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Since Aristotle’s first theory on the Milky Way to present times, there’s still so much astronomers need to learn about the galaxy our Solar System lies in. Over the course of time, the observations made on the Milky Way itself seemed harder to do than on any other galaxy, simply because they had to be made from within the galaxy, offering very little perspective. That is why the latest findings by scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics should come as no surprise. As it appears, not only were we wrong about the speed and weight of our Galaxy, but...

It's a classic image from every youngster's science textbook: a cutaway image of Earth's interior. The brown crust is paper-thin; the warm mantle orange, the seething liquid of the outer core yellow, and at the center the core, a ball of solid, red-hot iron. Now a new theory aims to rewrite it all by proposing the seemingly impossible: Earth has not one but two inner cores. The idea stems from an ancient, cataclysmic collision that scientists believe occurred when a Mars-sized object hit Earth about 4.45 billion years ago. The young Earth was still so hot that it was mostly...

Global warming is the cause of a number of damaging effects to the earth and its inhabitants, such as climate change, glacier retreat, rising sea levels, and now we may have a new threat on the horizon... world war! According to the 2007 CNA Corporation report, there is clear indication that as the tensions of global warming continue to heat up, so may the possibilities of war. There are two obvious factors which will be the cause of the increasing threat of war: 1.Crowding and Territorial Tensions- The number one cause of such tensions will be the migration of different...

Hundreds of earthquakes have hit Yellowstone National Park, raising fears of a more powerful volcanic eruption. The earthquake swarm, the biggest in more than 20 years, is being closely monitored by scientists and emergency authorities. The series of small quakes included three last Friday which measured stronger than magnitude 3.0. The strongest since this latest swarm of quakes began on December 27 was 3.9. No damage has yet been reported but scientists say this level of activity - there have been more than 500 tremors in the last week - is highly unusual. "The earthquake sequence is the most intense...

Did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine seeing an article at the liberal website the Huffington Post that not only refuted the anthropogenic global warming myth, but also asked Nobel Laureate Al Gore to apologize for the climate hysteria he's caused? No...neither did I.

Mammoths were a hearty group of giants that went extinct not because of climate change or overhunting by early humans, but a "perfect storm" of conditions, according to new research. At the height of their numbers, the elephant-like beasts roamed the northern hemisphere from France to Canada, north above the Arctic circle and south into China.

Last hour - tsunami warning issued. Date-Time Saturday, January 03, 2009 at 19:43:54 UTC Sunday, January 04, 2009 at 04:43:54 AM at epicenter Location:       0.510°S, 132.783°E Depth:       35 km (21.7 miles) set by location program Region:       NEAR THE NORTH COAST OF PAPUA, INDONESIA

With the increased seismic activity in the Yellowstone Caldera, it is likely that there is some increased interest in in the geology of the area. Here are some resources that should be of interest. First, we have a fairly recent peer reviewed publication on the "Super Volcano" known as Yellowstone, including some discussion of just what a "Super Volcano" is. The largest scale of volcanic eruptions, the so-called super-eruptions, can destroy all living beings and infrastructure over tens of thousands of square kilometres, can disrupt agriculture over millions of square kilometres and can alter global climate for years or decades....

A Yellowstone earthquake update: 1) The rumbling continues, including 3.5, 3.0 and 3.2 quakes just today 2) Here is some more Jake Lowenstern (the Yellowstone volcano scientist) analysis (via TIME): Jake Lowenstern, Ph.D.,YVO's chief scientist, who also is part of the USGS Volcano Hazards Team, told TIME that it doesn't appear a supervolcano event is imminent. "We don't think the amount of magma exists that would create one of these large eruptions of the past," he said. "It is still possible to have a volcanic eruption comparable to other volcanoes. But we would expect to see more and larger quakes,...

Subtle Rises in Temperature Make for Wild Weather; 'Exceptionally Unusual' Becomes the New NormalSAN FRANCISCO -- Three independent research groups have concluded that 2008 was a comparatively cool year on planet Earth -- a feverish chill on our warming world. The year's average global temperature was the 9th or 10th warmest since reliable record-keeping began in 1850, and the coldest since the turn of the 21st century, according to separate surveys by the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization, NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, and the U.S. National Climatic Data Center. Each used slightly different methods to rank 2008 based...

