Category archives: Weekly Selection

MI weekly selection #496

MI weekly selection #496

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Over two-thirds of world’s glaciers will melt by 2100 More than two-thirds of the world’s glaciers will disappear by 2100 if the climate continues to warm at current trends. The global temperature is on track to rise 2.7 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, but scientists note that if future […]

MI weekly selection #495

MI weekly selection #495

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Bering Land Bridge formed surprisingly late during last ice age A new study shows that the Bering Land Bridge, the strip of land that once connected Asia to Alaska, emerged far later during the last ice age than previously thought. Full Story: Princeton University Exotic clasts in Chang’e-5 samples indicate unexplored terrane on moon The […]

MI weekly selection #494

MI weekly selection #494

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

NASA ends Mars InSight lander mission after 4 years NASA has officially concluded its InSight lander mission on Mars after the spacecraft’s solar panels accumulated too much dust and has stopped transmitting information on the planet’s geologic makeup and activity. After an “enormously successful mission,” InSight is “going to sit on Mars and enjoy the […]

MI weekly selection #493

MI weekly selection #493

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Astronomers identify 2 planets as possible water worlds Using data from the Kepler, Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, astronomers have identified two exoplanets orbiting a red-dwarf star 218 light-years away suspected of being made mostly of water. “It is the first time we observe planets that can be confidently identified as water worlds, a type […]

MI weekly selection #492

MI weekly selection #492

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Radioactive meteorites could have brought life to Earth The gamma rays produced by carbonaceous chondrites, radioactive meteorites that contain water and organic compounds, could have been sufficient to spark the chemical reactions that created amino acids, the building blocks of life on Earth, researchers have concluded. The study is based on observations from bombarding chemicals […]

MI weekly selection #491

MI weekly selection #491

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Flash thought to result from black hole swallowing a star Two separate teams of scientists, who have published papers in Nature and Nature Astronomy, have concluded that a flash of light that appeared in February was the astrophysical jet that erupted from a massive black hole as it swallowed a star. “From the data we […]

MI weekly selection #490

MI weekly selection #490

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Best-explored planet outside our solar system WASP-39b, a boiling Saturn-like planet 700 light-years away from the sun has become the best-explored planet outside our solar system, as the James Webb Space Telescope’s observations have yielded a trove of information about the exoplanet’s atmosphere. Laura Kreidberg, director of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, said the […]

MI weekly selection #489

MI weekly selection #489

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Meteorites may have brought water to Earth Analysis of fragments of a meteorite that landed in the driveway of a British home in 2021 revels the space debris originated in the outer solar system and held water chemically similar to the water found on Earth. The meteorite came from an asteroid in Jupiter’s orbit some […]

MI weekly selection #488

MI weekly selection #488

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Layered rocks may be Earth’s oldest known fossils Researchers have found fossil evidence of what may be the first known life on Earth with the discovery of stromatolites, layered rocks formed by photosynthetic microbes, in Western Australia’s Dresser Formation that date back 3.48 billion years. Full Story: Live Science Sharks face rising extinction risk, other […]

MI weekly selection #487

MI weekly selection #487

Weekly Selection

By César Tomé

Gene editing to combat the negative effect of climate change in plants Plant biology experts agree that gene editing is a tool that has great potential for use in combating the negative effect of climate change in plants and that the technology “will be a relevant approach as soon as the genetic determinants of this […]