Search Results for: antarctica

Planetary Science

Machine learning points to prime places in Antarctica to find meteorites

Using data on how ice moves across Antarctica, researchers identified more than 600 spots where space rocks may gather on the southern continent.

Climate

Ancient penguin bones reveal unprecedented shrinkage in key Antarctic glaciers

Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers are losing ice faster than any other time in the last 5,500 years. That history is written in bones and shells.

Climate

Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier ice shelf could collapse within five years

The loss of Thwaites’ buttressing ice shelf could hasten the demise of the “Doomsday Glacier” and raise the risk of dramatic sea level rise.

Earth

Satellites show how a massive lake in Antarctica vanished in days

Within six days, an Antarctic lake with twice the volume of San Diego Bay drained away, leaving a deep sinkhole filled with fractured ice.

Oceans

Some deep-sea octopuses aren’t the long-haul moms scientists thought they were

Off California’s coast, some octopuses lay eggs in the warmer water of geothermal springs in the “Octopus Garden,” speeding up their development.

Planetary Science

A meteor may have exploded over Antarctica 430,000 years ago

Tiny spherules recovered from a mountaintop suggest a space rock broke apart midflight and sprayed debris across thousands of kilometers.

Oceans

The Southern Ocean is still swallowing large amounts of humans’ carbon dioxide emissions

A 2018 study suggested the ocean surrounding Antarctica might be taking up less CO₂ than thought, but new data suggest it is still a carbon sink.

Planetary Science

Earth sweeps up 5,200 tons of extraterrestrial dust each year

Thousands of micrometeorites collected from Antarctica come from both comets and asteroids, a new study suggests.

Planetary Science

Organic molecules in an ancient Mars meteorite formed via geology, not alien life

Analysis of an ancient Martian meteorite reveals that organic molecules within it were formed by geologic processes rather than alien life.

Microbes

Missing Antarctic microbes raise thorny questions about the search for aliens

Scientists couldn’t find microbial life in soils from Antarctica, hinting at a limit for habitability on Earth and other worlds.

Climate

Wally Broecker divined how the climate could suddenly shift

Wally Broecker’s insight into the shutdown of the great ocean conveyor belt spurred the study of abrupt climate change.