University of Sydney astronomers, working with international colleagues, have found a star system like none seen before in our galaxy. Scientists believe that one of the stars — about 8,000 light-years from Earth — is the first known candidate in the Milky Way to produce a dangerous gamma-ray burst, among the most energetic events in ...
The extinction of woolly mammoths has been a hotly debated topic among scientists, with theories of asteroid collisions, diseases, and human hunting coming up as probable causes. A newly discovered crater in Greenland now gives credence to the idea that the mammoth extinction may have been brought about as a result of an asteroid collision. ...
Slow-motion collisions of tectonic plates under the ocean drag about three times more water down into the deep Earth than previously estimated, according to a first-of-its-kind seismic study that spans the Mariana Trench. The observations from the deepest ocean trench in the world have important implications for the global water cycle, according to researchers in ...
The quantum world is a bizarre place. Here, things can exist in two places at once. They can even tunnel through seemingly impenetrable boundaries. An even more interesting phenomenon of the quantum world is entanglement in which groups of particles correlate regardless of how far they are from each other. Using entanglement, it is possible to ...
In November 2017, scientists pointed NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope toward the object known as ‘Oumuamua — the first known interstellar object to visit our solar system. The infrared Spitzer was one of many telescopes pointed at ‘Oumuamua in the weeks after its discovery that October. ‘Oumuamua was too faint for Spitzer to detect when it looked more ...
A survey of ice in Greenland has uncovered evidence suggesting a kilometer-wide iron asteroid slammed into that island, perhaps as recently as 12,000 years ago during the end of the Pleistocene. The resulting 19-mile-wide impact crater has remained hidden under a half-mile-thick ice sheet until now. It recently was exposed by an ultra-wideband chirp radar ...
Mercury, the smallest planet in our solar system, is reportedly shrinking. It is estimated that the planet’s diameter has contracted by almost 14 kilometers since it was first formed almost 4 billion years ago. Mercury, a shrinking planet Earth’s massive mountains and steep cliffs are said to be the result of colliding tectonic plates. But ...
Hundreds of hikers each day pass by the fallen boulder along the Bright Angel Trail in Grand Canyon National Park. It might otherwise go unnoticed except for the 28 indentations — sloping tiny footprints left behind by a small, reptile-like creature about 310 million years ago — that cover the rock’s expansive surface. Steve Rowland, ...
The presence of water on early Mars has been theorized for centuries. Early telescopes revealed ice caps, and early astronomers noted channels that were hypothesized to be natural rivers or creature-created canals. Over the past two decades, rovers Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity have sent back invaluable data to scientists who are trying to interpret ...
Some 10 billion years ago, the Milky Way merged with a large galaxy. The stars from this partner, named Gaia-Enceladus, make up most of the Milky Way’s halo and also shaped its thick disk, giving it its inflated form. A description of this mega-merger, discovered by an international team led by University of Groningen astronomer ...
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