Tag: science

Someone is apparently considering putting a helicopter on Starship when it goes to Mars

2:53 pm

Potential Starship helicopter location

In my regular trolling through the images sent down from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), I sometimes come across things that imply truly exciting future missions. That happened when in 2019 I found a bunch of photos each labeled as a “candidate landing site for SpaceX Starship”. Without fanfare SpaceX had begun researching locations for where it intended to land Starship on Mars, in the northern lowland plains, research that it later solidified considerably.

Similarly, I have found MRO images in 2022 suggesting scientists were thinking of running a helicopter mission inside Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system. Another image in 2024 suggested that a helicopter mission might go to another region in Mars’s southern cratered highlands.

The image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, is another new example of a potential Martian helicopter mission. It was taken on August 19, 2025 and is labeled provocatively “Characterize Possible Rotorcraft Landing Site.” Unlike the previous two proposed helicopter locations, however — which appeared to be aimed at uncertain NASA funding — this image’s location suggests it is far more certain, and might launch far sooner than you can imagine.
» Read more

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ISS study suggests that weightlessness impacts the eyes of men more than women

10:50 am

Eye flattening while in space
Astronauts who experienced changes in their
eyes (SANS) while on long missions in space

The uncertainty of science: A recent study of 30 astronauts during long term stays on ISS suggests that weightlessness impacts the shape of the eyes more in men than in women.

You can read the paper here.

In addition to changes in fluid around the brain, the team also found that a form of eye compression, a hallmark of Spaceflight Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome known as globe flattening, was the most consistent eye change among crew members. “By far the most prevalent sign of eye changes that we observed was globe flattening, suggesting that this should be the primary monitoring target for ocular health,” Seidler said. “Interestingly, eye changes were more prevalent in males than females.”

Globe flattening, when the back of the eyeball becomes slightly indented or pushed inward, might sound minor, but it can have significant effects on vision and raise concerns for long-duration space missions.

Surprisingly, there was no strong link between brain structural changes and eye changes, suggesting that the effects on the eyes and brain may arise from distinct mechanisms rather than shared physiological cause

For the eye research, the sample was so small, 28 individuals of which only 9 were females, the researchers readily admit in their abstract that and “interpretation of these findings should be tempered by the fact that our sample included a relatively small number of females.” Nonetheless, the research did suggest that, regardless of sex, about half of all humans will experience these eye issues during long missions in weightlessness.

The results underscore the need to do artificial gravity experiments in orbit, to find out the minimum amount of gravity needed to mitigate or even eliminate these health issues. Otherwise, interplanetary travel is going to be seriously hampered, if not impossible.

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Webb captures spectacular false-color image of planetary nebula

10:25 am

The Red Spider Nebula
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced to post here, was taken by the Webb Space Telescope and released this week by the European Space Agency (ESA). It shows in the near-infrared what the scientists have labeled “The Red Spider Nebula”, a planetary nebula of eruptive gases formed near the end of a star’s life.

Webb’s new view of the Red Spider Nebula reveals for the first time the full extent of the nebula’s outstretched lobes, which form the ‘legs’ of the spider. These lobes, shown in blue, are traced by light emitted from H2 molecules, which contain two hydrogen atoms bonded together. Stretching over the entirety of NIRCam’s field of view, these lobes are shown to be closed, bubble-like structures that each extend about 3 light-years. Outflowing gas from the centre of the nebula has inflated these massive bubbles over thousands of years.

Gas is also actively jetting out from the nebula’s centre, as these new Webb observations show. An elongated purple ‘S’ shape centred on the heart of the nebula follows the light from ionised iron atoms. This feature marks where a fast-moving jet has emerged from near the nebula’s central star and collided with material that was previously cast away by the star, sculpting the rippling structure of the nebula seen today.

It is theorized that a not yet detected second star circles the primary, with both acting as the blades in a blender to mix the gases and help produce these shapes.

Be sure to click on the image to see the full resolution version. It shows the details in the central region much more clearly.

