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It started with a quiver deep down in the Martian crust weak, barely detectable, yet bearing 4.5-billion-year-old echoes. Those seismic waves, recorded by NASA's InSight lander from 2018 to 2022, have revealed a remarkable discovery: giant preserved fragments of Mars' primordial crust, trapped in the planet's mantle since the formation of the Solar System.The discovery emerged from the painstaking analysis of eight exceptionally clear marsquake events by a team led by Constantinos Charalambous of Imperial College London. Using the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), InSight recorded how primary (P) and secondary (S) waves traveled through the planet, reflecting and...

Could a vagabond giant from the outermost regions of interstellar space be poised on the cusp of sweeping by our cosmic doorstep? Astronomers say yes and they have the data to support it. Using the Pan-STARRS survey telescope on Hawaii and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, researchers have found a giant rogue planet, possibly as massive as Jupiter, speeding toward the solar system. It is a transient discovery made possible by the combination of wide-sky monitoring and the capability of high-resolution spectroscopy. Pan-STARRS first notified astronomers to the object with weak, creeping light signals near...

Both the James Webb Space Telescope and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory observatory SPHEREx snapped new images of 3I/ATLAS this week, almost two months after it was first spotted in the skies above Chile. 3I/ATLAS glows red in the new images with a seemingly threatening aura, though most scientists believe the object to be merely a 12-mile-wide interstellar comet. The snaps showed that 3I/ATLAS is “outgassing” as it approaches the Sun, which was expected. However, the object is dumping out a conspicuous amount of carbon dioxide and a surprisingly small amount of water and carbon monoxide, according to experts, including Harvard...

Abstract The prevailing idea so far about why the rainfall occurs was that after agglutination of water droplets with condensation nuclei, the size of the particle formed by the condensation nuclei connected with droplets of water increased considerably and caused its fall. This idea has led to numerous scientific publications in which empirical distribution functions of clouds’ water droplets sizes were proposed. Estimates values provided by these empirical distribution functions, in most cases, were validated by comparison with UHF Radar measurements

USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences has uncovered how tiny microorganisms work together as a living electrical network to consume some of this gas before it escapes, acting as a powerful living filter. By revealing how these microbes naturally reduce methane emissions, the findings could lead to innovative strategies to better control methane release in both natural and engineered environments. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, sheds light on a unique partnership between two very different microbes: anaerobic methanotrophic archaea (ANME) and sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB). Alone, neither microbe can consume methane. When ANME break down methane,...

Across the globe, technology that is designed to generate solar energy could potentially be employed for yet another planet-saving enterprise: Asteroid detection. One scientist at Sandia National Labs has started to get the ball rolling on a theory using a large-scale mirror, and a bit of ingenuity and hope. Sitting just south of Albuquerque is a field of more than 200 large-scale mirrors. These heliostats focus the immense power of the sun on to a 200-foot tower, collecting as much as a million watts of power during the day, but at night, they don’t have a job — they’re just...

A new global study reveals that ancient carbon, once thought securely stored in soils and rocks, is leaking into the atmosphere via rivers. For the first time, researchers have confirmed that carbon trapped in landscapes for thousands of years or longer can return to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide escaping from river surfaces. The study, led by scientists from the University of Bristol and featured as the cover story in Nature, suggests that plants and upper soil layers may be absorbing about one additional gigaton of CO2 annually to balance this release. This highlights an even more critical role for...

Hidden magma chambers, rising heat, and global climate implications are now under intense scrutiny. The stakes go far beyond the American West — and the timeline may be shorter than expected. Massive Volcanic Eruption. Credit: Shutterstock | The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel =============================================================================== A detailed geophysical study published in Nature in by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has refined our understanding of the Yellowstone supervolcano, uncovering new insights into its subsurface magma dynamics. Concurrently, climatological assessments by researchers such as Markus Stoffel (University of Geneva) have renewed discourse around the global systemic risks posed by a potential super-eruption —...

Archaeologists have conducted a study of lithic material from the Pilauco and Los Notros sites in north-western Patagonia, revealing evidence of human occupation in the region prior to the Younger Dryas period.The Younger Dryas, which occurred circa 12,900 to 11,700 years BP), was a cooling event which marked a return to glacial conditions, temporarily reversing the climatic warming of the preceding Late Glacial Interstadial.The period in which humans arrived in South America, in particular, north-western Patagonia, has been the subject of an ongoing debate by academics for many years.Previous archaeological evidence and palaeogenetic studies have suggested human presence between 16...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: * Experts believe a giant mass of hot rock known as the North Atlantic Anomaly (NAA) is heading toward New York City. * A new study suggests that the NAA could be responsible for the split between Canada and Greenland 80 million years ago. * The recent research adds to previous studies, pointing to a new hypothesis in geological history. ========================================================================= The theory of continental drift was proposed by German meteorologist Alfred Wegener more than a century ago in 1912. According to the theory, the continents we know today were once...

