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Explanation: Do some surface features on Enceladus roll like a conveyor belt? A leading interpretation of images taken of Saturn's most explosive moon indicate that they do. This form of asymmetric tectonic activity, very unusual on Earth, likely holds clues to the internal structure of Enceladus, which may contain subsurface seas where life might be able to develop. Pictured above is a composite of 28 images taken by the robotic Cassini spacecraft in 2008 just after swooping by the ice-spewing orb. Inspection of these images show clear tectonic displacements where large portions of the surface all appear to move all...

Of all the ancient cultures, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Thracians are some of the most mysterious. Seen by the Greeks as great warriors -- as well as barbarians -- the Thracians had no written language, and left behind little in the way of monumental architecture.However, this didn't mean they weren't good craftsmen, and the Thracians who ruled an area from the Balkans to Bulgaria and Hungary, were expert metal workers making exquisitely crafted jewelry. In Homer's Illiad he describes a Thracian chariot as "like no war-gear of men but of immortals."But despite the fact that they were numerous --...

Next week’s pre-winter arctic plunge might be a sign of things to come for the Eastern U.S., as several key weather patterns will converge to bring early bone-chilling cold and potentially more snowstorms to the region. According to the FOX Forecast Center, two weather patterns, La Niña and an easterly Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, will allow more rounds of arctic air that is typically trapped high above the North Pole to spill into the lower levels of the atmosphere and south into the Eastern U.S. This frigid air is known as the “Polar Vortex.” Air in the polar vortex sits in the...

The seventh wonder of the ancient world lies beneath the harbor of Alexandria. When did the Lighthouse of Alexandria Fall? | 9:00 toldinstone | 610K subscribers | 2,185 views | November 7, 2025 0:00 Introduction 1:02 Construction 1:48 Appearance 3:22 Huel 4:22 Decline and fall 5:18 Qaitbay Citadel 5:45 Submerged ruins 7:16 Latest developments 7:38 Egypt with Toldinstone

According to an IFL Science report, the Jomon, a group of hunter-gatherers who lived in what is now Japan between 16,000 and 3,000 years ago, had less Denisovan ancestry than other East Asians. The Denisovans were an archaic group of humans, first identified through bones discovered in Siberia's Denisova Cave, who lived in Asia between about 200,000 and 40,000 years ago. Today, people living in Oceania and islands in Southeast Asia have generally inherited about four percent of their DNA from the Denisovans. To learn more about how Denisovan genes spread through these populations, Jiaqi Yang of the Max Planck...

Explanation: What are those strange blue objects? Many of the brightest blue images are of a single, unusual, beaded, blue, ring-like galaxy which just happens to line-up behind a giant cluster of galaxies. Cluster galaxies here typically appear yellow and -- together with the cluster's dark matter -- act as a gravitational lens. A gravitational lens can create several images of background galaxies, analogous to the many points of light one would see while looking through a wine glass at a distant street light. The distinctive shape of this background galaxy -- which is probably just forming -- has allowed...

Shocking new images of the interstellar visitor have revealed that it has mysteriously shrunk in size weeks ahead of its closest approach to Earth. NASA recently calculated the change, noting it shed 13 percent of its material after 3I/ATLAS soaring past the sun last month. Harvard Professor Avi Loeb, who has been analyzing the object since the summer, noted that this sudden shrinkage was directly tied to the noticeable change in the interstellar object's course as it moved closer to the sun. 'For a typical comet, this should have resulted in a massive coma with dust and gas that would...

These species skip the tadpole stage entirely, an incredibly rare phenomenon among toads and frogs. In A Nutshell Scientists identified three new toad species in Tanzania that give birth to live babies instead of laying eggs, bringing the global total of live-bearing frogs and toads to just 20 species. DNA extracted from museum specimens collected in 1899 helped researchers solve a 115-year-old mystery about where these toads actually live, with genetic analysis showing populations previously thought to be one species are actually four distinct species separated by mountain ranges. The newly described species face serious conservation threats, with ranges as...

Phys.org reports that a new study of Scythian animal-style artifacts has been conducted by Timur Sadykov of the Russian Academy of Sciences and his colleagues. The artifacts they analyzed, which were recovered from a ninth-century b.c. burial mound known as Tunnug 1 in southern Siberia's Uyuk River Valley, feature representations of rams, felines, birds, and snakes made with bone and bronze. “Clearly, wild animals were very important as spirits inhabiting the natural world, and it's really interesting that we mostly see depictions of wild animals and barely any domesticated animals (the rams are probably wild argali sheep),” said team member...

