Antarctic Dinosaur Hunt; 60 Days in Bed For Science; Noise May Disturb Sea Floor Ecosystem
Did Some of Today’s Species Get Their Start in Antarctica? We know Antarctica is the land of snow and ice and is the coldest place on Earth. But believe it or not, this polar continent, was once quite warm, due to the different, earlier atmosphere. Antarctica was covered with lush vegetation and teeming with a […]
Moon Born from a Violent Head-On Collision
It’s been theorized by a number of scientists that the moon was formed as the result of a collision between an early Earth and a protoplanet known as Theia, named after the mother of the goddess of the moon in Greek mythology, some 4.5 billion years ago (around 100 million years after Earth formed). But scientists seem […]
Study: Ancient Forests Fueled Early Climate Change
A pair of scientists from the United Kingdom have found a fossilized tropical forest complete with tree stumps of one of Earth’s first forests in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago located between Norway and the North Pole. They also say that primitive forests such as the one they found may be one of the reasons for […]
Earth’s Atmosphere Got Its Oxygen in Periodic Bursts Over a 100 Million Year Period
For about the first 2.1 billion years of Earth’s history, its atmosphere didn’t have enough oxygen to support complex life. Scientists believe that Earth’s first atmosphere,formed after its creation, was probably made up of hydrogen and helium. Then as a result of volcanic eruptions that spewed gases from Earth’s interior, in a process known as […]
NASA’S MAVEN Solves Mars Atmosphere Mystery
Last month NASA dropped a bombshell when it announced it had found evidence of water flowing on Mars. Yesterday the space agency held a press conference at its Washington headquarters to announce that they may have solved a decades-old mystery of what happened to the Martian atmosphere and its water, when they presented new findings […]
We’re Surrounded with Personal Cloud of Microbes
Just like ‘Pig Pen’, the character from Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts cartoon, who walks in a cloud of dust, each of us is surrounded by our very own personal cloud of microbes. Every day we all release millions of bacteria that live on and in our bodies into the air around us, according to a […]
Scientists Find Jupiter’s Younger Sibling
A group of scientists have discovered a new exoplanet they say resembles a young Jupiter. Called 51 Eridani b, the gas giant is about 100 light years away, has twice the mass of Jupiter, orbits its star – 51 Eridani – at a distance comparable to between Saturn and Uranus in our solar system and […]
Astronomers Image Birth of a Planetary Nebula in Sharp Detail
For the first time ever, a team of astronomers have captured stunning pictures of one of the universe’s most impressive sights: the birth of a bipolar ‘planetary nebula.’ The scientists gathered the images of nebula surrounding L2 Puppis using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope or VLT, in the Atacama Desert of northern […]
Sunblock Could Harm Sea Animals, Seals/Sea Lions Once Spread TB, Link Between Colds/Infections and Strokes in Children, Life Found Deep Beneath Antarctic Ice
Sunblock Good For You – May Be Bad For Marine Animals For many people, especially in the northern hemisphere, summer time is also vacation time, and one of the most popular destinations is the beach. One of the most important rituals for beachgoers is slathering on gobs of sunblock on their bodies. But what people […]
Robotic Arm Has Split-Second Timing
Swiss scientists have developed a robotic arm that can catch items thrown at it with split-second accuracy. Researchers say the new invention, described in IEEE Transactions on Robotics, catches various sized objects within 5/100 of a second. The mechanized arm has three joints, a complex and sophisticated hand with four fingers, and measures about 1.5 […]