GreeenBlogs

Tens of millions of years ago, Earth was completely wrapped in ice—no oceans, no sunlight, nothing but white. That chilling era, known as Snowball Earth, lasted between 720–635 million years ago . Scientists have long wondered: Did anything survive that freeze? Now, groundbreaking research from Fatima Husain, Jasmin Millar, Anne Jungblut, Ian Hawes, Thomas Evans, and Roger Summons reveals surprising answers right from the icy labs of Antarctica. Why Meltwater Ponds Matter These researchers dove into the supraglacial meltwater ponds on the McMurdo Ice Shelf, near where Robert Falcon Scott’s team once described “dirty ice” from debris-laden glaciers . These ponds, only a few meters across and perched atop ice, are formed when dark sediment absorbs sunlight and melts parts of the frozen surface. Their goal? To explore whether these ponds harbor ancient biosignatures—chemical fingerprints from complex life (eukaryotes)—mirroring the kind of organisms that might have clung on during Snowb...

A cosmic whisper from Arizona that could widen your eyes (and your mind!) Yesterday, June 14, 2025, the University of Arizona dropped a cosmic bombshell: astronomers using ALMA (the giant telescope in Chile) studied 30 young star systems and found that gas—crucial for building giant planets—dissipates much faster than dust in their disks . It means that gas giants like Jupiter might need to grow up really quickly, or risk fading away before they even begin.   What the Study Found These swirling clouds—protoplanetary disks—are made of gas and dust, the building blocks of worlds. The AGE‑PRO survey looked at stars aged 1 to 6 million years, in three regions: Ophiuchus, Lupus, and Upper Scorpius . Their key insights: 1. Gas dissipates fast. When these disks are young, gas escapes quickly—within a few million years. 2. Dust sticks around. Surprisingly, dust lingers longer, giving more time for rocky planet building. 3. Some disks hang on. A few disks still had more gas than expected,...