Geologists unlock mysteries of our Earth's inner core

A research team from the University of Illinois and colleagues in China found earth's inner core has an inner core of its own, with crystals aligned in a different direction. 

Image courtesy Lachina Publishing Services.

Seismic waves are helping scientists to plumb the world's deepest mystery: the planet's inner core.

Thanks to a novel application of earthquake-reading technology, a research team at the University of Illinois and colleagues at Nanjing University in China have found that the Earth's inner core has an inner core of its own, which has surprising properties that could reveal information about our planet.

Xiaodong Song

Led by Xiaodong Song, a professor of geology at the U. of I., and visiting postdoctoral researcher Tao Wang, the team published its work in the journal Nature Geoscience on Feb. 9.

"Even though the inner core is small - smaller than the moon - it has some really interesting features," said Song.

"It may tell us about how our planet formed, its history, and other dynamic processes of the Earth. It shapes our understanding of what's going on deep inside the Earth."

Researchers use seismic waves from earthquakes to scan below the planet's surface, much like doctors use ultrasound to see inside patients.

The team used a technology that gathers data not from the initial shock of an earthquake, but from the waves that resonate in the earthquake's aftermath.

The earthquake is like a hammer striking a bell; much like a listener hears the clear tone that resonates after the bell strike, seismic sensors collect a coherent signal in the earthquake's coda.

(NB: CODA, on a recorded earthquake seismogram refers to the total length of the seismic wavetrain)

"It turns out the coherent signal enhanced by the technology is clearer than the ring itself," said Song.

"The basic idea of the method has been around for a while, and people have used it for other kinds of studies near the surface, but we are looking all the way through the center of the Earth."

Looking through the core revealed a surprise at the center of the planet, though not of the type envisioned by novelist Jules Verne.

The inner core, once thought to be a solid ball of iron, has some complex structural properties. 

The team found a distinct inner-inner core, about half the diameter of the whole inner core. 

The iron crystals in the outer layer of the inner core are aligned directionally, north-south. However, in the inner-inner core, the iron crystals point roughly east-west.

Not only are the iron crystals in the inner-inner core aligned differently, they behave differently from their counterparts in the outer-inner core.

This means that the inner-inner core could be made of a different type of crystal, or a different phase.

"The fact that we have two regions that are distinctly different may tell us something about how the inner core has been evolving," Song said.

"For example, over the history of the Earth, the inner core might have had a very dramatic change in its deformation regime. It might hold the key to how the planet has evolved. We are right in the center, literally, the center of the Earth."

ESA Integral manoeuvres to improve future observations

Credit: ESA

ESA’s Integral observatory is able to detect gamma-ray bursts, the most energetic phenomena in the Universe.

Since 2002, ESA’s Integral spacecraft has been observing some of the most violent events in the Universe, including gamma-ray bursts and black holes.

While it still has years of life ahead, its fuel will certainly run out one day.

Integral, one of ESA’s longest-serving and most successful space observatories, has begun a series of four thruster burns carefully designed to balance its scientific life with a safe reentry in 2029.

That seems far off, but detailed planning and teamwork now will ensure that the satellite’s eventual entry into the atmosphere will meet the Agency’s guidelines for minimising space debris.

Making these disposal manoeuvres so early will also minimises fuel usage, allowing ESA to exploit the valuable satellite’s lifetime to the fullest.

This is the first time that a spacecraft’s orbit is being adjusted, after 12 years in space, to achieve a safe reentry 15 years in the future, while maximising valuable science return for the subsequent seven to eight years.

“Our four burns will use about half of the estimated 96 kg of fuel available,” says Richard Southworth, spacecraft operations manager at ESA’s Space Operations Centre, ESOC, in Darmstadt, Germany.

“This will influence how Integral’s orbit evolves, so that even after we run out of propellant we will still have a safe reentry in February 2029 as a result of natural orbit decay.

“No further manoeuvres are required between now and then and Integral can continue to operate.”

Debris Mitigation
The latest ESA debris guidelines require that a satellite must be disposed of in such a way that it poses no risk to other satellites in protected orbital regions for more than 25 years.

Although Integral’s early launch date, in 2002, means it is not required to stick to the guidelines, they were followed for planning the disposal.

“We have done a great deal of modelling for Integral’s reentry in 2029,” says Klaus Merz of ESA’s Space Debris Office.

“We’re confident that this month’s manoeuvres will put it on track for a future safe reentry at latitudes in the far south, reducing risk far below guideline levels.”

Without these firings, the fuel supply would run out in perhaps 12–16 more years, after other essentials such as power end Integral's working life, but the satellite would not reenter for up to 200 years, which would present a hazard to other missions.

The Space Billboard: Innovation or Pollution of the Earth's skies

SpaceBillboard, a supporter of innovative space research, is set to launch the world's first billboard in space in a milestone that marks the increasing importance of CubeSats in Space Exploration.

Researchers at KU Leuven University in Belgium came up with the novel idea of launching a real billboard into space to help fund their research on a new line up of NexGen satellites called CubeSats.

A CubeSat is small, about the size of a milk carton - and lightweight, which makes them cheaper to build and launch.

