Harvard-Smithsonian scientists speculate that little green men may not be “green” at all, and finding them might be a simple matter of looking for industrial pollution in the atmospheres of exoplanets. The remote analysis of distant planets for signs of pollution is discussed in the latest issue of The Astrophysical Journal and the scientists who […]
NASA scientists using data from the Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have created the first cloud map of a planet beyond our solar system, a Jupiter-like world known as Kepler-7b (depicted left, with Jupiter to the right). The planet is marked by high clouds in the west and clear skies in the east. Previous analyses […]
Using a DC-8 aircraft to scoop-up air samples from the troposphere, scientists have identified significant numbers of living microorganisms – mostly bacteria – six miles above the Earth’s surface. The work, detailed in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is of interest to atmospheric scientists as the microorganisms could play a role in forming […]
Microbiologists from the University of Colorado Boulder were surprised to find that the dominant airborne bacterial communities of several American cities most closely resembled the microbial communities found in dog poop. The study showed that of the four Midwestern cities sampled in the experiment, Cleveland and Detroit had significant quantities of fecal bacteria in the […]
Two billion miles away in the atmosphere of Uranus, a dark vortex large enough to engulf two-thirds of the United States has appeared. Measuring 1,100 by 1,900 miles, the Hubble telescope captured images of the phenomenon which astronomers believe is a huge storm. Previous Hubble images of Uranus taken over the last decade have shown […]
