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The impact was captured using a door camera. Image credit: Compass Media/Joe Velaidum For possibly the first time ever, a meteorite has been captured on video and audio as it struck the Earth, just outside one man's home. Joe Velaidum, of Marshfield, Prince Edward Island, Canada, was standing outside his home last July, before setting off for a walk with his dog. If he had lingered a little longer, he may have become the second person in history to have been confirmed to be hit by a meteorite. "It is surreal to think about just rare and how close this...

Archaeologists and climate scientists from the University of Copenhagen can now show that ritual sacrifices of sun stones coincided with a large volcanic eruption that made the sun disappear throughout Northern Europe. This image shows two so-called sun stones, which are small flat shale pieces with finely incised patterns and sun motifs. They are known only from the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. Credit: National Museum of Denmark Volcanic eruptions shaped the destinies of ancient European societies, leading to dramatic cultural shifts and the emergence of sun worship practices among Neolithic communities. Archaeological findings, including the mysterious sun...

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are intense, millisecond-long bursts of radio waves that release energy equivalent to the Sun’s output over several days. A new study suggests they may result from asteroids colliding with neutron stars, shedding light on their potential origins and the immense energy involved. The study proposes that FRBs could be caused by interstellar objects, such as asteroids or comets, colliding with neutron stars, the ultra-dense remnants of massive stars. These collisions release up to 10^29 joules of energy, enough to power humanity for 100 million years. While collisions between neutron stars and interstellar objects are rare in...

An international team of geophysicists using a new imaging technique that measures the speed of seismic waves caused by earthquakes to locate the juncture of tectonic plates in the Earth’s mantle say they have discovered the remnants of what appears to be a “lost world” beneath the Pacific Ocean. Previous methods to locate these junctures between tectonic plates have always found them where scientists expected them to be. However, this latest joint effort by geophysicists from ETH Zurich and the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) found indications of these zones at locations that display no indications of tectonic plates...

The "demoted" dwarf planet Pluto and its largest moon Charon make an unusual pair, and for decades, scientists have been discussing how the binary system—in which each mutually orbits the other—came to be. With Charon being half Pluto's size, experts have struggled to explain how it ended up in the dwarf planet's domain.Now, a team of researchers has suggested that Pluto may have secured Charon through a newly described "kiss and capture" mechanism... Their work was published on Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience.The new theory suggests that billions of years ago, Pluto and Charon collided in the far reaches...

This weekend, the mountain-size space rock will peak in brightness in a rare once-in-a-decade event that you can observe from home with basic stargazing binoculars — or in a free livestream. Named (887) Alinda, the near-Earth asteroid measures an estimated 2.6 miles (4.2 kilometers) wide — roughly the width of Manhattan — according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. On Wednesday (Jan. 8), the chunky space rock made its closest approach to Earth in decades, swooping to within 7.6 million miles (12.3 million km) of our planet, or about 32 times the average distance between Earth and the moon. Alinda isn't...

Archaeologists have dated the lakefront Neolithic (7000–3200 b.c.) settlement of Dispilio in northern Greece using a method that involves detecting evidence of bursts of cosmic radiation in ancient wood samples. In 2012, physicist Fusa Miyake first identified sudden spikes in the level of radioactive carbon-14 in tree rings that could be attributed to bombardment by cosmic rays at precisely known points in the past. A handful of these spikes, called Miyake Events, which allow wood samples to be dated to a single year, can be identified in tree rings dating back as far as 12,350 b.c.A team including University of...

An artistic representation of Chiron’s nucleus surrounded by debris and a coma of dust and gas. Credit: William Gonzalez Sierra UCF researchers utilized the James Webb Space Telescope to uncover unique characteristics of (2060) Chiron, a distant “centaur” that exhibits traits of both a comet and an asteroid. These findings provide valuable insights into the origins of our Solar System. Although our Solar System is billions of years old, we’ve only recently gained deeper insight into one of its most dynamic and intriguing members: (2060) Chiron. Chiron belongs to a group of celestial objects known as “Centaurs.” These objects orbit...

Led by Jacob Kegerreis, the team's new study revealed that a rogue asteroid may have passed too close to Mars. During its flyby, Mars' strong gravitational pull would have disrupted, or ripped apart, the asteroid, leading to hundreds of thousands of small rocky fragments orbiting Mars.While more than half of the fragments created from the disruption event are believed to have been ejected away from Mars, those trapped within the planet's orbit would have continued to collide, creating more debris. After these collisions stopped and the fragments settled into a ring around Mars, the material within the rings likely began...

This and other recent coronal mass ejections were not directed towards Earth. The extremely rare coronal mass ejection seen like a bubble stretching around the Sun! Image Credit: NASA/ESA/SOHO Solar scientists think there is a very active sunspot on the far side of the Sun. Sunspots are a common feature, especially during Solar Maximum, but we are yet to see this particular one. It will come into view next week, but something must be stirring the solar activity. In the last 10 days, four coronal mass ejections (CMEs) have been seen leaving the other side of the Sun. Among them,...

