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For now, life is flourishing on our oxygen-rich planet, but Earth wasn't always that way – and scientists have predicted that, in the future, the atmosphere will revert back to one that's rich in methane and low in oxygen. This probably won't happen for another billion years or so. But when the change comes, it's going to happen fairly rapidly, according to research published in 2021. This shift will take the planet back to something like the state it was in before what's known as the Great Oxidation Event (GOE) around 2.4 billion years ago. What's more, the researchers behind...

THE Moon destroyed a forest on Earth just by wobbling, according to a new study. The theory solves a mystery from 2015 which involved tens of millions of mangrove trees dying in Australia.... ...The researchers used 30 years of national satellite data to conduct their research and correlate the Moon's behavior with the mass tree death. This helped them spot a pattern of trees dying every 18 to 19 years, which is in keeping with the Moon wobble timeline....

The coronal hole is a gigantic solar gulf stretching across the sun’s center. Coronal holes are areas in the sun's upper atmosphere where our star's electrified gas (or plasma) is less hot and dense than in other regions, which makes them appear black in contrast. Around these holes,the sun's magnetic field lines, instead of looping back in on themselves, point outward into space, beaming solar material outwards at up to 1.8 million mph (2.9 million km/h)... This barrage of energetic solar debris, mostly consisting of electrons, protons and alpha particles, is absorbed by Earth’s magnetic field, which becomes compressed, triggering...

Hosted by: Hank GreenEarth's other moons | SciShow Space104,369 views | November 22, 2022

What Happens If A Star Explodes Near The Earth?Veritasium | November 15, 2022

...Last spring, Manning realized he could solve the problem by looking elsewhere -- hundreds of kilometers away from Thera -- to regions of the Aegean Sea that experienced the tsunami effects caused by the eruption. Manning incorporated dates obtained for these episodes into his model to test for, and discount, the volcanic carbon dioxide caveat. On Thera itself, he also spotted the importance of a short but clearly observed gap in time between the abandonment of the town at Akrotiri and the huge eruption, and he incorporated this previously overlooked constraint into the modeling....

Small branding irons from ancient Egypt were likely used to mark the skin of human slaves, a new study suggests.Several of the ancient Egyptian branding-irons — actually made of bronze — were too small for large animals like cattle and were probably used to brand human slaves.Several ancient texts and illustrations, as well as 10 branding irons dating to 3,000 years ago, suggest that ancient Egyptians branded slaves. These branding irons, actually made of bronze, are now in the collections of the British Museum and the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London.The branding irons are thought to...

Many different species of phytoplankton are photosynthetic: They require sunlight to generate energy. When the ocean freezes over, less light can penetrate to the surface where they typically thrive. Scientists have been studying when and where the tiny organisms begin to flourish and have noted this typically occurs when the sea ice retreats. In recent years, work at the opposite end of the world, in the Arctic, has suggested masses of phytoplankton (or "blooms") can and do survive under sea ice in darker, low light conditions. [S]cientists collected data from 51 floating laboratories ("floats") deployed between 2014 and 2021. The...

Scientists have confirmed that a “stabilizing feedback” on 100,000-year timescales keeps global temperatures in check Peer-Reviewed Publication MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY The Earth’s climate has undergone some big changes, from global volcanism to planet-cooling ice ages and dramatic shifts in solar radiation. And yet life, for the last 3.7 billion years, has kept on beating. Now, a study by MIT researchers in Science Advances confirms that the planet harbors a “stabilizing feedback” mechanism that acts over hundreds of thousands of years to pull the climate back from the brink, keeping global temperatures within a steady, habitable range. Just how does...

Archaeologists in Israel say they have found the first-known written sentence in Canaanite, an alphabet used by the long-ago inhabitants of the region and until now lost to time. The sentence—comprising 17 Canaanite characters, totaling seven words—was incised on an ivory comb carved from an elephant tusk. It says: “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.” Photo: Dafna Gazit, Israel Antiquities Authority

video at link................ Scientists have discovered three elusive asteroids lurking in a region of space near the sun often cloaked by solar glare, including one they say has the capacity to deliver planetary devastation. One of the asteroids, 2022 AP7, is roughly 1 mile wide and crosses Earth's orbit trajectory around the sun, rendering it one of the most "hazardous" asteroids discovered in the past eight years, a team of researchers announced Monday. “Our twilight survey is scouring the area within the orbits of Earth and Venus for asteroids," said Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Earth and Planets Laboratory...

