These scientists identified the five most severe crises the planet faces in a new report, Our Future on Earth 2020.
In 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon.
NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Many people are still upset that Pluto was demoted from being a planet. But definitions of various celestial objects are fairly fluid. So whether it is an asteroid or moon or planet is up for debate.
In the future, people may be able to go to Mars.
Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.com
Of all the planets in the solar system, there’s a reason we call Earth home. It’s made of just the right stuff. It’s not too small, or too big, or too hot or too cold. It’s just right.
On June 5-6, 2012, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory collected images of one of the rarest predictable solar events: the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun.
NASA/SDO, AIA
This hot, acidic neighbor with its surface veiled in thick clouds hasn’t benefited from the attention showered on Mars and the Moon. But Venus may offer insights into the fate of the Earth.
All the buildings and the cars and the restaurants, and the phones and even everything that’s inside of you… it all started with an exploding star, billions of years ago.
Even if we can prevent a global warming apocalypse, our planet won’t be safe forever – the sun will one day expand. So should we try to move the Earth to a wider orbit?
It’s hard to believe, but big storms and hurricanes are caused by tiny particles moving around in the atmosphere.
Photographed on Kangaroo Island, this rock – called a ‘zebra schist’ – deformed from flat-lying marine sediments through being stressed by a continental collision over 500 million years ago.
Dietmar Muller
Giant forces slowly move continents across a viscous layer of the Earth, like biscuits gliding over a warm toffee ocean. This stresses the continents, and twists and contorts the crust.
Planetary scientists believe that Earth was formed by the conglomeration of meteorites and comets – which also brought water.
Festa/SHutterstock.com
The source of water on Earth, the Moon and planets in our solar system is hotly debated. Some in the planetary science community argued that it came from asteroids and comets. Now they have proof.
What’s left after a star explodes.
NASA/ESA/JHU/R.Sankrit & W.Blair via Wikimedia Commons.