Newsdesk Archive
About 66 million years ago, an ancient sea monster the height of a five-story office building once gnashed its sharp teeth as it swam around the dark waters of Antarctica, a new study finds.
In excavated waste heaps along the western coast of Greenland, researchers have found evidence that ancient Greenlanders, known as the paleo-Inuit or Saqqaq, may have been eating large amounts of bowhead whale. But these 4,000-year-old "dumpsters" are from millennia before humans had specialized technology to hunt down such massive prey.
Related: On a wet British Columbia island, historical fires likely were human products
Related: Ancient Doggerland diet discovered
Related: Research provides new data about the first communities of the Old Neolithic in the Iberian Peninsula, based on the study of stone bracelets
Cheddar Man is the name given to the remains of a man that was found in Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. Cheddar Man was discovered around the turn of the 20 th century, and has been dated to the Mesolithic period. It seems that there was not much research done on Cheddar Man, and he was probably a set of prehistoric remain amongst many.
The Neanderthals disappeared about 30,000 years ago, but little pieces of them live on in the form of DNA sequences scattered through the modern human genome. A new study by geneticists at the University of California, Davis, shows why these traces of our closest relatives are slowly being removed by natural selection.
Alt: Evolution purged many Neanderthal genes from human genome
As the ancestors of modern humans made their way out of Africa to other parts of the world many thousands of years ago, they met up and in some cases had children with other forms of humans, including the Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Scientists have charted more than 1,000 years of Tanzanian environmental history using sediments extracted from a peat bog. Working in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania, where only 15% of the tropical forests remain compared to 1,000 years ago, the team aimed to identify if the region's rich biodiversity had altered over the years and what major events in history, such as the emergence of the ivory trade in the Victorian period, might have contributed to changes in the forests.
In 1721, missionary Hans Egede sailed a ship called The Hope from Norway to Greenland, seeking Norse farmers whom Europeans hadn't heard from in 200 years in order to convert them to Protestantism.
When the Vikings landed at the holy island of Lindisfarne in 793AD, it marked the beginning of hundreds of years of terrifying raids, which would earn the Norsemen a fearsome reputation as murderers and pillagers throughout Europe.
It might sound incredulous, but the small lump of soil pictured above represents one of the most sensational discoveries made at Denmark’s fifth Viking ring fortress: Borgring.
The lump of soil was removed from the area around one of the fortress’ four gates and it contains the remains of a collection of tools, which probably once lay inside a Viking toolbox.
The discarded bone of a chicken leg, still etched with teeth marks from a dinner thousands of years ago, provides some of the oldest known physical evidence for the introduction of domesticated chickens to the continent of Africa, research has confirmed.
A few months ago, neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch emerged from a 10-hour surgery that she hadn't done before.
"Most of my patients are humans," says Bloch, who works at the Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland.
Elephants are intelligent, highly social animals that are known to comfort and protect each other. This sympathetic behavior is on display in the above video, which shows the rescue of three Asian elephants in the Yunnan Province in southwest China.
Related: Carbon dating confirms ivory poaching is alive and well in Africa
It’s a case of lofty living meeting Noah’s ark. Gardens atop city buildings can act as refuges for threatened species and help plants colonise the surrounding landscape.
For the last six years, a team of Australian conservationists has been growing critically endangered native plants on the roofs of buildings in Melbourne.
Wind is never in short supply in Scotland, which makes the county an ideal place to construct a lot of wind turbines. Now, WeatherEnergy has reported that wind turbines generated 792,717 MWh of electricity to the National Grid in October, up by more than 25 percent on the same month last year.
Plants temporarily halted the acceleration of rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, new research suggests.
From 2002 through 2014, CO2 levels measured over the oceans climbed from around 372 parts per million to 397 parts per million.
A global “greening” of the planet has significantly slowed the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the start of the century, according to new research.
More plants have been growing due to higher CO2 levels in the air and warming temperatures that cut the CO2 emitted by plants via respiration.
Understanding how carbon dissolves in water at the molecular level under extreme conditions is critical to understanding the Earth's deep carbon cycle—a process that ultimately influences global climate change.
Related: Major ocean current is widening as climate warms
Related: Antarctica's Ice Sheets Are Melting Faster — And From Beneath
Australia shifts and tilts back and forth by several millimeters each year because of changes to the Earth's center of mass, according to a new study. The findings could help scientists better track the precise location of Earth's center of mass, which is important for GPS and other satellite measurements, according to the study's author.
