Newsdesk Archive
A South American experiment seeks to find if potatoes could be grown on Mars as a food source for future astronauts. They also hope the data will help them better understand how this staple may be affected by climate change on Earth
We know the Earth is habitable because—well, here we are. But would it look like a good candidate for life from hundreds of light-years away?
Good, but perhaps not great, according to astronomer Rory Barnes of the University of Washington-based Virtual Planetary Laboratory. It's a question, among many others, that he and co-authors asked in a recent paper.
The government of Luxembourg announced Wednesday that the country will be investing in the as-yet-unrealized industry of asteroid mining.
The tiny European country will be funding research into the extraction of minerals from objects in space, working on legal and regulatory frameworks to govern such activities and, potentially, directly investing in companies active in the field.
Related: Largest rocky world found
Pluto has icebergs, NASA revealed today. By analyzing data and images returned by the New Horizons spacecraft, scientists determined that these icebergs are actually very large. They measure several miles across, and traverse the icy plains region being called Sputnik Planum, which makes up half of the large heart shape on the dwarf planet's now familiar face.
Alt: Is Pluto an even icier world than previously thought?
It's looking less likely that a swarm of comets or an "alien megastructure" can explain a faraway star's strange dimming.
The star (nicknamed "Tabby's Star," after its discoverer, Tabetha Boyajian) made major headlines last October when Jason Wright, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University, suggested that it could be surrounded by some type of alien megastructure.
It seems like every day, a video or image emerges that appears to show a UFO near the International Space Station. And it generally -- OK, always -- turns out not to be a UFO. It's normally space debris, light reflections from the station windows, an antenna attached to the station, etc.
But wouldn't it be interesting if someone actually launched a satellite into Earth orbit (illustrated above), with the specific mission of trying to detect and prove unknown objects are actually out there? Get ready for CubeSat for Disclosure.
A small asteroid that two years ago flew past Earth at a comfortable distance of about 1.3 million miles (2 million kilometers) will safely fly by our planet again in a few weeks, though this time it may be much closer.
Bursts of gamma rays from the center of our galaxy are not likely to be signals of dark matter but rather other astrophysical phenomena such as fast-rotating stars called millisecond pulsars, according to two new studies, one from a team based at Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and another based in the Netherlands.
Eliminating worn-out cells extends the healthy lives of lab mice — an indication that treatments aimed at killing off these cells, or blocking their effects, might also help to combat age-related diseases in humans.
As animals age, cells that are no longer able to divide — called senescent cells — accrue all over their bodies, releasing molecules that can harm nearby tissues. Senescent cells are linked to diseases of old age, such as kidney failure and type 2 diabetes.
It is ethically permissible to create “three-parent babies” in clinical experiments, as long as certain guidelines are followed, a U.S. panel of experts has concluded.
These babies result from a procedure known as mitochondrial replacement therapy, mitochondrial transfer or three-person IVF.
The Locus robot can zip around a clothing warehouse larger than the size of six football fields. It can also work for 24 hours, without a break for lunch or a salary.
The new bot, created by Locus Robotics, just launched in its first warehouse: a Devens, Massachusetts space owned by Quiet Logistics, a warehousing company that fills online orders for both small startups and megabrands like Zara and Bonobos.
A Japanese company is to open the world’s first “robot farm”, as agriculture joins other sectors of the economy in attempting to fill labour shortages created by the country’s rapidly ageing population.
Scientists in Germany are poised to conduct a nuclear fusion experiment they hope will advance the quest for a clean and safe form of nuclear power.
In a test expected to be attended by Angela Merkel, the chancellor, researchers will inject a tiny amount of hydrogen into a special device and heat it until it becomes a super-hot gas known as plasma – mimicking conditions inside the sun.
Alt: FOUND: Hydrogen Plasma That Could Be New Energy Source
Washington State University researchers have concluded that feeding a growing global population with sustainability goals in mind is possible. Their review of hundreds of published studies provides evidence that organic farming can produce sufficient yields, be profitable for farmers, protect and improve the environment and be safer for farm workers.
The supervolcano lurking under Yellowstone National Park may not have resulted from a rising plume of hot rock from the planet’s depths as previously suggested.
New simulations of North America’s underside reveal that the mantle plume blamed for powering the Yellowstone supervolcano is in fact cut off from the surface by the remnants of a lost tectonic plate.