A CubeSat is the perfect answer for universities and start-ups to get involved in space research, one of the bedrock platforms for research on advanced technology solutions.

European Space Agency ESA and NASA in the US have active CubeSat programs that help drive the development and adoption of emerging technologies in support of new business solutions.

Tjorven Delabie, co-founder of SpaceBillboard said: "We are talking about an out-of-this-world project, that allows companies to bring their brand into space."

"The idea is catching on, and SpaceBillboard has already secured a number of contracts for companies to have their message on their own billboard in space."

The launch of the billboard is scheduled for the beginning of 2016, to be launched from Alcantara in Brazil.

Highest and fastest
The messages on the SpaceBillboard will be the highest and the fastest ever seen in the industry, flying at 27,400 kph at an altitude of 500 km.

The Billboard will orbit the Earth 15 times a day, becoming the first advertisements that literally bring their message around the world.

Although the billboard will not be visible from Earth, all messages will be continuously visible on the SpaceBillboard website as well as used in the customers' branding campaigns.

Marketing and Science
SpaceBillboard is a new kind of crowdfunding project where private and corporate donors help push space research forward. For companies, buying one or more of the 400 available squares on the billboard is a perfect opportunity to showcase their innovative spirit. At euro 2500 per square for the launch premiere, SpaceBillboard is a fantastic way to bring together experts from academia and industry to support the future of technology.

Personal Messages
Inspiring people about space research is an important part of SpaceBillboard's mission. Therefore, you can also put a personal message on the billboard yourself.

Sending a personal message into space costs euro 1/character. So far, many have already signed up to share their message, most of them are messages of love.

Into Space
Once the SpaceBillboard has been sold out, it will be put on the CubeSat. This satellite will also perform a valuable scientific mission.

The CubeSat will be deployed into a high inclination, low Earth orbit, and is expected to operate in orbit for up to ten years.

After that, the satellite will burn up in the atmosphere, ensuring that no space debris is left behind.

Asteroid 2004 BL86: NEO That Flew Past Earth Has A Companion Moon - Binary

This movie of asteroid 2004 BL86 was generated from data collected by NASA's Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, on Jan. 26, 2015. Twenty individual images were used.

Credit: NASA

Scientists working with NASA's 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, have released the first radar images of asteroid 2004 BL86.

The images show the asteroid, which made its closest approach on Jan. 26, 2015 at 8:19 a.m. PST (11:19 a.m. EST) at a distance of about 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers, or 3.1 times the distance from Earth to the moon), has its own small moon.

The 20 individual images used in the movie were generated from data collected at Goldstone on Jan. 26, 2015.

They show the primary body is approximately 1,100 feet (325 meters) across and has a small moon approximately 230 feet (70 meters) across.

In the near-Earth population, about 16 percent of asteroids that are about 655 feet (200 meters) or larger are a binary (the primary asteroid with a smaller asteroid moon orbiting it) or even triple systems (two moons).

The resolution on the radar images is 13 feet (4 meters) per pixel.

The trajectory of asteroid 2004 BL86 is well understood. Monday's flyby was the closest approach the asteroid will make to Earth for at least the next two centuries.

It is also the closest a known asteroid this size will come to Earth until asteroid 1999 AN10 flies past our planet in 2027.

Asteroid 2004 BL86 was discovered on Jan. 30, 2004, by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey in White Sands, New Mexico.

Radar is a powerful technique for studying an asteroid's size, shape, rotation state, surface features and surface roughness, and for improving the calculation of asteroid orbits.

Radar measurements of asteroid distances and velocities often enable computation of asteroid orbits much further into the future than if radar observations weren't available.

NASA places a high priority on tracking asteroids in a vain effort that this will somehow protect our home planet from them.

In fact, the U.S. believes it has the most robust and productive survey and detection program for discovering near-Earth objects (NEOs), and report that to date, taking into account all U.S. assets, both civil and military, they have discovered over 98 percent of the known NEOs.

Gamma-Ray Burst was Cause of a Mass Extinction on Earth

In this illustration, a jet is produced by an unusually bright gamma-ray burst.

Credit: NASA/Swift/Cruz deWilde

A gamma-ray burst, the most powerful kind of explosion known in the universe, may have triggered a mass extinction on Earth within the past billion years, researchers say.

These deadly outbursts could help explain the so-called Fermi paradox, the seeming contradiction between the high chance of alien life and the lack of evidence for it, scientists added.

Gamma-ray bursts are brief, intense explosions of high-frequency electromagnetic radiation.

These outbursts give off as much energy as the sun during its entire 10-billion-year lifetime in anywhere from milliseconds to minutes.

Scientists think gamma-ray bursts may be caused by giant exploding stars known as hypernovas, or by collisions between pairs of dead stars known as neutron stars.

If a gamma-ray burst exploded within the Milky Way, it could wreak extraordinary havoc if it were pointed directly at Earth, even from thousands of light-years away.

Although gamma rays would not penetrate Earth's atmosphere well enough to burn the ground, they would chemically damage the atmosphere, depleting the ozone layer that protects the planet from damaging ultraviolet rays that could trigger mass extinctions.

