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Jinlin Crater A team of scientists has uncovered evidence that a massive asteroid strike created a prominent crater in southern China’s Guangdong province roughly 10,000 years ago, during a period of rapid human development. The Jinlin crater, situated near Zhaoqing city, marks only the fifth confirmed impact site in China and the very first identified in the country’s southern region. Measuring approximately 2,950 feet across, the tilted, bowl-shaped formation suggests it was formed by an extraterrestrial object roughly 100 feet in diameter, unleashing an explosion comparable to dozens of atomic bombs. Researchers believe the impact would have had a profound...

There's no way around it, so I'm just going to say it, we can laugh, laugh some more, and move on. Then share it with our friends and family and laugh again. Uranus smells like farts. Seriously. That's not some childish joke (but come on, it's kinda funny). That's straight from scientists at the University of Oxford, who published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy on Monday. Researchers studied Uranus using a giant telescope in Hawaii known as Gemini North. What they found was - ahem - unfortunate for the planet that is already the butt (hehe) of...

video https://www.accuweather.com/en/videos/scientists-confirm-uranus-smells-like-rotten-eggs/y5nhc0zje62dorleahhurgganpwvljc_

Researchers have long wondered about the composition of the clouds high up in Uranus' sky — specifically, whether they're dominated by ammonia ice, as at Jupiter and Saturn, or by hydrogen sulfide ice. The answer has proved elusive, because it's tough to make observations with the required detail on distant Uranus. (Not only are Jupiter and Saturn closer to Earth, they have also hosted dedicated orbiter missions. Uranus has been visited just once — a brief flyby by NASA's Voyager 2 probe in January 1986.) Irwin and his colleagues studied Uranus' air using the Near-Infrared Integral Field Spectrometer (NIFS), an...

ROSINA, the mass spectrometer aboard the Rosetta spacecraft gives scientists an idea how comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko smells like: it stinks. (Photo : ESA - C. Carreau/ATG medialab) Given its distance from the Earth, it seems far-fetched to have an idea what comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the target comet of the Rosetta mission, smells like. The Rosetta spacecraft of the European Space Agency has so far hinted scientists on how the comet looks like but it appears that the robotic space probe isn't just equipped to take images. It also has an instrument on board that can give scientists clues on what the comet...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: * Time travel is deterministic and locally free, a paper says—resolving an age-old paradox. * This follows research observing that the present is not changed by a time-traveling qubit. * It’s still not very nice to step on butterflies, though. ======================================================================= In a peer-reviewed paper, a scientist says he has mathematically proven the physical feasibility of a specific kind of time travel. The paper appears in Classical and Quantum Gravity. Germain Tobar and Fabio Costa, both of the University of Queensland at the time of the paper’s publication, worked together on...

We often imagine our galaxy as a serene, spinning disk of stars, a celestial carousel of light against the black velvet of space. This comforting image, however, is an illusion. From our tiny vantage point, embedded within one of its spiral arms, we are only now learning that the Milky Way is a place of profound and dynamic movement, a living entity that breathes and shudders on a scale almost impossible to comprehend. The latest revelation, born from the unparalleled data of the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope, is not just a wobble or a tilt, but a colossal,...

Astronomers have found signs that the small icy world Chiron, orbiting between Saturn and Uranus, may be forming a new ring system in near-real time. ================================================================ an illustration of Chiron with rings An artist's conception of the small icy world Chiron, which orbits between Saturn and Uranus and may be building its own ring system. (Image credit: Observatório Nacional/MCTI/Chrystian Pereira) In a universe where change usually unfolds over eons, astronomers have gotten a rare front-row seat to watch a small, icy world beyond Saturn build a brand-new set of rings in real time. A team of Brazil-based astronomers found that...

Astronomers have discovered a 2,300-foot-wide (700 meters) asteroid hidden in the sun's glare, and it’s whizzing through our solar system at a near record-breaking pace.The skyscraper-size asteroid, named 2025 SC79, loops around the sun once every 128 days, giving it the second-fastest asteroid orbit in the solar system. It is also only the second known space object that orbits entirely inside of Venus' orbit, occasionally even crossing the orbit of Mercury.Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Science research institute in Washington, D.C., first spotted 2025 SC79 on Sep. 27...To put its 2,300-foot diameter in context, the so-called "city-killer" asteroid...

NATIONAL MOLE DAY We'll eliminate any visions of a burrowing creature celebration immediately; National Mole Day recognizes a special number in chemistry. Chemists and chemistry students mark the occasion each year on October 23rd. #NationalMoleDay More specifically, the celebrations take place between 6:02 AM and 6:02 PM. In the U.S., the time and date are written 6:02 10/23. The time and date are derived from Avogadro’s number. Avogadro's number is approximately 6.02×10^23. Hence, defining the number of particles (atoms or molecules) in one mole of a substance, one of the seven base SI units. A mole is a unit of...

