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Scientists have revealed that graphite in the ancient Saglek-Hebron iron formations of Nunatsiavut, once thought to indicate the earliest life on Earth, likely has abiotic origins.Early Life on EarthThe isotopic composition of carbon in iron formations from the Saglek-Hebron Complex in Nunatsiavut (northern Labrador) has been seen as evidence of the earliest traces of life on Earth. But a new study by the University of Ottawa, Carleton University, and University College London suggests otherwise.The study shows that the petrographic, geochemical, and spectroscopic features in the graphite (the crystalline form of carbon) found in the Saglek-Hebron chemical sedimentary rocks are in...

New research indicates that the most recent major collision in our galaxy occurred billions of years later than previously believed.Using data from the Gaia spacecraft, researchers found that the Milky Way's last major galactic collision happened less than three billion years ago, not the eight to 11 billion years previously thought...Newberg, a renowned astrophysicist and Milky Way expert, and Donlon focused on the so-called "wrinkles" in our galaxy, which are formed when other galaxies collide with the Milky Way...By comparing their observations of the wrinkles with cosmological simulations, the team was able to determine that our last significant collision with...

An Egyptian archaeological team discovered the remains of the sixth-century-B.C. structure three years ago during excavations at an archaeological site in the ancient city of Buto, now called Tell Al-Faraeen, in Egypt's Kafr El-Sheikh governorate...Unlike traditional monuments, which typically have a single pylon, the observatory had two pylons facing each other, framing the circular observatory spot and symbolizing akhet, or the horizon where the sun rises. Facing this Akhet was a limestone watchtower that was likely once paired with another and used to observe constellations, Ghonim said.The excavation also uncovered a statue of the falcon-headed god Horus. The depiction of...

T Coronae Borealis is a binary star system composed of a red giant and a companion white dwarf located in the constellation of Corona Borealis. Nicknamed the “Blaze Star,” it is a recurrent nova with a period of approximately 80 years. Very soon, it is expected to increase rapidly in brightness and astronomers worldwide are training their gaze to catch a glimpse of the expected nova event.

The longest core of rock ever extracted from beneath Greenland’s thick ice could hold clues about how quickly the island’s frozen covering will melt as the planet warms.Preliminary analysis of the rock and associated sediment suggests that, at some time in the past three million years or so, the material in this core was exposed to air. That means that the ice atop it had melted away, at least temporarily.The work adds to a small but growing cadre of studies that use Greenland’s bedrock to illuminate how unstable the overlying ice has been in the past…Using the latest equipment, the...

...two teams, called UNITE (UNISTELLAR Network Investigating TESS Exoplanets) and Exoplanet Watch, have combined forces to confirm a new planetary discovery—a toasty "warm Jupiter."...Planets around other stars, called exoplanets, sometimes block the light from the stars they orbit. When this happens, it's called a "transit." Amateur astronomers can observe exoplanet transits with their own telescopes by watching for the light from a nearby star to dim.NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) sees these dimming events, too—many thousands of them. But just seeing a star dim once is not enough. You need to catch multiple dimming events (and perform various other...

Explanation: Do underground oceans vent through canyons on Saturn's moon Enceladus? Long features dubbed tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space, creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon's South Pole and creating Saturn's mysterious E-ring. Evidence for this has come from the robot Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Pictured here, a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from a close flyby. The unusual surface features dubbed tiger stripes are visible in false-color blue. Why Enceladus is active remains a mystery, as the neighboring moon...

Explanation: Globular star cluster Omega Centauri packs about 10 million stars much older than the Sun into a volume some 150 light-years in diameter. Also known as NGC 5139, at a distance of 15,000 light-years it's the largest and brightest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen exhibits the presence of different stellar populations with a spread of ages and chemical abundances. In fact, Omega Cen may be the remnant core of a small...

Blue Origin didn't admit to these mishaps, of course, but every organization has its leaks! What impact will this have on NASA Artemis and HLS? Will we ever get transparency from Jeff Bezos?Two Blue Origin New Glenn rocket stages wrecked in factory mishaps! Will this delay NASA missions? | 11:07The Angry Astronaut | 144K subscribers | 71,442 views | August 22, 2024

Betelgeuse is our next door supergiant. It is almost 1000 times bigger than our sun and possibly it has already exploded in a giant supernova. How would we notice, how fast would the process be and what could we expect to see from Earth? Something happened in 2019 Betelgeuse is currently in the final stages of its short life. So when the red supergiant abruptly darkened in late 2019, the behavior led many to speculate that it might be about to explode. The loss of brightness was far greater than anything previously recorded. Analyzing data from Hubble Space Telescope and...

