It
was a busy week for space news, thanks to the annual meeting of the
Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.
Planetary scientists no doubt wore out the “Let It Go” selection on the
karaoke machine, but only after dropping some exciting new knowledge
about our solar system.
Pluto’s ice volcanoes
As the New Horizons probe continues to download the massive cache of data it captured as it flew past Pluto, the discoveries just keep on coming. This week, scientists released 3D maps of Pluto’s surface, including two mountains with shapes that are strikingly familiar.
“These
are big mountains with a large hole in their summit, and on Earth that
generally means one thing — a volcano,” said Oliver White, New Horizons
postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California.
Because
it’s so cold In the outer solar system, the geology of places like
Pluto is nothing like Earth’s. Pluto’s mountains are made of water ice,
and its volcanoes probably erupt a partially melted slurry of ice,
nitrogen, ammonia, and methane. Volcanoes are one way that a planet like
Pluto can replenish its surface, paving over craters and smoothing
everything out.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s report shows why Nigeria’s economy experiences difficulties – and if the trend continues the situation may get even worse. Nigeria’s oil revenues sharply declined within a year by over two thirds, says the report, recently published by the NNPC. The NNPC report shows that oil revenues declined more than 67 per cent over a period of time since September 2014 till July 2015, and that had “ dire consequences to the federation “. However, if that rends continues, the situation in Nigeria’s economy, heavily dependent on oil revenues, may get even worse. Nigeria derives more than 90 per cent of its foreign exchange earnings from crude.
THE Federal Government has condemned the incident that occurred at the Bauchi Airport Saturday, describing the incident as unacceptable. The incident, which went viral on many social media networks, involved a Bauchi bound chartered Aero contractor flight which took off from Abuja. According to information gathered, passengers on board the flight disembarked on landing at Bauchi airport with the help of a ladder as against the accepted use of gangway. The development has generated condemnation and affront to safety. Feelers from the Ministry of Transportation have indicated that the incident has caused a national embarrassment. “The Federal Government is frowning at the incident. Even though the airport is
More than one million migrants and refugees have entered Europe this year, according to an intergovernmental organisation. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says the million mark was crossed on Monday - a more than a four-fold increase in comparison with last year. The actual number of arrivals recorded as having entered the continent
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