It's also possible that gamma-ray bursts may spew out cosmic rays, which are high-energy particles that may create an experience similar to a nuclear explosion for those on the side of the Earth facing the explosion, causing radiation sickness.

To see how great a threat gamma-ray bursts might pose to Earth, researchers investigated how likely it was that such an explosion could have inflicted damage on the planet in the past.

Gamma-ray bursts are traditionally divided into two groups, long and short, depending on whether they last more or less than 2 seconds.

Long gamma-ray bursts are associated with the deaths of massive stars, while short gamma-ray bursts are most likely caused by the mergers of neutron stars.

For the most part, long gamma-ray bursts happen in galaxies very different from the Milky Way, dwarf galaxies low in any element heavier than hydrogen and helium.

Any long gamma-ray bursts in the Milky Way will likely be confined in regions of the galaxy that are similarly low in any element heavier than hydrogen and helium, the researchers said.

The scientists discovered the chance that a long gamma-ray burst could trigger mass extinctions on Earth was 50 percent in the past 500 million years, 60 percent in the past 1 billion years, and more than 90 percent in the past 5 billion years.

For comparison, the solar system is about 4.6 billion years old.

Short gamma-ray bursts happen about five times more often than long ones. However, since these shorter bursts are weaker, the researchers found they had negligible life-threatening effects on Earth.

They also calculated that gamma-ray bursts from galaxies outside the Milky Way probably pose no threat to Earth.

These findings suggest that a nearby gamma-ray burst may have caused one of the five greatest mass extinctions on Earth, such as the Ordovician extinction that occurred 440 million years ago.

The Ordovician extinction was the earliest of the so-called Big Five extinction events, and is thought by many to be the second largest.

The scientists also investigated the danger that gamma-ray bursts may pose for life elsewhere in the Milky Way.

Stars are packed more densely together toward the center of the galaxy, meaning worlds there face a greater danger of gamma-ray bursts.

Worlds in the region about 6,500 light-years around the Milky Way's core, where 25 percent of the galaxy's stars reside, faced more than a 95 percent chance of a lethal gamma-ray burst within the past billion years.

The researchers suggest that life as it is known on Earth could survive with certainty only in the outskirts of the Milky Way, more than 32,600 light-years from the galactic core.

The researchers also explored the danger gamma-ray bursts could pose for the universe as a whole.

They suggest that because of gamma-ray bursts, life as it is known on Earth might safely develop in only 10 percent of galaxies.

They also suggest that such life could only have developed in the past 5 billion years.

Before then, galaxies were smaller in size, and gamma-ray bursts were therefore always close enough to cause mass extinctions to any potentially life-harbouring planets.

"This may be an explanation, or at least a partial one, to what is called the Fermi paradox or the 'Big Silence,'" said lead study author Tsvi Piran, a physicist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

"Why we haven't encountered advanced civilizations so far? The Milky Way galaxy is much older than the solar system and there was ample time and ample space, the number of planetary systems with conditions similar to Earth is huge, for life to develop elsewhere in the galaxy. So why we haven't encountered advanced civilizations so far?"

The answer to Fermi's paradox may be that gamma-ray bursts have struck many life-harbouring planets.

The most severe criticism of these estimates "is that we address life as we know it on Earth," Piran told reporters.

"One can imagine very different forms of life that are resilient to the relevant radiation."

Piran and his colleague, Raul Jimenez, detailed their findings online today (Dec. 5) in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Invisible shield to ultrarelativistic electrons found thousands of miles above Earth

Scientists have discovered an invisible shield roughly 7,200 miles above Earth. 

Image courtesy Andy Kale, University of Alberta.

A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder has discovered an invisible shield some 7,200 miles above Earth that blocks so-called "killer electrons," which whip around the planet at near-light speed and have been known to threaten astronauts, fry satellites and degrade space systems during intense solar storms.

The barrier to the particle motion was discovered in the Van Allen radiation belts, two doughnut-shaped rings above Earth that are filled with high-energy electrons and protons, said Distinguished Professor Daniel Baker, director of CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).

Held in place by Earth's magnetic field, the Van Allen radiation belts periodically swell and shrink in response to incoming energy disturbances from the sun.

As the first significant discovery of the space age, the Van Allen radiation belts were detected in 1958 by Professor James Van Allen and his team at the University of Iowa and were found to be comprised of an inner and outer belt extending up to 25,000 miles above Earth's surface.

In 2013, Baker, who received his doctorate under Van Allen, led a team that used the twin Van Allen Probes launched by NASA in 2012 to discover a third, transient "storage ring" between the inner and outer Van Allen radiation belts that seems to come and go with the intensity of space weather.

The latest mystery revolves around an "extremely sharp" boundary at the inner edge of the outer belt at roughly 7,200 miles in altitude that appears to block the ultrafast electrons from breeching the shield and moving deeper towards Earth's atmosphere.

"It's almost like theses electrons are running into a glass wall in space," said Baker, the study's lead author.

"Somewhat like the shields created by force fields on Star Trek that were used to repel alien weapons, we are seeing an invisible shield blocking these electrons. It's an extremely puzzling phenomenon."

