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Scientists have discovered two new minerals and possibly a third in a meteorite discovered in Somalia in 2020, researchers from the University of Alberta, in Edmonton confirmed on Wednesday. The two minerals came from a single 2.4-gram slice of the meteorite, which was officially discovered two years ago. Locals near the town of El Ali, in the Hiiraan region of Somalia had known about its existence for decades. "Whenever you find a new mineral, it means that the actual geological conditions, the chemistry of the rock, was different than what's been found before," University of Alberta Department of Earth &...

Oct. 26 (UPI) -- An Arkansas family who awoke to the smell of fire discovered a smoking hole in their deck -- and they suspect a meteorite may have been to blame. John Devane of Greenwood said he and his family awoke to the smell of smoke inside their house about 3 a.m. and set about searching for the source. They discovered the smoke was coming from a hole in their deck, which had apparently caught fire. Devane said the flames had been extinguished when a corner of the family's hot tub melted from the heat, causing it to pour...

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...

Agriculture in Syria started with a bang 12,800 years ago as a fragmented comet slammed into the Earth's atmosphere. The explosion and subsequent environmental changes forced hunter-gatherers in the prehistoric settlement of Abu Hureyra to adopt agricultural practices to boost their chances for survival. That's the assertion made by an international group of scientists in one of four related research papers, all appearing in the journal Science Open: Airbursts and Cratering Impacts. The papers are the latest results in the investigation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, the idea that an anomalous cooling of the Earth almost 13 millennia ago...

A "horrified" hospital employee at Kaiser Permanente leaked a sex change training for diversity, equity and inclusion, which promoted the idea that a 3-year-old can be transgender. "The employee, who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of losing her job, was horrified," according to the Wednesday report from Libs of TikTok. As part of the hospital system's DEI training, medical employees were expected to watch a video with children explaining they knew they were transgender at age 3 and 4. "Many transgender people have ALWAYS known their true gender," the video said. "My name is Rose. I'm a transgender girl....

(Central Michigan University/YouTube) One of the largest meteorites ever recorded in Michigan never came to the attention of experts until a whopping 80+ years after its discovery. Living a humble life as a 10-kilogram (22-pound) doorstop at a local farm, the space rock laid around for several decades before being recognized by the scientific community. "I could tell right away that this was something special," Mona Sirbescu, a geologist at Central Michigan University (CMU), explained in 2018 after investigating the object. "It's the most valuable specimen I have ever held in my life, monetarily and scientifically." VIDEO AT LINK........... David...

The Perseid meteor shower is one of the best shooting star displays of the year and it's currently active. The Perseid meteor shower (also known as the Perseids) is active every year from mid-July to late August. This year the shower will peak around the night of Aug. 12 and before dawn on Aug.13, 2023, according to the science site Royal Museums Greenwich. 2023 will be a good year for the Perseids as the moon will only be 10% illuminated. The Perseids are caused by Earth passing through debris — bits of ice and rock — left behind by Comet...

Explanation: Meteors can be colorful. While the human eye usually cannot discern many colors, cameras often can. Pictured here is a fireball, a disintegrating meteor that was not only one of the brightest the photographer has ever seen, but colorful. The meteor was captured by chance in mid-July with a camera set up on Hochkar Mountain in Austria to photograph the central band of our Milky Way galaxy. The radiant grit, likely cast off by a comet or asteroid long ago, had the misfortune to enter Earth's atmosphere. Colors in meteors usually originate from ionized chemical elements released as the...

Tiny spheres of once-molten metal magnetically dredged from the seafloor could be pieces from IM1, a potential interstellar meteor that struck Earth in 2014 Over the past two weeks, I have circumnavigated the globe by land, air and sea. The reason? A kitchen sink–sized chunk of interstellar material that my colleagues and I believe collided with the Earth at 100,000 miles per hour nearly a decade ago. After years of effort, we may have finally found pieces of this elusive object on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, about a mile beneath the waves. The story began In April 2019,...

A Las Vegas, Nevada family says they saw very large “non-human beings” in their backyard just moments after an unidentified object crashed into their backyard. KLAS is reporting that on April 30th, around 11:50 PM, a strange object was recorded on Las Vegas Metro Police body cam, while streaking through the sky — presumably crashing near the family’s home. While on the phone with emergency dispatch, the seemingly frightened caller reported, “They’re like 8 foot, 9 feet, 10 foot. They look like aliens to us. Police were quick to respond — arriving to the scene just 30 minutes after their...

