The Daily Galaxy: Great Discoveries Channel

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Microbes Discovered Sub-Sea Floor Living on a Geologic Timescale.

Tiny ancient microbes beneath the sea floor influence the Earth's long-term carbon cycle. Distinct from life on the Earth's surface, these microbes may account for one-tenth of the Earth's living biomass, according to an interdisciplinary team of researchers who  looked at sediment samples from a variety of depths taken off the coast of Peru, but many of these minute creatures are living on a geologic timescale. The team examined how the microbial world differs in the sub-sea floor from that in the surface waters, with profound implications for our understanding of possible lifeforms elsewhere in the Solar System.

New Technologies Accelerate Search for Earth-Like Planets to Tipping Point

A great new age of the discovery of Earth-like planets has reached the tipping point, according to Harvard Professor of Astronomy Dimitar Sasselov, who heads the Origins of Life Initiative  said after the International Astronomical Union (IAU) symposium held this May .

“We can say this is the moment where we started the exploration of planets like Earth.” The symposium's focus was “Transiting Planets,” or the technique of discovering planets by measuring changes in the light of distant suns when a planet passes in front of them.

Greenland Ice Core Analysis Shows Sharp Warming Near End Of Last Ice Age

Data obtained from a Greenland ice core by an international science team led by project leader Dorthe Dahl-Jensen of the Center for Ice and Climate at the Neils Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen, shows that two huge Northern Hemisphere temperature upswings prior to the close of the last ice age some 11,500 years ago were tied to fundamental shifts in atmospheric circulation.

According to the researchers, the first abrupt warming period beginning at 14,700 years ago lasted until about 12,900 years ago, when deep-freeze conditions returned for about 1,200 years before the onset of the second sharp warming event. The two events indicate a speed in the natural climate change process never before seen in ice cores, said White, director of University of Colorado's Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research.

You Name the Cosmos!

Many of the recent discoveries by the Hubble Space Telescope have been "named" with numbers. Gone are the poetic, mythic names like Milky Way or Andromeda or Pegasus.

Let's have some fun and help NASA out and create names for these awesome celestial objects.

We'll select your best submissions and send them off to NASA headquarters.

What's your name for: IC 4406 -likely a hollow cylinder, according to NASA experts, with its square appearance the result of our vantage point in viewing the cylinder from the side.

FYI: Luke McKinney on Vacation in Ireland

Luke will be back first week in August. In the interim, I will fill in for him, minus, of course, his brilliant wit and lucid prose. Luke is back home for a couple of week's vacation in Ireland. Best, Casey Kazan.

Mystery of the Earth's Polar Caps 41 Million Years Ago

For most of our planet's history until fairly recently, the overall pattern has been for the Earth to be hot, with no permanent ice to be found anywhere.

New research to test global ice volume approximately 41.6 million years ago shows that ice caps at this time, if they existed at all, would have been small and easily accommodated on Antarctica.

Massive Changes in Oceanic & Atmospheric Circulation Triggered Ancient Global Warming

The planet’s climate systems is nothing really but a large game of dominoes, with one consequence or event always linked or linking to another, continuing down a chain. The formation of the Atlantic Ocean, in particular its northeast corner, may have been one in a line of dominoes that created a planetary global warming some 55 million years ago.

At the end of the Paleocene epoch, an event took place which has gone down in history as the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. It was a time of great planetary warming, and is associated with massive changes in oceanic and atmospheric circulation, the extinction of 30 to 50 percent of sea floor life, and the turnover of mammalian life.

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TGIF! Earth from Outside the Solar System