A paper on the subject was published in Nature 'An impenetrable barrier to ultrarelativistic electrons in the Van Allen radiation belts.'

The team originally thought the highly charged electrons, which are looping around Earth at more than 100,000 miles per second, would slowly drift downward into the upper atmosphere and gradually be wiped out by interactions with air molecules, but the impenetrable barrier seen by the twin Van Allen Probes stops the electrons before they get that far, said Baker.

The group looked at a number of scenarios that could create and maintain such a barrier.

"Nature abhors strong gradients and generally finds ways to smooth them out, so we would expect some of the relativistic electrons to move inward and some outward," said Baker.

"It's not obvious how the slow, gradual processes that should be involved in motion of these particles can conspire to create such a sharp, persistent boundary at this location in space."

Another scenario is that the giant cloud of cold, electrically charged gas called the plasmasphere, which begins about 600 miles above Earth and stretches thousands of miles into the outer Van Allen belt, is scattering the electrons at the boundary with low frequency, electromagnetic waves that create a plasmapheric "hiss," said Baker.

The hiss sounds like white noise when played over a speaker, he said.

"I think the key here is to keep observing the region in exquisite detail, which we can do because of the powerful instruments on the Van Allen probes."

"If the sun really blasts the Earth's magnetosphere with a coronal mass ejection (CME), I suspect it will breach the shield for a period of time," said Baker, also a faculty member in the astrophysical and planetary sciences department.

"It's like looking at the phenomenon with new eyes, with a new set of instrumentation, which give us the detail to say, 'Yes, there is this hard, fast boundary,'" said John Foster, associate director of MIT's Haystack Observatory and a study co-author.

NASA Lidar Lasers to Map Earth's Forests in 3D

An artist's conception of the 3D maps of forest architecture that data from GEDI could produce.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

A new laser instrument developed for the International Space Station is expected to generate incredible 3D maps of Earth's forests.

The instrument called Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) uses lidar, a special kind of laser technology, to create detailed 3D maps and measure the biomass of forests.

NASA has already launched a satellite designed to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but the new instrument, once launched, will allow scientists to estimate the total amount of carbon stored here on Earth inside trees.

"(GEDI) lidar will have a tremendous impact on our ability to monitor forest degradation, adding to the critical data needed to mitigate the effects of climate change," Patrick O'Shea, chief research officer at the University of Maryland, said in a statement.

Scientists already knew that trees absorb carbon. What scientists don't know is how much they store.

This is a problem because scientists can't predict how much extra carbon would escape into the atmosphere if a forest was destroyed or if planting new trees would be enough to offset the emissions.

"One of the most poorly quantified components of the carbon cycle is the net balance between forest disturbance and regrowth," Ralph Dubayah, the (GEDI) principal investigator at the University of Maryland, said in the same statement.

GEDI's lidar instrument works by shooting streams of light particles at the Earth that then reflect back and are picked up by a detector.

The time it takes the particles to reach Earth and bounce back is converted into a distance.

Every material that the light particles pass through on their journey leaves behind a "fingerprint" that the detector can read.

That means that light particles that pass through leafy tree canopies will look different than the particles that pass through branches or trunks. The unique markers will allow scientists to construct detailed 3D maps of forest architecture.

The lidar pulses will measure the height of trees to about a 3-foot (1 meter) accuracy and allow scientists to estimate the total biomass in a forest and how much carbon it's storing.

GEDI will have three lasers that will shoot out a total of 14 laser beams that will cover about 4 miles (6.5 kilometers). The team of engineers behind GEDI estimate that it will send out about 16 billion laser pulses every year.

Piers Sellers, deputy director of Goddard's Sciences and Exploration Directorate, said GEDI's data will be invaluable when it's combined with historic records of carbon levels collected by satellites like Landsat and MODIS which have been hovering over Earth for decades.

Scientists will also combine the 3D maps with images, maps and data collected from other satellites.

The ultimate goal is to create a database that will monitor changes in forests over time.

Scientists hope the combined data will reveal more about land use, biodiversity and climate change effects.

NASA officials estimate that engineers will complete GEDI by 2018. Once aboard the space station, it will scan most tropical and temperate forests between 50 degrees north and 50 degrees south latitude.

Three-man multinational ISS crew returns to Earth - Video

Expedition 41 Commander Max Suraev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), NASA Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman and Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency landed safely on the steppe of Kazakhstan near the town of Arkalyk on Nov. 10, Kazakh time, after bidding farewell to the Expedition 42 crew members and undocking their Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft from the Rassvet module on the International Space Station.

Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency (L), Max Suraev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (C), and NASA's Reid Wiseman (R) sit in chairs outside the Soyuz TMA-13M capsule just minutes after they landed in Kazakhstan November 10, 2014

A three-man multinational crew of astronauts returned to Earth Monday aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, after spending 165 days working together at the International Space Station, NASA said.

ISS commander, Russia's Max Suraev, his American colleague Reid Wiseman and German Alexander Gerst from the European Space Agency (ESA) touched down at 10:58 pm Sunday (0358 GMT Monday).

