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Seeing our world through the eyes of a migratory bird would be a rather spooky experience. Something about their visual system allows them to 'see' our planet's magnetic field, a clever trick of quantum physics, and biochemistry that helps them navigate vast distances. Now, for the first time ever, scientists from the University of Tokyo have directly observed a key reaction hypothesised to be behind birds', and many other creatures', talents for sensing the direction of the planet's poles. Importantly, this is evidence of quantum physics directly affecting a biochemical reaction in a cell – something we've long hypothesised but...

NASA is actively monitoring a strange anomaly in Earth's magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies above the planet, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa.

A NASA intern has discovered a new type of aurora in 3-year-old video footage of the Arctic sky. With the help of NASA scientists and a satellite, Jennifer Briggs, a physics student at Pepperdine University, connected the unusual aurora to a sudden retreat in Earth's magnetic field. It's the first time scientists have seen an aurora caused solely by a compression of Earth's magnetic field. Usually, auroras dance across the sky when a lot of high-energy particles from the sun, called solar wind, flood over Earth. But in this case, the sun didn't show any unusual or heightened activity.

What prompted this “massive, but localised compression”, which looked like something punched the magnetic field, is unclear. The edge of the bubble rushed towards the Earth by about 25,000 kilometres, taking just 1 minute and 45 seconds. The researchers suggested that there might have been an unprecedented storm in the area where the solar particles sneak through our protective bubble, the magnetosphere. What caused the storm is not known. "This motion is something that we've never seen before. This eastward and then westward and then spiralling motion is not something that we've ever seen, not something we currently understand", Briggs...

The light show, forecast for Saturday and Sunday, is a result of geomagnetic storm activity, NOAA says. The best time to see the aurora is a couple hours before or after midnight with a clear, dark sky creating the best conditions. A similar phenomena occurred in March, when a geostorm gave those in southern Canada and the northern US a look at the northern lights.

NASA has shared a spectacular picture of the Northern Lights adorning the sky in Iceland - but warned that the "beauty and the beast" aurora could wreak havoc here on Earth. The image was captured by astronomer Juan Carlos Casado in 2016, and selected as NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day on Sunday. It shows the aurora borealis over Thingvallavatn Lake in Iceland - a lake that partly fills a fault that divides Earth's large Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. "Admire the beauty but fear the beast," wrote Casado, in his picture caption. The beauty is the aurora overhead,...

Russian photographer Alexander Stepanenko visited the Murmansk region in Russia for years, attempting to capture an image of the aurora over an abandoned military hydroelectric station. Stepanenko's patience finally paid off on Sept. 10, 2018. This and other photos were recently selected for the shortlist of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest, organized by the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in the United Kingdom.

Have you ever wanted to see auroras, the rippling lights that sometimes paint the heavens with unearthly blues or greens and make you feel like you're in a van Gogh painting? If you live in a northern U.S. state, Tuesday might be your chance. Residents in some parts of at least 15 states across the country may be able to see the awe-inspiring phenomenon, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said on Monday. "The further north you are -- say, upstate New York or upper Michigan -- the more likely you are to see the aurora," Rodney Viereck, a...

Nearly a millennium and a half ago, red light streaked across the night sky over Japan. Witnesses compared it to the tail of a pheasant -- it appeared as a fan of beautiful red feathers stretched across the sky. Since the event, scientists have studied the witness accounts written in the year 620 A.D. and speculated about what the cosmic phenomenon could have actually been. Now, researchers from The Graduate University for Advanced Studies may have found the answer... "It is the oldest Japanese astronomical record of a 'red sign,'" said Ryuho Kataoka, a researcher with the Department of Polar...

By comparing data collected by all-sky cameras, magnetometers, and seismometers during three aurora events in 2019, University of Alaska Fairbanks seismologist Carl Tape and colleagues show that it's possible to match the striking display of lights with seismic signals, to observe the same phenomenon in different ways. Researchers have known for a while that seismometers are sensitive to magnetic fluctuations—and have worked hard to find ways to shield their instruments against magnetic influence or to remove these unwanted signals from their seismic data. But the aurora study offers an example of how seismometers could be paired with other instruments to...

It sounds like a riddle: What do you get if you take two small diamonds, put a small magnetic crystal between them and squeeze them together very slowly? The answer is a magnetic liquid, which seems counterintuitive. Liquids become solids under pressure, but not generally the other way around. But this unusual pivotal discovery, unveiled by a team of researchers working at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory, may provide scientists with new insight into high-temperature superconductivity and quantum computing. Though scientists and engineers have...

