Rare Moon Dust Can Tell Us About Earth
Ever wanted to hop onto a fluffy cloud? Catch a falling star? Bottle sunshine? Well, you can’t. But what you can do is hold some of the Moon in your hand… if you’re one of the few qualified scientists who are researching new lunar material. Sharing is caring, but these researchers have a great reason for being very precious with moon dust.
Moon dust is some of the rarest material on the planet and, for the first time, China has shared its samples of moon dust internationally. These samples have now racked up some serious frequent flyer miles, traveling across the globe after being taken all the way from the Moon. Talk about jet lag. Until now, scientists have been using samples collected decades ago. It wasn’t until 2020 that China’s spacecraft went to an unexplored spot of the Moon, then returned with 2 kilograms of moon rock. This dust is now being studied, and researchers are working carefully (VERY carefully) to uncover the evidence it has to offer about our universe’s environmental history.
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Look at the sea off the coast of East Greenland today, and you’ll notice two big changes: less ice and more whales.
Greenland is a huge Arctic island between North America and Europe. For a long time, thick sea-ice along its eastern coast kept large whales away, even in summer. But as the ocean has warmed and the ice has shrunk, some of the world’s biggest whales have moved in.
Scientists combined airplane surveys, satellite tags on whales and observations from local Inuit hunters. They found that fin whales, humpbacks, and minke whales now arrive by the thousands each summer. The whales are following capelin, a small fish that has moved into the warmer water. Humpbacks weren’t spotted in the area at all until 2006.
A sea full of whales might sound like great news, but it isn’t good news for every species. Many whales can travel between feeding areas, so they can follow the food. But some Arctic animals depend on sea-ice and have fewer places to go.
Polar bears have already been struggling as their icy habitat disappears. Now researchers say narwhals, which are specially adapted to icy Arctic waters, are having to share their home with the new arrivals, and in some places they’re being pushed out.
So the same change that’s creating a feast for some whales is shrinking the world for animals that need the ice.
Need a quick fix for nature? Just add beavers! Okay, it’s not quite that simple. But a small beaver family in the UK has shown what these animals can do, turning a shallow, struggling stream into what Forestry England called a “watery wonderland.”
Don’t picture water slides. Before the beavers arrived, the stream nearly dried up every summer. The beavers built dams from branches and mud, which held water back and spread it across the land. That created wetlands, areas where shallow water covers the ground for much of the year. Those wetlands now support insects, birds, and bats, along with small predators such as stoats, weasels, and pine martens. (Pine martens are tree-climbing relatives of the weasel.)
For now, the beavers live inside a fenced area. Their success has conservation groups asking whether beavers could one day be released into the wild without fences. That takes more than opening a gate. First, conservationists need feasibility studies (research to check whether a release would work). They also need government permission and a long-term plan for managing the animals. And they have to work out how beavers and people will share the land, since beaver dams can flood farmland, roads, or gardens.
If it’s done well, the payoff could be big. Beaver wetlands can boost biodiversity, or the variety of living things in one area. They also act like sponges, helping land hold on to water during heatwaves and droughts.
This summer, the largest wildfire ever recorded in Spain swept across the country. But the damage doesn’t end when the flames go out. For years, Spain’s sunshine and warm weather have helped its farms and its tourism industry thrive. Now extreme heat, drought, wildfires, and floods are putting both at risk.
Over the past few months, farmers have lost buildings and animals to the fires. Rebuilding would be hard enough in good conditions, but things are getting tougher. Summers are getting hotter, there’s less rain, and the wet season is ending earlier.
Tourism is feeling the effects too. Around 100 million foreign visitors are expected in Spain this year, and tourism makes up about 13% of the country’s economy. But some travelers are now choosing other destinations to avoid extreme temperatures and frequent heatwaves. For those who do visit, tour guides are changing schedules to avoid the hottest part of the day, sticking to shady routes, and making more stops for water.
Heat isn’t the only danger. In 2024, flash floods in the Valencia region of eastern Spain killed more than 230 people and damaged hundreds of businesses. The cost of the damage was equal to about 12% of the region’s GDP, which is the total value of everything the region produces in a year.
Spain’s problems aren’t unique. Climate change shows up in different ways in different places, from heatwaves in one country to floods or drought in another, and no part of the world is untouched.
The Mars Moons Exploration’s mission: grab a piece of one of Mars’s moons and bring it back to Earth. Talk about a big job! No wonder this is the first time anyone’s ever attempted this.
Our inner Solar System has only three moons: one for Earth and two for Mars. Mars may have two moons, but they’re both relatively small. The smaller moon, Deimos, is about 6 miles across. Phobos is around double that, but, at 12 miles across, its diameter is still closer to the distance to your local grocery store than the size of Earth’s Moon (which is over 2,000 miles across).
Scientists want to bring a sample from Phobos back to Earth, which should hopefully help answer the question: How exactly did these Mars moons form? One possibility is that a giant impact on early Mars blasted debris into space that later became the moons. Another is that Phobos and Deimos started as asteroids that were captured by Mars’s gravity.
