Ancient Empires Produced Significant Greenhouse Gasses
An analysis of Greenland ice core samples indicates significant global methane emissions per capita during the Roman Empire and China’s Han Dynasty — much greater than had been known.
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Neighboring Black Holes Defy Predictions of Violent Interactions
Around the cosmos, black holes aren’t known for being the nicest neighbors. They tend to make their presence felt in unpleasant ways, pulling nearby matter inward even as they belch out violent blasts of plasma and radiation. Put two of them in the same neighborhood and the resulting tug-of-war can quickly turn ugly. But in…
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Case of Missing Quasar Gas Clouds Now Solved
The case of the missing quasar gas clouds has been solved by a worldwide research team led by Penn State astronomers. The discovery was announced in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, which describes 19 distant quasars whose giant clouds of gas seem to have disappeared in just a few years. Quasars are powered…
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Remains of Fanged, Tiny Veggie Dinosaur Found
A “punk-sized” dinosaur with porcupine-like bristles featured some flashy stabbing self-sharpening fangs – although it likely only had a taste for plants. The newly identified dinosaur, named Pegomastax africanus, or “thick jaw from Africa,” was a mere two feet long and weighed less than a modern housecat in the flesh. Its remains were chipped out…
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The $1 Billion Journey to the Mantle of the Earth
In an unprecedented $1 billion mission to reach the Earth’s mantle, geologists are set to start drilling 3.7 miles beneath the seafloor, to reach the Earth’s mantle. And according to project co-leader Damon Teagle, “It will be the equivalent of dangling a steel string the width of a human hair in the deep end of…
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Tree Rings Reveal Amazon’s Rainfall History
Samples from eight cedar trees in Bolivia have helped shed light on the seasonal rainfall in the Amazon basin over the past century, say researchers. A study led by UK-based scientists said the data from the trees provided a key tool to assess the natural variation in the region’s climate system. It suggested that tree-rings…
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Here’s What the Space Around Earth Sounds Like
Surrounding our planet are rings of plasma, part of Earth’s magnetosphere, which are pulsing with radio waves. Those waves are not audible to the human ear alone, but radio antennae can pick them up, and that’s just what an instrument — the Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science (EMFISIS) — on NASA’s…
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The Future Is Ours
This short video by Michael Marantz presents an optimistic and heroic vision of our future.
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Source of Monster Black Hole’s Energy Jet Identified
A peek at swirling matter around a giant black hole verifies that it is the source of a monstrous blast of energy thousands of light-years long, researchers say. Bursts of energy known as relativistic jets spew out matter at close to the speed of light. These jets can travel across an entire galaxy, suggesting they…
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Mayas Prophesized, but Not End of World
As the clock winds down to December 21, experts on the Mayan calendar have been racing to convince people that the Mayas didn’t predict an apocalypse for the end of this year. Some experts are now saying the Mayas may indeed have made prophecies, just not about the end of the world. Archaeologists, anthropologists and…