Explanation: This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula, the result of a supernova seen in 1054 AD, is filled with mysterious filaments. The filaments are not only tremendously complex, but appear to have less mass than expelled in the original supernova and a higher speed than expected from a free explosion. The featured image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, is presented in three colors chosen for scientific interest. The Crab Nebula spans about 10 light-years. In the nebula's very center lies a pulsar: a neutron star as massive as the Sun but...

A giant colonial spiderweb in a sulfuric cave on the border between Greece and Albania may be the largest ever found — and it was built by spiders we didn't know liked the company of others.Researchers have discovered more than 111,000 spiders thriving in what appears to be the world's biggest spiderweb, deep inside a pitch-black cave on the Albanian-Greek border.The "extraordinary" colony consists of a colossal web in a permanently dark zone of the cavern, according to a study published Oct. 17 in the journal Subterranean Biology. The web stretches 1,140 square feet (106 square meters) along the wall...

According to a Live Science report, the name of a previously unknown Maya queen has been deciphered from an inscription discovered last year on a staircase at Cobá, an urban center on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula that was occupied from about 350 B.C. into the fourteenth century. Researchers from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) named the staircase Foundation Rock. Although its 123 hieroglyphic panels have been damaged by erosion, David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin and Octavio Esparza Olguín of the National Autonomous University of Mexico were able to match one of the Foundation Rock...

According to a statement released by the University of Exeter, traces of 76 stone chacus, or funnel-shaped traps, have been spotted in satellite images of northern Chile by Adrián Oyaneder of the University of Exeter. The dry-stone walls of the chacus stretch downhill for hundreds of yards, and end in pits surrounded by enclosures. Hunters would have driven vicuña into the traps and then collected them from the pits. Oyaneder noted that the trap builders sometimes employed natural features in the landscape as arms of their traps. He has also found evidence of settlements in satellite images of Chile's Western...

For thousands of years, the rugged limestone highlands of Slovenia's Karst Plateau have kept a stunning secret buried beneath forests and rocky sinkholes.Now, new research has revealed that this landscape once hosted massive, purpose-built stone megastructures that appear to have guided and trapped wild herds in one of Europe's earliest examples of large-scale communal hunting.This discovery not only sheds light on prehistoric hunting practices but also challenges our understanding of early European societies and their capabilities.The discovery, led by archaeologists from the University of Ljubljana, was recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Using airborne laser...

This picture was taken on Mars yesterday.

A Harvard astrophysicist who believes the Manhattan-sized comet hurtling towards Earth could possibly be fueled by alien technology has invited Kim Kardashian to join his research team — after she got a quick response from the federal government. Kardashian asked NASA’s acting administrator Sean Duffy on X last week to spill the “tea” on 3I/ATLAS, the mysterious interstellar comet that’s baffled scientists like Avi Loeb with its anomalous qualities. “Great question!” Duffy promptly responded to Kardashian’s query. “@NASA’s observations show that this is the third interstellar comet to pass through our solar system. No aliens. No threat to life here...

Explanation: Sometimes galaxies form groups. For example, our own Milky Way Galaxy is part of the Local Group of Galaxies. Small, compact groups, like Hickson Compact Group 87 (HCG 87) shown above, are interesting partly because they slowly self-destruct. Indeed, the galaxies of HCG 87 are gravitationally stretching each other during their 100-million year orbits around a common center. The pulling creates colliding gas that causes bright bursts of star formation and feeds matter into their active galaxy centers. HCG 87 is composed of a large edge-on spiral galaxy visible near the image center, an elliptical galaxy visible to its...

Is every "now" the same? Does the past, present, and future all equally exist? Am I having a crisis? The Andromeda Paradox - When is "Now"? | 11:09 Kyle Hill | 2.64M subscribers | 1,021,227 views | August 7, 2020 Andromeda Paradox [YouTube search]

Why does energy disappear in General Relativity? 0:00 What is symmetry? 4:25 Emmy Noether and Einstein 7:33 General Covariance 11:59 The Principle of Least Action 15:29 Noether's First Theorem 18:24 The Continuity Equation 23:20 Escape from Germany 24:49 The Standard Model - Higgs and Quarks The Hole In Relativity Einstein Didn't Predict | 27:39 Veritasium | 18.4M subscribers | 8,522,299 views | April 14, 2025 Emmy Noether [YouTube search]

A groundbreaking new biography of Æthelstan marks 1,100 years since his coronation in 925AD, reasserts his right to be called the first king of England, explains why he isn't better known and highlights his many overlooked achievements. The book's author, Professor David Woodman, is campaigning for greater public recognition of Æthelstan's creation of England in 927AD.The Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the signing of Magna Carta in 1215 are two of the most famous years in English history. But very few people know what happened in 925 or 927AD. Professor David Woodman, the University of Cambridge-based author of The...