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New orbital radar data confirms large ice deposits in Phelgra Mountains near Starship landing zone

3:18 pm

Overview map

A new paper published this week used the SHARAD radar instrument on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to confirm that the glacial features found everywhere within the Phlegra Mountains where one of Starship’s four prime landing sites is located contains significant quantities of very accessible pure water ice.

The red dots on the map to the right mark two of those prime landing sites, with one inside the Phelgra Mountains in a region directly studied by this paper. The numbered black dots were other images taken by MRO for SpaceX, reported here in 2020. From the paper’s abstract:

We examined mid-latitude landforms on Mars that resemble Earth’s debris-covered glaciers in a region called Phlegra Montes. Our study site is a 1,400-km-long mountain range in the northern hemisphere of Mars that houses numerous debris-covered glaciers also called Viscous Flow Features (VFFs). Using data from the SHallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument, we detected eight new glaciers and estimated the thickness and volume of ice within them as well as the thickness of the debris on top insulating the ice. Our findings suggest that the region holds around 1.2 trillion cubic meters of ice below the surface. We detected two notable types of glaciers for the first time on Mars using SHARAD: (a) a glacier system with terrace-like steps and (b) a perched “hanging” glacier on the eastern side of the mountains

The study also found that the layer of dust and debris that covers these glaciers and protects them from sublimating away ranges from 6 to 25 feet in thickness, well within reach of any future colonists.

This study only confirms what all the orbital data for the past two decades has suggested, that Mars is an icy world like Antarctica, not a dry desert like the Sahara. As the researchers themselves note in the very first line of their paper, “Mars is a frozen world where water ice is abundant above, at, and under the surface.”

Their research also confirms that SpaceX has made a good choice for its Starship prime landing sites. Though it will likely not make its first landing at site #3, because it is inside the mountains and thus more risky, expect a landing there not long thereafter.

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The alien landscape of Mars’ north polar ice cap

1:29 pm

The strange terrain of Mars' north polar ice cap
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on August 24, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The camera team labels this simply as a “terrain sample,” which usually means it was not taken as part of any specific research request, but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature. When they need to do this, they try to find interesting things to photograph, and mostly succeed.

At first glance the picture to the right does not appear that interesting. If anything it shows an endless expanse of mottled terrain, with no features of any interest at all. This sameness however is what makes this picture and landscape intriguing. What caused it to look this way?
» Read more

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New data supports theory of dark matter, but suggests inexplicably that it acts differently depending on the galaxy’s mass

9:13 am

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers analyzing twelve small and faint galaxies have determined that the existence of some form of mysterious undetected dark matter is necessary to explain the motions of their stars, and that another theory dubbed MOND that would make dark matter unnecessary fails to explain the data.

The authors found that the galaxies’ internal gravitational fields cannot be explained by visible matter alone, and that MOND predictions fail to reproduce the observed behaviour. They then compared their results with theoretical models that assume instead that these galaxies are surrounded by a massive halo of dark matter. Run on the UK’s DiRAC National Supercomputer facility, these dark matter models gave a much better match to the data.

Sounds good, eh? Not so fast. The research also found that large and small galaxies inexplicably interact with gravity and dark matter differently.

The research, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, also challenges a long-standing assumption about how galaxies behave. Astronomers have long believed there is a simple link between the amount of visible matter in a galaxy and the strength of the gravitational pull it produces – known as the “radial acceleration relation.” While this relationship still holds for larger systems, the new study shows that it starts to break down in the smallest galaxies.

In other words, we don’t know enough yet to really explain the formation and behavior of galaxies. This really isn’t surprising, considering the time scales involved (billions of years) and the distances (millions to billions of light years).

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Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander delayed again

8:01 am

Moon's south pole, with landers indicated

According to an update on the status of Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander posted on October 24, 2025, the company has now delayed the launch from the fall of 2025 to July 2026, apparently because the spacecraft is not yet assembled and its many components are still undergoing testing.