Until now, the only pieces of Mars that scientists have been able to study fell to Earth as meteorites, but these types of samples become contaminated as they travel through our atmosphere. A piece taken directly from Phobos, however, would be pristine.
The plan is for the spacecraft to fly past Deimos, send a rover onto Phobos, and later land to collect a sample that is expected to return to Earth in 2031. After all this, researchers are expecting a whopping… 10 grams of material. That’s the same as about two nickels! But scientists say that is enough, especially because they would be able to do several studies on each grain of material.
Look at the sea off the coast of East Greenland today, and you’ll notice two big changes: less ice and more whales.
Greenland is a huge Arctic island between North America and Europe. For a long time, thick sea-ice along its eastern coast kept large whales away, even in summer. But as the ocean has warmed and the ice has shrunk, some of the world’s biggest whales have moved in.
Scientists combined airplane surveys, satellite tags on whales and observations from local Inuit hunters. They found that fin whales, humpbacks, and minke whales now arrive by the thousands each summer. The whales are following capelin, a small fish that has moved into the warmer water. Humpbacks weren’t spotted in the area at all until 2006.
A sea full of whales might sound like great news, but it isn’t good news for every species. Many whales can travel between feeding areas, so they can follow the food. But some Arctic animals depend on sea-ice and have fewer places to go.
Polar bears have already been struggling as their icy habitat disappears. Now researchers say narwhals, which are specially adapted to icy Arctic waters, are having to share their home with the new arrivals, and in some places they’re being pushed out.
So the same change that’s creating a feast for some whales is shrinking the world for animals that need the ice.
Need a quick fix for nature? Just add beavers! Okay, it’s not quite that simple. But a small beaver family in the UK has shown what these animals can do, turning a shallow, struggling stream into what Forestry England called a “watery wonderland.”
Don’t picture water slides. Before the beavers arrived, the stream nearly dried up every summer. The beavers built dams from branches and mud, which held water back and spread it across the land. That created wetlands, areas where shallow water covers the ground for much of the year. Those wetlands now support insects, birds, and bats, along with small predators such as stoats, weasels, and pine martens. (Pine martens are tree-climbing relatives of the weasel.)
For now, the beavers live inside a fenced area. Their success has conservation groups asking whether beavers could one day be released into the wild without fences. That takes more than opening a gate. First, conservationists need feasibility studies (research to check whether a release would work). They also need government permission and a long-term plan for managing the animals. And they have to work out how beavers and people will share the land, since beaver dams can flood farmland, roads, or gardens.
If it’s done well, the payoff could be big. Beaver wetlands can boost biodiversity, or the variety of living things in one area. They also act like sponges, helping land hold on to water during heatwaves and droughts.
This summer, the largest wildfire ever recorded in Spain swept across the country. But the damage doesn’t end when the flames go out. For years, Spain’s sunshine and warm weather have helped its farms and its tourism industry thrive. Now extreme heat, drought, wildfires, and floods are putting both at risk.
Over the past few months, farmers have lost buildings and animals to the fires. Rebuilding would be hard enough in good conditions, but things are getting tougher. Summers are getting hotter, there’s less rain, and the wet season is ending earlier.
Tourism is feeling the effects too. Around 100 million foreign visitors are expected in Spain this year, and tourism makes up about 13% of the country’s economy. But some travelers are now choosing other destinations to avoid extreme temperatures and frequent heatwaves. For those who do visit, tour guides are changing schedules to avoid the hottest part of the day, sticking to shady routes, and making more stops for water.
Heat isn’t the only danger. In 2024, flash floods in the Valencia region of eastern Spain killed more than 230 people and damaged hundreds of businesses. The cost of the damage was equal to about 12% of the region’s GDP, which is the total value of everything the region produces in a year.
Spain’s problems aren’t unique. Climate change shows up in different ways in different places, from heatwaves in one country to floods or drought in another, and no part of the world is untouched.
The Mars Moons Exploration’s mission: grab a piece of one of Mars’s moons and bring it back to Earth. Talk about a big job! No wonder this is the first time anyone’s ever attempted this.
Our inner Solar System has only three moons: one for Earth and two for Mars. Mars may have two moons, but they’re both relatively small. The smaller moon, Deimos, is about 6 miles across. Phobos is around double that, but, at 12 miles across, its diameter is still closer to the distance to your local grocery store than the size of Earth’s Moon (which is over 2,000 miles across).
Scientists want to bring a sample from Phobos back to Earth, which should hopefully help answer the question: How exactly did these Mars moons form? One possibility is that a giant impact on early Mars blasted debris into space that later became the moons. Another is that Phobos and Deimos started as asteroids that were captured by Mars’s gravity.
Until now, the only pieces of Mars that scientists have been able to study fell to Earth as meteorites, but these types of samples become contaminated as they travel through our atmosphere. A piece taken directly from Phobos, however, would be pristine.
The plan is for the spacecraft to fly past Deimos, send a rover onto Phobos, and later land to collect a sample that is expected to return to Earth in 2031. After all this, researchers are expecting a whopping… 10 grams of material. That’s the same as about two nickels! But scientists say that is enough, especially because they would be able to do several studies on each grain of material.