Astronomers searching for habitable worlds might do best to look for rocky planets several times larger than Earth. That’s because, according to a new study, our planet is at the lower end of the size range needed for plate tectonics—which scientists believe are vital for stabilizing temperatures enough for life.
“Although the Earth Observatory typically reserves “Image of the Day” space for publishing data and images acquired by Earth-observing satellites, we are sometimes so enthralled by the spectacular images acquired by spacecraft observing other parts of the solar system that we want to share these ‘otherworldy’ views with our visitors.”
The Sun is midway through its stable hydrogen burning phase known as the main sequence. But when the Sun enters the red giant phase in around 5 billion years things are going to get a lot rougher in the Earth-Moon system…..
“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives.” This was posted about 100 days ago, but I thought it deserved reposting.
Planetary scientists have found evidence of a meteor impact much larger and earlier than the one that killed the dinosaurs — an impact that they believe caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth’s history.
Zoom in to see hi-res images of clouds over the Earth taken by NASA’s MODIS Terra satellite, updated around midday PST each day.
Seen from the outer solar system through Cassini’s cameras - Earth is captured in a natural color portrait made possible by the passing of Saturn directly in front of the sun from Cassini’s point of view.