Lifeboat Foundation

Meteorite material presumed to be devoid of water because it formed in the dry inner Solar System appears to have contained sufficient hydrogen to have delivered to Earth at least three times the mass of water in its oceans, a new study shows.

While the idea that enstatite chondrite (EC) meteorites contained enough hydrogen to provide water to the growing proto-Earth has been proposed, efforts to rigorously test this scenario have been hampered by difficulties in measuring hydrogen concentrations in ECs — an obstacle this study overcame.

According to models of Solar System formation, Earth should be dry. However, our blue planet’s vast oceans, humid atmosphere and well-hydrated geology boldly defy such predictions, making it unique among the other rocky planets of the inner Solar System.

Electric current is everywhere, from powering homes to controlling the plasma that fuels fusion reactions to possibly giving rise to vast cosmic magnetic fields. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have found that electrical currents can form in ways not known before. The novel findings could give researchers greater ability to bring the fusion energy that drives the sun and stars to Earth.

“It’s very important to understand which processes produce electrical currents in plasma and which phenomena could interfere with them,” said Ian Ochs, graduate student in Princeton Universitys Program in Plasma Physics and lead author of a paper selected as a featured article in Physics of Plasmas. “They are the primary tool we use to control plasma in magnetic fusion research.”

Groups of stars can tear their planet-forming disk to shreds, leaving behind warped, misaligned rings, scientists find in a breakthrough study.

Solar systems like ours generally form with their planets all orbiting in the same, flat plane. But, as an international team of scientists has found in a new study, this isn’t always the case.

Please have a listen to Episode 14 of Cosmic Controversy with guest Julie Castillo, NASA’s Dawn mission project scientist. We spend much of the episode discussing the beguiling dwarf planet Ceres and the need for a sample return mission.

This week’s guest is NASA Dawn project scientist Julie Castillo-Rogez who led the hugely successful robotic mission on the first in-depth look at the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. Castillo talks about why there’s a growing consensus that Ceres may have long had habitable subsurface conditions and why we need a sample return mission to launch in 2033. We also discuss Mars’ moons of Deimos and Phobos and the first interstellar asteroid, Oumuamua.

Continue reading “Episode 14 --- Does the Dwarf Planet Ceres Harbor Life?” »

The moon is turning ever so slightly red, and it’s likely Earth’s fault. Our planet’s atmosphere may be causing the moon to rust, new research finds.

Rust, also known as an iron oxide, is a reddish compound that forms when iron is exposed to water and oxygen. Rust is the result of a common chemical reaction for nails, gates, the Grand Canyon’s red rocks — and even Mars. The Red Planet is nicknamed after its reddish hue that comes from the rust it acquired long ago when iron on its surface combined with oxygen and water, according to a statement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

ASTEROID-HUNTING SPACECRAFT: NASA’s latest mission is heading to the Trojan asteroids to discover the origin of our solar system via Seeker.

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This is my second video presentation on the topic of GEO space-based solar power (astroelectricity). This was also given via video at a conference in Portugal on 22 Aug 2020. After a brief introduction to astroelectricity, the 24-minute presentation addresses how global astroelectricity will enable most of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals to be addressed and, especially, how affordable middle-class housing can be built. We are living in an exciting time (in a positive sense) where emerging technologies will enable us to push through these difficult times. The key is to undertake an orderly transition from fossil carbon fuels to astroelectricity and not be sidetracked by poorly developed “solutions” such as the Paris Climate Agreement and the Green New Deal.

The world needs a peaceful, orderly plan to transition from fossil carbon fuels to globally decentralized sustainable energy sufficient to enable worldwide middle-class prosperity. Nuclear power, wind power, and ground solar power—“solutions” often tied to the Green New Deal—cannot practically achieve this. Astroelectricity, generated in space by space-based solar power, can meet this need. This presentation builds on the “(Em)powering World Peace and Prosperity Using Astroelectricity” to discuss the global benefits that will arise from transitioning to astroelectricity.

Continue reading “Enriching humanity using astroelectricity” »

To the surprise of many planetary scientists, the oxidized iron mineral hematite has been discovered at high latitudes on the Moon, according to a study published today in Science Advances led by Shuai Li, assistant researcher at the Hawai’i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST).

Iron is highly reactive with oxygen—forming reddish rust commonly seen on Earth. The lunar surface and interior, however, are virtually devoid of oxygen, so pristine metallic iron is prevalent on the Moon and highly oxidized iron has not been confirmed in samples returned from the Apollo missions. In addition, hydrogen in solar wind blasts the lunar surface, which acts in opposition to oxidation. So, the presence of highly oxidized iron-bearing minerals, such as hematite, on the Moon is an unexpected discovery.

“Our hypothesis is that lunar hematite is formed through oxidation of lunar surface iron by the oxygen from the Earth’s upper atmosphere that has been continuously blown to the lunar surface by solar wind when the Moon is in Earth’s magnetotail during the past several billion years,” said Li.