Taxonomy term

With two rovers patrolling the surface of Mars, six spacecraft orbiting above it, and scientists here on Earth studying the Red Planet from afar, new findings are announced often. Here are a few of the latest updates.

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, which has a dense, nitrogen-rich atmosphere with evidence of large amounts of frozen water at the surface, is a world apart from Earth’s moon. Among other strange phenomena, Titan has vast fields of frozen hydrocarbon particles that form 100-meter-tall dunes whose crests point east, opposite the prevailing west-blowing winds predicted by atmospheric models of Titan. In a new study in Nature Geoscience, researchers have found that these mysterious dunes may be sculpted in part by electrostatic charging of the frozen hydrocarbon grains.

The Dead Sea, a landlocked lake bordered by Israel, Jordan and Palestine, is nearly 10 times saltier than the ocean. And it’s getting saltier. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the water level has dropped by nearly 30 meters, largely because of diversions of the Jordan River, the lake’s primary tributary and the arid region’s main source of fresh water.

The 2016 book, “Tipping Point for Planet Earth,” by paleoecologists Anthony D. Barnosky and Elizabeth A. Hadly, is a serious book on a serious topic, and a well-written, one-stop resource for anyone who wants to understand a host of looming problems. The book focuses on the alarming number of worrisome planetary trends now underway, mainly as a result of the convergence of population growth and human-induced global warming. Chapters cover people (population growth), “stuff” (increased purchases of material goods), storms, hunger, thirst (failing water supplies, clean or not), toxins, disease and war. These trends have merited serious attention from environmental scientists and deserve the same from politicians. Whether they are tipping points, however, is a point of contention.