For example, none of Griffin’s four propellant tanks have yet been installed. Nor apparently has its core structure been fully integrated, with “tanks, ramps, attitude control thrusters, and solar panels” only now having completed “fit checks.”

The map to the right indicates the location where Griffin is supposed to land, about 100 miles from the Moon’s south pole. Nova-C, Intuitive Machines first attempt to soft land on the Moon, landed at the green dot, but failed when it fell over at landing. Intuitive Machines second lunar lander, Athena, also fell over when it landed in the same region that is now Griffin’s target landing zone.

Griffin has experienced repeated delays since the contract was issued to Astrobotic in 2020. The mission was originally supposed to launch in November 2023, carrying NASA’s Viper rover. In July 2022 however it was delayed one year to November 2024 because Astrobotic said it needed more time.

Sometime after the failure of Astrobotic’s first lunar lander, Peregrine, in January 2024, NASA once again delayed the Griffin mission, pushing it back another year to November 2025.

In July 2024 NASA canceled Viper, removing it as a payload from Griffin, because Viper was significantly overbudget and would not be ready for that fall 2025 launch. NASA however did not cancel Griffin. It appears however that Astrobotic wasn’t ready either for a launch in November, and thus this further delay.

Whether it will be ready by July remains unknown. Based on Astrobotic’s own update I have serious doubts. For a spacecraft that was supposed to originally launch in 2023, Griffin seems woefully unready now, two years past that date.

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Weird “What the heck?!” pedestal crater on Mars

1:10 pm

A
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on August 26, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). While the full image shows what the camera team labels as the “ridges” that cover this area, the most prominent feature in the whole landscape is this half-mile-wide pedestal crater, sitting about 50 to 100 feet above the surrounding terrain.

What makes this strange butte so weird is the plateau on top, criss-crossed with ridges and hollows in a manner that defies any obvious geological explanation.

Pedestal craters are not uncommon on Mars, and in fact a bunch of others are found throughout this region. The theory for their formation is that they formed when the surface here was much higher. The impact made the crater floor more dense and resistant to erosion, so as the surrounding terrain wore aware the crater ended up being a butte.

However, pedestal craters usually have relatively smooth tops, making this crater another example of a “What the heck?” image.
» Read more

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Betelgeuse’s long predicted companion star confirmed

9:23 am

The image released in July 2025
The image of the companion, released previously
in July 2025.

Astronomers have now confirmed prior observations announced in July 2025 of Betelgeuse’s long predicted companion star.

The July conclusions found faint evidence of the companion, shown to the right, from data collected by the Gemini telescope in Hawaii, when the modeling said the companion was at its farthest point from the central star.. This new research was based on new observations in December 2024 by the Hubble and Chandra space telescopes, taken at the same time.

During this ideal observational window, the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii captured a faint image near Betelgeuse that could be its tiny companion. In a separate study, the Carnegie Mellon-led team used Chandra to collect X-ray data to determine the nature of the mysterious object. “It could have been a white dwarf. It could have been a neutron star. And those are very, very different objects,” O’Grady said. “If it was one of those objects, it would point to a very different evolutionary history for the system.”

But it wasn’t either. O’Grady and her collaborators found no evidence of accretion — a hallmark of compact objects like neutron stars or white dwarfs. Their findings, to be published in The Astrophysical Journal, point instead to a young stellar object roughly the size of the Sun. A companion paper from researchers at the Flatiron Institute, using Hubble data, helped narrow down the companion’s size.

You can read their paper here [pdf]. It estimates the companion to have a mass about 1.4 to 2 times that of the Sun.

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The second known asteroid discovered orbiting closer to the Sun than Venus

8:56 am

Using ground-based telescopes scanning the morning and evening sky, an astronomer has discovered only the second known asteroid circling the Sun within the orbit of Venus.

The manner of the discovery itself, by Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution, also illustrated our modern world.