A meteorite impact off Long Island 2,300 years ago may have set off a huge tsunami that flooded the New York City region, a new study says (New York City and Long Island map). It's not known whether any ancient settlements were in the path of the proposed killer waves, but "any significant tsunami today would be devastating and likely to flood places like lower Manhattan," Vanderbilt University geologist Steven Goodbred said. Tsunamis are typically triggered by seismic events. An undersea earthquake, for example, caused the catastrophic 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. But meteorite strikes have also been known to spark...

Nanodiamonds found across North America suggest that major climate change could have been cosmically instigatedRoughly 12,900 years ago, massive global cooling kicked in abruptly, along with the end of the line for some 35 different mammal species, including the mammoth, as well as the so-called Clovis culture of prehistoric North Americans. Various theories have been proposed for the die-off, ranging from abrupt climate change to overhunting once humans were let loose on the wilds of North America. But now nanodiamonds found in the sediments from this time period point to an alternative: a massive explosion or explosions by a fragmentary...

<p>Filling the atmosphere with Greenhouse gases associated with global warming could push the planet into a new ice age, scientists have warned.</p> <p>Researchers at the University of Birmingham found that 630 million years ago the earth had a warm atmosphere full of carbon dioxide but was completely covered with ice.</p>

University of Oregon Scientists found microscopic diamonds in the black layer of rock at Murray Springs in Arizona. At least once in Earth’s history, global warming ended quickly, and scientists have long wondered why. Now researchers are reporting that the abrupt cooling — which took place about 12,900 years ago, just as the planet was emerging from an ice age — may have been caused by one or more meteors that slammed into North America. That could explain the extinction of mammoths, saber-tooth tigers and maybe even the first human inhabitants of the Americas, the scientists report in Friday’s...

First an explosion as powerful as thousands of megatons of TNT rained meteorites down on North America. Then forest fires broke out across the continent, sending up a thick layer of soot and dust that blocked out the sun. A sudden ice age ensued, and some of the Earth's largest animals went extinct in a blink of geological time. It's well known that a meteorite colliding with Earth is considered the most likely reason dinosaurs died off 65 million years ago. Now a team of scientists says it has found new evidence that a comet triggered a similar extinction much...

Abundant tiny particles of diamond dust exist in sediments dating to 12,900 years ago at six North American sites, adding strong evidence for Earth's impact with a rare swarm of carbon-and-water-rich comets or carbonaceous chondrites, reports a nine-member scientific team. These nanodiamonds, which are produced under high-temperature, high-pressure conditions created by cosmic impacts and have been found in meteorites, are concentrated in similarly aged sediments at Murray Springs, Ariz., Bull Creek, Okla., Gainey, Mich., and Topper, S.C., as well as Lake Hind, Manitoba, and Chobot, Alberta, in Canada. Nanodiamonds can be produced on Earth, but only through high-explosive detonations or...

We're all familiar with the concept of modern technology having ancient Chinese analogues. But a 2002 discovery in remote Qinghai province is anachronistic enough to constitute an OOPart. Out-of-place-artifacts are so unusual, or found in such improbable contexts, that mainstream science has no plausible explanation for them. The crystal skulls of Mexico referenced in the latest Indiana Jones movie, the iron pillar of Delhi, and the ancient Greek Antikythera mechanism are examples of OOPart yet to be explained. Like these, the pipes of Qinghai's Mount Baigong suggest a level of technology simply inconceivable for the apparent era of their manufacture. Those...

Grounding planes after the 11 September attacks may not have caused unusual temperature effects.When all commercial air traffic in the United States was grounded after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, scientists got an unexpected opportunity to test ideas about the climate effects of the condensation trails left behind by jets. A study in 20021 suggested that these contrails could have a significant effect on daily temperature patterns (see 'Air-traffic moratorium opened window on contrails and climate'). But a new analysis now claims that altered US temperature patterns during the three flight-free days can be explained by natural variations...

With more than 250 quakes recorded in less than a week at Yellowstone Park, should we be concerned? As most are aware, Yellowstone Park is the site of a "Supervolcano" which hides an enormous caldera measuring about 55 kilometers (34 miles) by 72 kilometers (45 miles). The last supervolcano/VEI 8 eruption on our planet was 26,500 years ago at Lake Taupo, New Zealand. However, a much larger eruption occurred about 75,000 years ago at Lake Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia which plunged the Earth into a volcanic winter, eradicating an estimated 60% of the human population.

