A heatwave the size of 10 Earths has been discovered rippling through Jupiter‘s atmosphere. It was 130,000 kilometers (around 81,000 miles) across, and a scorching 700 degrees Celsius (1,292 degrees Fahrenheit), traveling at speeds up to 2,400 meters per second away from the Jovian north pole. And this, scientists say, could resolve one of the
Month: September 2022
The oceans absorb more than 90 percent of all extra heat trapped by the emissions we’ve produced by burning fossil fuels. This heat is enormous. It’s as if we exploded an atom bomb underwater, every second of every day. The ocean isn’t warming at the same rate everywhere. We know the heat is concentrated in
This year marks the 100-year anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb and, even after all this time, the famous burial site is still revealing its secrets and stirring up controversy. A renowned British Egyptologist and former British Museum curator claims to have found evidence that the tomb’s royal murals and hieroglyphics might have been
On Thursday morning, NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew within 219 miles of the surface of Europa, a large icy moon that orbits Jupiter. It’s humanity’s closest look at the frozen world in more than 20 years. The Juno mission launched in 2011 to study Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. After it successfully completed
Being under stress can cause all kinds of physiological shifts in the human body, from heart rates to the chemicals released into the bloodstream – and it turns out our canine pals can sniff out those stress-related changes, even in strangers. Of course, we already know that dogs are super-sniffers, but this new study is
The James Webb and Hubble telescopes on Thursday revealed their first images of a spacecraft deliberately smashing into an asteroid, as astronomers indicated that the impact looks to have been much greater than expected. The world’s telescopes turned their gaze towards the space rock Dimorphos earlier this week for a historic test of Earth’s ability
NASA and SpaceX have agreed to study the feasibility of awarding Elon Musk‘s company a contract to boost the Hubble Space Telescope to a higher orbit, with a goal of extending its lifespan, the US space agency said Thursday. The renowned observatory has been operating since 1990 about 335 miles (540 kilometers) above Earth, in
Based on its market share, the world’s most notorious cryptocurrency Bitcoin results in more climate damage than the production of beef and nearly as much damage as crude oil, researchers in the United States have calculated. The findings of the new three-pronged analysis suggest Bitcoin is potentially unsustainable and could have disastrous social and environmental
The very first deep field image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just delivered a new treasure from the early Universe. In a splash of light that has traveled for 9 billion years to reach us, astronomers have spotted clusters of stars sparkling around a distant galaxy they have named the Sparkler. These
A new look at an extremely rare infant burial in Europe suggests humans were carrying around their young in slings as far back as 10,000 years ago. The findings add weight to the idea that baby carriers were widely used in prehistoric times, although archaeological evidence of such cloth is not usually preserved in the
Microscopic fragments of glass from the Moon have revealed a history of lunar impacts that lines up precisely with meteorite impacts here on Earth – including the giant asteroid impact 66 million years ago that killed most life on Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs. Using a range of techniques, a team of scientists precisely
As Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida on Wednesday afternoon and residents braced for what could be days of threatening weather, the shallow estuary of Tampa Bay on the state’s west coast was eerily transformed into a vast mud flat. The levels were so low in parts that the floor of the usually-bustling harbour was
Planet-heating methane spewing into the atmosphere from the damaged Nord Stream pipelines only has a modest impact on climate change, say scientists, but sharply highlights the risks of fossil-fuel-driven greenhouse gas emissions. The European Union has said it believes the leaks to the strategically important pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2, were caused by a
Road excavations in China’s Guizhou Province have unearthed a trove of ancient fish fossils. As a part of rock layers known as the Rongxi Formation, the new fossil bed is filled with never-before-seen species that push back the dates of our first jawed animal ancestors by about 15 million years. “Until this point, we’ve picked
The Vredefort crater in South Africa is the largest of its kind on Earth, estimated to stretch as far as 300 kilometers (more than 180 miles) from rim to rim. Walking non-stop, it would take a good two-and-a-half days to make it from one side to the other. The scars left by an asteroid collision
Electrons whizzing through a grid-like lattice don’t behave at all like pretty silver spheres in a pinball machine. They blur and bend in collective dances, following whims of a wave-like reality that are hard enough to imagine, let alone compute. And yet scientists have succeeded in doing just that, capturing the motion of electrons moving