At the atomic level, bismuth displays a number of quirky physical phenomena. A new study reveals a novel mechanism for controlling the energy transfer between electrons and the bismuth crystal lattice. Mastering this effect could, ultimately, help convert waste heat back into electricity, for example to improve the overall efficiency of solar cells.
Rome’s only surviving pyramid from ancient times is being put in the spotlight after a Japanese clothing magnate helped pay for an ambitious cleanup.
Archaeologists are eager to show off the monument, constructed around 2,000 years ago as the burial tomb for a Roman praetor, or magistrate, named Caius Cestius.
Artist Michelangelo suffered from arthritis as he aged but addiction to work may have extended the use of his hands, an expert has claimed.
Three pictures of the great Renaissance sculptor and painter between the ages of 60 and 65 show evidence of osteoarthritis affecting the small joints of his left hand.
Henry VIII may have suffered repeated traumatic brain injuries similar to those experienced by football players and others who receive repeated blows to the head, according to research by a Yale University expert in cognitive neurology.
The discovery of a tomb of a previously unknown queen is shedding light on a dark period of ancient Egyptian history.
Archaeologists recently unearthed the 4,600-year-old tomb of Khentkaus III - a queen of the Old Kingdom - in a necropolis of Abu-sir, southwest of Cairo.
In the savannah of Alatash National Park, the lion sleeps tonight.
This remote part of north-west Ethiopia was considered a possible habitat for lions, but it is seldom visited by people.
Research debunks assumption ships only made lower-frequency sounds
Noise caused by shipping traffic in the Salish Sea extends into the same frequencies used by local salmon-eating killer whales to hunt and communicate, according to a new study.
Scientists studying the run-off from Greenland's melting glaciers have discovered a vastly larger amount of a key ocean nutrient poised to flood into the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Some 400,000 metric tons of phosphorus per year is now estimated to be pouring from the Greenland ice sheet. That's equivalent to the amount of the nutrient released by the Amazon or the Mississippi River.
Phil Gawne, the transportation minister on the Isle of Man, is working 16-hour days on two projects rooted in radically different eras.
First, he’s trying to salvage the island’s horse-drawn carriages that date to 1876. At the same time, Gawne is leading a project to potentially lure companies that make fully self-driving cars, vehicles without steering wheels or pedals.
Other countries are bringing the democratic process to the digital age—but challenges remain
Sooner or later everything seems to go online. Newspapers. TV. Radio. Shopping. Banking. Dating.
But it's much harder to drag voting out of the paper era.
New research has found, for the first time, a scientific solution that enables future internet infrastructure to become completely open and programmable while carrying internet traffic at the speed of light.
Researchers are developing GM plants that can be used as pharmaceutical biofactories to produce inexpensive, ingestible medicines
The day could soon come when patients could be taking their heart medication as a sprinkling of seeds on cereal or treating cancer with a daily cup of herbal tea.
Blombos Cave in South Africa has given us vast knowledge about our early ancestors. In 2015, four open access articles, with research finds from Blombos as a starting point, have been published in the journal PLOS ONE.
In just two 10-minute overflights, an airborne NASA synthetic aperture radar proved it could pinpoint areas of disturbance in Peru's Nasca lines World Heritage Site. The data collected on the two flights will help Peruvian authorities fully catalog the thousand-year-old designs drawn on the ground in and around the site for the first time, as well as giving them a new tool for protecting the fragile constructions from both careless humans and natural disturbances such as floods.
Researchers have returned from nearly two months at sea having failed to accomplish their goal of drilling to the center of the Earth.
"We may not have made it to our goal of 1,300 meter, but we did drill the deepest-ever single-leg hole into hard rock, 789 meters, which is currently the 5th deepest ever drilled into the hard ocean crust," onboard education and outreach officer Lucas Kavanagh wrote in a blog update.
By using an ion probe to analyze the carbon and nitrogen isotope compositions of the Witwatersrand diamond, which have been pristinely preserved for more than three billion years, researchers found that plate tectonics was likely in operation on Earth as early as 3.5 billion years ago.
Volcanoes are primed to erupt on a time scale of days to months rather than years, research suggests.
The study raises hopes of finding a more accurate way to tell when a volcano is about to explode, scientists at Oxford University say.
Whether we prefer to get up at the crack of dawn or work late into the night may be influenced by genes connected to the circadian rhythm, a study suggests.
US researchers compared the genomes of nearly 90,000 individuals with their responses to the question of whether they defined themselves as a morning person or evening person — an approach known as a genome-wide association study.
