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- Slight fluctuations will release mammoth amounts of underground energy - Next year we could have at least 20 serious earthquakes, scientists warn - The most intense ones are expected to occur in tropical regionsSwarms of devastating earthquakes are set to arrive next year due to the slowing of Earth's rotation, scientists claim. Experts warn we 'had it easy this year' with just six severe earthquakes. Next year we could have at least 20 serious earthquakes, and the most intense ones are expected to occur in tropical regions, home to around one billion people. Tiny changes in the speed...

As the sun moves through its 11-year cycle, it experiences active and quiet periods known as the solar maximum and solar minimum. While solar maximum can present itself in a host of different ways, a new study has found that microwaves emitted during the solar minimum have largely remained the same for more than half a century. Astronomers in Japan have been continuously monitoring solar microwaves across four-frequencies since 1957. This began at the Toyokawa Branch of the Research Institute of Atmospherics, Nagoya University, and was later relocated in 1994 to the NAOj Nobeyama Campus. In a new study, researchers...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A blazing fireball lit up the dark skies of Arctic Finland for five seconds, giving off what scientists said was "the glow of 100 full moons" and igniting hurried attempts to find the reported meteorite. Finnish experts were scrambling to calculate its trajectory and find where it landed, according to Tomas Kohout of the University of Helsinki's physics department, who said Thursday night's fireball "seems to have been one of the brightest ones." It produced a blast wave that felt like an explosion about 6:40 p.m. and could also be seen in northern Norway and in...

Nestled in the asteroid belt, the dwarf planet Ceres contains water-rich materials that suggest it once boasted a global ocean in its distant past. Now, two new studies from NASA's Dawn mission may reveal traces of an ancient ocean in the crust, with remnants left behind in the muddy mantle beneath.  Scientists used the tug of gravity on NASA's Dawn spacecraft to track gravitational features across the dwarf planet Ceres. Combined with models of the evolution of the icy surfaces, these observations reveal an ocean mostly frozen into a strong but flexible crust, with a mud-rich inner layer that keeps...

A startling collision in an ancient galaxy slews Earth's largest telescopes to a spot in the Hydra constellation. Two rapidly spinning neutron stars have violently merged to form a possible black hole. And, for the first time, astronomers see its electromagnetic flash and hear its gravitational thunder as they watch new elements being born.

At first blush, Frank Klein is another distinguished veteran in a military town full of them. But the 96-year-old retired U.S. Air Force colonel can also lay claim to a special footnote in history. In addition to being a decorated officer and skilled navigator, he’s the man who helped redefine where north was. The Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, native’s journey to his footnote was a circuitous one. Following high school, he had a mind to go into acting and actually moved to New York City. For a year he had a role on a weekly CBS radio program, where he would rub...

It's called the "shadow zone" and it lies around two kilometres below the surface in an ocean abyss where trapped water dates back to the fourth century. This ancient water, which is between 1000 and 2000 years old, dates back to when the ancient Germanic tribe the Goths instigated the end of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of Medieval Europe. Lying in a 6000km by 2000km patch of the North Pacific Ocean between 1km and 2.5km below the surface, the shadow zone's reason for existence has remained a mystery until now. ... "Abyssal ocean overturning shaped by sea...

At least 61 people were killed and more than 300 others were hurt in a powerful earthquake on the Iran-Iraq border region Sunday, Iranian officials revealed. The quake had a magnitude of 7.3, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) announced, as reports of serious structural damage started to emerge. At least six of the deaths were on Iraq's side of the border, Iranian state media reported. On its website, the USGS placed the quake's epicenter at about 18.6 miles southwest of the Iraqi city of Halabja. The USGS also issued an "orange" alert for "shaking-related fatalities and economic losses."

The Hebrew Bible has several references to King Hezekiah's reforms and attempts to centralize worship in Jerusalem. 2 Chronicles 29-32 describes his efforts during the first year of his reign to cleanse and refurbish the Temple in Jerusalem, believing that his ancestors had not worshipped the God of Israel dutifully. 2 Kings 18:4 narrates that "he removed the high places (bamot), broke down the pillars (masseboth), and cut down the sacred pole (asherah)."

A mantle plume producing almost as much heat as Yellowstone supervolcano appears to be melting part of West Antarctica from beneath. Researchers at NASA have discovered a huge upwelling of hot rock under Marie Byrd Land, which lies between the Ross Ice Shelf and the Ross Sea, is creating vast lakes and rivers under the ice sheet. The presence of a huge mantle plume could explain why the region is so unstable today, and why it collapsed so quickly at the end of the last Ice Age, 11,000 years ago.