Comet 3I/ATLAS is heading toward a rare encounter with NASA’s Europa Clipper, offering a unique opportunity to uncover secrets of the cosmos. © Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Shadow the Scientist NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, currently on its way to Jupiter, may soon encounter a unique scientific opportunity. The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is about to cross the path of the spacecraft’s trajectory, potentially showering it with charged particles from its ion tail. This rare alignment could provide the closest look yet at material from beyond our solar system, offering a glimpse into the distant star systems where such comets originated. A...

Explanation: It is one of the more massive galaxies known. A mere 46 million light-years distant, spiral galaxy NGC 2841 can be found in the northern constellation of Ursa Major. This sharp view of the gorgeous island universe shows off a striking yellow nucleus and galactic disk. Dust lanes, small, pink star-forming regions, and young blue star clusters are embedded in the patchy, tightly wound spiral arms. In contrast, many other spirals exhibit grand, sweeping arms with large star-forming regions. NGC 2841 has a diameter of over 150,000 light-years, even larger than our own Milky Way and captured by this...

Ireland has officially joined the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) as an associate member state. CERN is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world on the Franco-Swiss border, just outside Geneva. The main focus of activity in CERN is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27-km (17-mile) underground ring in which protons are accelerated and collided into one another. Associate membership will allow Ireland’s researchers to participate in CERN’s scientific programs and will make Irish citizens eligible for staff positions and fellowships at CERN. …

Researchers make landmark advance in the quest to unlock virtually limitless clean energy from the same reaction that powers the stars On a former military airfield a few miles south of Oxford, a group of scientists are trying to bottle the sun. Not literally, of course — but their ambitions come close. Inside a four metre-tall, apple-shaped machine known as the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak Upgrade (MAST-U), they are attempting to recreate, control and ultimately commercialise the fusion reactions that power the stars. In the past few weeks, they have made landmark progress. Fusion is physics’ grand prize, promising a...

Explanation: While most spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way, have two or more spiral arms, NGC 4725 has only one. In this sharp color composite image, the solo spira mirabilis seems to wind from a prominent ring of bluish, newborn star clusters and red tinted star forming regions. The odd galaxy also sports obscuring dust lanes a yellowish central bar structure composed of an older population of stars. NGC 4725 is over 100 thousand light-years across and lies 41 million light-years away in the well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. Computer simulations of the formation of single spiral arms suggest that...

...Scientists have been keeping a close watch on those changes, both to ensure there’s nothing unexplainable by our current understanding, but also to compare 3I/ATLAS to both previous interstellar visitors as well as comets in our own solar system. A recent paper from European researchers describes how the changes in a particular material ratio in 3I/ATLAS’ coma fit with our current understanding of cometary geology.That ratio is the nickel to iron (Ni/FE) abundance ratio. It has been measured for two decades, including on twenty in-system comets as well as 2I/Borisov, the last known interstellar visitor our solar system had. However,...

Space exploration has entered a new era where microbial discoveries challenge our understanding of life beyond Earth. The Chinese Tiangong station recently became the site of an extraordinary finding that reads like science fiction but represents very real scientific advancement. This discovery raises fundamental questions about biological adaptation in extreme environments. Niallia tiangongensis emerges from space station samples During routine operations in May 2023, the Shenzhou-15 crew collected samples from Tiangong’s habitation module that would later reveal something unprecedented. Scientists identified a completely new bacterial species, subsequently named Niallia tiangongensis after its birthplace among the stars. This microorganism represents the...

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory unit of NASA said Monday that it will lay off about 550 employees — 11% of JPL’s workforce — as part of a restructuring. The job cuts “are not related to the current government shutdown,” JPL Director Dave Gallagher said in a message to the unit that was posted on the lab’s website. JPL is a research and development lab funded by NASA — the federal space agency — and managed by the California Institute of Technology. “While not easy, I believe that taking these actions now will help the Lab transform at the scale and...

VIDEO AT LINK.............. An unusual double-ring structure spotted in space with the help of citizen scientists has turned out to be a cosmic rarity. The celestial anomaly, captured by a radio telescope, is an odd radio circle, one of the scarcest and most mysterious objects in the universe, said Dr. Ananda Hota, lead author of a study published on October 2 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Odd radio circles, also known as ORCs, likely consist of magnetized plasma — charged gas that is strongly influenced by magnetic fields — and are so massive that entire galaxies...

New research suggests that Ariel, a moon of Uranus, might have once harbored an ocean about 100 miles (170km) deep. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/PSI/Mikayla Kelley/Peter Buhler Evidence points to a long-lost ocean beneath Ariel’s icy crust. Tides and orbit shifts may have cracked its surface billions of years ago. Growing evidence indicates that a deep ocean may lie hidden beneath the icy exterior of Uranus’ moon Ariel. A new study published in Icarus examined how this subsurface ocean might have formed and evolved, revealing that it could once have reached depths of more than 100 miles (170 kilometers). For comparison, Earth’s Pacific...