Comet may have exploded over planet, causing fires, die-offs, researchers say A meteorite colliding with the Earth 65 million years ago is considered to be the most likely reason dinosaurs vanished from the planet. Now a team of scientists says it has found new evidence that an object from space caused a similar extinction event only 13,000 years ago. In an article to be published Friday in the journal Science, researchers present what one author calls the "smoking bullet"—proof that an exploding comet triggered the sudden, thousand-year freeze that killed off mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and other large mammals that used...

The tsunami washed over Fire Island and, to the west, waves perhaps as high as 20 feet spilled into Lower Manhattan. The furious onrush of water left sediment a foot and a half deep on the Jersey Shore, and debris cascaded far up the Hudson River. No, there’s no need to rush to higher ground, commandeer a rowboat in Central Park or empty the closet to grab the rubber boots. This disaster occurred about 2,300 years ago, though how bad it was, or even if it was a tsunami, remains in dispute. But several geologists have collected evidence indicating that...

2008 will be coming to a close with yet another spotless days according to the latest solar image. This will bring the total number of sunspotless days this month to 28 and for the year to 266, clearly enough to make 2008, the second least active solar year since 1900. See larger image here. http://icecap.us/index.php The total number of spotless days this solar minimum is now at around 510 days since the last maximum. The earliest the minimum of the sunspot cycles can be is July 2008, which would make the cycle length 12 years 3 months, longest since cycle...

Nearly 400 earthquakes have rocked Yellowstone National Park since last Friday. The quakes are putting scientists on alert, but they say this type of activity isn't unusual. As long as the quakes continue, the park will keep a very close eye on the region. Hank Heasler, the Park's Geologist, said "Back in 1985, up to 3 months of earthquakes (occured). (They were) up to magnitudes 4.7. So the past four days have been relatively energetic for the last few years." Scientists say predicitng earthquakes is still in it's infancy and not reliable. Park officials are not worried that this swarm...

Claims that coastal tree barriers can halt the might of a tsunami are false and dangerous, a team of international marine scientists said today.

Editor's note: Marine geophysicist Robin Bell is leading an expedition to Antarctica to explore a mysterious mountain range beneath the ice sheet. Following is the fifteenth of her updates on the effort as part of ScientificAmerican.com's in-depth report on the "Future of the Poles." AGAP South Camp, ANTARCTICA —Yesterday morning the sky at the South Pole had the kind of ‘iffy’ look that made my stomach turn. Instead of the normal brilliant blue, there were clouds on the horizon and sparkling ice crystals blowing past in the air. Allan Meredith, chief pilot for the British Antarctic Survey, was set to...

A swarm of small earthquakes in Yellowstone National Park is the most intense measured there in years, leaving scientists puzzled.

Did anyone else, aroung 21:29 EST seea HUGE shooting star,heading from the East, going East to South East in the sky in the New England Sky???

Excerpt: MAP 2.4 2008/12/30 00:36:39 44.510 -110.384 0.2 60 km ( 37 mi) ESE of West Yellowstone, MT MAP 2.4 2008/12/29 21:25:15 44.525 -110.360 2.0 61 km ( 38 mi) ESE of West Yellowstone, MT

MOSCOW. (Andrei Kislyakov, scientific commentator, for RIA Novosti) - The world geological community is warning that today's seismic activity on our planet is nothing compared with what's to come. Over the past three years, Pakistan, for example, has been hit by dozens of earthquakes. In March 2005, 80,000 people died under the rubble there. On October 30, the last time nature went on the rampage, there were hundreds of victims. Tens of thousands of people drowned during an overwhelming Asian tsunami at the end of 2004. China and Afghanistan have been rocked by quakes again more recently. These natural disasters,...

The scarred surface of Europa may be due to the push and pull of Jupiter's gravity (Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/University of Colorado) Strong ocean tidal flow and heating on moons of the outer planets Robert H. Tyler Applied Physics Laboratory and Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, 1013 NE 40th Street, Seattle, Washington 98105, USA Correspondence to: Robert H. Tyler1Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to R.H.T. (Email: tyler@apl.washington.edu). Data from recent space missions have added strong support for the idea that there are liquid oceans on several moons of the outer planets, with Jupiter's moon...

