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Alan Duffy was confused. On Thursday, the astronomer’s phone was suddenly flooded with calls from reporters wanting to know about a large asteroid that had just whizzed past Earth, and he couldn’t figure out “why everyone was so alarmed.” “I thought everyone was getting worried about something we knew was coming,” Duffy, who is lead scientist at the Royal Institution of Australia, told The Washington Post. Forecasts had already predicted that a couple of asteroids would be passing relatively close to Earth this week. Then, he looked up the details of the hunk of space rock named Asteroid 2019 OK....

We weren't in danger of losing a chunk of our planet to asteroid 2019 OK, but it was detected just the day before it slipped past, and that's the worrying part. The European Space Agency had enough time to ask two telescopes in the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) to take a look at the asteroid right before its flyby. These aren't beauty shots. The asteroid looks like a dark blob, but the observations are helping us learn more about 2019 OK. We now know the asteroid flew by at a distance of just 40,000 miles (65,000 kilometers). Cosmically, that's...

The media is abuzz over the first icy “casualty” of climate change: a small glacier in Iceland named Okjökull, also known as “OK.” The claim, made in a press release from Rice University, is OK became the first glacier in Iceland to lose its glacial status because of global warming. According to the press release, “This will be the first monument to a glacier lost to climate change anywhere in the world.” Of course, the fearmongers do not say why the glacier has stopped growing. Instead, they simply invoke the new universal boogeyman of “climate change” as the reason....

The space rock — designated as a near-Earth object, because its orbit takes it within 30 million miles of our planet — is expected to come within about 4.55 million miles of us as it whizzes by at 10,400 mph. Anything that gets closer than 0.05 “astronomical units” — roughly 4.65 million miles — is considered “potentially hazardous.” The asteroid, dubbed 2006 QQ23, is 1,870 feet in diameter

(Video at source)A group of international researchers say they have uncovered possible evidence of a warmer climate in Alaska — dating back to when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Dr. Tony Fiorillo of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas, and his team are fresh back from a three-week, remote expedition to Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve. During that time, Fiorillo says the researchers discovered what appeared to be a crayfish burrow. How do crayfish fit in with dinosaurs? We wondered that too. "They lived with the dinosaurs," Fiorillo explained. "As you can imagine, in Anchorage, there aren't...

When Paul C. Sereno went hunting for dinosaur bones in the Sahara, his career took a sharp turn from paleontology to archaeology. The expedition found what has proved to be the largest known graveyard of Stone Age people who lived there when the desert was green. The first traces of pottery, stone tools and human skeletons were discovered eight years ago at a site in the southern Sahara, in Niger. After preliminary research, Dr. Sereno, a University of Chicago scientist who had previously uncovered remains of the dinosaur Nigersaurus there, organized an international team of archaeologists to investigate what had...

How dust from the Sahara is fuelling the Amazon

I now regard as established that Ahhiyawa of the Hittite texts refers to a Mycenaean Greek kingdom not located in Asia Minor. Those who wish to wait for the proverbial "smoking gun" may do so, but the circumstantial evidence is now overwhelming. The alternative hypothesis of Hajnal (2003: 40-42) of Ahhiyawa as a small city state of Cilicia is not credible. Hittite references show that Ahhiyawa was a formidable power influential in far western Asia Minor. I leave to others the problem of determining just which Mycenaean kingdom (or kingdoms) should be identified with the Ahhiyawa of the Hittite texts......

An inscribed ancient Egyptian scarab and five clay tablets with carvings of naked women have been found in Rehob, a 3,500-year-old city in Israel. The carvings likely depict ancient fertility goddesses, such as Asherah or Ashtarte, Amihai Mazar, an archaeology professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told Live Science. "[They] were used at home, as part of popular domestic religious practice in the domestic sphere, mainly related to fertility of women," Mazar said in an email, noting that similar carvings have been found at other archaeological sites in the region... Made of a mineral called steatite, the scarab contains...

Birdwatcher Alexander Ternopolsky made a remarkable discovery one day at the archaeological site of Tel Dor on Israel's Carmel Coast -- not a bird, but a rare Egyptian scarab seal. The stone scarab -- an ancient Egyptian object shaped like a scarab beetle -- belonged to a high-ranking official of the 13th Dynasty (18th-17th centuries B.C.E.) in Middle Kingdom Egypt... The name of the scarab's owner, his position, and ankh and djed symbols (representing eternal life and stability, respectively) are engraved on the Egyptian scarab seal. While the owner's name hasn't been deciphered yet, he is described on the scarab...

