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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...

New research indicates that the most recent major collision in our galaxy occurred billions of years later than previously believed.Using data from the Gaia spacecraft, researchers found that the Milky Way's last major galactic collision happened less than three billion years ago, not the eight to 11 billion years previously thought...Newberg, a renowned astrophysicist and Milky Way expert, and Donlon focused on the so-called "wrinkles" in our galaxy, which are formed when other galaxies collide with the Milky Way...By comparing their observations of the wrinkles with cosmological simulations, the team was able to determine that our last significant collision with...

An Egyptian archaeological team discovered the remains of the sixth-century-B.C. structure three years ago during excavations at an archaeological site in the ancient city of Buto, now called Tell Al-Faraeen, in Egypt's Kafr El-Sheikh governorate...Unlike traditional monuments, which typically have a single pylon, the observatory had two pylons facing each other, framing the circular observatory spot and symbolizing akhet, or the horizon where the sun rises. Facing this Akhet was a limestone watchtower that was likely once paired with another and used to observe constellations, Ghonim said.The excavation also uncovered a statue of the falcon-headed god Horus. The depiction of...

new planet-wide electric field that is as fundamental to Earth as gravity has been discovered in a major scientific breakthrough. The ambipolar electric field, which begins 150 miles above the planet, has been described as a “great invisible force” that lifts up the sky and is responsible for the polar winds. The polar winds interact with the jet streams to help drive the majority of weather patterns across the globe. Until now, the field had only been theorised, but a Nasa team, which includes scientists from the University of Leicester, has now sent a rocket into the field and measured...

The longest core of rock ever extracted from beneath Greenland’s thick ice could hold clues about how quickly the island’s frozen covering will melt as the planet warms.Preliminary analysis of the rock and associated sediment suggests that, at some time in the past three million years or so, the material in this core was exposed to air. That means that the ice atop it had melted away, at least temporarily.The work adds to a small but growing cadre of studies that use Greenland’s bedrock to illuminate how unstable the overlying ice has been in the past…Using the latest equipment, the...

A 3,500-year-old jar has been accidentally smashed into pieces by a four-year-old boy during a trip to a museum in Israel. The Hecht Museum in Haifa told the BBC the crockery dated back to the Bronze Age between 2200 and 1500BC - and was a rare artefact because it was so intact. It had been on display near the entrance of the museum without glass, as the museum believes there is "special charm" in showing archaeological finds "without obstructions". The jar was most likely originally intended to be used to carry local supplies, such as wine and olive oil. It...

Explanation: Do underground oceans vent through canyons on Saturn's moon Enceladus? Long features dubbed tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space, creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon's South Pole and creating Saturn's mysterious E-ring. Evidence for this has come from the robot Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Pictured here, a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from a close flyby. The unusual surface features dubbed tiger stripes are visible in false-color blue. Why Enceladus is active remains a mystery, as the neighboring moon...

The images are ones you have to see to believe. One of the world's biggest icebergs is stuck spinning in an ocean vortex off the coast of Antarctica.Massive iceberg stuck spinning in ocean vortex off Antarctica | 1:57NEWS CENTER Maine | 104K subscribers | 897,238 views | August 15, 2024

In a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers pieced together the chemical identity of the asteroid that fueled the planet’s fifth mass extinction event. Sixty-six million years ago, the story of life on Earth took a dramatic turn when an asteroid collided with what’s now the Yucatán Peninsula in Chicxulub, Mexico. The aftereffects of the collision resulted in the extinction of an estimated 75% of animal species, including most dinosaurs except for birds. But practically nothing of the asteroid itself remains. In a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers pieced together the chemical identity...

The warning of a tremor that could kill more than 320,000 people is forcing Japan to think of the abstract danger of disaster in more concrete terms, says Gearoid Reidy for Bloomberg Opinion.To live in Japan is to live with the risk of a devastating earthquake at any time. Usually, however, people tend to view that threat in the abstract. It’s kind of like thinking about death - I know I’ll die someday, but I hope it won’t be today. And so far, at least, I keep getting lucky. Until we don’t. Thursday’s announcement from Japanese authorities, warning of an...

Using data from NASA's InSight lander - which carried out a four-year-long mission that ended in 2022 - researchers say the amount of water underground could cover all of Mars with between one to two kilometres of water.

(NEXSTAR) – Geomagnetic storm conditions observed over the weekend strengthened Monday morning, creating a “major disturbance in Earth’s magnetic field,” the Space Weather Prediction Center said. The storm reached a G4 level in strength — the second-highest on the scale, classified as “severe” — just before 11 a.m. Eastern Time. The geomagnetic storm conditions may continue into the evening as solar flaring continues, forecasters said. “Severe levels is pretty extraordinary,” Shawn Dahl, service coordinator at SWPC, said in a media briefing earlier this year. “It’s a very rare event to happen.” At the G4 level, impacts on our infrastructure are...

Explanation: A Halley-type comet with an orbital period of about 133 years, Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle is recognized as the parent of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. The comet's last visit to the inner Solar System was in 1992. Then, it did not become easily visible to the naked eye, but it did become bright enough to see from most locations with binoculars and small telescopes. This stunning color image of Swift-Tuttle's greenish coma, long ion tail and dust tail was recorded using film on November 24, 1992. That was about 16 days after the large periodic comet's closest approach to Earth....

The carvings at Göbekli Tepe even show the movements of the constellations. Image credit: Dr Martin Sweatman Acataclysmic comet impact 13,000 years ago may have sparked the rise of civilization, according to the authors of a new study. The event – which many scientists believe never happened – may even be documented at the world-famous site of Göbekli Tepe, forming part of a series of carvings that the researchers say represent the world’s oldest solar calendar. Located in southern Türkiye, Göbekli Tepe is a pre-pottery Neolithic complex that is estimated to be around 12,000 years old. Analyzing an intricately carved...

The slabs included hieroglyphic inscriptions about the kings' achievements, including King Amenhotep III, also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent and ancestor of King Tut...The ancient artifacts were discovered in the area in 1960, but were lost the following decade during the construction of the Aswan High Dam in Aswan.Archaeologists had rushed to remove them before they were lost underwater, but many couldn't be relocated in time...The researchers used underwater filming and photographing techniques to document the discovery.They are also creating 3D models of the images using photogrammetry - the process of using surface measurements from pictures to create an accurate...