Venus Express has made the first detection of an atmospheric loss process on Venus's day-side. Last year, the spacecraft revealed that most of the lost atmosphere escapes from the night-side. Together, these discoveries bring planetary scientists closer to understanding what happened to the water on Venus, which is suspected to have once been as abundant as on Earth.

The power of viruses is well documented in human history. Swarms of little viral Davids have repeatedly laid low the great Goliaths of human civilization, most famously in the devastating pandemics that swept the New World during European conquest and settlement. In recent years, there has been growing evidence for the hypothesis that the effect of the pandemics in the Americas wasn't confined to killing indigenous peoples. Global climate appears to have been altered as well. Stanford University researchers have conducted a comprehensive analysis of data detailing the amount of charcoal contained in soils and lake sediments at the sites...

Bright Bolide Credit & Copyright: Howard Edin (Oklahoma City Astronomy Club) Explanation: On September 30, a spectacular bolide or fireball meteor surprised a group of amateur astronomers enjoying dark night skies over the Oklahoma panhandle's Black Mesa State Park in the Midwestern US. Flashing past familiar constellations Taurus (top) and Orion, the extremely bright meteor was captured by a hillside camera overlooking the 2008 Okie-Tex Star Party. Astronomy enthusiast Howard Edin reports that he was looking in the opposite direction at the time, but saw the whole observing field light up and at first thought someone had turned on their...

On Dec. 21st, another solar wind stream will arrive, only this time it will hit Earth directly. The stream is spewing from a coronal hole that straddles the sun's equator, which puts our planet squarely in the "cross hairs." The longest night of the year could be a green one; Arctic sky watchers should be alert for auroras

The biggest moon in the solar system is Ganymede, the third large moon out from Jupiter. Larger than Mercury, Ganymede has a heterogeneous surface of dark and light areas (picture), grooved terrain, abrupt changes of landforms, and bright splashes where impacts have scarred its icy surface (gallery). What goes on inside, though, is more surprising: it has an intrinsic magnetic field. Researchers could only make it last for the assumed age of the solar system by appealing to “special conditions” that are not necessarily compatible with theories of its formation...

Smivs writes "The BBC are reporting that drillers looking for geothermal energy in Hawaii have inadvertently put a well right into a magma chamber. Molten rock pushed back up the borehole several meters before solidifying, making it perfectly safe to study. Magma specialist Bruce Marsh says it will allow scientists to observe directly how granites are made. 'This is unprecedented; this is the first time a magma has been found in its natural habitat,' the Johns Hopkins University professor told BBC News. 'Before, all we had to deal with were lava flows; but they are the end of a magma's...

SOLAR SCIENCENASA: Ionosphere not where it should be disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only by Staff WritersWashington (UPI) Dec 17, 2008 The U.S. space agency says it has discovered the boundary between the Earth's upper atmosphere and space has moved to extraordinarily low altitudes. The finding was determined by National Aeronautics and Space Administration instruments aboard an Air Force satellite launched in April. The instruments, including ion and neutral sensors, make measurements of the variations in neutral and ion densities and drifts that can result in disruptions of navigation and communication signals. But the first discovery was that the...

As ice melts away from Antarctica, parts of the continental bedrock are rising in response -- and other parts are sinking, scientists have discovered. snip Before POLENET and its more spatially limited predecessors, scientists had few direct measurements of the bedrock. They had to rely on computer models, which now appear to be incorrect. "When you compare how fast the earth is rising, and where, to the models of where ice is being lost and how much is lost -- they don't match," Wilson said. "There are places where the models predict no crustal uplift, where we see several millimeters...

Consider yourself lucky. It could be much, much colder outside -- like ice age cold. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have used powerful computer climate models to show that, were it not for a rise in global temperatures that started thousands of years ago with the first clearing of European forests, we would be entering another ice age. Glaciers would be growing instead of melting. Your back would be even more sore from shoveling.

Over the period of several hours SOHO observed a large bubble-like coronal mass ejection (CME) blast from the far side of the Sun and out into space to the right (Dec. 8-9, 2008). The particle cloud will have no effect on Earth. Even within the rather narrow field of view of this C2 coronagraph, the bubble expands to the size of the sun. CMEs often appear bulbous in shape, but this might be likened to an expanding smoke ring. The sun is still near its lowest levels of activity in the solar cycle, but starting to break out of its...

