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Explanation: How does your favorite planet spin? Does it spin rapidly around a nearly vertical axis, or horizontally, or backwards? The featured video animates NASA images of all eight planets in our Solar System to show them spinning side-by-side for an easy comparison. In the time-lapse video, a day on Earth -- one Earth rotation -- takes just a few seconds. Jupiter rotates the fastest, while Venus spins not only the slowest (can you see it?), but backwards. The inner rocky planets across the top underwent dramatic spin-altering collisions during the early days of the Solar System. Why planets spin...

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and Harvard Scientist Avi Loeb are calling for NASA to monitor the Manhattan-sized interstellar object 3I/ATLAS as it passes the sun on Halloween Eve to ensure it does not drop off “mini probes” that could invade Earth. Luna (R-Fla.) and the Ivy league astrophysicist appeared together on a podcast and called for both the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Jupiter’s Juno probe to adjust their current courses and monitor the object that NASA has deemed a comet. “If we are visited by a technological object like 3I/ATLAS — it could either visit us or release some mini-probes...

NASA reveals a breathtaking photo of Earth and Moon taken from deep space. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU | The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel From nearly 290 million kilometers away, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft turned its gaze homeward and captured an arresting glimpse of Earth and the Moon, now just distant specks of light nestled among the stars of the Aries constellation. According to NASA, this deep-space photo opportunity came as part of a scheduled instrument calibration while the spacecraft continues its cruise toward the asteroid Psyche. Testing Cameras With Familiar Cosmic Landmarks The image, taken on July 20 and 23, was created...

How old is the earth? Unfortunately, neither Christian conservative Old Testament scholars nor Christian scientists are in universal agreement. This topic covers a broad spectrum of issues so I am going to try and narrow the focus of the discussion. I will first briefly discuss the biblical aspects of the question, then move on to geology, the flood, and the Grand Canyon… First, how do the "young-earth" and "old-earth" positions view the Scriptures? Let me emphasize right at the start that both young- earth and old-earth creationists bring a reverent and submissive attitude to Genesis. The difference is a matter...

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President Donald Trump provided an update on the stranded NASA astronauts set to make their way back to Earth in a social media post on Monday. In a Truth Social post, Trump said that he recently conferred with Janet Petro, the acting administrator of NASA, who is coordinating the return of NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. "She is coordinating our Team of highly respected Scientists, Space Engineers, and various other ‘geniuses,’ who has agreed to let our Astronauts come home long prior to the two week period originally approved by NASA," Trump wrote. "Janet was great. She said,...

An asteroid with the power to unleash an explosion one hundred times greater than an atomic bomb has triggered global space agency alarms. The odds that the space rock dubbed Y4, which is nearly the size of a football field at between 130 and 300 feet wide, could hit Earth is now too close to ignore, they warn. “If you put it over Paris or London or New York, you basically wipe out the whole city and some of the environs,” Bruce Betts, chief scientist of The Planetary Society, told Agence France-Presse last week. The asteroid was first observed on...

About 71% of the Earth's surface is water, though it only makes up around 0.02% of the planet's total mass.

Benton McClintock, 27, had been running away from his credit card bill for nearly a decade before deciding to pay it off. When McClintock was in college, he began paying for big trips to Milan, Paris, and other getaways with his credit card, and—until his balance had ballooned to $40,000—thought nothing of it.

An international team of geophysicists using a new imaging technique that measures the speed of seismic waves caused by earthquakes to locate the juncture of tectonic plates in the Earth’s mantle say they have discovered the remnants of what appears to be a “lost world” beneath the Pacific Ocean. Previous methods to locate these junctures between tectonic plates have always found them where scientists expected them to be. However, this latest joint effort by geophysicists from ETH Zurich and the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) found indications of these zones at locations that display no indications of tectonic plates...

Scientists mapped genomes of bed bug strains, identifying 729 mutations linked to insecticide resistance, offering insights for improved pest control. Scientists have successfully mapped near-complete and highly accurate genomes for two strains of bed bugs: one highly susceptible to insecticides and another “superstrain” that is roughly 20,000 times more resistant. This achievement provides the most comprehensive view yet of the genetic mutations behind insecticide resistance. The findings were published in the journal Insects. While bed bugs are not known to transmit diseases to humans, their bites can cause itchy rashes and secondary infections. Insecticide use, including the now-banned DDT, nearly...

