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Crew-2 astronaut Thomas Pesquet captured this stunning image of a strong aurora above North America November 4, 2021. The beautiful light show was the result of a recent X-class solar flare. In late October, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured an intense flare erupting from the Sun. A few days later, the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) saw what astronaut Thomas Pesquet called “the strongest auroras of the entire mission.” Pictured here is a shot Pesquet took of the light show they saw over North America, which included “amazing spikes higher than our orbit … [and] rapid waves and pulses…

For most people, being described as a “flat Earther” is an insult. The idea of the Earth being flat is considered not only wrong, but a  model of wrongness, the gold standard of being incorrect about something. This being so, oddly enough, most people described pejoratively as “flat Earthers” do not actually  believe that the Earth is flat. “Flat Earther” is simply a scientifically seasoned variation of “idiot”. For a recent example, US President Barack Obama recently  expressed impatience  with the persistent objections put forward by climate change deniers by saying: “We don’t have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society.” In a subsequent…

Two Ancient Egyptian Kingdom Tombs Opened in Luxor, Egypt Two tombs of unidentified officials dated to Egypt’s New Kingdom era have been opened at Luxor’s Draa Abul-Naglaa necropolis years after they were initially discovered by German archaeologist Frederica Kampp in the 1990s. The opening of the tombs was announced at an international conference attended by the governor of Luxor, the minister of social solidarity, the director-general of the International Monetary Fund, members of the international media, foreign ambassadors, members of parliament, and Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany. “It is a very important discovery because both tombs contain very rich funerary…

A woodpecker prepares to smash its beak against a tree.  Carol Gaudreault / 500px via Getty Images About 12 thousand times a day, woodpeckers drill their beaks into trees to search for food, make nests or communicate with other birds. “This is basically what the woodpeckers need to do to survive, so if they’re not sleeping and they’re not resting, they are probably pecking on something,” Wesley Hochachka, an ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, tells Popular Science’s Kate Baggaley. “There’s no respite from it at all.” In the scientific community, researchers have widely accepted that the birds have some sort of shock-absorbing…

Researchers blame too much summer sea ice for causing a downward spiral in one colony An Adélie penguin Courtesy of Kate Kloza / Australian Antarctic Program Adélie penguins in East Antarctica may be in serious trouble: A population of the small black-and-white birds has shrunk by 43 percent over the last decade, according to new research. Ecologists believe changing environmental conditions—not direct human activity—may be to blame for the declining numbers of Adélie penguins near the region’s Mawson research station. They shared more details of their findings in a paper published Monday in the journal Global Change Biology. Researchers believe the presence of too much summer sea…

Beloved Australian songbird will risk life and limb for its breeding group but ignore cries for help from unfamiliar birds, scientists say Scientists who studied the superb fairywren were ‘astonished’ at the variation in help offered to distressed birds, which depends on social relations. Photograph: Auscape/Universal Images Group/Getty Images What do superb fairywrens have in common with humans? They are more likely to help a family member in distress than a stranger. The study, from scientists at Monash University and the Australian National University, tracked the beloved songbirds in the first research to focus on understanding how animals that live in a multi-level…

A distant observer would never actually see someone cross into the event horizon of a black hole, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity. I’ve always understood that, according to general relativity, a distant observer of someone who falls into a black hole would see them slow down, then come to a virtual stop at the event horizon and become “smeared.” So how is it that LIGO can record two black holes combining in milliseconds?  Kevin Hooper Calgary, Alberta Let’s consider GW150914, the first binary black hole merger detected via gravitational waves. The final black hole formed during the merger is 60…

The super-Earth Kepler 62f, estimated to be around 40% larger than Earth. If we wish to colonize another world, finding a planet with a gravitational field that humans can survive and thrive under will be crucial. If its gravity is too strong our blood will be pulled down into our legs, our bones might break, and we could even be pinned helplessly to the ground. Finding the gravitational limit of the human body is something that’s better done before we land on a massive new planet. Now, in a paper published on the pre-print server arXiv, three physicists, claim that the…

In the ancient city of Sagalassos in southwestern Türkiye, archaeologists have identified an unusual burial practice from the early Roman imperial period, consisting of deliberately bent nails, covering tiles, and a layer of lime. A team of archaeologists from KU Leuven and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, both in Belgium, have published their new work in the journal Antiquity. Unearthed at the famed archaeological site of Sagalassos in the Türkiye’s southwest, the tomb, which dates back to A.D. 100-150, contains evidence to suggest that the people of the time were terrified that the dead might rise up from…

