One Moon "day" is approximately 29.5 Earth days. This rotation coincides with its orbit around the Earth so that we only see about 59 per cent of the surface of the Moon from Earth. When the Moon first formed, its rotational speed and orbit were very different than they are now. Over time, the Earth's gravitational field gradually slowed the Moon's rotation until the orbital period and the rotational speed stabilised, making one side of the Moon always face the Earth. Read More >>
Koichi Wakata—a Japanese astronaut now on board the International Space Station—just shared this incredible photo of the "Moon setting on the blue Earth atmosphere". Read More >>
You're looking at the oldest fragment of Earth ever found: a zircon 4.375 billion years old, something that has deep implications in our understanding of the planet's formation. While some scientists said other samples weren't genuine, new research just published in the journal Nature Geoscience proves that this is the real McCoy. Read More >>
Remember how in Superman Christopher Reeve spun Earth backwards to go back in time and save Lois? Turns out, he probably shouldn't have done that, because slowing the Earth's rotation to a stop would seriously mess with everything on our planet, as Earth Unplugged explains. Not cool, Superman. Read More >>
From microscopic coral to massive planets, the natural world is full of beauty on a scale that can only be seen with the aid of a microscope or a telescope. The winners of the 11th annual International Science and Engineering Visualisation Challenge have been announced—sponsored by the journal Science and the U.S. National Science Foundation—letting us zoom in to microscopic scales and zoom out onto planetary scales. Read More >>
This image may look like the opening scene from a high-budget sci-fi film, but it is in fact a real photograph, snapped by astronaut Koichi Wakata from the International Space Station. Read More >>
Researchers at Scotland's Abertay University are getting a brand new look at the seemingly nondescript world hidden in plain sight—the soil beneath our feet. Read More >>
You're looking at a picture of the Vanuatu Archipelago in Australia, shrouded in vog—a word used to describe the kind of volcanic smog which is formed when gases from a volcano react with sunlight, oxygen and moisture. Read More >>
At the Zhangye Danxia Landform Geological Park in Gansu, China, tourists flock to see China's own version of the Grand Canyon: A mountain range of densely packed layers of minerals and rock that are dramatically striated into a layer cake of magenta, maroon, and lemon-coloured stone. Read More >>
Earth from above is a beautiful sight and, apart from cats and porn, there's almost nothing the internet likes more at the moment than data visualisations. Combine the two and you've got solid gold—or in Earth's case, a stunning, technicolour look at global wind and weather conditions. Read More >>
This beautiful tracking video shows Asteroid 2013 XY8 buzzing by our planet on Tuesday night. It's estimated to be up to 230 feet across, more than three times the size of the Chelyabinsk asteroid that caused havoc earlier this year. And we only discovered it four days ago. This could have been hairy. Read More >>
It's one of those things you've probably idly wondered but never really lent masses of thought: what the hell would the planet be like if humans had never existed? Fortunately, this video tries to explain. Read More >>
If you've ever wanted to visit the extreme environments used as offworld training landscapes for future astronauts—where bleak, windswept, and often highly remote locations act as surrogates for the surfaces of other planets—a new guidebook will help you find them. Assembled for the European Space Agency by scientists at the Open University, The Catalogue of Planetary Analogues (PDF) is now available for download. Read More >>
Scientists examining the collapse of other possibly life-supporting planets similar to Earth suggest we've got around 1.75bn years left to lounge about on this particular rock, before changes in the Sun make it impossible to live. Assuming we don't nuke/melt/burn/poison ourselves out of existence first, that is. Read More >>
It's nearly impossible for us to imagine how the Earth might look to someone who's only ever seen it from a local's vantage point. But thanks to the Library of Congress, we don't have to imagine, newly posted images of 19th century drawings show us exactly what humans thought the Earth looked like far before we could ever have known for sure. The Smithsonian compiled a few of them, and some of our favorites lie below. You can see the rest over at The Library of Congress here. [Library of Congress via The Smithsonian]Read More >>
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