Earth

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Less than 1% of earth has safe levels of air pollution, study finds

Air quality is particularly worrisome in regions such as southern Asia and eastern Asia, where more than 90% of days had PM2.5 concentrations above the 15 microgram threshold

Deep earthquakes could be employed to study earth's mantle: Study

A new study demonstrated a new method, involving deep earthquakes, to measure the fluidity of the Earth's mantle. The study, by a scientist from University of Chicago, US, suggested there may be a layer of surprisingly fluid rock ringing the Earth, at the very bottom of the upper mantle. The finding was made by measuring the lingering movement registered by GPS sensors on islands in the wake of a deep earthquake in the Pacific Ocean near Fiji, the study published in the journal Nature said. "Even though the mantle makes up the largest part of Earth, there's still a lot we don't know about it," said Sunyoung Park, a geophysicist with the University of Chicago and the lead author on the study. "We think there's a lot more we can learn by using these deep earthquakes as a way to probe these questions," said Park. We still know surprisingly little about the Earth beneath our feet. The furthest anyone has managed to dig down is about seven and a half miles before the increasing heat .

Of fake trees and moondust sunscreen

From a man-made sun-shield to deflect the Sun's rays to giant artificial trees to sequester carbon, radical and potentially risky solutions to stave off climate change are gaining traction

Earth lost one-fifth of its wetlands since 1700, most could still be saved

Earth has lost one-fifth of its wetlands since 1700 but most could still be saved

NASA, IBM team up to develop AI-based models to spur new Earth discoveries

NASA and IBM have collaborated to develop artificial intelligence (AI) based models that will make it easier to mine vast datasets to advance scientific knowledge about Earth, and help the world to adapt to a changing environment. The joint work will apply AI foundation model technology to NASA's Earth-observing satellite data for the first time, NASA said in a statement. Foundation models are types of AI models that are trained on a broad set of unlabelled data, can be used for different tasks, and can apply information about one situation to another. "The beauty of foundation models is they can potentially be used for many downstream applications," said Rahul Ramachandran, a senior research scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. "Building these foundation models cannot be tackled by small teams; you need teams across different organisations to bring their different perspectives, resources, and skill sets," Ramachandran said in a statement. One project will train an IB

Earth likely to cross 1.5-degree warming in next decade, predicts AI study

The world will cross the global warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius within 10 to 15 years, even if emissions decline, according to a study that employed artificial intelligence (AI) to predict the results. If emissions remain high over the next few decades, the study predicts a one-in-two chance that Earth will become 2 degrees Celsius hotter on average compared to pre-industrial times by the middle of this century, and a more than four-in-five chance of reaching that threshold by 2060. The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, employed AI to predict climate change using recent temperature observations from around the world. "Using an entirely new approach that relies on the current state of the climate system to make predictions about the future, we confirm that the world is on the cusp of crossing the 1.5 C threshold," said the study's lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Stanford University in the US. "Our AI mo

Earth to have close encounter with small asteroid this week: NASA Systems

The asteroid was initially spotted by amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov on Saturday and reported to the Minor Planet Center (MPC)

NASA's Webb telescope spots its first Earth-like exoplanet: Researchers

Researchers have confirmed an exoplanet, a planet that orbits another star, using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope for the first time

NASA mission spots 2nd Earth-size world within 'habitable zone' of its star

NASA mission has discovered a second Earth-sized, rocky planet within the habitable zone of its star -- the range of distances where liquid water could occur on a planet's surface

NASA launches first-ever mission SWOT to observe nearly all water on Earth

SWOT will cover the entire Earth's surface between 78 degrees south and 78 degrees north latitude at least once every 21 days

Need separate pan-India licence for Satellite Earth Station Gateways: TRAI

A satellite gateway (also referred to as a teleport or hub) is a ground station that transmits data to and from the satellite to the local area network

Closest known black hole to Earth spotted, just 1,600 light-years away

Astronomers have discovered the closest known black hole to Earth, just 1,600 light-years away. Scientists reported Friday that this black hole is 10 times more massive than our sun. And it's three times closer than the previous record-holder. It was identified by observing the motion of its companion star, which orbits the black hole at about the same distance as Earth orbits the sun. The black hole was initially identified using the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft, said Kareem El-Badry of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. El-Badry and his team followed up with the International Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to confirm their findings, which were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The researchers are uncertain how the system formed in the Milky Way. Named Gaia BH1, it's located in the constellation Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer.

Beaver Blood Moon lunar eclipse on November 8; here's all you need to know

Commonly known as the Blood Moon, a total lunar eclipse occurs when the full moon moves into the deep umbral shadow of the Earth and receives light only first filtered by Earth's atmosphere

Debris of Chinese rocket to fall back on Earth this weekend: Report

The rocket, Long March 5B, was used to send the final part of the Tiangong space station called Mengtian to the space station

Can low earth orbit satellites roar? Mittal, Musk, Tatas putting in money

The size of the market will also depend on which customer segment the players are targeting

Earth on track to warm above 2C despite climate action, claims report

Despite some progress in the last year, governments need to do more by 2030 to ensure that the global temperature increase is below 2C and ideally closer to 1.5C

NASA's James Webb, Hubble capture DART impact after asteroid strike

For the first time, Webb and Hubble have simultaneously captured imagery from the same target in the cosmos

Why did NASA ram DART into an asteroid?

American space agency NASA recently conducted a planned mission to hit a cruising asteroid in space, as a part of its first planetary defense technology demonstration. Let's find out more about it

Earth aims DART to knock asteroid off course; now all eyes are on the sky

Scientists will be watching through the next several weeks to see how effective the impact was