A meteorite that recently crashed through the roof of a U.S. home has been found to be older than Earth itself, according to scientists. NASA confirmed the object blazed across the Georgia sky in broad daylight on June 26 before exploding. A fragment from the meteorite struck a house in McDonough, where researchers from the University of Georgia later conducted an analysis. According to CBS, their examination revealed the meteorite likely formed around 4.56 billion years ago — approximately 20 million years before Earth came into existence. The dramatic event was witnessed by hundreds across Georgia and neighboring states, many...

A violent eruption under Greenland’s ice exposed a secret lake and left a crater the size of a city. Credit: ESA | The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel A hidden lake beneath Greenland’s Harder Glacier unexpectedly erupted, unleashing a powerful surge of water that carved a massive crater in the ice. The dramatic event caught researchers off guard, as water surged upward through thick ice, creating a profound impact on the glacier. Over just ten days, the lake released 23.8 billion gallons (90 million cubic meters) of water, equivalent to nine hours of Niagara Falls’ full-force flow. A Violent Flood...

New research reveals compelling evidence of a comet explosion 12,800 years ago, found in ocean sediment cores, supporting the theory of a global climate shift during the Younger Dryas period. ================================================================== In a groundbreaking study, researchers have uncovered compelling evidence of a comet that exploded in Earth’s atmosphere 12,800 years ago. The discovery, detailed in the journal PLOS One, stems from an in-depth analysis of oceanic sediment cores extracted from Baffin Bay, located near Greenland. These cores, containing ancient sedimentary layers, revealed the presence of unique microscopic particles that could only have originated from a comet or meteor. The study,...

Is this the start of Goo York City? UK scientists have discovered a massive “blob” of rock underneath the Appalachian mountains that’s slowly oozing its way toward New York City, per a slimy new study published in the journal Geology. “This thermal upwelling has long been a puzzling feature of North American geology,” the study’s lead author, Tom Gernon, Professor of Earth Science at the University of Southampton, said in a statement. Officially dubbed the Northern Appalachian Anomaly (NAA), this subterranean slimeball sits 125 feet deep underground and extends 220 miles across New England. The team reportedly discovered it using...

An eastern Russian volcano has erupted for the first time in more than 500 years, which may have been related to an 8.8 magnitude earthquake last week... The Krasheninnikov Volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula emitted a plume of ash 3.7 miles into the sky overnight. The last recorded eruption of the volcano happened in the 15th century.. ... Last week's massive earthquake was the latest in a series of seismic events in the region, including another temblor that shook a region 11 times zones away from Moscow on the Pacific peninsula ... Krasheninnikov is one of 8 volcanoes nestled among...

Google has for years been harnessing the power of its Android smartphones to detect and measure tens of thousands of earthquakes. In a new paper published in the journal Science, researchers from the search giant described how they used motion sensors from its two billion-strong network of phones running Android between the years 2021 and 2024 to detect and alert quakes to users in almost 100 countries around the world. Known as "Android Earthquake Alerts" (AEA), this early warning system has uses the smartphones' accelerometers to detect telltale vibrations as they happen and inform residents of quakes in their areas....

On November 7, 1492, the Ensisheim meteorite was observed to fall in a wheat field outside the walled town of Ensisheim in then Alsace, Further Austria (now France).It was a stony, triangular-shaped meteorite weighing 127 kilograms. The object can still be seen in Ensisheim's Museum, the sixteenth-century Musée de la Régence.Upon impact, the meteorite created a 1-meter (3 ft 3 in) deep hole. Its fall through the Earth's atmosphere was witnessed at a distance of up to 150 kilometers from where it eventually landed.People living in neighboring areas gathered at the location to raise the meteorite from its impact hole....

An enormous, 515-mile-long flash of lightning that crossed at least three states has been named the longest in recorded history in the world. The 2017 “megaflash” stretched from eastern Texas to near Kansas City — a distance that would take at least eight hours by car or 90 minutes by commercial plane, according to the World Meteorological Organization. In comparison, the average bolt of lightning usually measures less than 10 miles, according to the National Weather Service.

Mysterious Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions may point to Moses and Joseph as historical figures, sparking global scholarly controversy. A groundbreaking proto-thesis by independent scholar Michael S. Bar-Ron suggests exactly that. After eight years of rigorous epigraphic analysis, Bar-Ron argues that two inscriptions found at Serabit el-Khadim, an ancient turquoise mining site on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, contain the Semitic phrase “This is from MŠ” — a possible early rendering of the name Moses (Moshe). The inscriptions, dated to Egypt’s late 12th Dynasty during the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhat III, are written in Proto-Sinaitic, considered one of the world’s earliest alphabetic scripts. According to...

Archaeologists working at the ancient Hittite settlement of Kayalıpınar, located in Türkiye's Sivas province, have uncovered a remarkably well-preserved clay tablet containing a bird omen text...The discovery was made as part of an ongoing excavation led by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Çiğdem Maner of Koç University's Department of Archaeology and Art History. The site, historically known as Samuha, holds immense historical importance as a major administrative and religious center of the Hittite Empire...The tablet offers insights into Hittite divination practices, particularly the interpretation of bird movements as omens. Known as "bird oracles", these texts were central to Hittite spiritual and state...