(April 24, 2024)
The age of the Earth’s magnetic field remains under question in part because we don’t fully understand what causes it today. We know it is a product of movements in the molten outer core, whose high iron content turns convection currents into a dynamo, and these currents in turn are produced by the solidification of the inner core.
(April 2018)
Using constraints from experiments, simulations, and theory, we show that spontaneous crystallization in a homogeneous liquid iron alloy at Earth‘s core pressures requires a critical supercooling of order 1000 K, which is too large to be a plausible mechanism for the origin of Earth‘s inner core. We consider mechanisms that can lower the nucleation barrier substantially. Each has caveats, yet the inner core exists: this is the nucleation paradox.
(February 9, 2018)
„Everyone, ourselves included, seemed to be missing this big problem,“ study author Steven Hauck, a professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, said in a statement. Namely, they were missing „that metals don‘t start crystallizing instantly unless something is there that lowers the energy barrier a lot.“
In chemistry, this extra energy is known as the nucleation barrier: the point at which a compound visibly changes its thermodynamic phase.
(…)
In their paper, the researchers proposed one possibility: Perhaps a massive nugget of solid metal alloy dropped from the mantle and plunged into the liquid core.
(June 11, 2026)
The observation provides new insights into the behaviour of the liquid outer core, which plays a key role in generating Earth’s magnetic field. Without this magnetic shield, the planet would be dangerously exposed to solar radiation.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh checked ground observations and satellite data between 1997 and 2025. They report in The Journal of Studies of Earth’s Deep Interior, that in 2010, a broad region of iron-rich fluid beneath the equatorial Pacific switched from moving weakly westwards to strongly eastwards.
(April 16, 2016)
In this paper, we focus on the effects of stellar rotation on the evolution of the planetary orbit and on the impact of the changes of the planetary orbit on the rotation of the star.
(January 19, 2018)
As our sun gets older, it‘s losing mass, and so its gravitational pull becomes weaker. As a result, the orbits of all the planets in our solar system are expanding, not unlike „the waistband of a couch potato in midlife,“ according to a new NASA press statement.
A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Maryland and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has shown that the aging sun is behaving according to Albert Einstein‘s theory of general relativity.
(January 19, 2018)
To study the dynamics of our aging star, @NASASun researchers have enlisted Mercury, the smallest, innermost planet in the solar system. See how: go.nasa.gov/2DsuhTT
A leap second (sometimes called intercalary second)[1] is a one-second adjustment occasionally applied to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), to accommodate the difference between International Atomic Time (TAI), as measured precisely by atomic clocks, and observed solar time (UT1), which varies due to irregularities and long-term slowdown in the Earth‘s rotation.
(…)
After 1972, both clocks have been ticking in SI seconds, so the difference between their displays at any time is 10 seconds plus the total number of leap seconds that have been applied to UTC as of that time; as of 2024, 27 leap seconds have been applied to UTC, so the difference is 10 + 27 = 37 seconds. The most recent leap second was on December 31, 2016.
Die Erde rotiert minimal langsamer, als bei der Definition der Sekunde zugrunde gelegt wurde; ein tatsächlicher mittlerer Sonnentag dauert daher um Sekundenbruchteile länger als 86.400 Sekunden.
(…)
Im Jahr 1972 betrug die Differenz zwischen UTC und TAI vor EinfĂĽhrung der Schaltsekunde bereits 10 Sekunden, heute liegt sie bei 37 Sekunden.
(June 7, 2026)
Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing as climate change melts glaciers and polar ice sheets, redistributing water across the planet and subtly lengthening the day. According to new research from the University of Vienna and ETH Zürich, the current increase in day length — 1.33 milliseconds per century — is unprecedented over at least the past 3.6 million years. It’s a new measure of how profoundly human-driven warming is affecting the Earth system, even as only 48% of Americans believe climate change is the result of human activity.
(…)
Researchers reconstructed changes in day length over the past 3.6 million years using fossil remains of benthic foraminifera — single-celled marine microorganisms on the seafloor — and advanced machine-learning techniques.
According to the Tanzania Meteorologiucal Authority (TMA) , July is expected to record colder-than-usual conditions compared with other months of the cold season.
(July 2, 2026)
@SalinasEsteban
(Juky 3, 2026)
The SMN forecast that the cold would persist over the coming days, with Friday as a possible coldest day of the year in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, before a slight warming toward the weekend. Authorities recommended that people dress in layers, take extra care when traveling due to possible ice formation, and ventilate heated rooms to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning.
Location Approx. minimum temperature
Maquinchao (RĂo Negro) -14 °C
Trelew (Chubut) -13 °C
El Palomar (Buenos Aires) -7 °C
Mar del Plata (Buenos Aires) -1 °C (wind-chill -3.4 °C)
Buenos Aires City -1.9 °C
(July 3, 2026)
For all the media’s huffing and puffing over western Europe’s “climate-change heatwave,” the planet cooled in June.
UAH’s satellite-based lower troposphere record has June 2026 at +0.46C above the norm, down from +0.53C in May — a clear monthly fall all while headlines tried to turn one regional European hot spell into proof of a planetary catastrophe.
According to a World Weather Attribution report — and dutifully recycled by the usual activist rags — western Europe’s recent heatwave was “impossible without the climate crisis.”
Reuters led with the same line, adding that the “soaring night-time temperatures” were made 100 times more likely. The Guardian went further, calling it the “worst ever and impossible without climate crisis,” and claiming the heat was “only possible because of fossil-fuel burning.” Euronews warned that “climate change is running rampant,” while El PaĂs spelled out the sermon in its headline: “It’s not just hot, it’s climate change.” Etc. Etc. Etc.
The European heat was real. But it was weather. It was circulation. That is what blocking highs do.
