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Scientists are reporting that a “horned” comet three times bigger than Mount Everest is hurtling toward Earth after encountering a large explosion. The blast originated on October 5 from 12P/Pons-Brooks a cryovolcanic — or cold volcano — comet. According to Live Science, the comet, nicknamed the “Devil” due to its apparent horns, measures a colossal 18.6 miles in diameter, or the size of a small city. For reference, Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth, is about 5.5 miles high. This marked the second time this interstellar ice cube erupted in the last four months. The Science Times reports that...

New measurements of Neptune's atmosphere by a European space telescope suggest that a comet may have crashed into the gas giant about 200 years ago.Scientists analyzed the composition of Neptune's atmosphere using data from the Herschel space observatory. They found a peculiar distribution of carbon monoxide in the gas giant's atmosphere, which could be an indication of an earlier comet impact...Other similar collisions between comets (or asteroids) and planets helped the astronomers detect the telltale signs of cometary impacts.When pieces of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed into Jupiter in 1994, scientists were able to examine the trajectory and debris to...

An ambitious effort to understand the Earth’s climate over the past 485 million years has revealed a history of wild shifts and far hotter temperatures than scientists previously realized — offering a reminder of how much change the planet has already endured and a warning about the unprecedented rate of warming caused by humans. The timeline, published Thursday in the journal Science, is the most rigorous reconstruction of Earth’s past temperatures ever produced, the authors say. Created by combining more than 150,000 pieces of fossil evidence with state-of-the-art climate models, it shows the intimate link between carbon dioxide and global...

In November of 2020, a freak wave came out of the blue, lifting a lonesome buoy off the coast of British Columbia 17.6 meters high (58 feet). The four-story wall of water was finally confirmed in February 2022 as the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded at the time. Such an exceptional event is thought to occur only once every 1,300 years. And unless the buoy had been taken for a ride, we might never have known it even happened. For centuries, rogue waves were considered nothing but nautical folklore. It wasn't until 1995 that myth became fact. On the...

Dutch researchers have found evidence of approximately 20 mysterious, large-scale structures hidden beneath the sediment of an ancient lost ocean on Mars. The team also reports the discovery of evidence that an active Martian crust is pushing against Olympus Mons, elevating the solar system’s largest volcano. Previous scientific efforts have found hidden ice deposits and other unexpected structures on the red planet. However, the researchers behind this latest discovery say these mysterious, large-scale structures are particularly perplexing because they appear hidden beneath the sedimentary layers of an ancient ‘lost’ Martian ocean. “These dense structures could be volcanic in origin or...

The bronze blade, thought to be around 3,000 years old, has the markings of Ramesses II, hailed as the most powerful king of ancient Egypt...The sword was uncovered among the ruins of an ancient military fort in Housh Eissa, a city just south of Alexandria, which featured barracks for soldiers and storage rooms for food, weapons and other goods...The ancient sword likely did not belong to the famous king, but likely to one of his soldiers stationed at the fort, experts said.Elizabeth Frood, an Oxford University Egyptologist who was not involved in the dig, told The Washington Post: 'An object...

Hürriyet Daily News reports that an excavation conducted at the Maydos Church Hill Mound in northwestern Turkey uncovered a 3,900-year-old cylinder seal, a 3,400-year-old lead sling stone, spindle whorls, weaving tools, metal tools, and drills dated to the Middle Bronze Age, around 2000 B.C. Archaeologist Göksel Sazcı of Onsekiz Mart University said that when sling stones are found, they are usually made of stone or terracotta. "The ones made of lead are very rare and are mostly found in the Hellenistic and Roman periods," he added. "Such finds are mostly known from the Mediterranean island of Crete, its Knossos settlement,...

The bronze items—three shields and a helmet—were found during excavations at the archaeological site of Ayanis, an ancient citadel and settlement in what is now Van province in eastern Turkey, Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy announced on social media.Ayanis was a citadel city founded in the seventh century B.C. by the Urartian king Rusa. Urartu was an Iron Age kingdom that extended across parts of what is now eastern Turkey, Armenia, Iran and Iraq.The kingdom, renowned for its mastery of stone, metal and weaponry, was one of the most powerful states in West Asia during the eighth and...

Today, the coelacanth is a fascinating deep-sea fish that lives off the coasts of eastern Africa and Indonesia and can reach up to 2m in length. They are "lobe-finned" fish, which means they have robust bones in their fins not too dissimilar to the bones in our own arms, and are thus considered to be more closely related to lungfish and tetrapods (the back-boned animals with arms and legs such as frogs, emus, and mice) than most other fishes.Over the past 410 million years, more than more than 175 species of coelacanths have been discovered across the globe. During the...

In a couple of weeks, Earth will have a mini-moon for 56.6 days. Welcome to the neighborhood, 2024 PT5. Image credit: Buradaki/Shutterstock.com An asteroid heading towards Earth is set to have an unusual fate: instead of smashing through our planet’s atmosphere, it’s likely to become trapped in orbit and become a mini-moon. It will be a swift visit, however, and is likely to only remain in Earth's gravitational grasp for two months. The asteroid, named 2024 PT5, was discovered on August 7 and measures around 10 meters (33 feet) in diameter. Two astronomers from the Complutense University of Madrid, Carlos...