Scientists from the University of Bristol and partner universities in Germany, France, Canada and Wales, have discovered a huge magmatic lake, 15 kilometres below a dormant volcano in Bolivia, South America.
The historic eruption of the Greek volcano Thera in about 1650 B.C. triggered massive tsunamis and led to the end of the dominant civilization in the Mediterranean. Now, researchers say these destructive tsunamis may have been generated by the flow of volcanic material into the sea, challenging previous explanations, according to a new study.
Alt: Santorini eruption: new theory says ‘pyroclastic flows’ caused devastating Bronze Age tsunamis
Alt: An Ancient Tsunami That Ended a Civilization Gets Another Look
Alt: The wave that sank Atlantis: Deadly Santorini tsunamis in the late Bronze Age may have been driven by lava flow
The research team that has carried out the last campaign found remains of stone carving along with cutting and fracturing marks on the bones of animals that lived on the margins of the great lake that dominated and conditioned life in the north of the province of Granada.
Chimpanzees in Guinea are regularly using long and robust tools to fish for algae, reveals new research published this month in the American Journal of Primatology.
All of the food you’ve ever eaten was made with sunlight captured by plants just a few months or years before you ate it. But some of the energy on your plate could soon come from sunlight captured by plants millions of years ago, thanks to plans to feed livestock with fossil fuels.
A biotechnology company called Calysta, based in Menlo Park, California, is set to announce the first ever large-scale factory that uses microbes to turn natural gas – methane – into a high-protein food for the animals we eat.
Move over meat. Beetle larvae consumed as food in some parts of the world deliver as much iron to the body, gram per gram, as beef
Dogs have been dining on human food scraps since the early days of their domestication, it appears.
Our canine companions developed the ability to digest starchy foods during the farming revolution thousands of years ago, according to DNA evidence.
Submitting to mob mentality is always a risky endeavor, for humans or hyenas. A new study focusing on the latter, though, shows that when it comes to battling for food, mobbing can be beneficial.
Succeeding in the male-dominated science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines can be very challenging for female faculty. Now, a Northwestern University study of the collaboration patterns of STEM faculty publishing 4 November in the open-access journal PLOS Biology has found that the playing fields in some disciplines are not as level as they first appear.
Elon Musk reckons the robot revolution is inevitable and it's going to take all the jobs. For humans to survive in an automated world, he said that governments are going to be forced to bring in a universal basic income—paying each citizen a certain amount of money so they can afford to survive. According to Musk, there aren't likely to be any other options.
Related: Ontario pilot project puts universal basic income to the test
Related: Basic income for all: a 500-year-old idea whose time has come?
The idea is that by making better use of surplus capacity - things sitting idle for much of the time - we can cut costs, reduce waste and live more sustainably. Uber and Airbnb are the two biggest global examples of this phenomenon.
While some medical studies focus on developing completely new medicines and treatments for diseases, others attempt to improve existing options. In an attempt at the latter, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new nanoparticle-based treatment that makes chemotherapy more effective.
Related: Common food additive promotes colon cancer in mice
What would happen if an electric current no longer flowed, but trickled instead? This was the question investigated by researchers working with Christian Ast at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. Their investigation involved cooling their scanning tunnelling microscope down to a fifteen thousandth of a degree above absolute zero.
Chinese scientists have successfully obtained high-confinement plasma for a record length of time, which experts believe will promote the development of international thermonuclear fusion research.
In 2009, applied physicist Peter Sturrock was visiting the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, when the deputy director of the observatory told him he should read a controversial article about radioactive decay. Although the subject was outside Sturrock's field, it inspired a thought so intriguing that the next day he phoned the author of the study, Purdue University physicist Ephraim Fischbach, to suggest a collaboration.
Related: Watch out for the supermoon that will set a 68-year record
Water. Its absence has ignited wars and leveled societies. It’s our most precious commodity and one that is growing increasingly scarce.
What if you could pull it out of thin air?
One of our sadder legacies from nearly six decades of space exploration is a chain of orbital debris surrounding Earth. Some pieces are as small as flecks of paint, while others are the corpses of dead satellites long out of fuel.