Supposed "junk" DNA, found in between genes, plays a role in suppressing cancer, according to new research by Universities of Bath and Cambridge. The human genome contains around three metres of DNA, of which only about two per cent contains genes that code for proteins. Since the sequencing of the complete human genome in 2000, scientists have puzzled over the role of the remaining 98 per cent.
For women, shedding the pounds can feel like a unending struggle of dieting and exercise with little results.
But a new study suggests that there could be a reason why females find it more difficult to lose weight than men.
The question of what sets humans apart from other animals is one of the oldest philosophical puzzles. A popular answer is that only humans can understand that others also have minds like their own.
But new research suggests that ravens - birds singled out by many cultures as a symbol of intelligence and wisdom - share at least some of the human ability to think abstractly about other minds, adapting their behavior by attributing their own perceptions to others.
Alt: Ravens can imagine being spied on, study finds
A study* published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggests how Neanderthals could have been driven to extinction by competition with modern humans. Archaeologists have hypothesized that competition between Neanderthals and modern humans led to the former’s extinction because modern humans had a more advanced culture than Neanderthals, giving modern humans a competitive edge.
Prehistoric men living in Qesem Cave, Israel nearly half a million years ago ate tortoises, say archaeologists based on shell and bone remains found in the site, which bore clear marks of man-caused damage and burning. It is the oldest-known example of cooked tortoise cuisine.
A unique boat from the pyramid age has been discovered at Abusir by the expedition of the Czech Institute of Egyptology.
The mission of the Czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague has recently made an unexpected discovery at Abusir South that once again highlights the importance of this cemetery of the Old Kingdom officials.
New details have emerged of a previously unknown queen of ancient Egypt -- and if the professor behind the find is correct, it could be bad news for the rest of us.
Reports surfaced in November of the tomb of Khentkaus III, a queen in the era of the Old Kingdom (2649--2150 BC).
A traditional ten-acre cemetery holds enough embalming fluid to fill a small swimming pool. But there may be a greener way
The lives of humans leave indelible marks on the environments they choose to call home. But you might be surprised at how much environmental damage a person can do after they’re dead.
Neglect of the soil beneath our feet could have far-reaching consequences for future generations in the UK and the rest of the world, an ecologist from The University of Manchester has warned.
In a new book, Earth Matters, published by Oxford University Press, Professor Richard Bardgett argues it is vital for the future of humanity to protect our soils.
Rising ocean temperatures are a significant threat to coral. Perhaps second only to phytoplankton, healthy coral communities are one of the most vital components of marine biodiversity.
But coral research has mostly produced bad news recently. Over the last four decades, as much as 80 percent of all coral in the Caribbean has disappeared.
Traditional fruit gardens planted by indigenous communities in the Malaysian rainforest increase the diversity of the animals who make it their home, research has found.
The study, led by researchers at The University of Nottingham's campuses in the UK and Malaysia, has shown that the impact of humans can have positive outcomes for the conservation of this precious ecosystem when managed effectively.
The protection of B.C.'s Great Bear Rainforest is now assured, after a decade of complex negotiations between the province, First Nations and industry.
Under terms of the agreement announced Monday morning by Premier Christy Clark, 85 per cent (3.1 million hectares) of the forested area of the northern wilderness will be completely — and permanently — protected from industrial logging.
A project is testing whether high-tech objects that look a bit like artificial trees can generate renewable power when they are shaken by the wind -- or by the sway of a tall building, traffic on a bridge or even seismic activity.
Are humans inadvertently driving evolution in animals? Mounting evidence suggests activities such as commercial fishing, angling and hunting, along with the use of pesticides and antibiotics, are leading to dramatic evolutionary changes.
Related: Is technology causing us to 'evolve' into a new SPECIES? Expert believes super humans called Homo optimus will talk to machines and be 'digitally immortal' by 2050
An international team of scientists – recently returned from a 47-day research expedition to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean – have collected an unprecedented sequence of rock samples from the shallow mantle of the ocean crust that bear signs of life, unique carbon cycling, and ocean crust movement.
Praying for rain? You'll get (slightly) less when the moon is very high, a new study finds.
Scientists at the University of Washington say the moon's position impacts the amount of rainfall on Earth.
The hunt for signs of life on Mars has been on for decades, and so far scientists have found only barren dirt and rocks. Now a pair of astronomers thinks that strangely shaped minerals inside a Martian crater could be the clue everyone has been waiting for.
