News
June 11, 2025
"Door to Hell" starting to close after 54 years. There are no written Soviet records, no logs, no official drilling reports, and no confirmation that they'd lit it intentionally – but there's no disputing a ~100-foot-deep (~30-m), 226-foot-wide (69-m) pit of relentless fiery fury that's been burning for around 50 years in the Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan.
June 10, 2025
China is preparing to drill through the earth's crust and reach the mantle. If the drilling ship reaches the mantle boundary, it will be a scientific breakthrough comparable to landing on the moon, the researchers believe.
June 4, 2025
Deposits of platinum and other metals on the moon have been estimated at a trillion dollars. Lunar craters may contain platinum and other precious metals trapped there as a result of meteorite impacts, worth more than a trillion dollars. This means that mining resources on the moon may be more economically profitable than individual asteroid mining - although the legal status of such activities remains unclear.
May 28, 2025
Russian scientists have confirmed the appearance of a new island in the northern part of the Caspian Sea due to a decrease in its level. The island is being named, the press service of the P. P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology (IO) of the Russian Academy of Sciences reported.
May 28, 2025
Financing for Russia's new lunar program, which aims to build a station on the moon, will begin in 2025. This was stated by the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Gennady Krasnikov at the general meeting of the Academy.
"As for the lunar program, it includes seven lunar missions with various scientific objectives. <...> This is a large and very responsible program and, of course, a serious challenge for our academic institutions. Financing of this program will begin this year," said the head of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
May 19, 2025
Roscosmos showed a photo of the eruption of the Shiveluch volcano in the Kamchatka Territory (Russia). The volcano had previously spewed two ash columns 8 and 8.5 km high. Satellites allow monitoring the situation with the eruption of the Shiveluch volcano in the Kamchatka Territory. This is reported in the Telegram channel of Roscosmos.
May 14, 2025
Magellan mission reveals possible tectonic activity on Venus. Vast, quasi-circular features on Venus's surface may reveal that the planet has ongoing tectonics, according to new research based on data gathered more than 30 years ago by NASA's Magellan mission.
On Earth, the planet's surface is continually renewed by the constant shifting and recycling of massive sections of crust, called tectonic plates, that float atop a viscous interior. Venus doesn't have tectonic plates, but its surface is still being deformed by molten material from below.
May 12, 2025
The “wealthiest 10%” of people on the planet are “responsible” for 65% of the 0.61C increase in global average temperatures over 1990-2020, according to new research. The study, published in Nature Climate Change, uses a field of climate science called “attribution” to determine the contribution of the world’s “wealthiest population groups” to climate change through the greenhous
April 29, 2025
China, Russia may build nuclear plant on moon to power lunar station, official says. China is considering building a nuclear plant on the moon to power the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) it is planning with Russia, a presentation by a senior official showed on Wednesday.
China aims to become a major space power and land astronauts on the moon by 2030, and its planned Chang’e-8 mission for 2028 would lay the groundwork for constructing a permanent, manned lunar base.
April 28, 2025
Environment groups say Thursday order ignores effort to adopt rules to prevent harmful mining of ocean floor. Environmental groups are decrying an executive order signed by Donald Trump to expedite deep-sea mining for minerals, saying it could irreparably harm marine ecosystems and ignores an ongoing process to adopt international rules for the practice.