NASA estimates that more than a half-million fragments are out there, occasionally posing threats to the International Space Station (ISS) or satellites. Collisions have happened before and will very likely happen again.
An experimental propulsion system that seems to violate the laws of physics may actually work, a new study suggests.
A controversial and puzzling engine design known as the EmDrive generated small amounts of thrust in a lab test, NASA researchers reported in the study, which has yet to be published or peer-reviewed but was recently leaked online.
Alt: Leaked NASA paper shows the 'impossible' EM Drive really does work
Alt: 'Impossible' fuel-free engine that could take humans to Mars in 10 weeks DOES work, claim leaked Nasa papers
A strangely shaped depression on Mars could be a new place to look for signs of life on the Red Planet, according to a new study. The depression was probably formed by a volcano beneath a glacier and could have been a warm, chemical-rich environment well suited for microbial life.
The lack of liquid water on the surface of Mars today has been demonstrated by new evidence in the form of meteorites on the Red Planet examined by an international team of planetary scientists.
Last month, five government agencies convened in El Segundo, Calif., to discuss a looming threat. In 2020, their directive stated, a massive asteroid could strike a densely-populated location in the southern half of the state. The agents in attendance, lit by harsh fluorescent lights, were going to have to come up with a plan.
THE end of the universe is about to get interesting. Most data favours a slow fade into a silent, frozen oblivion. But a new analysis suggests the cosmos could gradually tear itself apart, galaxy from galaxy and atom from atom. Or at least, we can’t rule it out.
We know that the universe mostly consists of dark matter, which only interacts with regular matter via gravity, and dark energy, a mysterious, unseen force thought to be accelerating the expansion of the universe.
The battle scenes of Shakespeare’s Henry V may have been written to suit the long, narrow stage of the Curtain, one of the earliest purpose-built theatres in London.
Related: Now We’ll Finally Get to See the American Revolution Through the Eyes of King George
Related: Fit for a King? Medieval Book 'Illuminates' Likely Theft by Henry VIII
If you want a decent night’s sleep stop fiddling with your phone, researchers have warned.
A US study has found that greater screen time, particularly at bedtime, is linked to disrupted sleep patterns - including taking a longer time to drop off.
Controversial plans to allow drug users to inject safely under supervision in Glasgow have been approved.
Related: Number of young heroin addicts in England down 79% over last decade
Related: MDMA may pose greater danger to women than men, say scientists
Recreational marijuana is now legal in California — and that’s a game changer for public health. Maine, Nevada, and Massachusetts also legalized recreational marijuana, though the initiative failed in Arizona.
Related: Australia legalizes medical marijuana cultivation
Related: Turkey legalizes cannabis production in 19 provinces
A series of popular science articles have recently been touting the health benefits of tattoos, specifically their ability to boost your immune system. Most are based on a studyled by Dr. Christopher Lynn at the University of Alabama. But is a little ink really the cure for the common cold?
Your birth year predicts -- to a certain extent -- how likely you are to get seriously ill or die in an outbreak of an animal-origin influenza virus, according to a study co-led by researchers from the University of Arizona in Tucson and the University of California, Los Angeles.
For the first time, scientists have identified a sub-region in the brain that works to form a particular kind of memory: fear-associated with a specific environmental cue or “contextual fear memory.”
No braille? No problem. A new device lets blind people read by popping a miniature camera on their fingertip.
To read printed material, many visually impaired people rely on mobile apps like KNFB Reader that translate text to speech.
Lip reading is a tricky business. Test results vary, but on average, most people recognize just one in 10 words when watching someone’s lips, and the accuracy of self-proclaimed experts tends to vary — there are certainly no lip-reading savants. Now, though, some researchers claim that AI techniques like deep learning could help solve this problem.
A machine-vision algorithm can tell a book’s genre by looking at its cover. This paves the way for AI systems to design the covers themselves.
With the elections done, let’s take a look at one of the most prolific source of political tweets during the campaign period — bots. Yes, you may well have been retweeting or replying to bots. This isn’t so terribly novel, but notably, they can seem as passionate as you are, and they have been given an AI upgrade.
A study published by researchers at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute recently examined just how influential these bots were (and are)
US military scientists have used electrical brain stimulators to enhance mental skills of staff, in research that aims to boost the performance of air crews, drone operators and others in the armed forces’ most demanding roles.
