Continents Move, Life Evolves
13.7 billion years of evolution in 85 seconds.
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Ghostly Gamma-Ray Beams Blast From Milky Way’s Center
As galaxies go, our Milky Way is pretty quiet. Active galaxies have cores that glow brightly, powered by supermassive black holes swallowing material, and often spit twin jets in opposite directions. In contrast, the Milky Way’s center shows little activity. But it wasn’t always so peaceful. New evidence of ghostly gamma-ray beams suggests that the…
Indo-Australian Tectonic Plate Is Breaking in Pieces
An 8.7 earthquake that struck west of Indonesia on April 11 was the biggest of its kind ever recorded and confirms suspicions that a giant tectonic plate is breaking up, scientists believe. The quake, caused by an unprecedented quadruple-fault rupture, gave Earth’s crustal mosaic such a shock that it unleashed quakes around the world nearly…
A Blip That Speaks of Our Place in the Universe
It is natural for those not deeply involved in the half-century quest for the Higgs Boson – one of the most important missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is nature – to ask why they should care about this seemingly esoteric discovery. There are three reasons. First, it caps one of the most remarkable…
Should Big Bang Step Aside for Big Chill?
The start of the universe should be modeled not as a Big Bang but more like water freezing into ice, a team of theoretical physicists report. As reported in the journal Physical Review D, the researchers from the University of Melbourne and RMIT University suggest that by investigating the cracks and crevices common to all…
Astronomers Discover Star Racing Around Black Hole at Center of Our Galaxy
UCLA astronomers report the discovery of a remarkable star that orbits the enormous black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy in a blistering 11-and-a-half years — the shortest known orbit of any star near this black hole. The star, known as S0-102, may help astronomers discover whether Albert Einstein was right in…
A Quixotic Quest to Mine Asteroids
A new company backed by two Google Inc. billionaires, film director James Cameron and other space exploration proponents is aiming high in the hunt for natural resources—with mining asteroids the possible target. The venture, called Planetary Resources Inc., revealed little in a recent press release except to say that it would “overlay two critical sectors—space…