The "Pylos Combat Agate," as the seal has come to be known for the fierce hand-to-hand battle it portrays, promises not only to rewrite the history of ancient Greek art, but to help shed light on myth and legend in an era of Western civilization still steeped in mystery. The remarkably undisturbed and intact grave revealed not only the well-preserved remains of what is believed to have been a powerful Mycenaean warrior or priest buried around 1500 B.C., but also an incredible trove of burial riches that serve as a time capsule into the origins of Greek civilization. But...

According to the book of Joshua in the Old Testament, after an all-night march from Gilgal, the Israelites attacked the Amorites at Gibeon, they then pursued them to Azekah and then to Makkedah. We have evidence from historical geography of where these places were: Gibeon was about 10 km northwest of Jerusalem, Azekah about 30 km southwest of Gibeon and Makkedah about 20 km south of Azekah. Because the eclipse occurred in the afternoon, it was probably seen from near Azekah, from where the partial eclipse would have started at 15:27 (local apparent time as given by a sundial), with...

Scientists studying the effects of tsunamis have now shed light on what could be the earliest record of a person killed in a tsunami: someone who lived 6,000 years ago in what's now Papua New Guinea in the southwest Pacific. Their skull was found in geological sediments having the distinctive hallmarks of ancient tsunami activity... The skull in question was found in 1929, buried in the ground near the small town of Aitape on the northern of Papua New Guinea, about 500 miles north of Australia... In 2014 Golitko and others went back to the exact place where this skull...

Venice (AFP) - Nobody is ever going to call Paul Schrader's "First Reformed" a feel-good movie, and the legendary screenwriter and director is fine with that. "If you are hopeful about humanity and the planet you are not paying attention," Schrader said Thursday as he presented his latest writing and directing project at the Venice film festival. The film turns around the uncheery theme of impending environmental apocalypse and the question of whether Christians could or should have done more to prevent it. "I don't see humanity outliving the century," Schrader told reporters after the drama, which stars Ethan Hawke,...

A huge well of molten carbon that would spell disaster for the planet if released has been found under the US. Scientists using the world's largest array of seismic sensors have mapped a deep-Earth area, covering 700,000 sq miles (1.8 million sq km). This is around the size of Mexico, and researchers say it has the potential to cause untold environmental damage. The discovery could change our understanding of how much carbon the Earth contains, suggesting it is much more than we previously believed. It would be impossible to drill far enough down to physically 'see' the Earth's mantle,...

Radiation inside one of the damaged reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power facility has reached an “unimaginable” level according to experts. Because so much nuclear material from Fukushima escaped into the Pacific Ocean, there are many scientists that believe that it was the worst environmental disaster in human history, but most people in the general population seem to think that since the mainstream media really doesn’t talk about it anymore that everything must be under control. Unfortunately, that is not true at all. In fact, PBS reported just last year that “it is incorrect to say that Fukushima is under...

The Italian name for the caldera — Campi Flegrei, or “burning fields”— is apt. The 7.5-mile-wide cauldron is the collapsed top of an ancient volcano, formed when the magma within finally blew. Though half of it is obscured beneath the crystal blue waters of the Mediterranean, the other half is studded with cinder cones and calderas from smaller eruptions. And the whole area seethes with hydrothermal activity: Sulfuric acid spews from active fumaroles; geysers spout water and steam and the ground froths with boiling mud; and earthquake swarms shudder through the region, 125 miles south of Rome. And things seem...

Pollution, pesticides and fast food is killing our children, with new government statistics revealing that the number of youngsters diagnosed with cancer has risen by 40% over the past 16 years. Analysis compiled by researchers from the charity Children with Cancer UK found new cases of cancer in young people rose by 1,300 every year since statistics were last compiled in 1998. The charity found this is most evident in colon cancer, which has increased by 200%, and thyroid cancer, which has seen its cases doubled during the 18 years since the last report was released. […] Alasdair Philips, science...

...As he and his team began to slice into the mound, located 30 miles east of Stavropol... It took nearly a month of digging to reach the bottom. There, Belinski ran into a layer of thick clay that, at first glance, looked like a natural feature of the landscape, not the result of human activity. He uncovered a stone box, a foot or so deep, containing a few finger and rib bones from a teenager... Nested one inside the other in the box were two gold vessels of unsurpassed workmanship. Beneath these lay three gold armbands, a heavy ring, and...

Two continent-size blobs of hot — and possibly molten — rock can be found deep underground, about halfway to the center of the Earth, according to a new study. These curious structures — each of which is so large that it would be 100 times taller than Mount Everest... One of the blobs is located beneath the Pacific Ocean, and the other can be found beneath the Atlantic. These underground structures start where the Earth's mantle meets the core, but they send "plumes" up through the rock like a Lava Lamp, the researchers said. ... Different types of seismic waves...