The successful tests of the devices pave the way for servicemen and women to be wired up at critical times of duty.
You’re having dinner in a virtual reality game. The banquet scene in front of you looks so real that your mouth is watering. Normally, you would be disappointed, but not this time. You approach the food, stick out your tongue – and taste the flavours on display. You move your jaw to chew – and feel the food’s texture between your teeth.
Devices that autonomously regulate blood sugar levels are in the final stages before widespread availability
Related: Robo-Pharmacist: This AI is Designing Structures for Futuristic Wonder Drugs
With an ageing population and care costs rising, robots and smart homes may be a solution. But would you want a plastic dog to look after your loved ones?
Women who give birth may be biologically "older" than women who don't, a new study suggests.
For the study, the researchers analyzed information from 1,556 U.S. women ages 20 to 44 who took part in a national survey from 1999 to 2002, which involved giving blood samples.
It’s a condition that kills millions all over the world. Some estimate it’s responsible for 100,000 deaths every day. It takes decades to show symptoms. It attacks the whole body, leaving no part unravaged. So what is this killer plague? Aging.
Related: The Beat Goes Off: Scientists Pinpoint the Loss of Musical Perception
If only they had “grooming glasses” they’d be fine. But in the absence of a pair of specs, ageing bonobos have been found to compensate for dodgy eyesight by focusing on fur that’s further away.
Related: She's a great aper! House-proud chimpanzee cleans the windows of her new enclosure every day after she decided to copy zoo keepers
Climate taxes on meat and milk would lead to huge and vital cuts in carbon emissions as well as saving half a million lives a year via healthier diets, according to the first global analysis of the issue.
Turin’s new mayor has announced plans to make it a vegetarian city – even introducing a weekly meat-free day. But in an area with a meat-eating and rich culinary culture, the plans are proving divisive for residents
Analysis of insect damage to fossil leaves presents new theory as to why southern hemisphere recovered faster from asteroid that killed the dinosaurs
Alt: Was South America a refuge during the dino-killing mass extinction?
Alt: A popular theory about the dinosaur-killing meteor has been debunked
Life took hold on land at least as early as 3.2 billion years ago, suggests a study by scientists from Berlin, Potsdam and Jena (Germany). The team led by Sami Nabhan of the Freie Universität Berlin studied ancient rock formations from South Africa's Barberton greenstone belt.
Kaikaifilu is a new species of giant sea lizard (mosasaur) discovered in 66 million year-old rocks of Antarctica. At about 10 m long, it is the largest known top marine predator from this continent. It lived near the end of the dinosaur age, when Antarctica was a much warmer ecosystem, and fed on filter-feeding marine reptiles.
Stroll through any museum hall well-stocked with fossil mammals and it’s tempting to look at the extinct beasts as variations on recognizable themes. There’s a sloth, but bigger. There’s a camel, but smaller. I guess that weirdo in the corner looks something like a pig. We shove the remains of the extinct into expectations of the familiar even if the fit isn’t particularly good. And that’s a shame. Fossil mammals were stranger than we often give them credit for, and they often behaved in ways that no modern animal does. Just look at Kolponomos.
For more than 30,000 years, northern Russia's cold permafrost has preserved the small bodies of two furry and wide-pawed cave lion cubs, one of them in almost pristine condition, a new study found.
Ireland's oldest human grave has become even more exceptional for one of its contents: The oldest polished ax on record in Europe was likely created solely for a burial, archaeologists say.
Archaeologists in the UK have uncovered a small well that was traditionally used by religious pilgrims, who believed it could wash away their sins and cure various ailments such as poor eyesight.
Beneath the golden sands west of the Nile, at the ancient Egyptian sacred site of Abydos, archaeologists have made an extraordinary discovery: a whole fleet of boats that were sketched onto the interior walls of a subterranean mud-brick boat chamber in about 1840 B.C.
The Ipuwer papyrus, also known as the ‘Admonitions of Ipuwer’, is a controversial text that describes starvation, drought, death, and violent upheavals in ancient Egypt, with some maintaining that it is an eyewitness account of the Exodus plagues. Neither the beginning nor end of this work was preserved, leaving historians with difficulty in interpreting the material and reaching a final conclusion about the events it describes.
African-Americans have long been among the country’s most fervent Christians, from the choir to the pulpit to the affirming voices from every “amen corner.”