Earth's North Pole points to a direction in space marked by the North Star. Polaris is both a navigation aid and a remarkable star in its own right. It is the brightest member of a triple-star system and is a pulsating variable star. Polaris gets brighter and fainter periodically as the star’s diameter grows and shrinks over a four-day cycle.Polaris is a kind of star known as a Cepheid variable. Astronomers use these stars as "standard candles" because their true brightness depends on their period of pulsation: Brighter stars pulsate slower than fainter stars. How bright a star appears in...

In a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers pieced together the chemical identity of the asteroid that fueled the planet’s fifth mass extinction event. Sixty-six million years ago, the story of life on Earth took a dramatic turn when an asteroid collided with what’s now the Yucatán Peninsula in Chicxulub, Mexico. The aftereffects of the collision resulted in the extinction of an estimated 75% of animal species, including most dinosaurs except for birds. But practically nothing of the asteroid itself remains. In a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers pieced together the chemical identity...

Explanation: A supermoon occurred yesterday. And tonight's moon should also look impressive. Supermoons appear slightly larger and brighter than most full moons because they reach their full phase when slightly nearer to the Earth -- closer than 90 percent of all full moons. This supermoon was also a blue moon given the definition that it is the third of four full moons occurring during a single season. Blue moons are not usually blue, and a different definition holds that a blue moon is the second full moon that occurs during a single month. The featured image captured the blue supermoon...

An international team of astronomers has overturned a longstanding belief that stars and dark matter interact in a mysterious way to create uniform density structures across different galaxies. This finding, published in 'Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS)', challenges a theory that had perplexed scientists for 25 years. The research team, which includes scientists from Australia, the UK, Austria, and Germany, utilized the Very Large Telescope in Chile to observe and analyze 22 galaxies that are approximately four billion years old. The results revealed that the perceived uniformity in galaxy density may not be a real phenomenon but...

Set to launch in the mid-2020s, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will explore the mysteries of dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets, ushering in a new era of detailed cosmic surveys and discoveries. Credit: NASA ============================================================= NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, featuring a state-of-the-art camera, will significantly enhance our cosmic exploration, providing insights into dark energy, dark matter, and distant exoplanets through detailed, expansive surveys. The primary instrument for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a sophisticated camera that will survey the cosmos from the outskirts of our solar system all the way out to the edge...

(NEXSTAR) – Geomagnetic storm conditions observed over the weekend strengthened Monday morning, creating a “major disturbance in Earth’s magnetic field,” the Space Weather Prediction Center said. The storm reached a G4 level in strength — the second-highest on the scale, classified as “severe” — just before 11 a.m. Eastern Time. The geomagnetic storm conditions may continue into the evening as solar flaring continues, forecasters said. “Severe levels is pretty extraordinary,” Shawn Dahl, service coordinator at SWPC, said in a media briefing earlier this year. “It’s a very rare event to happen.” At the G4 level, impacts on our infrastructure are...

The death of this reigning physics paradigm, the Standard Model, has been predicted for decades. There are hints of its problems in the physics we already have. Strange results from laboratory experiments suggest flickers of ghostly new species of neutrinos beyond the three described in the Standard Model. And the universe seems full of dark matter that no particle in the Standard Model can explain. But recent tantalizing evidence might one day tie those vague strands of data together: Three times since 2016, ultra-high-energy particles have blasted up through the ice of Antarctica, setting off detectors in the Antarctic Impulsive...

A "telescope" buried deep under Antarctic ice has detected the first signals that scientists hope will allow them to identify the source of mysterious particles that bombard Earth from outer space. For the past ten years scientists have been planning and building an ambitious experiment to explain the mystery of what produces the cosmic rays and elusive particles known as neutrinos, which constantly pepper our planet. more at Telegraph.co.UK

Antarctic telescope delivers first neutrino sky map UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON NEWS RELEASE Posted: July 30, 2003 A novel telescope that uses the Antarctic ice sheet as its window to the cosmos has produced the first map of the high-energy neutrino sky. The map, unveiled for astronomers at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union, provides astronomers with their first tantalizing glimpse of very high-energy neutrinos, ghostly particles that are believed to emanate from some of the most violent events in the universe -- crashing black holes, gamma ray bursts, and the violent cores of distant galaxies. The first map of...

Explanation: A Halley-type comet with an orbital period of about 133 years, Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle is recognized as the parent of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. The comet's last visit to the inner Solar System was in 1992. Then, it did not become easily visible to the naked eye, but it did become bright enough to see from most locations with binoculars and small telescopes. This stunning color image of Swift-Tuttle's greenish coma, long ion tail and dust tail was recorded using film on November 24, 1992. That was about 16 days after the large periodic comet's closest approach to Earth....