Leaving Earth
The absorption of outgoing thermal infrared by carbon dioxide means that Earth still absorbs about 70 percent of the incoming solar energy, but an equivalent amount of heat is no longer leaving. The exact amount of the energy imbalance is very hard to measure, but it appears to be a little over 0.8 watts per square meter. The imbalance is inferred from a combination of measurements, including satellite and ocean-based observations of sea level rise and warming.
Leaving Earth
The four minutes billionaire Sir Richard Branson spent in a state of weightlessness on the edge of space this weekend was a historic feat in the burgeoning space tourism business, but many critics say Branson and other billionaires are missing the mark by looking to the stars, leaving behind a planet rife with problems that big investments might be able to fix.
Artist's concept of the Dawn spacecraft leaving Earth. Launched September 27, 2007, Dawn's mission was to learn more about the formation and makeup of the early solar system by studying objects in the asteroid belt. Dawn reached and orbited protoplanet Vesta in 2011-2012 and then went on to Ceres. It is the first mission to have been planned to orbit two objects in our solar system. 041b061a72