Overall, the planet cooled 0.07C in June.
(June 26, 2026)
Heatwaves pose a serious threat to human health and have profound impacts on ecosystems. During the summer of 2022, more than 60,000 people across Europe died as a result of extreme heat. Even in the following summer, which was significantly cooler, over 47,000 heat-related deaths were recorded (Gallo et al., 2024). Last year, the first heatwave in Europe, also hitting at the end of June, cost an estimated 2,300 people their lives in only 12 European cities (Grantham Institute, 2025).
(July 11, 2025)
A searing heatwave that swept across parts of Europe in late June 2025 has been linked to nearly 2,300 excess deaths, according to a rapid attribution study conducted by scientists from Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
The analysis shows that global warming raised temperatures during this heatwave by 2 to 4°C above what they would have been in a world without human influence. This increase, though seemingly modest, had deadly consequences when combined with ageing infrastructure, dense urban environments, and inadequate heat preparedness in many parts of Europe. Temperatures soared well beyond seasonal norms, straining public health systems and exposing gaps in cities’ ability to protect residents.
Researchers focused on data from June 23 to July 2 and 12 European cities in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, the UK, Greece, Croatia, and Hungary.
(May 28, 2026)
We use Sun-as-a-star helioseismology data, collected by the Birmingham Solar-Oscillations Network, to examine the relationship between the solar-cycle-induced frequency shifts of whole-Sun, low-angular degree solar p modes and well-known proxies of global solar activity. Changes in behaviour between the low-frequency modes and proxies, which in a previous study we found had occurred on the declining phase of Cycle 23, appear to have persisted into Cycle 25. More striking is a significant change in the relationship for higher-frequency modes, which the new Cycle 25 data now reveal. The observed mean frequency shifts in Cycle 25 are much stronger than one would expect for these modes based on the relationship between the frequencies and proxies seen in previous cycles, in particular Cycle 22. In sum, Cycle 25 is as strong as Cycles 22 and 23 when observed in this higher-frequency seismic band, in marked contrast to the relative sizes of the cycles seen in the global activity proxies, where Cycle 25 is noticeably weaker. (…)
The last few solar cycles have seen significant changes in overall levels of activity and differences in the evolution of magnetic fields at different solar latitudes (e.g. see D. H. Hathaway 2015; A. Norton et al. 2023). Cycle 24 was significantly weaker in well-known proxies of global solar activity than previous cycles, and marked a departure from the preceding so-called modern maximum epoch (I. G. Usoskin 2017). While the current Cycle 25 has peaked at higher activity, it did not return to pre-Cycle-24 levels.
(May 28, 2026)
Professor Sarbani Basu, from Yale University, said, “We discovered that the relationship between internal solar oscillations and surface activity has evolved over the past few cycles. This trend cannot be explained simply by weaker magnetic fields. Instead, it indicates a structural reorganisation of how the Sun’s magnetic activity is stored beneath the surface.”
Ongoing collection and analysis of BiSON solar data over what remains of Cycle 25 and into the upcoming Cycle 26 will be crucial in determining whether the changes discovered in the Sun’s activity point to a sustained, systematic change in solar magnetic behaviour.
(May 29, 2026)
Here‘s where it gets strange. Traditional measurements of solar activity such as sunspot counts and magnetic field strengths at the surface suggest that cycle 25 is relatively modest. But the helioseismic data tells a different story. Look at the high-frequency oscillations, which probe the shallowest layers, and cycle 25 appears just as powerful as its predecessors. The Sun looks different depending on where you look. The surface is playing it down but the interior is not.
What does this mean? The honest answer is that nobody is entirely sure yet.
(July 2, 2026)
Faced with observations of early black holes and galaxies that weren’t expected to exist, scientists have come up with a wealth of new theories to explain them. Now they just need to figure out which ones are true.
The epicenters, which USGS estimated to be about 3 miles apart, were near the town of MorĂłn on Venezuela‘s Caribbean coast, some 100 miles west of Caracas.
(…)
„This doesn‘t happen very often,“ Earle said. „When they‘re right together it‘s hard to understand what would happen.“
The strongest of the „doublet,“ as the USGS described the twin quakes, is the largest earthquake to strike Venezuela since 1900, when a 7.7-magnitude quake hit the country, according to USGS.
Roskosmos teilte mit, dass ihre Experten zwei Lecks an Bord der Internationalen Raumstation entdeckt hätten, fĂĽr die Besatzung jedoch keine unmittelbare Gefahr bestehe. Das erste Leck sei rasch abgedichtet worden, und derzeit liefen die Vorbereitungen zur Abdichtung des zweiten. „Die Sicherheit der Besatzung und der Bordsysteme ist nicht gefährdet, der Druck an Bord der ISS ist stabil und wird auf dem vorgesehenen Niveau gehalten.“
Die NASA und Roskosmos – die beiden Hauptbetreiber der Station – streiten seit Monaten ĂĽber die Ursache und mögliche ReparaturmaĂźnahmen fĂĽr kleine Luftlecks im Servicemodul Swesda.
The four astronauts of SpaceX‘s Crew-12 mission are NASA‘s Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. They arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) in mid-February for a six-month stay.
They took shelter today in Crew-12‘s Dragon capsule „Freedom,“ along with NASA‘s Williams, who arrived at the station in late November aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
Williams flew with two crewmates on that Soyuz — cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev. They‘re presumably the ones who attempted the PrK leak fix today. (Stevens‘ X post did not mention who performed the repair or what exactly the operation entailed.)
NASA on Friday temporarily ordered astronauts to take shelter during repairs to fix a fresh leak aboard the International Space Station.
The five astronauts moved into the SpaceX capsule that is docked at the station while cosmonauts worked to fix the leak, which is on the Russian side of the orbiting laboratory.