Did the eruption of Thera cause the Ten Plagues of Egypt, such as the transformation of the Nile into blood?The eruption of the Minoan island of Thera, or Santorini, has popularly been linked to the legend of Atlantis. However, many researchers also attempt to connect it to another famous story: the Ten Plagues. The Bible tells the story of the Ten Plagues of Egypt in the Book of Exodus. Is it possible that the eruption of Thera really could have resulted in these famous Ten Plagues? How the eruption of Thera supposedly explains the Ten Plagues According to advocates of...

Ahram Online reports that archaeologist Ahmed Said El-Kharadly of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and his colleagues are excavating the military site of Tell Al-Abqain, which is located near the coast of northern Egypt. They have uncovered mudbrick barracks structures dated to the New Kingdom period, between about 1550 and 1070 B.C. "It is an important discovery highlighting the strategic role of [the] Tell Al-Abqain area as a crucial military outpost on the Western military road, protecting Egypt's northwestern borders from potential invasions by Libyan tribes and Sea Peoples," said Mohamed Ismail Khaled, Secretary General of the SCA. The...

Explanation: Orbiting 400 kilometers above Quebec, Canada, planet Earth, the International Space Station Expedition 59 crew captured this snapshot of the broad St. Lawrence River and curiously circular Lake Manicouagan on April 11. Right of center, the ring-shaped lake is a modern reservoir within the eroded remnant of an ancient 100 kilometer diameter impact crater. The ancient crater is very conspicuous from orbit, a visible reminder that Earth is vulnerable to rocks from space. Over 200 million years old, the Manicouagan crater was likely caused by the impact of a rocky body about 5 kilometers in diameter. Currently, there is...

The structure in Quebec, Canada. Image credit: Google Maps Aman browsing Google Maps whilst planning a camping trip in Quebec's Côte-Nord region has potentially discovered the site of an ancient asteroid impact. People have discovered all sorts of oddities while browsing through Google Maps, from "aliens" and camera-hogging cats to the answer to decades old cold cases. In the latest find, Joël Lapointe stumbled across an unusual, roughly spherical structure about 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) across surrounding Marsal Lake in Quebec. Lapointe contacted geophysicist Pierre Rochette of the Centre de recherche en géosciences de l'environnement (CEREGE) in France for help...

Three new species of walnuts have been found above the Arctic Circle, remnants of a time when the North and South Poles were covered in forests. Credit: Florida Museum photo by Jeff Gage =============================================================================== The discovery of extinct walnuts in the Arctic suggests a warmer historical climate with dense forests, extending our knowledge of walnut evolution and geographic spread. Scientists have discovered three new species of extinct walnuts on an island above the Arctic Circle. The fossils were discovered further north than any known walnut species, living or extinct, and represent some of the oldest-known records of this group. A...

The first inhabitants of what is now the United States appeared around 15,000 to 20,000 years ago — a blip in time compared to the annals of some of the earliest places humans lived. Initially, population growth was slow due to the continent’s geographic isolation; significant increases began only after Europeans made their way to the Americas throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. By the 20th century, the U.S. population was experiencing rapid expansion — a trend that has slowed in recent years. Here’s a look at America’s changing population through history, from early prehistoric arrivals to the decline we’re...

...Approximately 4 billion years ago, an asteroid hit Ganymede. Now, a Kobe University researcher has discovered that the Solar system's biggest moon's axis shifted as a result of the impact...the asteroid was around 20 times larger than the one that ended the age of the dinosaurs on Earth...Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System, bigger even than the planet Mercury, and is also interesting for the liquid water oceans beneath its icy surface. Like the Earth's moon, it is tidally locked, meaning that it always shows the same side to the planet it is orbiting and thus also...

Scientists have uncovered a vast donut-shaped structure buried thousands of miles beneath our feet. Researchers from the Australian National University used seismic waves generated by earthquakes to peer into the Earth's mysterious molten core. By tracing the path of these waves through the planet, the researchers found a region a few hundred kilometres thick where they travelled two per cent slower than normal.

China has become the first country to gather samples from the far side of the moon and bring them back to Earth in a landmark achievement for the Beijing space programme. A re-entry capsule containing the precious cargo parachuted into a landing zone in the rural Siziwang Banner region of Inner Mongolia on Tuesday after being released into Earth’s orbit by the uncrewed Chang’e-6 probe....The mission’s lander spent two days collecting rock and soil from one of the oldest and largest craters on the moon, the 1,600-mile-wide South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin...

Scientists found that Sedna... had a weird orbit around the sun... hinted that another large mass in the outer solar system was gravitationally pulling on the miniworld...Then, in a 2014 study, astronomers announced that they had detected... 2012 VP113, with an eccentric orbit similar to Sedna's... Since 2016, Brown, Batygin and others... have discovered even more eccentric TNOs — bringing the total to 13...Planet Nine's composition is probably "most like Neptune," ... around 500 astronomical units away from the sun...This far out, it could take between 5,000 and 10,000 years for Planet Nine to complete a single trip around the...