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grayscale image showing the changes Phaethon undergoes as it rotates. Each side is slightly different Some of the changes observable in Phaethon as it rotates, as seen by the Arecibo Observatory. (Taylor et al., Planetary and Space Science, 2019) The near-Earth asteroid responsible for the spectacular annual Geminids meteor shower has been caught doing something really unexpected. Scientists studying the shifting light of 3200 Phaethon have concluded the rocky body is spinning faster and faster on its axis, shaving off around 4 milliseconds every year. That might not seem like a lot, but asteroid spins don't usually change at all....

Strange Long-Lasting Pulse of High-Energy Radiation Swept Over Earth Record Breaking Gamma Ray Burst Astronomers think GRB 221009A represents the birth of a new black hole formed within the heart of a collapsing star. In this illustration, the black hole drives powerful jets of particles traveling near the speed of light. The jets pierce through the star, emitting X-rays and gamma rays as they stream into space. Credit: NASA/Swift/Cruz deWildeNASA’s Swift and Fermi Missions Detect Exceptional Cosmic BlastAn unusually bright and long-lasting pulse of high-energy radiation swept over Earth Sunday, October 9, captivating astronomers around the world. The intense emission...

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency intends to launch its DESTINY+ mission to the near-Earth asteroid Phaethon in 2024, with the aim of flying by the space rock in 2028, so this "potentially hazardous" asteroid has been studied intensely in the lead-up to the mission. Researchers recently made one particularly notable discovery about Phaethon: Its spin is speeding up. The asteroid's rotational period is decreasing by 4 milliseconds per year. Even a small change like this could impact the DESTINY+ observations. Knowing the specific spin rate allows the team to more accurately predict the asteroid's orientation during the spacecraft's flyby —...

Ancient microbial life on Mars could have destroyed the planet’s atmosphere through climate change, which ultimately led to its extinction, new research has suggested. The new theory comes from a climate modeling study that simulated hydrogen-consuming, methane-producing microbes living on Mars roughly 3.7 billion years ago. At the time, atmospheric conditions were similar to those that existed on ancient Earth during the same period. But instead of creating an environment that would help them thrive and evolve, as happened on Earth, Martian microbes may have doomed themselves just as they were getting started, according to the study published Oct. 10...

Initially dubbed Swift J1913.1+1946...now re-named GRB221009A. 2.4 billion light-years away...18 teraelectronvolts. [T]hough this proximity happens to be 20 times closer than the average long gamma-ray burst, it poses absolutely no danger to life on Earth. Rather, it's tremendously exciting – an event that could These bursts mark the end of the life of a massive star – a supernova or hypernova. They can also emerge from a collision between two neutron stars. Different gamma-ray burst profiles mean different kinds of explosions, which fade in different ways. When astronomers observed a collision between two neutron stars in 2017, it produced a...

This Sentinel-2 image has been processed in true color, using the shortwave infrared channel to highlight the new flow of lava. The northernmost island of the Aeolian archipelago, located just off the northern tip of Sicily, Stromboli’s volcano has been erupting almost continuously for the past 90 years. Credit: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2022), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO Early on Sunday morning, a volcano on the Italian island of Stromboli erupted, releasing huge plumes of smoke and a lava flow pouring into the sea. Less than five hours after the eruption, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captured...

The destructive space rock was somewhere between 12.4 and 15.5 miles wide. The largest asteroid ever to hit Earth, which slammed into the planet around 2 billion years ago, may have been even more massive than scientists previously thought. Based on the size of the Vredefort crater, the enormous impact scar left by the gargantuan space rock in what is now South Africa, researchers recently estimated that the epic impactor could have been around twice as wide as the asteroid that wiped out the nonavian dinosaurs. The Vredefort crater, which is located around 75 miles (120 kilometers) southwest of Johannesburg,...

Researchers who have been studying medium-sized to large strong earthquakes in California have found that the local magnetic field changes 2-3 days before an earthquake. The researchers accessed magnetic field data from a collection of magnetometers at 125 sensor stations along significant faults in California in cooperation with the Google Accelerated Science team. They gathered information between 2005 and 2019, a period in which 19 earthquakes with a magnitude of 4.5 or higher struck the faults. Their multi-station analysis took into account other types of processes, such as rush hour traffic, that might have an impact on the magnetometers but...

A US Vela Hotel satellite captured the Vela Incident, also known as the South Atlantic Flash on September 22, 1979. The incident was a double flash of light that beamed off Antarctica near the Prince Edward Islands. To date, there is no official account of what caused the double flash leading to several hypotheses being advanced on the probable cause. Some sources claim that the incident was characteristic of a nuclear test while others believe that the flash was as a result of an aging satellite generating electrical signals. Other sources also claim that the lights were as a result...

an image of uranus taken using the keck observatory. The planet appears to glow blue against the darkness, with thin, gossamer rings wrapped vertically around its middle Uranus as imaged by the Keck Observatory. (Lawrence Sromovsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison/W.W. Keck Observatory) Uranus marches to the beat of its own weird little drum. Although it shares many similarities with our Solar System's other ice giant, Neptune, it has a bunch of quirks that are all its own. And one of these is impossible to miss: Its rotational axis is so skewed it may as well be lying down. That's a whopping...