Alan Duffy was confused. On Thursday, the astronomer's phone was suddenly flooded with calls from reporters wanting to know about a large asteroid that had just whizzed past Earth, and he couldn't figure out "why everyone was so alarmed." "I thought everyone was getting worried about something we knew was coming," Duffy, who is also lead scientist at the Royal Institution of Australia, told The Washington Post. Forecasts had already predicted that a couple asteroids would be passing relatively close to Earth this week. Then he looked up the details of the hunk of space rock named Asteroid 2019 OK....

Three asteroids will pass safely by Earth today, two of which are about the same size as one of the pyramids at the famous Giza complex in Egypt. The first of these space rocks, known as 2015 HM10, has already made its closest approach when it came within about 2.9 million miles of our planet at 2:00 a.m. EDT this morning. The asteroid—which is estimated to measure up to 360 feet in diameter—whizzed past at speeds of around 21,000 miles per hour relative to the Earth. The second of the asteroids—2019 OD—is estimated to be about the same size as...

A number of stone, pottery and wooden coffins were also found, some of which had mummies which were uncovered in good condition, in addition to a number of wooden masks some of them are incomplete and a set of tools that were used in cutting and polishing. The Middle Kingdom era is called the era of economic prosperity because of many economic projects, such as irrigation, trade, industry and agriculture. Among the most famous kings of the Middle Kingdom were King Mentuhotep II, who restored the unity of the country and spread security after the chaos that plagued Egypt in...

PARIS, Oct 13: A Russian meteorite that crashed two weeks ago in Siberia, but whose existence is being played down by Russian authorities, is said to be "one of the great events of the century" by French space specialist Antonella Barucci. Miss Barucci, a meteorite specialist employed by the Paris Observatory said that the Russian metorite, which fell October 3 in a remote region of Siberia "could be the largest and most important meteorite to fall on earth since the last one that fell in 1908, also on Siberia." The new Siberian meteorite has also the added attraction, moreover, that...

Ubinas Volcano Volcanic Ash Advisory: continuous ash emissions to 24000 ft (7300 m) Saturday Jul 20, 2019 04:30 AM | BY: VN Explosive activity continues. Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) Buenos Aires warned about a volcanic ash plume that rose up to estimated 24000 ft (7300 m) altitude or flight level 240 and is moving at 20 kts in SE direction. The full report is as follows:

Another day, another Asteroid! It was just yesterday when the news of Asteroid 2006 QV89 not hitting our Earth in september came to light. And now NASA has already detected another massive hazardous asteroid, named 2006 QQ23, that has high chances of hitting our Earth next month. According to CNEOS, 2006 QQ23, is expected to move past Earth on August 10th at 7:23 AM ST at a distance of about 0.04977 au which is a rather shorter distance in astronomical terms. It has also been tagged as “hazardous” meaning it has a pretty good chance of hitting our planet if...

A gap between linguistics and prehistoryThanks to the over 33,000 documents from Hattusha, the capital of the Hittite Kingdom, linguists have been able to gain a comprehensive insight into Luwian culture. Some fundamental publications include the book Arzawa, by Susanne Heinhold-Krahmer (1977); The Luwians, edited by H. Craig Melchert (2003); and Luwian Identities, edited by Alice Mouton and others (2013). Field-oriented excavating archaeologists, on the other hand, never mention Luwians in their explanatory models. The current knowledge regarding the Aegean Bronze Age has been summarized in a number of recently published voluminous works, without attention to any Luwian culture....

TORONTO, ON – Archaeologists leading the University of Toronto's Tayinat Archaeological Project in southeastern Turkey have unearthed the remains of a monumental gate complex adorned with stone sculptures, including a magnificently carved lion. The gate complex provided access to the citadel of Kunulua, capital of the Neo-Hittite Kingdom of Patina (ca. 950-725 BCE), and is reminiscent of the citadel gate excavated by British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley in 1911 at the royal Hittite city of Carchemish. The Tayinat find provides valuable new insight into the innovative character and cultural sophistication of the diminutive Iron Age states that emerged in the...

An ancient tree that contains a record of a reversal of Earth's magnetic field has been discovered in New Zealand. The tree -- an Agathis australis, better known as its M&Ccedilori name kauri -- was found in Ngawha, on New Zealand's North Island, during excavation work for the expansion of a geothermal power plant, stuff.nz reports. The tree, which had been buried in 26 feet of soil, measures eight feet in diameter and 65 feet in length. Carbon dating revealed it lived for 1,500 years, between 41,000 and 42,500 years ago... The lifespan of the kauri tree covers a point...

The researchers suggest that this type of world may a result of large “hot Jupiter” exoplanets migrating toward their host star. Exoplanet surveys have detected several such planets, and it’s believed that they likely formed at a greater distance from their respective stars and then slowly crept inward. When that happens, it’s possible that the change in gravitational forces would prompt large moons to break free from their existing orbits and become standalone worlds of their own. Computer simulations showed that this could indeed happen, and in those cases, the researchers believe we should call them ploonets. Remarkably, our own...