Just when and how their ancestors broke with traditional African spirit practices and adopted Christianity has never been fully resolved. Now archaeologists in Maryland have announced the discovery of an intact set of objects that they interpret as religious symbols — traditional ones from Africa, mixed with what they believe to be a biblical image: a representation of Ezekiel’s Wheel.
The world is at the start of a renaissance in supersonic and hypersonic flight that will transform aviation, but the effort will need steady commitment and funding if the United States wants to lead the way, congressional leaders and industry officials said at a forum late last month.
Civilization has dreamed of flying cars since the 1920s and tech companies from Google to Uber have recently said they want to make quick, accessible air transport available to commuters.
Airbus has joined the chorus of tech titans calling for flying cars with Project Vahana, an autonomous Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) vehicle.
For the first time, physicists have observed a strange molecule called the butterfly Rydberg molecule – a weak pairing of highly excitable atoms that was first predicted back in 2002.
The find not only confirms a 14-year-old prediction – it also confirms the existence of a whole new type of atomic bond.
X-rays appear to be trickling away from Pluto, even though the dwarf planet has no obvious way of making the high-energy photons, a new study reports.
Scattered pockets of magnetism across the surface of Mars have a significant influence on the planet's upper atmosphere, according to observations from ESA's Mars Express. Understanding these effects may be crucial for ensuring safe radio communications between Mars and Earth and, eventually, between explorers on the surface of the planet.
Related: A record of ancient tectonic stress on Mars
Although planets surround stars in the galaxy, how they form remains a subject of debate. Despite the wealth of worlds in our own solar system, scientists still aren't certain how planets are built. Currently, two theories are duking it out for the role of champion.
At first glance, these giant snowballs appearing around the Gulf of Ob in Siberia look like part of an elaborate prank or sci-fi movie set, but these strange objects are completely natural.
Alt: Why these enormous snowballs in Siberia could mean America is in for a very brrr-acing winter
Alt: Giant Snowballs Wash Up On Siberian Beach
The Canadian military has investigated a mysterious pinging sound coming from the sea floor in a remote region of the Arctic, officials have told the BBC.
The strange noise is reported by local people to have frightened animals away over the past few months.
Alt: Mysterious 'ping' sound from sea floor baffles Igloolik
Alt: The bizarre 'pinging' sound that can be heard from the sea in Northern Canada - but no one knows where it's coming from
A commercial diver working near Haida Gwaii off Canada’s west coast has spotted a strange object on the seafloor that bears a striking resemblance to a nuclear device lost from a US B-36 bomber that crashed in the area 66 years ago. The Canadian government is sending naval ships to investigate.
Prominent scientists are propagating new versions of the old idea that reality revolves around us
As far as we know, consciousness is a property of only one weird type of matter that evolved relatively recently here on Earth: brains. Neo-geocentrists nonetheless suggest that consciousness pervades the entire cosmos, and it might even have been the spark that ignited the big bang.
When we made contact with any aliens it would probably be like when the Native Americans first met Christopher Columbus.
Related: Is 'Asgardia' a plot by the ILLUMINATI? Conspiracy theorists claim the space nation will be used 'for mind control and evil purposes'
Related: Mass UFO Sighting In Arizona Reopens Phoenix Lights Debate
Related: Royal Marine recalls UFO sighting in Cyprus, 1971
As the value of meditation becomes widely recognized, researchers are increasingly trying to understand the differences among approaches. A study published today in Brain and Cognition reports subjective experiences and cortical activation patterns that distinguish the Transcendental Meditation technique from other meditation practices.
Related: Did a memory experiment really show evidence for psychic abilities?
Sometimes, when poring through history texts, it's easy to start seeing people of ancient times as 'objects' or 'concepts' to be studied from our informed vantage point in the future (relative to them). But sometimes archaeology uncovers evidence that helps us to realise that people back then were very much human.
Archeologists from the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) at the University of Tübingen have uncovered a large Bronze Age city not far from the town of Dohuk in northern Iraq. The excavation work has demonstrated that the settlement, which is now home to the small Kurdish village of Bassetki in the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan, was established in about 3000 BC and was able to flourish for more than 1200 years.
Thou shalt not covet … unless you are coveting the world's oldest known example of a stone tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments.
The world's oldest slab with the Decalogue will be up for auction until Nov. 16 in Beverly Hills, California.
