menu
close
subscribe donate

EarthSky Voices

EarthSky Voices

Members of the EarthSky community - including scientists, as well as science and nature writers from across the globe - weigh in on what's important to them. Photo by Robert Spurlock.

Illustration of round spacecraft hurtling towards a black circle.

Warp drives: Physicists give chances of faster-than-light space travel a boost

Posted by in Human World | Space | 3 days ago
Posted by

If humanity wants to travel between stars, people are going to need to travel faster than the fastest-moving stuff known in our universe: light. New research suggests that it might be possible to build warp drives and beat the galactic speed limit.

Illustration of a spacecraft on barren red dirt.

Chinese rover Zhurong to attempt to land on Mars this month

Posted by in Human World | Space | 1 week ago
Posted by

The Chinese Tianwen-1 mission’s Zhurong rover will attempt to land on the surface of Mars in mid-May 2021.

What Proxima’s massive flare means for our chances of alien neighbors

Posted by in Space | 1 week ago
Posted by

In May 2019, astronomers measured the largest flare ever from Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun. What do such flares mean for possible alien life, on a planet in the Proxima Centauri system, only 4 light-years away?
Big full moon with seagull silhouette.

Expect flooding from this week’s supermoon, but know a lunar cycle masks effects of sea level rise

Posted by in Earth | Human World | 2 weeks ago
Posted by

The April 2021 supermoon and the lunar nodal cycle, explained.
Illustration of dinosaur with open mouth.

How many Tyrannosaurus rex lived on Earth?

Posted by in Earth | 3 weeks ago
Posted by

During 2.4 million years of existence, a total of 2.5 billion Tyrannosaurus rex lived on Earth, and 20,000 individual animals would have been alive at any moment, according to new calculations.
A large brown spider with big black eyes crawling down a door frame.

A case against killing spiders

Posted by in Earth | Human World | 4 weeks ago
Posted by

An entomologist explains why it’s a good idea to be nice to the spiders you encounter and consider a live-and-let-live policy.
Bare tree trunks against a cloudy sky.

Sea level rise creating ghost forests in U.S. East

Posted by in Earth | 4 weeks ago
Posted by

Sea level rise is killing trees along the U.S. east coast, creating ‘ghost forests’ that are visible from space.
Painting of lots of blue and yellow fish

5 ways fish are like you and me

Posted by in Earth | Human World | 1 month ago
Posted by

Fish are more like humans than you might realize.
Painting of volcano, orange sky, lightning.

Did lightning strikes spark life on Earth?

Posted by in Earth | 1 month ago
Posted by

Lightning strikes – perhaps a quintillion of them, occurring over a billion years – might have provided sparks of life for the early Earth by unlocking phosphorus, says new research.

Explosion-like many-hued curly and straight lines and spots of light on a black background.

Evidence of a brand new physics?

Posted by in Human World | 2 months ago
Posted by

Physicists at the LHCb Collaboration at CERN have found particles not behaving the way they should according to the guiding theory of particle physics. Could it be evidence of a brand new physics?