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Got any plans Tuesday? Good. Keep them but know this. That day around 3 p.m. CDT (20:00 UT) asteroid 2014 KH39 will silently zip by Earth at a distance of just 272,460 miles (438,480 km) or 1.14 LDs (lunar distance). Close as flybys go but not quite a record breaker. The hefty space rock will buzz across the constellation Cepheus at nearly 25,000 mph (11 km/sec) near the Little Dipper at the time. Observers in central Europe and Africa will have dark skies for the event, however at magnitude +17 the asteroid will be too faint to spot in amateur...

Nabhan is a former teacher in California and now lives in Pittsburgh. He became interested in earthquakes while he was the earthquake preparedness coordinator for the school he worked at. He says he noticed every earthquake happened at dusk or dawn. “I realized this sort of conscience doesn’t happen in science. These dawn and dusk quakes during new and full moons are the paradigm on the west coast,” he said. “All six great quakes that have struck in Los Angeles that have killed people since the 30s, all of them, dawn or dusk [quakes]. How can earthquakes be predicted? Nabhan...

A handful of tree ring samples stored in an old cigar box have shed unexpected light on the ancient world, thanks to research by archaeologist Sturt Manning and collaborators at Cornell, Arizona, Chicago, Oxford and Vienna, forthcoming in the June issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science. The samples were taken from an Egyptian coffin; Manning also examined wood from funeral boats buried near the pyramid of Sesostris III. He used a technique called “dendro radiocarbon wiggle matching,” which calibrates radiocarbon isotopes found in the sample tree rings with patterns known from other places in the world that have already...

In 1989, Edward Bryant climbed a point on the southeast coast of his native Australia with a colleague and found an odd jumble of boulders well above the surf. A big wave, he thought, maybe a tsunami from an earthquake, must have tossed them up there. Over the next few years, however, the University of Wollongong geologist explored hundreds of miles of coast and found more signs of wave action, hundreds of feet above the water--too high for any quake-spawned surge. An astonishing hypothesis of devastation from outer space formed in his mind. It gathered some praise, along with many...

...Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a stalwart believer that global warming is a “hoax,” dismissed the report as a publicity stunt. Perhaps the senator needs a history lesson, because climate change has been leading to global conflict — and even the collapse of civilizations — for more than 3,000 years. Drought and famine led to internal rebellions in some societies and the sacking of others, as people fleeing hardship at home became conquerors abroad. One of the most vivid examples comes from around 1200 B.C. A centuries-long drought in...

Here, for the first time (to our knowledge), we are able to demonstrate unambiguously that the impact at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg, ∼66 Mya) was followed by a so-called “impact winter.” This impact winter was the result of the injection of large amounts of dust and aerosols into the stratosphere and significantly reduced incoming solar radiation for decades. Therefore, this phase will have been a key contributory element in the extinctions of many biological clades, including the dinosaurs. The K–Pg boundary impact presents a unique event in Earth history because it caused global change at an unparalleled rate. This detailed...

~snip~ In 1967 British astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell was left stunned by mysterious pulsing signals she detected coming from outside the solar system. For months she suggested the signals could be of an extraterrestrial intelligent origin, but they were later proven to be rapidly spinning stars known as pulsars. However, a new series of mysterious signals, known as Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), has again got astronomers scratching their heads and wondering if, maybe, we’re picking up alien messages...

Controversy over what sparked the Younger Dryas, a brief return to near glacial conditions at the end of the Ice Age, includes a theory that it was caused by a comet hitting the Earth. As proof, proponents point to sediments containing deposits they believe could result only from a cosmic impact. Now a new study disproves that theory, said archaeologist David Meltzer, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Meltzer is lead author on the study and an expert in the Clovis culture, the peoples who lived in North America at the end of the Ice Age. Meltzer's research team found that nearly...

A Terrifying GIF Of An Ice Age Ripping Through The US Leslie BaehrMay 15, 2014, 12:38 PM The northern ice cap creeps over earth. As we watch glaciers around the world recede, we sometimes hear the argument that these changes are part of the Earth's natural fluctuation. To some extent, they are. We've been in a relatively stable and warm period for at least 15,000 years. And we are unnaturally making the Earth even warmer. Before that, ice ages covered most of the Northern Hemisphere with glaciers. The last of the five major ice ages, called the Pleistocene glaciation, began...

"We know that the impact occurred within the last 70 million years, and in that time about 1.5 km of sediment has been eroded. That makes it really hard to pin down and actually date the impact." Erosion has worn away all but the "roots" of the crater, leaving a semicircular depression eight kilometres across with a central peak. Schmitt says that when it formed, the crater likely reached a depth of 1.6 to 2.4 km—the kind of impact his graduate student Wei Xie calculated would have had devastating consequences for life in the area. "An impact of this magnitude...