The Maya were, at their height, one of the world’s great civilisations. In the “classic” period, from AD 250–900, Maya cities with monumental architecture and huge populations spread across a large area through what is now Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and western Honduras. Extensive trade networks connected the Maya to the rest of Mesoamerica, producing the dynamic landscapes and bustling ports reported in early Spanish accounts.
When antiques collector Stephen Hibberts discovered a dusty oil painting of Jesus at a fair in Avignon he believed he was buying an unremarkable reproduction that was worth a few hundred pounds at best.
Based upon historical analyses, it is unlikely that a person named Marco Polo who visited China in the 1200’s existed.
Before presenting this argument, here is an analogy: if people do not know that Stephen King is an author of fictitious works, they could pick up the book Misery and believe the events actually occurred.
The title of this article might trigger self-satisfied smiles among first-borns, and some concerns among the rest of us.
Many studies show children born earlier in the family enjoy better wages and more education, but until now we didn’t really know why.
Related: Learn to Be Happier with Second Best: When your first choice is unavailable, you may be more satisfied with something completely different
Related: Success can come at any age, according to study
Results from a new clinical study conducted at Uppsala University suggest that curtailing sleep alters the abundance of bacterial gut species that have previously been linked to compromised human metabolic health.
Related: Teen Night Owls Struggle To Learn And Control Emotions At School
As an international study conducted by the University of Zurich based on 3-D reconstructions of animal skeletons reveals for the first time: Herbivorous mammals have bigger bellies than their usually slim carnivorous counterparts. In dinosaurs, however, there is no notable difference between carnivores and herbivores.
About 10 million years ago, a seal-like creature likely dove to the dark ocean floor, using its large, pool-ball-size eyeballs to spot squid and other prey, new research finds.
The ancient creature is a newly identified species of pinniped, a group that includes animals that are fin-footed and semiaquatic, such as seals and sea lions.
A giant extinct salmon used a mouthful of spiked teeth to fight rivals more than five million years ago.
The coastal waters of the Pacific were home to the bizarre species with huge teeth, a new study shows.
A paper published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports shows how higher latitude ecosystems recovered after the World's most cataclysmic extinction event 252 million years ago. New fossils discovered by Uppsala University palaeontologists record an empty alien world from immediately after the extinction.
Figuring out how far sea level rose during past warm periods in Earth's history starts with a walk on the beach, a keen eye for evidence of ancient shorelines, and a highly accurate GPS system. The math isn't as simple as subtracting the distance from the old shoreline to the water's edge, though. As massive ice sheets retreated during past ice ages, their weight on the land below lifted and the land rebounded. On longer time scales, circulation within the Earth's mantle has changed the shape and height of the crust, as well.
Related: We've been underestimating sea level rise this whole time, say scientists
Related: NASA Satellite Data Sets Record on How Much Ice the Arctic Is Losing
The ocean’s twilight zone is a spooky place, where creatures like krill and “werewolf” plankton hunt—and hide—using only the light they themselves emit. In most seas, the zone is deep, stretching from 200 to 1000 meters beneath the surface. But new research has found that in the winter waters near Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, the zone shifts upward during the long polar night, bringing some of these creatures close to the surface.
Entire lifetimes have come and gone without the moon looking quite as large as it will this month. On November 14th, skygazers will witness the closest full moon, or “supermoon,” of 2016. But more excitingly, it’ll be the closest full moon since 1948—and we won’t get another one like it until 2034.
If you accept conventional views of the Milky Way, humans live in a sort of cosmic cul-de-sac: our star is in the Orion Arm (aka Local Arm), a small spur sitting in between the much larger Sagittarius and Perseus arms. A team of international researchers might just shake up that sense of place, however.
Astronomers have found the shredded remains of a galaxy that passed through a larger galaxy, leaving only the smaller galaxy's nearly-naked supermassive black hole to emerge and speed away at more than 2,000 miles per second.
A newly discovered asteroid gave our planet a close brush last night—and in what may be an astronomical first, observers managed to film the space rock passing in and out of Earth’s shadow.
2016 VA, an object roughly the length of a commercial bus, was discovered yesterday by the Mount Lemmon Sky Survey in Arizona, and later by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center. A few hours after its discovery, at 8:42 PM ET, it zipped past our planet, coming within 47,000 miles (75,000 km) at closest approach.