Although in theory it may seem possible to divide time up into infinitely tiny intervals, the smallest physically meaningful interval of time is widely considered to be the Planck time, which is approximately 10-43 seconds. This ultimate limit means that it is not possible for two events to be separated by a time smaller than this.
For a planet that hasn’t technically been discovered yet, Planet Nine is generating a lot of buzz. Astronomers have not actually found a new planet orbiting the sun, but some remote icy bodies are dropping tantalizing clues about a giant orb lurking in the fringes of the solar system.
Despite what you'll often read, the Nobel prizewinning nuclear physicist never suggested that aliens don't exist
Two big ideas often come up in discussions about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. One is the Drake Equation, which estimates the number of civilizations in our Galaxy whose signals we might be able to detect—potentially thousands, according to plausible estimates.
UK scientists have been given the go-ahead by the fertility regulator to genetically modify human embryos.
The research will take place at the Francis Crick Institute in London and aims to provide a deeper understanding of the earliest moments of human life.
Have you ever rubbed a balloon in your hair to make it stick to the wall? This electrostatic stickiness called electroadhesion may change robotics forever.
EPFL scientists have invented a new soft gripper that uses electroadhesion: flexible electrode flaps that act like a thumb-index duo. It can pick up fragile objects of arbitrary shape and stiffness, like an egg, a water balloon or paper.
A Japanese firm said Monday it would open the world's first fully automated farm with robots handling almost every step of the process, from watering seedlings to harvesting crops.
Kyoto-based Spread said the indoor grow house will start operating by the middle of 2017 and produce 30,000 heads of lettuce a day.
Switzerland is set to vote on a proposal that wants to pay everyone 2,500 Swiss francs (£1,700) a month regardless of whether people are working or not.
If the plans go through, it will become the first country in the world to provide a basic unconditional monthly income, and they are already the first country to vote on the matter.
Imagine a polymer with removable parts that can deliver something to the environment and then be chemically regenerated to function again. Or a polymer that can lift weights, contracting and expanding the way muscles do.
These functions require polymers with both rigid and soft nano-sized compartments with extremely different properties that are organized in specific ways.
I’d never heard of it before this week, but it’s real. And there are plans to use it to look for antigravity
As I scrolled through the physics papers posted on the arXiv this week, one in particular caught my eye – “Measuring Antimatter Gravity with Muonium”. Possibly, this was because I wrote a bit about antimatter and gravity last week¹. But also, there was an unfamilar word.
Stacked in gravity-defying arrangements in the western San Bernardino Mountains, granite boulders that should have been toppled long ago by earthquakes are maintaining a stubborn if precarious balance. In puzzling out why these rocks still stand, researchers have uncovered connections between Southern California’s San Jacinto and San Andreas faults that could change how the region plans for future earthquakes.
The past 30 years in Europe have likely been the warmest in more than two millennia, according to new research.
The study used tree ring records and historical documents to reconstruct yearly temperatures going back 2,100 years.
One of the most extraordinary fish species in world may not be as old as once thought.
The Devils Hole pupfish survive in 32-degree Celsius water in a rock shaft in Death Valley in the US.
To prove that evolutionary change isn’t always down to the genes, just open an elephant’s mouth...
Long ago, perhaps even before the celebrated mists of time, there was a great family of animals that lived in Africa. The story starts some 10 million years ago and then the family grew and spread out.
The species Amphilagus tomidai was recently discovered - an ancestor of the rabbit which lived in present-day Siberia during the Miocene, about 14 million years ago. The discovery of this mammal, belonging to a family which was thought to only exist in Europe, reveals that the two continents were presumably connected free of natural barriers due to the disappearance of the ancient Paratethys Sea.
The San Diego Archaeology Center holds a pair of extraordinary skeletons. Dating back about 9,500 years, they are among the oldest human remains ever found in the Americas.
A number of scientists would love to study the bones, using powerful new techniques to extract any surviving DNA.
Alt: Two 9,500-Year-Old Skeletons Found At UC San Diego President's House Will Return To Tribes
Turkish researchers have discovered a 4,000 year-old shipwreck in Marmaris Hisarönü Gulf in the Mediterranean, as part of an ongoing project carried out by Dokuz Eylül University's Marine Sciences Institute since 2007.
Previously, it was widely believed that the humans sacrificed at the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan were prisoners of wars -- foreigners taken from conquered areas.
However, the recent results of a study appeared to hint that the victims were not only POWs. Some of them were also individuals who had been living in the area, at least for six years. And they could also be women, children, and the elderly, as per Fox News Latino.