He first observed it using the Cerro Tololo Dark Energy Camera the night before leaving on a hiking trip. Because the object was moving fast, he knew it must be very close to the Sun, so he’d need to image it again and soon to confirm its orbit before it became lost in the Sun’s glare.

“I had to schedule new observations to re-observe the object while deep in the forest of Pennsylvania,” he says. “It is just amazing that even camp sites today have good Wi-Fi access — that allowed me to download the new second observations of this asteroid and determine its unique orbit that is interior to Venus.”

Astronomers have found so few asteroids close to the Sun because the Sun’s glare makes observations difficult. Some scientists like to speculate to the press that there could be a large unknown population, with some posing a threat to Earth. The computer predictions however say the population is small, because the push of the Sun’s light and radiation should easily shift their orbits outward or make them unstable.

The two asteroids so far found confirm these models in a counter-intuitive way. The new asteroid is estimated to be a little less than a half mile across, while the previously discovered asteroid is thought to have a diameter of more than a mile. Their larger size makes it harder for the Sun’s light and radiation to shift their orbit.

In other words, this inner population of asteroids is likely to be low in number, but made up of larger objects.

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A somewhat typical volcanic vent on Mars

12:46 pm

Overview map

With today’s cool image we begin with the overview map to the right. The white dot marks the location, within the region on Mars dubbed the Tharsis Bulge, where four of its biggest volcanoes are located on a surface that has been pushed significantly above the red planet’s mean “sea level.”

The small rectangle in the inset shows the area covered by the cool image below. The focus is on a two-mile-long and half-mile-wide depression that sits on a relatively flat landscape of few craters.

If you look at the inset closely, you will notice this depression is surrounded by a dark borderline on all four sides, ranging in distance from three to thirteen miles. The grade to that borderline is downhill in all directions, with the drop ranging roughly from 800 to 1,000 feet.

So what are we looking at? » Read more

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Small fresh impact on Mars’ youngest major lava flow

1:25 pm

Monitoring a fresh impact on Martian lava
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 26, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The camera team labels this “Monitoring New Impact Site.” The fresh impact, indicated by the three dark patches just left and up from center, is actually not that fresh. It was first photographed by MRO on September 27, 2008. This newer picture is to see if anything significant had changed in the subsequent seventeen years.

In comparing the two pictures, the only change that is obvious is that the patches have faded and become less distinct. Nothing else appears different.

The surrounding terrain however is interesting in its own right. The landscape is remarkably flat, though it has that meandering ridge coming out from that lighter patch in the lower right. What are we looking at?
» Read more

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Meandering channel in Mars’ southern cratered highlands

1:25 pm

Meandering channel on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 30, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Dubbed a “channel” by the MRO science team, it shows us a meandering canyon with a floor that seems filled with corroded linear features seen frequently on Earth glaciers. Here, the linear ridges appear broken, in many places missing, and in other places so broken their linear nature disappears.

If this was on Earth and I was a global warming activitist, I would immediately claim that the glacier has been evaporating away due to a warming climate caused by SUVs and Republican intransigence. This however is on Mars, where there are no SUVs or Republicans. So what is going on?
» Read more

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If there is any microbiology on Mars, new research says it will be found in the red planet’s ample ice

9:11 am

The uncertainty of science: New research that attempted to simulate conditions in the ice on Mars has determined that ancient microbes are more likely survive there for very long periods, as much as fifty million years, rather than the red planet’s dry sediments.

The research team, led by corresponding author Alexander Pavlov, a space scientist at NASA Goddard — who completed a doctorate in geosciences at Penn State in 2001 — suspended and sealed E. coli bacteria in test tubes containing solutions of pure water ice. Other E. coli samples were mixed with water and ingredients found in Mars sediment, like silicate-based rocks and clay.

