Did Expelled Stars Reionize the Ancient Universe?
Hot stars booted out of their galactic homes may be responsible for creating the conditions that led to today’s universe
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Want to Live on Mars? Here’s Your Chance
Just as NASA’s latest rover prepares to land on the surface of Mars, one Dutch company is looking to up the ante, with plans to send humans to the distant red planet. But before you sign up for travels to faraway lands, you may want to take note that the trip is a one-way deal,…
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Modern Culture May Have Emerged 30,000 Years Earlier Than Thought
Poisoned-tipped arrows and jewelry made of ostrich egg beads found in South Africa show modern culture may have emerged about 30,000 years earlier in the area than previously thought, according to two articles published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research shows that the 44,000-year-old artifacts are characteristic of the…
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Massive Landslides Spotted on Saturn’s Icy Moon
Landslides up to 50 miles long, spotted on Saturn’s moon, Iapetus, could help provide clues to similar movements of material on Earth. Scientists studying the icy satellite have determined that flash heating could cause falling ice to travel 10 to 15 times farther than previously expected on Iapetus. Extended landslides can be found on Mars…
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Century of Drought May Be Ahead
A drought that gripped western North America from 2000 to 2004 was the worst since the Middle Ages, but such extreme conditions may become normal during the next 100 years, finds a new study. During the drought that started at the turn of the century, forests withered, river basins were depleted, crop productivity dropped and…
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Flaring Black Holes May Solve Cosmic Ray Puzzle
Where do ultra high-energy cosmic rays come from? These charged particles zoom to Earth from outer space, but why is a mystery. Now a possible source – gamma-ray bursts, which seemed to have been ruled out – have received a new lease of life. Gamma-ray bursts are usually created by exploding stars, which produce neutrinos….
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Planetary Science: The Time Machine
Dating features on the Moon and Mars is guesswork. Scott Anderson is building a tool to change that.
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Genetic Data, Fossil Evidence Tell Differing Tales of Human Origins
After decades of digging, paleoanthropologists looking for fossilized human bones have established a reasonably clear picture: Modern humans arose in Africa some 200,000 years ago and all archaic species of humans then disappeared, surviving only outside Africa, as did the Neanderthals in Europe. Geneticists studying DNA now say that, to the contrary, a previously unknown…
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Why Do We Keep Going Back to Mars?
The huge NASA rover speeding toward an August landing on Mars may be the most capable and complex Red Planet explorer ever launched, but it’s far from the first. The 1-ton Curiosity rover — which will search for evidence that Mars is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life — represents humanity’s 40th effort…
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Actinobacteria as the Base of the Evolutionary Tree
Ever since Darwin first published The Origin of the Species, scientists have been striving to identify a last universal common ancestor of all living species. Paleontological, biochemical, and genomic studies have produced conflicting versions of the evolutionary tree. Now a team of researchers has developed a novel method to search the vast archives of known…