Posts by

Paul Scott Anderson

Webb fully aligned! See the new test images

NASA's Webb telescope has finished aligning all of its science instruments. The new test images are a taste of what's to come.

Paul Scott Anderson

May 8, 2022

Mars helicopter spots rover’s landing gear debris

NASA's Mars Helicopter has sent back some incredible new photos of the backshell and parachute that helped the Perseverance rover land over a year ago.

Paul Scott Anderson

May 4, 2022

Plate tectonics clues found in ancient crystals

A new study of ancient zircon crystals found in South Africa and other locations shows that plate tectonics on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago.

Paul Scott Anderson

May 1, 2022

Do Europa’s odd ridges indicate life?

Europa's odd ridges may form similarly to those in Greenland. The ridges occur over subsurface pockets of potentially habitable water in the moon's ice shell.

Paul Scott Anderson

April 27, 2022

Do Io’s enigmatic dunes form from lava and frost?

Researchers at Rutgers say they can finally explain how Io's enigmatic dunes form, despite the moon's extremely thin atmosphere and weak winds.

Paul Scott Anderson

April 27, 2022

Did an interstellar meteor hit Earth in 2014?

The U.S. Space Command published a surprising memo last week stating that an interstellar meteor crashed near Papua New Guinea in 2014.

Paul Scott Anderson

April 18, 2022

Neptune’s temperatures run oddly warm and cold

Neptune's temperatures are surprisingly both cooler and warmer than expected, scientists say in a new study using telescopes both on Earth and in space.

Paul Scott Anderson

April 17, 2022

Moon habitat project: Can we cope with the loneliness of space?

A simulation of a moon habitat in the Arctic shows how future lunar dwellers might cope with the psychological effects of extreme isolation.

Paul Scott Anderson

April 10, 2022

Hubble sees violent birth of Jupiter-like world

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have, for the 1st time, observed a giant new planet forming around another star via disk instability.

Paul Scott Anderson

April 8, 2022

Pluto’s giant ice volcanoes may still be erupting

Unusual large icy domes on Pluto's surface are likely giant ice volcanoes where water ice "lava" flowed, researchers say.

Paul Scott Anderson

April 3, 2022

Paul Scott Anderson

Paul Scott Anderson has had a passion for space exploration that began when he was a child when he watched Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. He studied English, writing, art and computer/publication design in high school and college. He later started his blog The Meridiani Journal in 2005, which was later renamed Planetaria. He also later started the blog Fermi Paradoxica, about the search for life elsewhere in the universe. While interested in all aspects of space exploration, his primary passion is planetary science and SETI. In 2011, he started writing about space on a freelance basis with Universe Today. He has also written for SpaceFlight Insider and AmericaSpace and has also been published in The Mars Quarterly. He also did some supplementary writing for the iOS app Exoplanet. He has been writing for EarthSky since 2018, and also assists with proofing and social media.