The researchers froze the samples and transferred them to a gamma radiation chamber at Penn State’s Radiation Science and Engineering Center, which was cooled to minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature of icy regions on Mars. Then, the samples were blasted with radiation equivalent to 20 million years of cosmic ray exposure on Mars’ surface, vacuum sealed and transported back to NASA Goddard under cold conditions for amino acid analysis. Researchers modelled an additional 30 years of radiation for a total 50-million-year timespan.

In pure water ice, more than 10% of the amino acids — the molecular building blocks of proteins — from the E. coli sample survived the simulated 50-million-year time span, while the samples containing Mars-like sediment degraded 10 times faster and did not survive. A 2022 study by the same group of researchers at NASA found that amino acids preserved in a 10% water ice and 90% Martian soil mixture were destroyed more rapidly than samples containing only sediment.

In other words, if there was ever microbiology on Mars, it is very unlikely Perseverance or Curiosity will ever find any, roving as they are in the dry Martian tropics.

Though this work has many uncertainties, especially in its assumption that it successfully simulated a 50-million-year time span, the result is hardly an earth-shaking discovery. If anything, it confirms the obvious, which is why NASA’s ludicrous claim that Perseverance’s prime mission is to look for life has always been a lie. It is traveling in the wrong place, a fact that was self-evident from the start.

Whether any microbiology might exist in Mars’ ice however is unknown. The odds are very very low, but not zero. If it does, it is even less likely it is living, based on orbital data.

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Layers of Martian ash

1:08 pm

Layering on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 31, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this as “layering”, which surely is an apt description. As the latitude is 9 degrees south, this location is within the dry tropics of Mars, where no near surface ice has yet been found. Thus, the terraced layers of this low 20-foot-high mesa are not indicative of the many glacial climate cycles found in the mid-latitudes.

Instead, we are looking at sedimentary layers of rock or dust, laid down over time and later exposed by erosion.

So what caused the layers? And what is causing them to be exposed, one by one? As always the overview map helps provide a possible explanation.
» Read more

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Scientists find that three normally incompatible substances can interact in the alien conditions on Titan

9:54 am

Artist rendering of Dragonfly soaring over Titan's surface
Artist rendering of Dragonfly soaring
over Titan’s surface

Scientists have discovered that, under the very cold conditions on Titan, three normally incompatible substances — methane, ethane and hydrogen cyanide — can mix together in a way that previously was considered impossible.

The background to the Chalmers study is an unanswered question about Titan: What happens to hydrogen cyanide after it is created in Titan’s atmosphere? Are there metres of it deposited on the surface or has it interacted or reacted with its surroundings in some way? To seek the answer, a group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California began conducting experiments in which they mixed hydrogen cyanide with methane and ethane at temperatures as low as 90 Kelvin (about -180 degrees Celsius). At these temperatures, hydrogen cyanide is a crystal, and methane and ethane are liquids.

When they studied such mixtures using laser spectroscopy, a method for examining materials and molecules at the atomic level, they found that the molecules were intact, but that something had still happened. … In their analysis, they found that hydrocarbons had penetrated the crystal lattice of hydrogen cyanide and formed stable new structures known as co-crystals.

Not surprisingly, this result suggests that the alien environment on Titan includes a lot of very unexpected chemistry, some of which we right now cannot predict, or even imagine. While exciting, it also suggests that NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Titan will face challenges that make that mission far more risky. It could quickly fail once it arrives, because of this alien environment.

Such a failure will of course help engineers design later missions, but Dragonfly is a very expensive mission, already overbudget at $3 billion. It might have made more sense to fly a fleet of small and cheaper missions to Titan to begin with, to lower the risks.

Sadly, that is not NASA’s plan.

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Peeling brain terrain in Martian crater

12:16 pm

Overview map

Peeling brain terrain on Mars
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image takes us once again back to Mars’ glacier country, the 2,000 mile-long mid-latitude strip in the northern hemisphere where almost every image shows glacier features. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 4, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It shows a small section of the floor of an unnamed 13-mile-wide crater, highlighting what the science team labels vaguely as “features.”

