Smallest-ever star discovered by astronomers

Written by University of Cambridge

The smallest star yet measured has been discovered by a team of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge. With a size just a sliver larger than that of Saturn, the gravitational pull at its stellar surface is about 300 times stronger than what humans feel on Earth.

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Private company plans to bring Moon rocks back to Earth in three years

Written by ERIC BERGER

After several years of secrecy, a company called Moon Express revealed the scope of its ambitions on Wednesday. And they are considerable. The privately held company released plans for a single, modular spacecraft that can be combined to form successfully larger and more capable vehicles. Ultimately the company plans to establish a lunar outpost in 2020 and set up commercial operations on the Moon.

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Ocean Cools and Air Temps Follow

Written by Ron Clutz

June Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) are now available, and we can see ocean temps dropping further after a short pause and resuming the downward trajectory from the previous 12 months.

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A fresh view on volcanic plumbing systems

Written by University of Oregon

The iconic El Capitan at Yosemite National Park in California contains a long-running record of magma injections that never breached the surface, instead freezing into the Earth's crust.

Volcanic eruptions such as Mount St. Helens’ in 1980 show the explosiveness of magma moving through Earth’s crust. Now geologists are excited about what uplifted granite bodies such as Yosemite’s El Capitan say about magma that freezes before it can erupt on the surface.

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NY Magazine Releases the Full Transcript With Michael Mann, which contradict Mann’s public comments

Written by Michael Bastasch

NY Magazine Published Its Inconvenient Interview With One Of The World’s Most Famous Climate Scientists

Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann was quick to criticize a New York Magazine article claiming that man-made global warming could make the Earth “uninhabitable” by the end of the century.

However, a transcript released Monday suggests a divergence between what Mann said publicly versus what he told the New York Magazine writer in an interview.

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A Critical Lesson from the NASA Earth Energy Budget

Written by Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D.

The essence of the argument that an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide, an infrared-active or greenhouse gas, causes the Earth’s surface to become warmer lies in a radiation-dominant viewpoint in the transport of energy between the surface and the atmosphere.  This viewpoint is depicted in the NASA energy budget shown below:

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