Some asteroids occupy corners of the sky in which the sun's glare smothers them...Last year, in the hope of finding asteroids cloaked by excessive sunlight, an international team of astronomers co-opted a camera primarily designed to investigate the universe's notoriously elusive dark matter.

In a presentation earlier this month, a team of researchers from The Geological Society of America (GSA)identified nine of what they believe to be the most livable caves on the surface of Mars — spaces large enough that they could give future explorers much-needed protection from the harsh environment of the planet's surface, The New York Times reports. The Red Planet is a hostile place: temperatures can drop to below negative 148 degrees Fahrenheit, the atmosphere is incredibly thin, and there's no ozone layer, which means solar radiation is extreme as well. And that's not to mention the very real...

Europe's Mars Express spacecraft has peered deeper into the subsurface of the Martian moon Phobos than ever before, finding hints of unknown structures that could be clues as to the moon's origin. Mars Express, which is a 19-year-veteran spacecraft in orbit around Mars, came within 51.6 miles (83 kilometers) of Phobos on Sept. 22, 2022 and was able to probe beneath the moon's surface using upgraded software on its MARSIS instrument (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding). Understanding the interior structure of Phobos could be key in solving the mystery of its origin. A close-up of the Martian...

The famous Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico completely collapsed in 2020. Now, scientists going through its final observations offer a major new asteroid report...Using data collected by Arecibo between December 2017 and December 2019, scientists have released the largest radar-based report on near-Earth asteroids ever published. The report, published Sept. 22 in The Planetary Science Journal, includes detailed observations of 191 near-Earth asteroids, including nearly 70 that are deemed "potentially hazardous" — that is, large asteroids with orbits that bring them within 4.65 million miles (7.5 million kilometers) of Earth, or roughly 20 times the average distance between Earth and...

A newly discovered, "potentially hazardous" asteroid almost the size of the world's tallest skyscraper is set to tumble past Earth just in time for Halloween, according to NASA. The asteroid, called 2022 RM4, has an estimated diameter of between 1,083 and 2,428 feet (330 and 740 meters) — just under the height of Dubai's 2,716-foot-tall (828 m) Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. It will zoom past our planet at around 52,500 mph (84,500 km/h), or roughly 68 times the speed of sound. At its closest approach on Nov. 1, the asteroid will come within about 1.43 million...

Named Miyake events after the lead author of the first study to describe them, the spikes occur roughly once every 1,000 years or so and are recorded as sudden increases in the radiocarbon levels of ancient tree rings. The leading theory among scientists is that Miyake events are solar flares that are 80 times more powerful than the strongest flare ever recorded. But a new study...suggests that the origin of the radiation bursts could be even more mysterious than first thought. Scientists have spotted six Miyake events in tree rings so far, indicated by sudden, single-year leaps in the concentrations...

A joint study by TAU and the Hebrew University, involving 20 researchers from different countries and disciplines, has accurately dated 21 destruction layers at 17 archaeological sites in Israel by reconstructing the direction and/or intensity of the earth's magnetic field recorded in burnt remnants. The new data verify the Biblical accounts of the Egyptian, Aramean, Assyrian, and Babylonian military campaigns against the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Findings indicate, for example, that the army of Hazael, King of Aram-Damascus, was responsible for the destruction of several cities—Tel Rehov, Tel Zayit, and Horvat Tevet, in addition to Gath of the Philistines,...

Ancient Egyptian carving sheds light on Karnak temple Sun Dec 17, 5:11 PM ET CAIRO (AFP) - Egypt announced the discovery of a carving dating back to the 12th century BC which could hold the key to valuable information on Karnak temple, the largest ancient religious site in the world. The large quartzite stone, carved with 17 lines of hieroglyphics, highlights the achievements of high priest Bak En Khonso and his contributions to the grand hall at Karnak. The 170 cm by 80 cm carving (5.5 by 2.5 feet), unearthed by a team of archeologists in the southern Nile city...

PLYMOUTH, Mass. -- A piece of debris came crashing through the roof of a building in Plymouth. Investigators are not sure where the piece of debris came from or what it came from. However, they do know it came from far up because the force of the object falling tore a hole through the roof of a building. Luckily, the object fell into an empty room and no one was hurt. Andrew McWilliams, an employee at Michael’s Warehouse, was shocked when he opened a door in his office to see the debris on the floor. “And that was the first...