I have used eleven Nuggets to investigate the notion of life on earth and whether there is a possibility of life elsewhere and have come to the conclusion that the Earth is the perfect place for life and the chances of life elsewhere is remote. The Bible makes it clear over both Genesis accounts of creation (Genesis 1 and 2 – read Beginnings) that God made the heavens and the Earth for the habitation of the crowning glory of His creative acts. There are commentators who regard the first two chapters of Genesis as an account of two different and...

Ukraine says the “experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile” fired at the city of Dnipro on Thursday carried 36 “submunitions” and was travelling at Mach 11 as it struck. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence has published new claims about the new kind of ballistic missile that struck the central city of Dnipro in the early hours of Thursday morning. A statement said the missile, which left earth’s atmosphere in a ballistic arc after being launched from Russia’s Astrakhan region made the approximately 500 miles to the city in 15 minutes. The missile had six re-entry vehicles, each of which carried a further...

New findings from Colorado’s rock formations provide physical evidence supporting the Snowball Earth theory, which suggests Earth was once frozen entirely, down to the equator. This study offers insights into a key phase of climate and life evolution. Credit: SciTechDaily.com Evidence from Colorado suggests glaciers once covered Earth to the equator, supporting the Snowball Earth theory. This discovery provides insight into early climate shifts and the evolution of life. Geologists have discovered compelling evidence in Colorado that hundreds of millions of years ago, enormous glaciers blanketed Earth as far as the equator, turning the planet into an icicle drifting through...

A storm could be-fall us. Colorful leaves and cooler temperatures aren’t the only thing autumn is potentially bringing. Meteorologists predict that Earth could be blasted by a geomagnetic storm on Wednesday due to its timing with the autumnal equinox. A coronal mass ejection (CME) — when plasma and magnetic particles burst forth from the sun’s surface — occurred on Sunday, the same day as the official start of fall, Space.com reported. It reportedly occurred when a sunspot called AR3835 unexpectedly spouted an M-class solar flare — something scientists hadn’t predicted as said sunspot had appeared stable.

What would happen if our universe was any larger or any smaller? Would life still be possible here on earth, or, in fact, anywhere in the universe?

ROME — Pope Francis has consecrated his monthly prayer intention to “the cry of the earth” this September, urging Christians to feel the earth’s “pain.” “If we took the planet’s temperature, it will tell us that the Earth has a fever,” the pontiff contends. “And it is sick, just like anyone who’s sick.” But are we listening to this pain?” he asks. “Do we hear the pain of the millions of victims of environmental catastrophes?” he continues. “The ones suffering most from the consequences of these disasters are the poor, those who are forced to leave their homes because of...

Four key pillars of the global climate are melting in the heat trapped by rising fossil fuel emissions, a new study has found. The relatively stable climate that nurtured human civilization depends in large part on these structures: the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica, the Amazon rainforest and the Atlantic currents that warm Europe. Under current policies, the world faces a scenario in which those pillars have roughly even odds of either surviving or collapsing during the next three centuries, according to results published Thursday in Nature Communications. The scientists warned that if the pillars are fatally undermined...

New studies, which utilized AI to monitor the effects of climate change on Earth's spin, have shown that our days are getting increasingly longer and that our planet will get more wobbly in the future. These changes could have major implications for humanity's future. The length of Earth's days and the orientation of our planet are being thrown out of balance as human-caused climate change continuously alters Earth's spin, new research suggests.

E​arth just had its two warmest days in over 80 years, topping a record set just one year ago. T​he back-to-back records: On Sunday, globally averaged temperatures over the planet's oceans and land masses reached 17.09 degrees Celsius (62.76 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the European Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). T​hat was 0.01 degrees Celsius above the previous warmest day for the planet set on July 6, 2023, in the ERA5 dataset dating to 1940, according to C3S. T​hen Monday, the planet's average temperature ticked up to 17.15 degrees Celsius, leapfrogging Sunday's record.