Category: space

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This is How Scientists Figured Out the Age of the Earth

How old humanity is will remain a point of contention probably for as long as there are people around to argue.

When it comes to the age of this beauty, disastrous planet we all call home, though, scientists are pretty much in agreement as far as when she was born in a fury of explosions and creation.

Image Credit: iStock

What you’ll find if you Google this question (aside from my amazingly succinct and informative article), is that – since the 1950s – scientists have been secure in the belief that the earth is around 4.54 billion years old (plus or minus 50 million years).

People have been working on the answer to this question for a few hundred years, actually, all the way back to Greek philosopher Aristotle. He believed that time had no beginning and no end, and that the earth was infinitely old.

In ancient India, religious scholars envisioned a universe that perpetually exploded, expanded, and collapsed before beginning again – their calculations were that this had been happening for around 1.97 billion years.

Image Credit: iStock

In the Middle Ages, Christian scholars combed the Bible for clues, coming up with much shorter estimates, somewhere between 5471 and 7519 years.

From the Renaissance on, scientists looked at factors from the planet’s rate of cooling, the accumulation of sediment, and the chemical evolution but came up with such wide-ranging answers there couldn’t be a consensus.

Around the turn of the 20th century, scientists discovered they could calculate how old a rock was by measuring radioactive decay, from which we got carbon dating – a reliable method for measuring large swaths of time.

In the 1950s, a geochemist named Clair C. Patterson – who had worked on the Manhattan Project – measured the isotopic composition of lead from the Canyon Diablo meteorite and other space rock samples that correlated to the formation of the earth.

Image Credit: Public Domain

His estimate – 4.5 billion years.

That number has been revised only slightly in the decades since.

Patterson recalled later that “no one cared about it.”

Image Credit: Public Domain

He feels that remains true even today, and maybe even less so.

It’s pretty cool to think about, though – rocks from space can tell us how long our planet has been around.

It’s like alien but not, and if you take the time to ponder it for a few minutes more, I doubt you’ll be sorry!

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Futurists Weigh In on What Our World Might Look Like in 500 Years

Barring any significant scientific advancements, none of us alive today are going to be around in 500 years. That doesn’t mean we can’t harbor some curiosity about whether or not our planet will look the same for our descendents, or different?

If it’s going to look different, how will it look different? It can be a crazy thing to consider, and not just from a technology point of view, either.

Image Credit: Pexels

500 years ago, after all, the world barely resembles the one we see all around us today. It was in the midst of a small Ice Age, and a period of vast European exploration and discovery.

When looking ahead several centuries, it’s hard to say for sure, largely because we remain unsure how the relationship between humans and the natural world is going to develop. We’ve been leaving our mark on the Earth since the Neolithic Age, manipulating the evolution of domestic plants and animal species, transforming the landscape, and of course, burning fossil fuels to our heart’s consent.

We’ve altered the planet’s climate, which continues to change and affect everything around us. Carbon dioxide levels are up to 412 parts per million as of the end of 2019, and global temperatures and sea levels are also on the rise.

Our planet is warming, and scientists have been warning for decades that natural disasters, food shortages, and other catastrophic events will eventually lead to social unrest, mass migration, and increased conflict.

Will the 26th century humans be dealing with the fallout of our lack of action? Or will they be looking back and thanking us for changing course while there was still time?

Image Credit: Pexels

Technology will surely continue to advance, and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku predicts that, by then, humans will be a civilization that’s learned to harness the entire sum of a planet’s energy. That means they would be able to use any clean energy technology we’ve imagined, and probably some that we haven’t.

Other theoretical futurists disagree, citing political and economic forces being likely to thwart any real steps toward progress.

Machine learning will be AMAZING, though. Stephen Hawking weighed in, proposing that by the year 2600, we would be publishing theoretical physics papers every 10 seconds. Moore’s Law says computer speed and complexity double every 18 months, so some of this work would surely be done by machines, without assistance.

Chew on that for a minute.

Other ideas include the average human lifespan stretching to 140 years, and that the digital storage of human personalities will let humans achieve a sort of immortality. We’ll be farming oceans, traveling in starships, and living on the moon and on Mars while robots take on the great frontiers.

Image Credit: Pexels

If any or all of that sounds pretty cool to you, I suggest you start calling your representatives today and pushing for action on climate change.

Otherwise we’re just going to be fighting over land and food instead of living on Mars.