Yesterday, humanity achieved a new and amazing first, 11 million kilometers (6.8 million miles) from home. After years of planning, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) finally slammed into a moonlet, Dimorphos, orbiting an asteroid, Didymos, in our first ever attempt to redirect the path of a significantly sized cosmic object. The images of the
What scientists thought were lakes of liquid water hiding under the southern polar ice cap of Mars could turn out to be… just regular old rock. New analysis has found that the brightly shining radar signal interpreted as underground water on the red planet could also have been produced by geological layering. It’s not a
Bullseye: A NASA spaceship on Monday struck an asteroid 7 million miles away in order to deflect its orbit, succeeding in a historic test of humanity’s ability to prevent a celestial object from devastating life on Earth. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impactor hit its target, the space rock Dimorphos, at 7:14 pm Eastern
Last Monday, September 19, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake shook the Pacific coast of Mexico at 11.05 am local time. Five minutes later and 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) away, a researcher at Death Valley National Park in California noticed something strange. Biological science technician Ambre Chaudoin was peering down into the famous limestone cavern known as
South Australia’s Naracoorte Caves is one of the world’s best fossil sites, containing a record spanning more than half a million years. Among the remains preserved in layers of sand are the bones of many iconic Australian megafauna species that became extinct between 48,000 and 37,000 years ago. The reasons for the demise of these
A Chinese pet-cloning company has announced the birth of the world’s first cloned Arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos), which was carried to term by an unlikely surrogate mother – a beagle. The cloned female wolf pup, named Maya, and her beagle mother were unveiled to the world in a brief video at a press conference
Deep below the surface of our world, far beyond our feeble reach, enigmatic processes grind and roil. Every now and then, the Earth disgorges clues to their nature: tiny chthonic diamonds encasing skerricks of rare mineral. From these tiny fragments we can glean tidbits of information about our planet’s interior. A diamond recently unearthed in
A submerged volcano on the seamount known as the Home Reef in the central Tonga Islands has awoken after 16 years of deep sleep to poke its head out of the blue. On 10 September 2022, lava and rock fragments began to ooze into the ocean 25 kilometers (15 miles) southwest of Late Island, while
Toxic levels of a pollutant commonly associated with the wastes of modern industry have been uncovered amid the most unlikely of archaeological sites. Long before conquistadors from far-off lands introduced the decay of war and disease, Maya cultures were dusting the soils of their urban centers with the heavy metal mercury. The element’s levels are
If you hadn’t already noticed, the ‘king of the planets’ is looking particularly glorious as of late. In fact, it’s been a while since anybody has seen the gas giant so positively radiant. On this Monday, September 26, Jupiter will come the closest to Earth it’s been in 59 years – and the view is
On September 26 at 11.15 pm UTC, NASA’s DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) will be the first to deliberately and measurably change the motion of a significant body in our Solar System. In other words, it will smash into an asteroid. The mission will provide the first test of a technique that could be
In one of the more unusual experiments we’ve seen recently, researchers attached a large pair of cartoonish googly eyes to the front of a small, self-driving vehicle – and it turns out that this kind of anthropomorphic tweak could actually improve pedestrian safety. A roving pair of peepers on the front of driverless vehicles could,
Scientists have created a robot that can transform from a black glob into a swarm of tiny beads and back again. The inventors say that the robot’s ability to split itself into many pieces and then snap back together makes it potentially useful for drug delivery. The human body is full of winding, narrow passages
When we consider termites, we may think of the danger they can pose to our houses once they settle in and start eating wood. But in fact, only about 4 percent of termite species worldwide are considered pests that might, at some point, eat your house. In nature, wood-eating termites play a broad and important
The twisty eruption of a dying star has finally been revealed in all its 3D glory. A team of scientists led by a high school graduate has reconstructed the complicated and mysterious nebulae that make up one of the most famous stellar ghosts in the sky – the Cat’s Eye Nebula. Their model revealed the
More than eight months after the underwater volcano near Tonga erupted on Jan. 14, scientists are still analyzing the impacts of the violent blast, and they’re discovering that it could warm the planet. Recently, researchers calculated that the eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apa spewed a staggering 50 million tons (45 million metric tons) of water