The three men smiled broadly from reclining chairs as medical personnel tended to them amid patches of snow on the barren steppe just northeast of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, where they landed.

Surayev flashed a V for victory sign while Wiseman pumped his fist as they waited to regain their land legs after nearly half a year of weightlessness.

"Everything was in the spirit of cooperation, so I think that everybody needs to learn and follow the example of the ISS crew members," Surayev said.

"Let's try to live together side by side. This is the most important thing," he added.

While in space the crew traveled more than 70 million miles (112.7 million kilometers), NASA said.

The "bulls-eye" touchdown was executed amid low clouds and fog "following a flawless descent back into the atmosphere," according to NASA TV.

The spacecraft was pulled onto its side by its parachute upon arrival, which NASA TV added was not uncommon.

The US space agency said the "departure of Wiseman, Gerst and Surayev marks the end of Expedition 41," referring to their mission to the ISS to carry out equipment repairs, maintenance and experiments.

Surayev was on his second long ISS mission, having now spent a total of 334 days in space, while the other two astronauts were on their first trip.

The three men were pictured smiling and with their arms around each other before hitching the ride back home, undocking from ISS at 7:31 pm (0031 GMT).

Another three-person crew remains on the ISS to "continue research and maintenance aboard the station" and will be joined by three more astronauts who launch from Kazakhstan on November 23, NASA said.

NASA lost its ability to reach the space station when the shuttle program ended in 2011 after 30 years.

The US space agency has helped fund private companies in a push to restore US access to the ISS.

In the meantime, the world's astronauts must rely on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to get to the ISS and back, at a cost of $70 million per seat.

There are 15 country participants in the ISS program, though the US and Russia contribute the lion's share of funds for the project.

Climate Change Caused by the Ocean Circulation and Atmosphere

The Thermohaline Circulation or ocean conveyor belt moves heat and water between the hemispheres, along the ocean bottom. It also moves carbon dioxide.

Most of the concerns about climate change have focused on the amount of greenhouse gases that have been released into the atmosphere, but in a new study published in Science, a group of Rutgers researchers have found that circulation of the ocean plays an equally important role in regulating the earth's climate.

In their study, the researchers say the major cooling of Earth and continental ice build-up in the Northern Hemisphere 2.7 million years ago coincided with a shift in the circulation of the ocean - which pulls in heat and carbon dioxide in the Atlantic and moves them through the deep ocean from north to south until it's released in the Pacific.

The ocean conveyor system, Rutgers scientists believe, changed at the same time as a major expansion in the volume of the glaciers in the northern hemisphere as well as a substantial fall in sea levels.

It was the Antarctic ice, they argue, that cut off heat exchange at the ocean's surface and forced it into deep water. They believe this caused global climate change at that time, not carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

"We argue that it was the establishment of the modern deep ocean circulation - the ocean conveyor - about 2.7 million years ago, and not a major change in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere that triggered an expansion of the ice sheets in the northern hemisphere," says Stella Woodard, lead author and a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences.

Their findings, based on ocean sediment core samples between 2.5 million to 3.3 million years old, provide scientists with a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of climate change today.

The study shows that changes in heat distribution between the ocean basins is important for understanding future climate change.

However, scientists can't predict precisely what effect the carbon dioxide currently being pulled into the ocean from the atmosphere will have on climate.

Still, they argue that since more carbon dioxide has been released in the past 200 years than any recent period in geological history, interactions between carbon dioxide, temperature changes and precipitation, and ocean circulation will result in profound changes.

Scientists believe that the different pattern of deep ocean circulation was responsible for the elevated temperatures 3 million years ago when the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was arguably what it is now and the temperature was 4 degree Fahrenheit higher.

They say the formation of the ocean conveyor cooled the earth and created the climate we live in now.

"Our study suggests that changes in the storage of heat in the deep ocean could be as important to climate change as other hypotheses, tectonic activity or a drop in the carbon dioxide level, and likely led to one of the major climate transitions of the past 30 million years," says Yair Rosenthal, co-author and professor of marine and coastal sciences at Rutgers

Earth's Water Existed 135 Million Years Earlier

An illustration of the early solar system shows proto-Earth, proto-Mars, Vesta within the asteroid belt, and proto-Jupiter. 

The dashed white line represents the "snow line" boundary for water ice in the solar system. 

Credit: Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The water that supports life on Earth may have been on the planet much earlier than scientists previously thought, new research suggests.

While the environmental conditions in Earth's early years made it impossible for water to remain on the planet's surface, scientists have found evidence that the ingredients for water were protectively stored inside rocky bodies near our planet, and maybe inside Earth itself.

The new findings suggest that there was water in the inner solar system 135 million years earlier than previous evidence had shown.

"Our findings show the earliest evidence of water in the inner solar system," said Adam Sarafian, a Ph.D. student at the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts and lead author of the new study.

This image of the giant asteroid Vesta was captured by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on Sept. 5, 2012.

Credit: NASA

Meteorites from an asteroid
The smoking gun appears inside meteorites that once belonged to the asteroid Vesta, one of the largest members of the asteroid belt that sits between Jupiter and Mars. Meteorites from Vesta, dark chunks of cooled magma often as big as grapefruits, continue to be found in Antarctica.