Those features appear to be glacial debris whose surface alternates between peeling gaps and the unique Martian geology dubbed “brain terrain”, whose formation is not yet understood but is believed to be associated with near surface ice.

The location is indicated by the white rectangle on the overview map above. At 36 degrees north latitude, this crater is deep within that mid-latitude strip where a lot of glacial features are routinely found. If you look at the inset, you can see that all the nearby craters appear to have formed in what appears to be slushy ground, their rims not very pronounced or distorted and their floors shallow, as if the ground melted like ice upon impact but very quickly solidified.

Mars is not a dry place. Future colonists will likely build their first cities around 30 degrees latitude, close enough to the equator to get warmer temperatures, but close enough to the near-surface ice found just a few degrees poleward, in a place such as this.

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The hurricane season in 2024 confounded the predictions again

1:04 pm

The trail of bad global warming predictions

The uncertainty of science: Though the climate science community had predicted that last year’s hurricane season was going to be one of the most active ever, a new study published two weeks ago in Geophysical Research Letters of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) found that the 2024 season did not behave as predicted. It ended up producing about the predicted number of hurricanes, but did so only because of a sudden rise in activity near the end of the season, after a long lull with almost no activity. From the study’s conclusion:

As has been noted throughout this study, the lull was immediately followed by one of the busiest ends to an Atlantic hurricane season on record, including two major hurricane landfalls in Florida (Helene and Milton), resulting in more than 250 fatalities and $100 billion in damage (National Centers for Environmental Information, 2025). Though the final overall number of hurricanes and major hurricanes were aligned with the seasonal forecasts, the extremely busy beginning and end to the season and marked lull in the middle highlight just how unusual the season was.

Last year’s prediction was not the first to be incorrect, though this time the error was in how the season unfolded instead of the total numbers. In the past two decades — since Al Gore prophesied that global warming would cause a gigantic increase in violent storms — NOAA has repeatedly called for very active hurricane seasons, and repeatedly those predictions have turned out wrong. In fact, from 2006 until 2018 there were almost no major hurricanes at all, the exact opposite to what Gore had foretold. Since then the seasons have returned to more normal numbers, but the predictions of the scientists have continued to be no better than throwing a dart at a wall while wearing a blindfold.

The ongoing 2025 hurricane season is following this same pattern. In May 2025 NOAA predicted this year would be a very active hurricane season. Instead, this season has matched those from 2006 to 2016, in which no hurricanes made landfall in the U.S. and the number of strong hurricanes was almost nil.

The season of course is not yet over. We could see a burst of activity in the next few months, similar to what happened in 2024. Nonetheless, the important takeaway from this story is that the scientists who claim to know what is going to happen simply don’t know anything. They are guessing, because as the paper above admits, the Earth’s weather and climate are incredibly complex, and our understanding of it is still in its infancy.

Remember this when you read the next “We’re all gonna die!” prediction touted in the propaganda press.

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Swarm satellite constellation detects changes in the Earth’s magnetic field during the past decade

8:01 am

Changes in the magnetic field over the northern hemisphere
Click for original graphic.

The European Space Agency’s three-satellite Swarm constellation, designed to measure the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field at high resolution, has found that the field’s weak and strong regions have shifted and changed in the past eleven years, since the constellation was launched.

The map to the right shows the changes over the northern hemisphere, related to the movement of the north magnetic pole towards Siberia.

[S]ince Swarm has been in orbit the magnetic field over Siberia has strengthened while it has weakened over Canada. The Canadian strong field region has shrunk by 0.65% of Earth’s surface area, which is almost the size of India, while the Siberian region has grown by 0.42% of Earth’s surface area, which is comparable to the size of Greenland.

Similarly, the Swarm data has shown the South Atlantic Anomaly, a major weak area of the field above South America near the equator, has grown significantly eastward towards Africa. That change is important for satellite operations, as spacecraft passing through it experience higher levels of radiation.

All these changes are thought to be because of shifts within the Earth’s molten core from which the dynamo of the magnetic field is generated.

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