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Despite oodles of data on dog domestication, the exact origins of our feline friends have long remained fuzzy. We do know that pet cats retained many of their wild cat ancestors’ characteristics. This—perhaps not surprising many cat caretakers—makes pet cats technically “semidomesticated.” But scientists have squabbled over precisely where and when such changes came about. The feline timeline is especially tricky to pinpoint due to scarce archeological findings, along with the fact that the bones of wild cats and domesticated ones look quite similar. So far, researchers have encountered tantalizing clues, including depictions of cats as beloved, jewelry-wearing family members...

An incredible image captures the bizarre UFO–like ring floating above Possagno, a tiny town in the foothills of the Italian Alps. The photograph was taken by photographer Valter Binotto, who watched as the glowing structure flashed in the sky at 10:45 local time on November 17. A photographer has captured a baffling image of a red UFO–like halo floating over the small Italian town of Possagno This ring is likely a structure known as an 'emission of light and very low–frequency perturbations due to electromagnetic pulse sources', or ELVEs for short. These are rings of red or green light created...

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, 2019. 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...

The Hayli Gubbi volcano in Ethiopia, located about 500 miles from the capital city of Addis Ababa, erupted on Sunday for the first time in about 12,000 years. The eruption was not too devastating as such events go, but it did release an enormous plume of ash, which rode the subtropical jet stream and quickly expanded to cover parts of Yemen, Oman, India, and Pakistan. Air India announced it canceled at least 11 flights on Tuesday due to concerns over the cloud. “The affected altitude is between 8.5 kilometers (5.2 miles) and 15 kilometers above the sea level,” said Mrutyunjay...

A volcano in Ethiopia erupted for the first time in at least 12,000 years on Sunday, sending a cloud of ash and smoke northeast across the Red Sea. Hayli Gubbi, a volcano in the Afar region of northern Ethiopia, erupted at around 8:30 a.m. UTC (3:30 a.m. EST) on Nov. 23. By 8 p.m. UTC (3 p.m. EST), the explosive phase of the eruption had stopped, according to the Toulouse Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) in France. This is the first time Hayli Gubbi is known to have erupted in the Holocene — the present geological epoch that began at...

Artist’s impression of the collision between the early Earth and Theia. Since Theia originated in the inner Solar System, in this perspective the Sun can be seen in the background. (Credit: MPS / Mark A. Garlick) In A Nutshell * Inner Solar System origins: By measuring iron isotopes in Moon rocks and meteorites, researchers determined Theia probably formed closer to the Sun than Earth did, not in the distant outer Solar System. * Identical twins: Earth and the Moon have virtually identical chemical signatures, but both fall outside the range of any meteorites we’ve found—suggesting they incorporated exotic material from...

A major explosive volcanic eruption unexpectedly began this morning at Ethiopia's Hayli Gubbi volcano, leading to the generation of an ash cloud the size of Portugal. Lengthy pyroclastic flows were generated, and heavy ashfall has occurred. Today's video discusses the ongoing eruption via the knowledge and analysis of a geologist.

A major explosive volcanic eruption unexpectedly began this morning at Ethiopia's Hayli Gubbi volcano, leading to the generation of an ash cloud the size of Portugal. Lengthy pyroclastic flows were generated, and heavy ashfall has occurred. Today's video discusses the ongoing eruption via the knowledge and analysis of a geologist. A Major Explosive Volcanic Eruption Just Occurred in Africa; Geologist Analysis | 4:51 GeologyHub | 382K subscribers | 242,738 views | November 23, 2025 0:00 Major Explosive Eruption 0:12 Hayli Gubbi Erupts 0:56 Volcanic Ash Advisory 2:34 Eruption Size 3:31 Erta Ale Link

Bounties as high as $100,000 are being offered to contract killers for the murder of dozens of Israeli researchers, including some in the US, on the website of a hateful anti-Zionist group. “The Punishment for Justice Movement” website offers between $50,000 for murdering one of the Jewish academics listed — and twice that amount for the killing of “special targets” — claiming the high-achieving researchers are complicit in child murder. Home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and social media accounts were listed for at least 40 academics, according to The Jerusalem Post. The website offered a $2,000 USD as reward...

A massive dry fracture has just opened on Mount Etna -- and scientists are now raising the alert level. This newly discovered fissure on the southeast wall is not releasing lava, but that doesn't make it safe. In fact, this type of "silent cracking" is often a sign of deep internal pressure, structural movement, or early-stage volcanic instability. In today's Geology Watch report, we break down the footage shared by Pio Andrea Peri and the latest update from INGV, which has now issued an F1 Alert Status -- indicating a high probability of lava fountains and increased volcanic activity at...