For years, scientists have debated whether humans or the climate have caused the population of large mammals to decline dramatically over the past several thousand years. A new study from Aarhus University confirms that climate cannot be the explanation. About 100,000 years ago, the first modern humans migrated out of Africa in large numbers. They were eminent at adapting to new habitats, and they settled in virtually every kind of landscape—from deserts to jungles to the icy taiga in the far north. Part of the success was human's ability to hunt large animals. With clever hunting techniques and specially built...

Researchers found direct evidence that Clovis people relied heavily on mammoths for food, using isotopic analysis to confirm 40% of a Clovis mother's diet came from mammoths. The study highlights how hunting large animals supported the Clovis people's mobility and rapid spread, while also contributing to the extinction of Ice Age megafauna...The study, featured on the Dec. 4 cover of the journal Science Advances, employed stable isotope analysis to reconstruct the diet of the mother of an infant found at a 13,000-year-old Clovis burial site in Montana. Previously, researchers inferred prehistoric diets primarily through indirect evidence, such as stone tools...

Artist’s impression of a superflaring sun-like star as seen in visible light. Image: © MPS/Alexey Chizhik Scientists Say Our Sun Could Release a Deadly ‘Superflare’ At Any Moment A new study led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Solar System Research (MPS) has revealed stars like our sun emit a massive burst of energy called a “superflare” that can prove dangerous or evenly deadly roughly every 100 years, meaning our Sun’s next event is already overdue. Previous research has suggested that superflares, which release more than one octillion joules of energy within a short period, may occur less...

Explanation: Based on its well-measured orbit, 3200 Phaethon (sounds like FAY-eh-thon) is recognized as the source of the meteoroid stream responsible for the annual Geminid meteor shower. Even though most meteor shower parents are comets, 3200 Phaethon is a known and closely tracked near-Earth asteroid with a 1.4 year orbital period. Rocky and sun-baked, its perihelion or closest approach to the Sun is well within the orbit of innermost planet Mercury. In this telescopic field of view, the asteroid's rapid motion against faint background stars of the heroic constellation Perseus left a short trail during the two minute total exposure...

Explanation: It was a night of 100,000 meteors. The Great Meteor Storm of 1833 was perhaps the most impressive meteor event in recent history. Best visible over eastern North America during the pre-dawn hours of November 13, many people -- including a young Abraham Lincoln -- were woken up to see the sky erupt in streaks and flashes. Hundreds of thousands of meteors blazed across the sky, seemingly pouring out of the constellation of the Lion (Leo). The featured image is a digitization of a wood engraving which itself was based on a painting from a first-person account. We know...

Now, only 5 days after a Mag 7.0 earthquake shook the Cape Mendocino Fracture Zone offshore of the CA coast, aftershocks continue hourly. Over 420 earthquakes in this 110 km x 20 km region are already listed. More happen each hour. Why do hundreds of small earthquakes offshore of northern California matter? Nobody lives there, no businesses nor voters nor industry is destroyed. No FEMA trailers nor FEMA money is needed of the earthquake is underwater. The Cape Mendocino Fracture Zone is the southern border of three tectonic plates being pushed east underneath the US continental plate. The Gorda Plate...

If you’re ever despairing about the state of the world, you can — at least, according to some scholars — be thankful it’s not the year 536 CE. To be fair, it’s medieval scholars, not 21st-century ones, who called 536 CE the worst year to be alive. But hear them out, because it sounds pretty bad. That year, a massive volcano erupted, historians believe, filling the air with volcanic ash. Of course, the majority of people affected by the disaster had no idea what was happening — they just knew it was very suddenly very dark for a very long...

These asteroids are as small as 10 m across, making them the smallest asteroids ever observed in the main asteroid belt. An artist’s illustration of Webb revealing, in the infrared, a population of main-belt decameter asteroids. Image credit: Ella Maru / Julien de Wit. Asteroid discoveries are essential for planetary-defense efforts aiming to prevent impacts with Earth, including the more frequent megaton explosions from decameter impactors. While large asteroids (=>100 km) have remained in the main belt since their formation, small asteroids are commonly transported to the near-Earth object (NEO) population. “We have been able to detect NEOs down to...

Amenhotep III became king while he was still a child. Image credit: Moraes et al., Clinical Anatomy (2024), Courtesy of Cícero Moraes Known by his superb nickname "The Magnificent", Pharaoh Amenhotep III oversaw arguably the most glorious period in Ancient Egyptian history, bringing peace and prosperity to the empire while commissioning the construction of some of its most lavish landmarks. Now, more than 3,350 years after his death, the ancient ruler has finally been restored to his former brilliance thanks to a new reconstruction of his mummified face. Presiding over Egypt for just under 40 years during the 18th Dynasty...

Ancient Cypriot writing was found on a wall dating from the 6th century BC at an archeological dig in Palaepaphos, the department of antiquities said on Wednesday...The 2024 excavation continued to focus on a monument north of a 186m monumental wall shaped like a P at the same site and which faces the sea.It had been thought it was part of a fortification and functioned as a defensive tower but the latest round of excavations points to it being unconnected and probably devotional.[emphasis added] Previous excavations have shown that the site was founded on a layer of the Late Cypriot...