Some 41,000 years ago a complete reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field occurred and compass needles would have pointed south not north, German scientists say. Researchers at the Helmholtz Center Potsdam — GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences report the most remarkable feature of the phenomenon was the speed of the reversal. “The field geometry…
The most crowded alien planetary system found yet possesses five worlds all orbiting a star at least 12 times closer than Earth does the sun, researchers say. KOI-500 is a super-compact planetary system, the most tightly packed one seen yet, hosting at least five planets ranging from 1.3 to 2.6 times the size of Earth….
Researchers at Penn State University have developed a chemical model that mimics a possible step in the formation of cellular life on Earth four-billion years ago. Using large “macromolecules” called polymers, the scientists created primitive cell-like structures that they infused with RNA – the genetic coding material that is thought to precede the appearance of…
Analyzing grains of soil collected from three Apollo lunar missions, geochemists have figured out that the hydrogen in trace amounts of water on the moon’s surface probably came from solar wind, the outflow of positively-charged hydrogen from the sun. For decades, scientists didn’t find much hydrogen in the lunar samples that had been returned to…
When ancestral humans walked out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago, Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies came along with them. Now the fruit flies, widely used for genetics research, are returning to Africa and establishing new populations alongside flies that never left — offering new insights into the forces that shape genetic variation. That’s…
Scientists from the Univ. of Southampton have identified a repeating trigger for the largest explosive volcanic eruptions on Earth. The Las Cañadas volcanic caldera on Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, has generated at least eight major eruptions during the last 700,000 years. These catastrophic events have resulted in eruption columns of over 25km high and…
At very low temperatures, close to absolute zero, chemical reactions may proceed at a much higher rate than classical chemistry says they should—because in this extreme chill, quantum effects enter the picture. A Weizmann Institute team has now confirmed this experimentally; their results would not only provide insight into processes in the intriguing quantum world…
Rapid urbanization will take a heavy toll on public health if city planning and development do not incorporate measures to tackle air pollution, warns a new study. The report, compiled by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC), was launched in Beijing in September as part of the IGAC Open…
A 520-million-year-old, three-inch fossil has yielded evidence that complex brains evolved much earlier than previously thought. The preserved external skeleton of Fuxianhuia protensa, an extinct type of arthropod, is the earliest known fossil to show a complex brain, according to a study published in the journal Nature. “No one expected such an advanced brain would…
In a laboratory in Scotland, a revolutionary kind of laser is taking shape – the first one to be made out of an artificial black hole. Once complete, the device could help confirm mounting evidence that real black holes, despite their name, emit light. A black-hole laser could also find practical uses in devices that…