Previous analysis found no water or water-forming ingredients in those meteorites, but Sarafian and his colleagues zoomed in on the molecular contents of the meteorites, and found trace amounts of hydrogen-oxygen molecules.

More than 4.5 billion years ago, or about 15 million years after solid bodies began to form around the young sun, water existed in the outer, cooler parts of the solar system, previous studies have shown.

But in the inner solar system, where Vesta and a young Earth resided, temperatures were far too hot and solar winds would send any water vapor to the outer regions of the solar system.

While the Earth grew and changed over the next 4 billion years or so, Vesta remained frozen in time, according to Sarafian.

"Vesta gives us a snapshot of what Earth maybe looked like when it was first forming," Sarafian said.

Geochemist: Helium and Lead isotopes provide insight into Earth's core

This map of the Samoan hotspot shows its division into three parallel volcanic lineaments. 

Credit: UCSB

A UC Santa Barbara geochemist studying Samoan volcanoes has found evidence of the planet's early formation still trapped inside the Earth.

Known as hotspots, volcanic island chains such as Samoa can ancient primordial signatures from the early solar system that have somehow survived billions of years.

Matthew Jackson, an associate professor in UCSB's Department of Earth Science, and colleagues utilized high-precision lead and helium isotope measurements to unravel the chemical composition and geometry of the deep mantle plume feeding Samoa's volcanoes.

Their findings appear today in the journal Nature.

In most cases, volcanoes are located at the point where two tectonic plates meet, and are created when those plates collide or diverge.

Hotspot volcanoes, however, are not located at plate boundaries but rather represent the anomalous melting in the interior of the plates.

Such intraplate volcanoes form above a plume-fed hotspot where the Earth's mantle is melting.

The plate moves over time, at approximately the rate human fingernails grow (3 inches a year), and eventually the volcano moves off the hotspot and becomes extinct.

Another volcano forms in its place over the hotspot and the process repeats itself until a string of volcanoes evolves.

"So you end up with this linear trend of age-progressive volcanoes," Jackson said. "On the Pacific plate, the youngest is in the east and as you go to the west, the volcanoes are older and more deeply eroded."

"Hawaii has two linear trends of volcanoes, most underwater, which are parallel to each other. There's a southern trend and a northern trend."

Because the volcanic composition of parallel Hawaiian trends is fundamentally different, Jackson and his team decided to look for evidence of this in other hotspots.

In Samoa, they found three volcanic trends exhibiting three different chemical configurations as well as a fourth group of a late-stage eruption on top of the third trend of volcanoes. These different groups exhibit distinct compositions.

"Our goal was to figure out how we could use this distribution of volcano compositions at the surface to reverse-engineer how these components are distributed inside this upwelling mantle plume at depth," Jackson said.

Each of the four distinct geochemical compositions, or endmembers, that the scientists identified in Samoan lavas contained low Helium-3 (He-3) and Helium-4 (He-4) ratios.

The surprising discovery was that they all exhibited evidence for mixing with a fifth, rare primordial component consisting of high levels of He-3 and He-4.

"We have really strong evidence that the bulk of the plume is made of the high Helium-3, -4 component," Jackson said.

"That tells us that most of this plume is primordial material and there are other materials hosted inside of this plume with low Helium-3, -4, and these are likely crustal materials sent into the mantle at ancient subduction zones."

The unique isotopic topology revealed by the researchers' analysis showed that the four low-helium endmembers do not mix efficiently with one another. However, each of them mixes with the high He-3 and He-4 component.

"This unique set of mixing relationships requires a specific geometry for the four geochemical flavors within the upwelling plume: They must be hosted within a matrix that is composed of the rare fifth component with high He-3," Jackson explained.

"This new constraint on plume structure has important implications for how deep mantle material is entrained in plumes, and it gives us the clearest picture yet for the chemical structure of an upwelling mantle plume."

More Information
Helium and lead isotopes reveal the geochemical geometry of the Samoan plume - M. G. Jackson, S. R. Hart, J. G. Konter, M. D. Kurz, J. Blusztajn & K. A. Farley Corresponding Author: Nature 514, 355–358 (16 October 2014) doi:10.1038/nature13794

ESA Releases Bad and Good News from Earth's Atmosphere Studies

Carbon dioxide emissions increased in East Asia (right) at an average rate of 9.8% per year from 2003 to 2011, but nitrogen oxides increased by ‘only’ 5.8% per year.  

This indicates a use of cleaner technology in East Asia. 

North America and Europe, however, show slightly decreasing trends for both gases. 

The maps show the corresponding spatial pattern as obtained from the satellite data: red corresponds to regions with high values of NOx and CO2, while blue indicates background values.

Credit: ESA

While Europe and North America show a decrease in emission trends between 2003 and 2011, emissions related to economic growth in East Asia continue to rise, but with a reduction in nitrogen oxides emitted per amount of carbon dioxide.

This demonstrates the use of cleaner technology in East Asia.

Nitrogen oxides are generated during the high-temperature combustion of fossil fuels in automobiles and industrial machinery.

