‘Cannibal’ solar flares may bring auroras as far south as New York

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Two coronal mass ejections (CMEs), eruptions of charged particles from the sun’s upper atmosphere known as the corona, burst from the sun on Aug. 14 and 15 respectively, according to the U.K. forecaster Met Office (opens in new tab). As the CMEs cross the 900,000-mile (150 million kilometers) distance between the star and our planet, they might cannibalize each other, according to SpaceWeather.com (opens in new tab), creating a single super powerful CME. 

Underwater snow on Earth could offer insight into Europa’s icy crust

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In a new study, researchers studied two types of underwater snow found on Earth as an analog for understanding how Europa’s shell thickens from below. Frazil ice forms in supercooled water columns and floats upward to accrete onto the bottom of ice shelves, while congelation ice grows directly from under the ice shelf. Intriguingly, the researchers determined that ice formed by these processes retains just a fraction of the salt from the water from which it formed. Frazil ice retains just 0.1% of the ocean’s salinity and could be common on Europa, according to the study, suggesting that Europa’s ice shell could be orders of magnitude purer than previous estimates.