Experimenting with a magnetic field almost 1M times stronger than that of the Earth, researchers in the Scholes Group were able to modify the optoelectronic properties of model nonmagnetic organic chromophores. The modifications, according to the paper, arise from the induction of ring currents in the aromatic molecules. Aromatic ring currents can be understood as the proposal that electrons delocalized by aromaticity will move circularly when a magnetic field is applied perpendicular to the aromatic plane, typically nudging chemical shifts of nearby atoms in NMR spectroscopy. For the experiment, researchers chose a model aromatic chromophore called a phthalocyanine, which has...

These readings were obtained by InSight's magnetic sensor, which studied the magnetic fields within the mission's landing zone. This shallow crater, known as "Homestead hollow", is located in the region called Elysium Planitia – a flat-smooth plain just north of the equator. This region was selected because it has the right combination of flat topology, low elevation, and low debris to allow InSight to probe deep into the interior of Mars. Prior to this mission, the best estimates of Martian magnetic fields came from satellites in orbit and were averaged over distances of more than 150 kilometres (93 miles). Measuring...

Barack Obama hates baby shark. And, mommy shark. And, daddy shark. And, ALL OF THE SHARKS!!! Which is why #44 rocked a shark deterrent anklet while paddleboarding in Hawaii! Check out the device on Obama's right ankle -- it's called a Sharkbanz and it claims to repel Jaws from snacking on you like a piece of chum!Look, shark attacks in Hawaii don't happen THAT often -- but they do happen -- and when you're a former President, you don't wanna go out like Samuel L. Jackson in "Deep Blue Sea." A company spokesperson tells us ... the band uses "patented...

Earlier this year, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Geological Survey (BGS) were forced to update the World Magnetic Model a year ahead of schedule due to the speed with which the magnetic north pole is shifting out of the Canadian Arctic and toward Russia’s Siberia. The BGS and the US National Centers for Environmental Information has released a new update to the World Magnetic Model this week, confirming that the magnetic north pole, whose coordinates are crucial for the navigation systems used by governments, militaries and a slew of civilian applications, is continuing its push toward...

At midnight on Mars, the red planet’s magnetic field sometimes starts to pulsate in ways that have never before been observed. The cause is currently unknown. That’s just one of the stunning preliminary findings from NASA’s very first robotic geophysicist there, the InSight lander. Since touching down in November 2018, this spacecraft has been gathering intel to help scientists better understand our neighboring planet’s innards and evolution, such as taking the temperature of its upper crust, recording the sounds of alien quakes, and measuring the strength and direction of the planet’s magnetic field. As revealed during a handful of presentations...

In his book "2061 - Odyssey Three" (the third of his Space Odyssey series), Arthur C. Clarke put forward the intriguing proposal that the core of the planet Jupiter was, in fact, a diamond the size of Earth. Now Clarke, even though a science fiction author of some repute, had a science background and always tried to bring rigorous scientific accuracy to his stories. So, could his proposition be possible? The somewhat predictable answer is - we don't know. But we can analyse the possibility within known scientific parametres, to see if it is, at least, possible. For diamond to...

Jupiter’s gravity field varies with depth, which indicated that material is flowing as far down as 3,000 km (1,864 mi). Combined with information obtained during previous perijoves, this latest data suggests that Jupiter’s core is small and poorly defined. This flies in the face of previous models of Jupiter, which held that the outer layers are gaseous while the interior ones are made up of metallic hydrogen and a rocky core. ... Another interesting find was that Jupiter’s gravity field varies with depth, which indicated that material is flowing as far down as 3,000 km (1,864 mi). Combined with information...

Early science results from NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter portray the largest planet in our solar system as a complex, gigantic, turbulent world, with Earth-sized polar cyclones, plunging storm systems that travel deep into the heart of the gas giant, and a mammoth, lumpy magnetic field that may indicate it was generated closer to the planet’s surface than previously thought. “We are excited to share these early discoveries, which help us better understand what makes Jupiter so fascinating,” said Diane Brown, Juno program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "It was a long trip to get to Jupiter, but these...

The researchers combined magnetic readings and radioisotope dating of samples from seven lava flow sequences to recreate the magnetic field over a span of about 70,000 years centered on the latest geomagnetic reversal. They accurately dated the lava flows by measuring the argon produced from radioactive decay of potassium in the rocks. They found that the final reversal was quick by geological standards, less than 4,000 years. But it was preceded by an extended period of instability that included two excursions — temporary, partial reversals — stretching back another 18,000 years. The lava flow data was corroborated by magnetic readings...