They contribute significantly to a reduction of air quality and can be the cause of respiratory problems.

At the same time, these sources release large amounts of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is toxic only at very high concentrations, but is the most important man-made greenhouse gas, leading to global warming and its related consequences.

In a study published yesterday in Nature Geoscience, scientists from the University of Bremen in Germany used data from the Sciamachy instrument on ESA’s Envisat satellite to measure nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide trends from 2003 to 2011.

They also exploited  Sciamachy-based data products generated within the ‘GHG-CCI’ project under ESA’s Climate Change Initiative.

“Nitrogen dioxide has a relatively short lifetime, hours, compared to carbon dioxide, which lasts decades, and is a suitable tracer of recently emitted carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion,” explained Maximilian Reuter, lead author of the study.

“Sciamachy measured nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide simultaneously. We used a spatial high-pass filtering method to isolate the anthropogenic carbon dioxide signal from overlaying signals due to uptake and release of carbon dioxide by vegetation.”

Satellite-derived CO2 concentrations proportional to local anthropogenic emissions in North America and Europe. 

The green line shows the mean value and the grey-shaded area its variability and uncertainty. 

This indicates that less CO2 is emitted during weekends compared to week days.

Using this method, the scientists were able to better see where and when carbon dioxide was emitted.

For example, it showed that less carbon dioxide from local anthropogenic sources is emitted during weekends in Europe and North America compared to week days.

“This has never been observed from space before and shows how accurate the used method is,” said Dr Reuter.

Although Envisat’s mission ended in 2012, a decade of data from its 10 instruments is still being exploited for studies on Earth’s atmosphere, land, oceans and ice caps.

“Unfortunately, none of the existing nor any of the planned near-future satellites are designed to directly observe carbon dioxide emissions of cities, power plants, volcanoes or other important emission hot spots,” said Michael Buchwitz, co-author of the study and GHG-CCI scientific leader.

“This will only be possible with the proposed mission CarbonSat.”

CarbonSat is one of the two candidates for ESA’s eighth Earth Explorer satellite.

Using the unique spectroscopic fingerprint of carbon dioxide and methane, CarbonSat aims to image these two strong greenhouse gases at very high resolution.

The mission would lead to a better understanding of the sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane.

ESA Space Station Astronaut 90 Minute Orbit Time-Lapse into 51 seconds Video

ISS crew member ESA's Alexander Gerst captured a complete orbit of Earth.

The station orbits the Earth roughly every 90 minutes and therefore passes from day to night, back to day in that time-period.

An Aurora Borealis can be seen in the night time portion of the video.

NASA SERVIR: ISERV tool enables rapid view of Earth images from space

A screen-capture of the new online map showing available images taken by the ISERV camera system. 

Users can click on a location to see a slideshow of images uploaded by project scientists. 

Credit: NASA

Flipping through online photo albums and social media collections of "selfies" is one thing, but when pictures can show land areas where millions of people live, it can put things in a completely different perspective - especially for scientists.



One of NASA's newest tools for effective Earth observation has been orbiting our planet for more than 15 years.

The International Space Station provides a constant, reliable perspective from which to record changes on the surface of Earth.

A new user-friendly online resource will provide images from a space station camera with nearly two years of images to share.

Danny Hardin, left, an NSSTC senior research scientist from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, trains three researchers from El Salvador to use SERVIR, an NSSTC-developed environmental monitoring system.

Credit: SERVIR

The interface is a world map that links to thousands of images made by the ISERV camera: the International Space Station SERVIR Environmental Research and Visualization System.

With the click of a mouse, the public can access the images with the ISERV Viewer.

People can view and download specific ISERV captures from a collection of more than 4,000 Earth images. ISERV scientists plan to expand the database to about 60,000 by summer 2015.



ISERV was installed as a technology testbed in the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF) on the orbiting laboratory in January 2013 and is scheduled to be removed from operation in 2015.

The camera receives and acts on commands from the ISERV team to acquire image data of specific areas of Earth's surface as the space station passes overhead.

Images from ISERV are uploaded quickly to the web due to a new automated georeferencing capability, allowing imagery to be processed and published much faster.

This is critically important when dealing with a disaster situation. Georeferencing is a process in which points in an image can be associated with geographic locations on a map.

The SERVIR project operates via regional "hubs" in Nairobi, Kenya; Kathmandu, Nepal; and Panama City, Panama, and is coordinated from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

The SERVIR hubs can task the ISERV system to image scenes of Earth's surface in their regions of interest to address environmental issues and disasters.

Much as parents can look back to see how their child has changed over the years, scientists hope that the snapshots gathered by ISERV of land areas before and after environmental changes will improve future response to natural disasters.

Solar Storm Would Have Wreaked Havoc On Earth: Multiple Views - Video

On July 23rd, 2012, a coronal mass ejection, traveling between 1,800 and 2,200 MPH, fastest ever recorded by NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), fortunately was not Earth-directed.