NASA’s DART spacecraft intentionally crashed into Dimorphos, a petite moonlet orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos. Now, a telescope on the ground in Chile has imaged the massive plume created by the impact in the days following the encounter. NASA is still sifting through the data of the collision to determine if the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, altered Dimorphos’s orbital trajectory around its larger companion... The expanding dust trail from the collision is clearly visible, stretching to the right corner of the image. According to a NOIRLab release, the debris trail stretches about 6000 miles (10,000 kilometers) from the...

'Bronze Age Pompeii' Found in Italy Dec. 3 — Italian archaeologists have discovered one of the world's best-preserved prehistoric villages, a "Bronze Age Pompeii" that was buried in volcanic ash near the world-famous Roman city almost 4,000 years ago. The ancient settlement was overwhelmed by volcanic flow when Mount Vesuvius erupted around 1800 B.C., smothering the village near present-day Nola in southern Italy many centuries before Pompeii suffered the same fate. "This is by far the best-preserved prehistoric village in Italy and one of the best in the world. Everyday life in the ancient Bronze Age is preserved there," Giuseppe ...

Located in the eastern province of Van in Turkey, the falling water level of Lake Van, with the decrease in precipitation and excessive evaporation caused by the increase in temperature, revealed the 11-step harbor at the bottom of the Urartu period castle...Due to the decrease in the lake level, the 11-step port of that period became visible in the coastal part of the castle, which was used by the Urartians for sea transportation, in the district where many structures and boats previously emerged.Experts examined the area, which was opened in the bedrock with a width of 3 meters and which...

South Australia's Naracoorte Caves is one of the world's best fossil sites, containing a record spanning more than half a million years. Among the remains preserved in layers of sand are the bones of many iconic Australian megafauna species that became extinct between 48,000 and 37,000 years ago.The reasons for the demise of these megafauna species are intensely debated. But the older the fossils we can find, the better we can understand the species' evolution and extinction.To date, determining the precise age of the caves has been difficult. However our research demonstrates, for the first time, how old Naracoorte's caves...

CO2 Has Almost No Effect on Global Temperature, Says Leading Climate Scientist Forget ‘settled’ science or ‘consensus’ – that is a political construct designed to quash debate in the interests of promoting a command-and-control Net Zero agenda. One of the great drivers of continual changes in the climate is heat exchange within both the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface. Current understanding of the entire picture is limited, and it seems the opportunity has been taken to fill this gap by blaming carbon dioxide almost entirely for the recent gentle warming. A new paper on the so-called ‘greenhouse’ effect highlights the...

A joint study by the Israel Antiquities Authority, Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science has discovered the world's earliest evidence of opium use from pottery that was unearthed during an excavation in Tel Yehud, Israel. The pottery was collected and photographed at the Israel Antiquities Authority lab in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

After 306 days, DART's mission will come to an end when it slams into a Colosseum-sized asteroid 7 million miles from Earth. VIDEO AT LINK.............. This animation shows what it might look like when DART dives into the Didymos dirt. ESA–ScienceOffice.org In less than 12 hours, NASA's DART spacecraft will be no more. After launching atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 on Nov. 24, 2021, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test probe will make its final death dive into the asteroid Dimorphos on Monday, Sept. 26, colliding with the space rock at about 14,000 miles per hour. We've got all the info...

A prominent Egyptologist has boldly claimed to have solved one archaeology’s greatest mysteries: the location of Queen Nefertiti’s mummified remains. Zahi Hawass, the previous Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs in Egypt, is part of the Egypt-led team that undertook a high-profile excavation in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings that allegedly uncovered amulets once owned by King Tut. The team announced last December that they had also unearthed several unnamed mummies, one of which Hawass believes is the famed ruler. “We already have DNA from the 18th dynasty mummies, from Akhenaten to Amenhotep II or III, and there are two...

The bright trail of light captured imaginations all across the United Kingdom. A bright fireball streaked across the sky late at night on Sept. 14 in the U.K.. At first, some observers thought the whizzing ball of light could have been a piece of space junk, perhaps from one of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites. But after some speedy calculations, the U.K. Meteor Network determined that the fireball was caused by a small space rock entering Earth’s atmosphere. “We’ve analysed it from many more angles. It is definitely a meteor. Probably a small piece of an asteroid that’s broken off an asteroid....

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows off its capabilities closer to home with its first image of Neptune. Not only has Webb captured the clearest view of this distant planet’s rings in more than 30 years, but its cameras reveal the ice giant in a whole new light. Most striking in Webb’s new image is the crisp view of the planet’s rings – some of which have not been detected since NASA’s Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe Neptune during its flyby in 1989. In addition to several bright, narrow rings, the Webb image clearly shows Neptune’s fainter...