David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences, The Open University 14 May 2019 We tend to think of the moon as the archetypal “dead” world. Not only is there no life, almost all its volcanic activity died out billions of years ago. Even the youngest lunar lava is old enough to have become scarred by numerous […]
Deep sea carbon reservoirs once superheated the Earth – could it happen again?
Lowell D. Stott, Professor, University of Southern California As concern grows over human-induced climate change, many scientists are looking back through Earth’s history to events that can shed light on changes occurring today. Analyzing how the planet’s climate system has changed in the past improves our understanding of how it may behave in the future. […]
Why the Indian Ocean is spawning strong and deadly tropical cyclones
Jennifer Fitchett, Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography, University of the Witwatersrand The Indian Ocean has made its mark on the global news cycle this year. In March, tropical cyclone Idai made headlines as one of the most severe storms to have made landfall in Mozambique. Current estimates indicate that more than 1,000 people died. This […]
60 days in Iceberg Alley, drilling for marine sediment to decipher Earth’s climate 3 million years ago
Suzanne O’Connell, Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Wesleyan University Competition is stiff for one of the 30 scientist berths on the JOIDES Resolution research vessel. I’m one of the lucky ones, granted the opportunity to work 12-hour days, seven days a week for 60 days as part of Expedition 382 “Iceberg Alley” in the […]
How did the Earth get its water? Asteroid sample gives a surprising answer
Monica Grady, Professor of Planetary and Space Sciences, The Open University 2 May 2019 Water is essential for life on Earth and is one of our most precious natural resources. But considering how our planet formed, it is quite surprising how much water we still have. The Earth aggregated from a cloud of gas and […]
How we are developing immunotherapies relevant to Africa
Neelakshi Mungra, PhD Candidate at the MB&I Unit, University of C.Town; Krupa Naran, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town, and Trishana Nundalall, PhD Candidate at the MB&I Unit The exorbitant costs of cancer drugs make it difficult for public and private health care systems to provide the […]
A Timeline of Human Evolution
The process of evolution involves a series of natural changes that cause species (populations of different organisms) to arise, adapt to the environment, and become extinct. All species or organisms have originated through the process of biological evolution. In animals that reproduce sexually, including humans, the term species refers to a group whose adult members […]
What’s on the far side of the Moon?
Wayne Schlingman, Director Arne Slettebak Planetarium, Ohio State University Looking up at the silvery orb of the Moon, you might recognize familiar shadows and shapes on its face from one night to the next. You see the same view of the Moon our early ancestors did as it lighted their way after sundown. Only one […]
Ancient four-legged whales once roamed land and sea
Jan Hoole, Lecturer in Biology, Keele University Whales belong in the ocean, right? That may be true today, but cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises) actually descended from four legged mammals that once lived on land. New research published in Current Biology reports the discovery in Peru of an entirely new species of ancestral whale that straddled […]
Karoo fossil find may shed light on how sabre toothed predators evolved
A team from the Evolutionary Studies Institute at South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand has discovered the fossil remains of what may be the oldest large-sized gorgonopsian ever found. The extremely well preserved fossil was found in Laingsburg in South Africa’s arid Karoo. Julien Benoit, Postdoc in Vertebrate Palaeontology, University of the Witwatersrand Prehistoric bestiary […]