Russian and American astronauts: ISS Crew return to Earth

Russian doctors help US NASA astronaut Steven Swanson after he returned with two Russian cosmonauts from the International Space Station, near the Kazakhstan city of Zhezkazgan on September 11, 2014

Credit: ROCOSMOS

Two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut returned to Earth on Thursday after spending more than six months working together aboard the International Space Station, as tensions between their countries soared over the Ukraine crisis.

Alex Skvortsov

American Steven Swanson and Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev, who left on March 26, landed in the Kazakh steppe at 0223 GMT aboard a Soyuz capsule, the Russian space agency Roscosmos and NASA said in joint statements.

The trio, who worked together in cramped quarters aboard the ISS, smiled broadly, gave thumbs up signs and waved in the sunshine as they spent their first minutes back on the planet.

The three spent a total of "169 days of science and technology research in space, including a record 82 hours of research in a single week" in July, NASA said in a statement.

The crew orbited the Earth more than 2,700 times and travelled more than 71.7 million miles, NASA said.

"One of several key research focus areas during Expedition 40 was human health management for long duration space travel as NASA and Roscosmos prepare for two crew members to spend one year aboard the orbiting laboratory in 2015," it said.

The ISS is now being commanded by Russian Cosmonaut Max Suraev, with crewmates Reid Wiseman of NASA and Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency.

Three new crew members, Barry Wilmore of NASA and Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova of Roscosmos, are due to arrive in two weeks, blasting off from Kazakhstan on September 25.

Elena Serova is the first Russian female cosmonaut to serve as an ISS crew member.

Amid the political tensions in Ukraine, NASA announced, in April, that it was cutting space cooperation with Russia over Moscow's Ukraine policies, but that work at the space station would not be affected.

Use of the space station depends very much on Russia, which is the only country with the capability of reliably transporting astronauts and cosmonauts to and from the facility.

The ISS was launched in 1998 as an international effort and has been a symbol of cooperation, particularly between the US (NASA), Russia (ROCOSMOS), Europe (ESA) and Japan (JAXA).

Aerial shot of the Expedition 40 Soyuz TMA-12M landing site.

Credit: ROCOSMOS 

NASA SDO: Extreme Solar Flare heading to Earth

The Sun by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. 

Credit: NASA

Scientists say an extreme X-Class solar flare is blasting its way to Earth and could mess up some power grids, satellites and radio transmissions.

Forecasters at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center don't yet know when Wednesday's solar storm will arrive here and which part of the planet will be facing the sun and bear the brunt of the effects.

It could be as early as Thursday morning to a few days.

Prediction Center director Tom Berger said scientists will have a better idea after they get more satellite data.

The X-Class flare is considered extreme on forecasters' scale, but just barely. Flares like this cause geomagnetic storms which can knock some power grids offline temporarily.

They also can damage satellites and disrupt radio transmissions but they expand the colourful Aurora Borealis (northern lights).

US-Russian ISS Space Crew Returns to Earth Tonight

Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov (center), Soyuz commander; NASA astronaut Steve Swanson (left), Expedition 40 commander; and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, flight engineer, conduct a suit leak check in their Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft ahead of a return home from the International Space Station set for Sept. 10, 2014.

Credit: NASA

A trio of space travelers will return to Earth tonight (Sept. 10) to end a months-long expedition to the International Space Station, and you can watch the landing live online.

American astronaut Steve Swanson and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev are due to land their Russian-built Soyuz space capsule on the Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan at 10:23 p.m. EDT (0243 Sept. 11 GMT), after more than five months in orbit.

You can watch the space crew's landing on Space.com in a live webcast provided by NASA. The webcast will include a series of broadcasts for each stage of the landing.

The landing webcast begins at 3:15 p.m. EDT (1915 GMT) with a farewell ceremony, then resumes at 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT) for live views of undocking. The landing coverage will begin at 9:15 p.m. EDT (0115 GMT).

Swanson and his crewmates launched to the International Space Station on March 25, with Swanson commanding the outpost's Expedition 40 mission. Three other station crewmembers — NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, cosmonaut Maxim Suarev and German astronaut Alexander Gerst — arrived at the station in late May.

"We've accomplished a lot. We've had a lot of fun," Swanson said Tuesday (Sept. 9) as he handed control of the space station over to Suarev. "This was a team effort. We got together and did it as a team.

During the Expedition 40 mission, the station astronauts and cosmonauts watched over a flurry of robotic cargo ship arrivals and departures by Russian, European and commercial American spacecraft. Skvortsov and Artemyev performed two spacewalks, and tossed a tiny Peruvian satellite into space on their second excursion.

Swanson made a bit of space history by becoming the first astronaut to post Instagram photos from space. And then there were the science experiments. Many, many experiments.

"We actually set the record for the number of hours of science in a week," Swanson said.

The return of Swanson, Skvortsov and Artemyev tonight will mark the official start of Expedition 41 on the International Space Station. Suarev will command that mission.

NEO Asteroid 2014 RC flyby caught on video

The NEO, asteroid 2014 RC, flew within 21,000 miles of the surface of Earth on September 7th, 2014.

A. Thirouin, B. Skiff, and N. Moskovitz analysed the brightness variations using the Lowell Observatory's 1.1m (42-inch) Hall telescope in Arizona.