Along lakes and streams that have long since disappeared, archaeologists working in southern Nevada have found nearly 20 sites used by ancient hunter-gatherers as much as 12,000 years ago.
And even though the sites are remote, they weren’t discovered by accident. Scientists expected to find them there.
It is said that the average modern woman consumes more than 3 kilograms of lipstick in her lifetime.
Some might find all that wax, oils and emollients a bit hard to digest, but the prehistoric inhabitants of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region made their women's cosmetics sticks out of something a little more edible around 3,500 to 4,000 years ago.
“Little pig, little pig, let me come in,” says the big, bad wolf. “No, no, not by the hair on my chinny chin chin,” say the three little pigs. This scene is deeply unrealistic and not just because of the pigs' architectural competence, the wolf's implausible lung capacity, and everyone's ability to talk.
The thing is: Pigs don't have chins. Nor do any animals, except for us.
As we enjoy the return of Star Wars and its big-screen battles, is there also wee warfare going on under our feet?
Saturday’s Weird Animal Question of the Week is pondering this question after Elli Coates wrote in after seeing what he thought were termites in the African bush.
Octopuses may have more complex social interactions than previously believed, a new study has found.
Biologists studied a group of Sydney octopuses off Australia's east coast and observed a range of behaviour that may indicate complex social signalling.
A surprising statistical regularity has been found in how a variety of genetic and environmental factors affect the life span of the C. elegans worm. These findings suggest that aging does not have a single discrete molecular cause but is rather a systemic process involving many components within a complex biological network. Perturb any node in the system, and you affect the whole thing.
An error has forced researchers to go back on their claim that humans across the whole of Africa carry DNA inherited from Eurasian immigrants.
Although the first humans left Africa some 100,000 years ago, a study published in 2013 found that some came back again around 3,000 years ago; this reverse migration has left its trace in African genomes.
It is not only animals that rely on physical cues to gauge the fertility of potential rivals for a mate, an unusual study asserted on Wednesday.
Without knowing it, human women seem to be able to recognise others in the most fertile phase of their menstrual cycle, around ovulation, simply by looking at their faces, it said.
There's a reason your mother told you to look people in the eye when you talk to them: eye contact conveys important social cues. Yet when someone holds your gaze for more than a few seconds, the experience can take on a different tenor. New work elucidates the factors that affect whether we like or loathe locking eyes for a lengthy period.
Related: Is It Your Turn to Speak? Watch My Eyes
Several recent studies reveal what you say—and how you say it—provide clues about disease
Future doctors may ask us to say more than “Ahhh.” Several groups of neuroscientists, psychiatrists and computer scientists are now investigating the extent to which patients' language use can provide diagnostic clues—before a single laboratory test is run.
Related: English is Surprisingly Devoid of Emotionally Positive Words
Scientists reported on Wednesday that they had taken a significant step toward understanding the cause of schizophrenia, in a landmark study that provides the first rigorously tested insight into the biology behind any common psychiatric disorder.
A study of 35 families by a psychiatric researcher showed for the first time that the structure of the brain circuitry known as the corticolimbic system is more likely to be passed down from mothers to daughters than from mothers to sons or from fathers to children of either gender.
Related: Brain Scans Could Identify Kids at Risk of Depression
Hidden beneath a painting of the enigmatic Tudor polymath John Dee performing an experiment for Elizabeth I is a dark and slightly terrifying secret, research has discovered.
X-ray imaging of the stately Victorian artwork has revealed that Dee was originally surrounded by human skulls before the ghoulish image was painted over, probably because it was too odd for the buyer.
The golden mummy mask of Titus Flavius Demetrius, who chose to be buried not as a Roman citizen but as an Egyptian god, is still in gleamingly immaculate condition 1,900 years after it was made.
It shines in an exhibition of treasures that made their way from 19th-century excavation sites to regional museums all over England, now brought together in a Victorian house in London.
Archaeologists surveying an ancient cemetery in Israel say they have discovered 1,700-year-old inscriptions in stone that may mark the burial place of elite rabbis.
The inscriptions were uncovered at Zippori, also known as Sepphoris, which was once the Jewish capital of Galilee in northern Israel.
Alt: Ancient inscriptions in Jesus' language unearthed in northern Israel, indicating Jews lived there ages ago
Ancient records tell us that the intrepid Viking seafarers who discovered Iceland, Greenland and eventually North America navigated using landmarks, birds and whales, and little else. There’s little doubt that Viking sailors would also have used the positions of stars at night and the sun during the daytime, and archaeologists have discovered what appears to be a kind of Viking navigational sundial. But without magnetic compasses, like all ancient sailors they would have struggled to find their way once the clouds came over.