Few animals show as much affection and loyalty as dogs. But a new study offers evidence that the same human-to-animal attachment can develop in wolves, too. While earlier studies have suggested something similar, there isn’t much previous research on the attachment between wolves and humans, and the results have varied. Here, the study team wanted
We have detected a strange new signal from across the chasm of time and space. A repeating fast radio burst source detected last year was recorded spitting out a whopping 1,863 bursts over 82 hours, amid a total of 91 hours of observation. This hyperactive behavior has allowed scientists to characterize not just the galaxy that
A bizarre deep-sea shark with bulging eyes and an unnerving, human-like smile was recently dragged up from the depths off the coast of Australia. Shark experts are uncertain exactly which species the creepy-looking creature might belong to, adding to the mystery surrounding the unusual specimen. A deep-sea angler, who goes by the online name Trapman
Lakes appearing in Alaska because of melting permafrost are “belching” methane into the atmosphere, a scientist working with NASA said. These lakes, called thermokarsts, are so full of the climate-damaging gas that it can be seen bubbling to the surface. More and more of these lakes are appearing as Alaska’s permafrost thaws with rising temperatures
Humans have concocted all sorts of equipment to help us overcome the intense water pressures of the ocean’s depths. Yet our fellow mammalians, the cetaceans (dolphins, whales, and porpoises), can somehow go far deeper while completely naked – and stay down for hours without taking a breath. And these animals are working against more than
The demise of the dinosaurs has long captivated paleontologists. Their mass extinction after a fiery meteorite pummeled Earth some 66 million years ago, as volcanoes erupted and global temperatures rose and fell, was a tumultuous end to the reign of these once-dominant beasts. But now another study suggests dinosaurs were already on their way out
A woman in labor is having a terrible time and suddenly shouts out: “Shouldn’t! Wouldn’t! Couldn’t! Didn’t! Can’t!” “Don’t worry,” says the doctor. “These are just contractions.” Until now, several theories have sought to explain what makes something funny enough to make us laugh. These include transgression (something forbidden), puncturing a sense of arrogance or
In the wacky gravitational environment in the heart of our galaxy, astronomers have found a gas blob orbiting our supermassive black hole at superspeed. Its characteristics are helping astronomers probe the space immediately surrounding Sagittarius A* in the search for answers about why the galactic center flickers and flares across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Their
A microscopic shape-shifting horror has been seen escaping the confines of our own tiny mobile jail cells in a way nobody predicted. Like the metal-morphing assassin in Terminator 2, the common fungal pathogen Candida albicans is known to grow a blade-like limb while inside its macrophage captor, which is then used to slowly work itself
Keeping two arms and two legs coordinated isn’t always easy. Not only do octopuses have double the number of limbs to manage, their arms behave as if they have a mind of their own. New research suggests the task of motor control might be simplified by sticking to a preferred arm to catch prey. Using
The first picture of Neptune to be taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals the latest, greatest details of the ice giant’s atmosphere, moons, and rings in infrared wavelengths. Some of those details – for example, faint bands of dust that encircle Neptune – haven’t been brought to light since the Voyager 2 probe
Babies in the womb are big fans of carrots but not so much leafy green vegetables – and show it in their faces, scientists said in a new study published Thursday. Researchers at Durham University in northeast England said the findings were the first direct evidence that babies react differently to various smells and tastes
Many of us are familiar with the idea that as we get older, we become less mentally agile; but is this something that can be measured – does our IQ decrease with age? If it does, at what speed does it do so? Do different types of intelligence decline at different rates? In order to
New research into workplace behavior has identified men in lower, subordinate positions as those most likely to use flirting to try and get ahead in their job – and the most likely to be using sexual innuendo and harrassing female bosses too. The root of what the researchers describe as unwanted social sexual behavior from
Human history has unfolded largely in bucolic settings, with sprawling savannas and forested river valleys hosting our ancestors for millions of years. By comparison, cities represent a radical new kind of habitat, one that despite its many perks often strains our mental health. Research has linked urban environments with increased risk for anxiety, depression, and
Archaeologists digging near Prague have discovered the remains of a Stone Age structure that’s older than Stonehenge and even the Egyptian pyramids: an enigmatic complex known as a roundel. Nearly 7,000 years ago during the late Neolithic, or New Stone Age, a local farming community may have gathered in this circular building, although its true
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