The incredible Apep system as seen in infrared by JWST. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Science: Yinuo Han (Caltech), Ryan White (Macquarie University); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) DOWNLOAD PDF SHARE facebook-icon twitter-icon reddit-icon flipboard-icon bluesky-icon Google prefered source badge From the very first images, JWST showed that it was going to be a revolutionary instrument, and yet it continues to surprise us. New observations from the infrared space telescope have upended previous observations of a relatively close star system. It has revealed a complexity that had not been seen before in spectacularly crisp new images. The aging star...

The ice giant Uranus is pictured shining against the blackness of space. Its blue surface is marked by lighter clouds and an equatorial band, while a large pale cloud hovers over its polar region. A Hubble Space Telescope view of Uranus captured in February 2019 (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Simon (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), and M. Wong and A. Hsu (University of California, Berkeley)) ============================================================= November is the best month of 2025 to catch a glimpse of the distant ice giant Uranus as it shines at opposition, though you'll still need a telescope if you hope to...

Scientists at the University of Santiago de Compostela have unveiled a new photocatalytic method that converts methane and other natural gas components directly into versatile chemical building blocks. Researchers have created an iron-based catalyst that controls methane’s extreme reactivity, opening the door for natural gas to serve as a sustainable feedstock for high-value chemicals, including pharmaceuticals. Natural gas, one of the most plentiful energy resources on Earth, consists mainly of methane, ethane, and propane. Although it is commonly burned for power and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, researchers have long looked for ways to convert these stable hydrocarbons into useful...

World leaders are heading into the final days of COP30, the United Nations climate meeting in Brazil. They are trying to agree on how to curb global warming and pay for the costs of an increasingly hotter planet. For the past eight years, one of the primary objectives of the annual negotiations has been to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to the temperatures in the late 1800s. That temperature goal was established after a landmark international scientific report laid out the catastrophic effects of exceeding that amount of warming. But that goal is no longer plausible, scientists...

An artist’s impression of a large red star releasing a bright, explosive burst of light. Swirling red and orange patterns surround the star, suggesting intense activity. In the background, a smaller blue planet appears with a faint, wispy trail extending away from it, indicating its atmosphere being blown off. The scene is set against a dark space backdrop dotted with stars. Credit: Olena Shmahalo/Callingham et al. Astronomers have, for the first time, confirmed a colossal coronal mass ejection from a distant star, a blast so powerful it could strip the atmosphere from any nearby planet. Astronomers using the European Space...

They describe the system, called Circulatronics, as more of a treatment platform than a one-off brain chip. Working with researchers from Wellesley College and Harvard University, the MIT team recently released a paper on the new technology, which they describe as an autonomous bioelectronic implant.As New Atlas points out, the Circulatronics platform starts with an injectable swarm of sub-cellular sized wireless electronic devices, or “SWEDs,” which can travel into inflamed regions of the patient’s brain after being injected into the bloodstream. They do so by fusing with living immune cells, called monocytes, forming a sort of cellular cyborg.After they’ve been...

Harvard physicists unveil system to solve long-standing barrier to new generation of supercomputers The dream of creating game-changing quantum computers — supermachines that encode information in single atoms rather than conventional bits — has been hampered by the formidable challenge known as quantum error correction. In a paper published Monday in Nature, Harvard researchers demonstrated a new system capable of detecting and removing errors below a key performance threshold, potentially providing a workable solution to the problem. “For the first time, we combined all essential elements for a scalable, error-corrected quantum computation in an integrated architecture,” said Mikhail Lukin, co-director...

In today’s weather forecast, we are talking about a rare and spectacular northern lights display expected to light up skies across much of the United States. tonight. A powerful geomagnetic storm is underway, allowing the aurora to be visible as far south as the central Plains, Ohio Valley, and even parts of the Deep South. Skies will need to be clear and dark, so head away from city lights for the best chance to see it. Infrastructure impacts, like power grid issues, cannot be ruled out. This is one of the most widespread aurora events in years, get all the...

The Sun has just fired off its most powerful solar flare of 2025, causing radio blackouts across half the globe. As the barrage of charged particles makes its way toward Earth, the aurorae borealis – or Northern Lights – could become visible at unusually low latitudes tonight. Solar flares are bursts of electromagnetic radiation that arise from tangles in the Sun’s magnetic field, and travel through space at the speed of light. The strongest of these are categorized as X-flares, three of which have now been recorded in the past few days. The first two were detected on November 9...

Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle. It is elliptical, or slightly oval-shaped. This means there is one point in the orbit where Earth is closest to the Sun, and another where Earth is farthest from the Sun. The closest point occurs in early January, and the far point happens in early July (July 7, 2007). If this is the mechanism that causes seasons, it makes some sense for the Southern Hemisphere. But, as an explanation for the Northern Hemisphere, it fails miserably.In fact, Earth's elliptical orbit has nothing to do with seasons. The reason for seasons was explained in...