JERUSALEM, Israel -- An Israeli archaeologist says he found the legendary citadel captured by King David. The conquest allowed David to establish Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is wrapped up in the discovery. Archaeologist Eli Shukron found the citadel in east Jerusalem in a predominately Arab neighborhood. The Elad Foundation, an organization that strives to prevent the city from being divided, financed the discovery. Arabs want that land as the capital for a future Palestinian state. The site also rekindles the debate about using the Bible as a field guide to identify ancient ruins. "For many...

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli archaeologist says he has found the legendary citadel captured by King David in his conquest of Jerusalem, rekindling a longstanding debate about using the Bible as a field guide to identifying ancient ruins. The claim by Eli Shukron, like many such claims in the field of biblical archaeology, has run into criticism. It joins a string of announcements by Israeli archaeologists saying they have unearthed palaces of the legendary biblical king, who is revered in Jewish religious tradition for establishing Jerusalem as its central holy city — but who has long eluded historians looking for...

An Israeli archaeologist says he has found the legendary citadel captured by King David in his conquest of Jerusalem, rekindling a longstanding debate about using the Bible as a field guide to identifying ancient ruins. The claim by Eli Shukron, like many such claims in the field of biblical archaeology, has run into criticism. It joins a string of announcements by Israeli archaeologists saying they have unearthed palaces of the legendary biblical king, who is revered in Jewish religious tradition for establishing Jerusalem as its central holy city—but who has long eluded historians looking for clear-cut evidence of his existence...

An earthquake with preliminary magnitude of 6.2 jolted Tokyo and vicinity early Monday morning, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. There was no tsunami warning and no immediate reports of major damage.

Don't worry, NASA's known about it for ages. Like, four whole days. So here’s a fun fact: while you were sleeping last night, you had a near-death experience. Yes, you – and everyone else on this lovely planet. In the wee hours of the morning, a pretty sizeable asteroid soared by the Earth, just missing it. But we’re okay. For now. At 4:13am EDT, asteroid 2014 HL129 essentially side-swiped the Earth, coming within 186,000 miles of our planet. For reference, the moon is 238,855 miles away. Which means the asteroid was much, much closer to us than the moon will...

Astronomers say they have discovered a star cluster that has been thrown in the direction of Earth at a speed of more than two million miles per hour. The cluster, named HVGC-1, originated in the M87 galaxy and is expected to endlessly drift through space, rocketing through the voids between other galaxies. "Astronomers have found runaway stars before, but this is the first time we've found a runaway star cluster," said Nelson Caldwell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who is the lead author on a study which is set to be published in the The Astrophysical Journal. HVGC stands...

Just over 8,000 years ago a huge landslide occurred off the coast of Norway, known as the Storegga Slide. The event created a catastrophic tsunami, with waves almost half as high as the Statue of Liberty, that battered Britain and other land masses. And now the most accurate computer model ever made of the tsunami suggests that it wiped out the remaining inhabitants of a set of low-lying landmass known as Doggerland off the coast of the UK. A new model by researchers at Imperial College London has revealed the devastating effects of a tsunami caused by a landslide off...

CAIRO — Remains of about 50 mummies, including newborn babies, thought to belong to the 18th Dynasty were found in a huge tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said Monday. Wooden coffins and death masks were found beside the bodies, probably dating from the New Kingdom, state news agency MENA quoted Ibrahim as saying. The New Kingdom takes in Egypt's 18th, 19th and 20th pharaonic dynasties, dating between about 1567 and 1085 B.C. According to initial studies of the find, princes and princesses were among the bodies found in the tomb, which had...

Scientists Have Underestimated The Likelihood Of City-Killing Asteroids Hitting Earth Reuters Irene Klotz, Reuters Apr. 28, 2014, 2:59 PM The chance of a city-killing asteroid striking Earth is higher than scientists previously believed, a non-profit group building an asteroid-hunting telescope said on Tuesday. A global network that listens for nuclear weapons detonations detected 26 asteroids that exploded in Earth's atmosphere from 2000 to 2013, data collected by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization shows. The explosions include the Feb. 15, 2013, impact over Chelyabinsk, Russia, which left more than 1,000 people injured by flying glass and debris. "There is...

Outside the Greek mainland and Aegean Island a possible representation of Achaean warriors equipped with boar tusks helmets is from an Egyptian papyrus fragments from Tell el-Amarna, home of Amenhotep III's son, dated around 1350 BC (*2). In this papyrus some warriors are depicted with conical pale-yellow helmets which remaind in general design the typical Aegean boar tusks helmet. This identification is strengthened by the find of a piece of boar’s tusk, with perforations for attaching it to a leather frame, during excavations at Qantir, the site of the Ramesside capital Pi-ramesse in the eastern delta. It appears likely that...