And you’ve gotta agree that one of those things sounds way cooler than the other.

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NASA Captures Amazing New Images of the Universe That Almost Look Photoshopped

There are so many secrets of our universe that we still haven’t figured out yet. We get a little bit closer every day – and these images from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory are definitely a giant leap in the right direction.

Since 1999, the flagship X-ray telescope has produced over 23 trillion bytes of data. Thanks to the giant orbiting fixture, tons of magical, awe-inspiring images have come our way.

Here’s the latest drop from NASA that’s sure to blow the minds of even the most pessimistic of us.

Eta Carinae

Photo Credit: NASA/CXC

Eta Carinae is a volatile system in our Milky Way galaxy. Previous eruptions from these two stars once created a ring of incredibly hot gas spanning 2.3 light years in diameter. That’s some pretty serious firepower.

Researchers are keeping track of which stars are up next to transform into supernovas – stars that suddenly become super bright due to a recent catastrophic explosion. This pair is likely high up on that list.

Helix Nebula

Photo Credit: NASA/CXC

This image was created using data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Spitzer Space Telescope, Hubble Telescope, and NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The reason it takes so many sources to create one image? Each telescope is detects different elements of the Helix Nebula – so putting the data together provides a more accurate picture of the nebula’s moving parts.

This particular image is around 4 light years in diameter – or roughly 24 trillion miles long.

Cartwheel Galaxies

Photo Credit: NASA/CXC

Galaxies like the one above are formed when collisions alter star formations. The hot gas distributed from this particular collision drags on for over 150,000 light years. That’s a distance that we cannot even begin to understand on Earth.

Messier 82

Photo Credit: NASA/CXC

Messier 82, or M82, is giving scientists a glimpse into the process of star formation.

Here’s more about the image from NASA:

X-rays from Chandra (appearing as blue and pink) show gas in outflows about 20,000 light years long that has been heated to temperatures above ten million degrees by repeated supernova explosions.

Optical light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (red and orange) shows the galaxy.

This incredible album of images is seriously out of this world. The vast expanse of the universe gives me a little bit of hope during this super dark time. It helps remind me that there are things out there far bigger than our own tiny existence here on planet Earth. Plus, it’s comforting to look at other planets in the solar system and realize that – as it stands – Earth is still pretty hospitable.

If you’re feeling down about climate change, check out these dire photos from Venus. They’re sure to help you appreciate the greenery around us that we take for granted.

What are some of your favorite photos from space? Share them with us in the comments below!

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Crazy Facts 2020-09-16 20:13:39

On March 18, 1965, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first man to walk in space. The 30-year-old Russian floated outside the Voskhod 2 spacecraft for 12 minutes while connected to a 16ft tether.

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This Corned Beef Sandwich Made an Illicit Trip Into Space

This tale begins with astronaut John Young. The 9th person to walk on the moon, Young enjoyed the longest career of any astronaut before – or after – him at NASA, flying 6 space missions in over 42 years of service.

Yeah. I know.

He flew his first mission in 1985, the 3rd Gemini mission. He and fellow astronaut Gus Grissom named their craft “Molly Brown,” after the Unsinkable Molly Brown, and when NASA suggested that they change it – no need to worry about crashing into the sea, after all – they said fine, they would call it “Titanic” instead.

The “Molly Brown” was the last crew-named spacecraft to lift off on NASA’s watch.

What NASA officials didn’t know was that Young wasn’t done causing trouble in 1985. Not even close.

Before the flight, Young’s friend Walter Schirra gave him a corned beef sandwich, and Young decided to stick it in his pocket and take it along.

You know, just to see what would happen.

He surprised Grissom with it, and his partner took a few bites before the sandwich started to fall apart.

NASA wasn’t happy, because the crumbs from the sandwich could have caused trouble with the ship’s mechanics, though everything turned out fine.

At least, they did until Congress got wind of the situation – they were upset because taxpayer money had been spent on “official food” that was supposed to be evaluated.

Image Credit: NASA

Spoiler alert: a few bites of cold corned beef did not spoil anyone’s appetite.

Young was reprimanded, NASA implemented new rules as far as what astronauts could bring on flights, and Young was reportedly peeved that his stupid sandwich got more attention than all of the hard work and achievements of the men on board.

I guess that’s what you get when you fly by the seat of your corned beef-laden pants.

He died in 2018 at the ripe old age of 87.

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