VIDEO AT LINK............... June 7 (UPI) -- A British Columbia man said he is trying to determine whether an object that splashed down in his backyard pool was a meteorite. Justin Broad said he was outside his home in Delta earlier this week when something fell from above and splashed into his pool. He said the object, which he suspects may have been a meteorite, was slightly disintegrating in the water. "It didn't cloud up and dissipate. It just dropped to the shallow end right at the bottom in a ball," Broad told Global News. Broad and his wife drained...

Earth has a new moon - or at least a 'quasi-moon', a new study has revealed. A quasi-moon is a space rock that circles the Earth, but is gravitationally bound by the sun. This quasi-moon, called 2023 FW13, was discovered by experts using the Pan-STARRS telescope at the top of the Haleakala volcano in Hawaii, and is one of a handful of known quasi-moons. Experts think the ancient cosmic companion has been in Earth's vicinity since 100 BC and will keep circling our planet for at least another 1,500 years, until AD 3700. Thankfully, neither 2023 FW13 or a similar...

When Suzy Kop entered her father's bedroom on May 8, 2023, she was stunned to find a grapefruit-sized rock next to a big dent on the wooden floor. Upon further investigation, the New Jersey resident saw two holes in the ceiling. It appeared that the stone had struck the floor with such great force that it rebounded and punched a second hole before landing back.

On Monday, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland...said the tremors were "not caused by earthquakes, but by pressure waves from an event in the atmosphere." However, they came from "an unknown source." On Saturday, GEUS said it had received "more than 60" tips from people on Bornholm that "earthquake-like tremors"—described as a deep rumbling, shaking and rattling, changing pressure in the ear—had been reported in the afternoon on Bornholm. No one was hurt. Police said they too were contacted by members of the public about the tremor on the eastern part of the island. Danish media reported that the...

A photo of the suspected meteorite that hit a home in New Jersey on May 8, 2023. Photo courtesy Hopewell Township Police Department/Facebook The week started with a bang for a homeowner in New Jersey after a likely meteorite blasted a hole through a house early Monday afternoon. A metallic rock fell out of the sky and hit a house in Hopewell Township, N.J., located approximately 10 miles north of Trenton. The Hopewell Township Police Department responded to the incident and confirmed that the oblong-shaped rock damaged the building. "It penetrated the roof, the ceiling and then impacted the hardwood...

First detected on Feb. 27, the asteroid dubbed 2023 DW is estimated to measure about 165 feet (50 meters) in diameter, or roughly the length of an Olympic-size swimming pool. The asteroid is expected to make a very close approach to Earth on Feb. 14, 2046; as of March 8, the European Space Agency's Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre(opens in new tab) predicts a 1-in-625 chance of a direct impact, although those odds are being recalculated daily. "Often when new objects are first discovered, it takes several weeks of data to reduce the uncertainties and adequately predict their orbits years into...

Large Antarctica meteorite The large meteorite that's been recovered. (Maria Valdes) ******************************************************************* Antarctica has a lot going for it when it comes to meteorite hunting. The dark rocks stand out against the icy landscape. Its dry climate keeps weathering to a minimum. And even when meteorites sink into the ice they are often returned to the surface by the churning of the glaciers. In spite of these ideal conditions, finding sizeable chunks of space rock is rare. A group of researchers have just returned from the ice-covered continent with five new meteorites that include an unusually large specimen. The big...

A bright fireball was seen over the coast of Ibaraki, Japan at 09:07 UTC on December 8, 2022. The object was recorded by a camera placed on a private home in Hiratsuka, facing northeast. It fell at a speed of 17.4 km/s at an entry angle of 45.8 degrees. The entire event lasted about 5 seconds.

he two brand new minerals were found inside a single 2.5 ounce (70 gram) slice taken from the 16.5 ton (15 metric tons) El Ali meteorite, which crashed to Earth in 2020. Scientists named the minerals elaliite after the meteor and elkinstantonite after Lindy Elkins-Tanton(opens in new tab), the managing director of the Arizona State University Interplanetary Initiative... The researchers classified El Ali as an Iron IAB complex meteorite, a type made of meteoric iron flecked with tiny chunks of silicates. While investigating the meteorite slice, details of the new minerals caught the scientists' attention. By comparing the minerals with...

In 2015, David Hole was prospecting in Maryborough Regional Park near Melbourne, Australia. Armed with a metal detector, he discovered something out of the ordinary – a very heavy, reddish rock resting in some yellow clay. He took it home and tried everything to open it, sure that there was a gold nugget inside the rock – after all, Maryborough is in the Goldfields region, where the Australian gold rush peaked in the 19th century. To break open his find, Hole tried a rock saw, an angle grinder, a drill, even dousing the thing in acid. However, not even a...