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If all goes as planned, NASA’s space vehicle Perseverance will touchdown on Mars Thursday night in the agency’s most ambitious mission to date. The mission’s primary task is to look for traces of life and in doing so, address one of the most fundamental questions in human history: Are we alone?
“The ultimate goal is to find traces of microscopic life that may have been present on Mars early in the planet’s history. If there was ever life on Mars, there’s a good chance that the samples from this mission will let us know. This is an extraordinarily exciting time,” says Morten Bo Madsen, a physicist and associate professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute.
Traces of prehistoric life will be the ultimate goal as the NASA rover Perseverance lands on Mars tonight. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen.
The research, which was published in the European Geosciences Union journal
Ocean Science, further revealed that, under the research team’s worst-case scenario, sea levels could surge as much as four and a half feet by the year 2100.
In its most recent assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had announced that sea levels were unlikely to rise beyond 3.6 feet by 2100.
The study’s authors noted that predictions used by the IPCC are based on a “jigsaw puzzle” of models for ice sheets, glaciers, and the warming of the sea. Such predictions can suffer because only a limited amount of data is sometimes available for the models to be tested on.
Sam Hancock4 February 2021 08:14
Johnson ‘risks humiliation’ over Cumbria coal mine
Nasa’s former senior climate scientist has penned an open letter to Boris Johnson, telling him to rethink the incoming Cumbria coal mine or risk being “vilified” by Britons for the rest of his time in office.
Dr James Hansen told the PM he had two choices: either to “change the course of our climate trajectory, earning the UK and yourself historic accolades” or “stick with business-almost-as-usual and be vilified around the world”.
“The contrary path is not so easy, but, with your leadership, it is realistic,” the expert told Mr Johnson.