The tomb of a Chinese emperor who lived more than 2,100 years ago has yielded the oldest remains of tea, said researchers who used it to re-date part of the ancient Silk Road network of Asian trade routes.
Oregon State University might want to consider changing its mascot after a monumental find yesterday (Jan. 25): The discovery of bones belonging to an ice-age mammoth within throwing distance of the school's football field.
A construction crew working on an expansion and renovation of the OSU Beavers' Valley Football Center uncovered the remains of the beast while digging in the north end of Reser Stadium.
An apparently very tasty, 500-pound Australian bird was eaten to extinction by humans 50,000 years ago, new research concludes.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, provide the first direct evidence that humans played a substantial role in the extinction of early Australian animals. In this case, the victim was a flightless 7-foot-tall bird known as Genyornis newtoni.
Researchers at McMaster University have uncovered significant new evidence in the quest for the elusive goal of gaining muscle and losing fat, an oft-debated problem for those trying to manage their weight, control their calories and balance their protein consumption.
January is prime time for returns in the retail industry, the month where shoppers show up in droves to trade in an ill-fitting sweater from grandma or to unload the second and third “Frozen” dolls that showed up under the Christmas tree.
When practicing and learning a new skill, making slight changes during repeat practice sessions may help people master the skill faster than practicing the task in precisely the same way, researchers report.
Poor results can wreck people’s lives, but the thinking behind exams is crude and simply out of date
When I was in high school I took the ACT, a college aptitude exam used as an admissions criterion by most American universities. My score was in the lowest third of all students.
Scientists say they now have good evidence in animals that exposure to a toxin from algae can trigger dementia-like changes in the brain.
If the US team is right, they may have found a new route towards treating and preventing neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.
European scientists have gathered tiny fungi that take shelter in Antarctic rocks and sent them to the International Space Station. After 18 months on board in conditions similar to those on Mars, more than 60% of their cells remained intact, with stable DNA. The results provide new information for the search for life on the red planet. Lichens from the Sierra de Gredos (Spain) and the Alps (Austria) also travelled into space for the same experiment.
Alt: Could fungi survive on Mars?
Like a zombie, the Milky Way galaxy may already be dead but it still keeps going. Our galactic neighbor Andromeda almost certainly expired a few billion years ago, but only recently started showing outward signs of its demise.
Galaxies seem to be able to "perish" – that is, stop turning gas into new stars – via two very different pathways, driven by very different processes. Galaxies like the Milky Way and Andromeda do so very, very slowly over billions of years.
Almost a month after Stephen Hawking and his colleagues posted a paper about black holes online, physicists still cannot agree on what it means.
Some support the preprint’s claim—that it provides a promising way to tackle a conundrum known as the black hole information paradox, which Hawking identified more than 40 years ago.
In case you didn’t know, a huge — like, on a galactic scale — cloud of gas is currently speeding toward our galaxy at 700,000 mph. It’s full of sulfur, over 11,000 light-years long and 2,500 light-years wide, contains as much mass as a million suns… and was very likely spat out of the Milky Way while T. rex was walking the Earth.
The moon was formed from a violent, head-on collision between the early Earth and a 'planetary embryo' called Theia approximately 100 million years after the Earth formed, almost 4.5 billion years ago.
Alt: Earth is actually two planets, scientists conclude
When the moon is high in the sky, it creates bulges in the planet's atmosphere that creates imperceptible changes in the amount of rain that falls below.
New University of Washington research to be published in Geophysical Research Letters shows that the lunar forces affect the amount of rain - though very slightly.
If you don’t know that the Earth is a sphere, wrongly believing our planet to be flat, don’t tell everyone on your Twitter feed and definitely don’t make a song about it, or Neil Degrasse Tyson might come after you and respond in kind.
Earlier this week, rapper B.o.B publicly questioned a spherical Earth, throwing his support behind flat Earth theory in a series of tweets and memes and suggesting a NASA cover-up.
Astronomers discovered how to calculate Jupiter’s position with geometry between 350 and 50 BC, predating work of European scholars by 14 centuries
Babylonian astronomers calculated the position of Jupiter using geometry 1,400 years before the technique was previously believed to have been developed, according to an expert.
Ancient mineral clay used by aboriginal people in Canada for centuries could be the key to fighting against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, according to a new study.