It's the most successful comet catcher in history. SOHO has just reached a new milestone: It has discovered its 1500th comet, making it more successful than all the other discoverers of comets throughout history put together. Not bad for a spacecraft that was designed as a solar physics mission. SOHO's history-making discovery was made on June 25th 2008 by US-based amateur astronomer Rob Matson. This is Rob's 76th SOHO comet find. When it comes to comet catching, the SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory has one big advantage over everybody else: its location. Situated between the Sun and the Earth, it has...

ScienceDaily (Dec. 16, 2008) — Observations made by NASA instruments onboard an Air Force satellite have shown that the boundary between the Earth's upper atmosphere and space has moved to extraordinarily low altitudes. These observations were made by the Coupled Ion Neutral Dynamics Investigation (CINDI) instrument suite, which was launched aboard the U.S. Air Force's Communication/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite on April 16, 2008.

Dec. 16, 2008: NASA's five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth's magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist. Solar wind can flow in through the opening to "load up" the magnetosphere for powerful geomagnetic storms. But the breach itself is not the biggest surprise. Researchers are even more amazed at the strange and unexpected way it forms, overturning long-held ideas of space physics. "At first I didn't believe it," says THEMIS project scientist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "This finding fundamentally alters our understanding of the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction." The opening...

Bat study raises doubts over our understanding of Earth's ecosystems. One of the most common techniques for diagnosing the ecological health of a region may be painting an inaccurate picture of biodiversity, a study of the bats on the tiny volcanic island of Montserrat suggests.To understand an area's ecology, researchers are often asked by funding agencies to conduct a short survey, known as a rapid biodiversity assessment.Such surveys are convenient: they fit easily into the typical 3-5-year timescale of a PhD, match the length of time within which grant-giving agencies expect to see results, and are relatively quick to write...

scientists are warning that several other major earthquakes are likely to occur in the region over the next decades. A new study examined the growth records of coral reefs off the coast of Sumatra, and say they show evidence of repeated bursts of earthquakes that relieve pressure on the Sunda fault. A shock in 2007 may be the beginning of a new cycle, researchers say. Says study coauthor Kerry Sieh: "If previous cycles are a reliable guide we can expect one or more very large west Sumatran earthquakes … within the next two decades" [Reuters]. As if to illustrate the...

Full press release text: The dancing light of the auroras on Saturn behaves in ways different from how scientists have thought possible for the last 25 years. New research by a team of astronomers led by John Clarke of Boston University has overturned theories about how Saturn's magnetic field behaves and how its auroras are generated. Their results will be published in the February 17 issue of the journal Nature.By choreographing the instruments aboard the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini spacecraft, while it was enroute to Saturn, to look at Saturn's southern polar region, Clarke and his team...

In particular, a few computers at NASA's Goddard Institute seem to be having a disproportionate effect on global warming. Anthony Watt takes a cut at an analysis I have tried myself several times, comparing raw USHCN temperature data to the final adjusted values delivered from that data by the NASA computers. My attempt at this compared the USHCN adjusted to raw for the entire US: Anthony Watt does this analysis from USHCN raw all the way through to the GISS adjusted number (the USHCN adjusts the number, and then the GISS adds their own adjustments on top of these adjustments)....

Anyone else see it? Went below tree line west of Saratoga NY - Might have gone to ground toward Utica??

A deluge that swept the Land of Israel more than 7,000 years ago, submerging six Neolithic villages opposite the Carmel Mountains, is the origin of the biblical flood of Noah, a British marine archeologist said Tuesday. The new theory about the source of the great flood detailed in the Book of Genesis comes amid continuing controversy among scholars over whether the inundation of the Black Sea more than seven millennia ago was the biblical flood. In the theory posited by British marine archeologist Dr. Sean Kingsley and published in the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israeli Archaeological Society, the drowning of the...

A deluge that swept the Land of Israel more than 7,000 years ago, submerging six Neolithic villages opposite the Carmel Mountains, is the origin of the biblical flood of Noah, a British marine archeologist said Tuesday. The new theory about the source of the great flood detailed in the Book of Genesis comes amid continuing controversy among scholars over whether the inundation of the Black Sea more than seven millennia ago was the biblical flood. In the theory posited by British marine archeologist Dr. Sean Kingsley and published in the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israeli Archaeological Society, the drowning of the...