A member of the genus Tanager is the Gilt-edged Tanager. It is a typically widespread bird found in the Atlantic Forest. Atlantic forest Is one of the world’s most endangered biomes in the world. Even though birds have always piqued the curiosity of both youngsters and adults, the Gilt-edged Tanager stands out in particular because of its brilliant yellow and blue coloring. The Gilt-edged Tanager is a beautiful bird that has a strong ability to draw people in. It possesses an enticing characteristic that draws in and captivates its target audience. In the mornings, it is frequently spotted perched on…

Using cameras set to monitor the moon, Daichi Fujii, curator of the Hiratsuka City Museum, recorded an event that occurred on February 23 at 20:14:30.8 Japan Standard Time (7:14 a.m. EST, or 1114 GMT). The event appears to be a meteorite impact, and it was located near Ideler L crater, slightly northwest of Pitiscus crater. Meteors travel on average at around 30,000 mph (48,280 kph), or 8.3 miles per second (13.4 km/s). Their high-velocity impacts generate intense heat and create craters, while also giving out a brilliant flash of visible light. Moon impacts can be seen from Earth, as captured…

An experiment recently completed at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in suburban Chicago has produced strong data suggesting that a new force of nature may have been discovered. If this result is ultimately confirmed, it would require a revision of the Standard Model of particle physics, which currently posits the existence of only four laws that govern interactions at the subatomic level: electromagnetism, gravity, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. The apparently new force of nature discovered in the Fermilab and CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is creating enormous buzz in the world of quantum physics. Evidence Builds for…

Archaeologists in Peru have uncovered a monumental temple site where they discovered unique human burials wrapped in fabrics printed with bizarre zoomorphic designs. These bundles contain the remains of deceased individuals, as well as various offerings and personal belongings wrapped in multiple layers of textiles, often with intricate designs and patterns. Found in tombs and caves, many burial bundles have been preserved for hundreds, or even thousands of years. High Status Ancient Burials PAP reports that within one burial mounds, archaeologists identified the wrapped remains of a young boy whose skull was “ intentionally deformed .” Wrapped in a three meters (9.84 ft) long cloth…

Black-throated Mango hovering. Photo by Chelsea Sampson/Shutterstock Hummingbirds, native to North and South America, are among the smallest and most agile birds in the world. Often barely larger than a thumb, they are the only bird species that can fly not only forwards, but also backwards or sideways. Their characteristic hovering flight makes that possible. However, hovering is extremely energy demanding. In a genomic study published in the journal Science, an international team of scientists led by Prof. Michael Hiller at the LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics (LOEWE-TBG) in Frankfurt, Germany, has investigated the evolutionary adaptations of the metabolism that may have…

A Snow Petrel stands on the frozen Southern Ocean. Photo by Tarpan/Shutterstock The arrival of the new year is a prime time for Antarctic birds like the South Polar Skua, Antarctic Petrel, and Snow Petrel to build nests and lay their eggs. However, from December 2021 to January 2022, researchers did not find a single skua nest on Svarthamaren, one of the regions where the birds go to raise their young. Similarly, the number of Antarctic and Snow Petrel nests dropped to almost zero. In these regions, climate change caused snowfall and snow accumulation to be significantly higher than in…

As meteorite dealers, my wife Linda and I have continued supplying meteorites and importing new stock throughout lockdown. On Friday, April 17th 2020, I received a parcel of meteorites I had ordered from a dependable regular source. These were twenty examples of a very well-known and popular common chondrite known as NWA 869. One of them was different and appeared to contain a metallic object inside. This NWA 869 meteorite was like nothing the writer had seen before. (Author supplied) For over twenty years we have been the owners of the UK’s only full-time meteorite dealership, Spacerocks UK. We both have university qualifications in astronomy…

Based on the assumption that climate change will destroy Earth soon, a supercomputer in a giant “black box,” is about to be set up in Tasmania, Australia. The supercomputer black box was created to record all conditions leading up to a “predicted” global collapse. As you will see, without denying climate change whatsoever, this rings of sheer catastrophism. Big data about Earth’s impending demise will now be available to survivors of a future apocalypse, should Mother Earth ever reset life on the planet. Earth’s temperature, sea levels and atmospheric CO2 will all be recorded within the Tasmanian “Black Box steel…

An astounding discovery in the Heaning Wood Bone Cave in northern England has revealed the oldest human remains found in the region, dating back 11,000 years. A team from the University of Central Lancashire ( UCLAN), uncovered evidence of human activity in the early Mesolithic period, shedding new light on the technologies and cultural habits of our ancestors. Lead archaeologist Martin Stables says the cave was inhabited in the early Mesolithic period (Middle Stone Age) when Homo sapiens , or modern humans, were the only hominid species to roam in the British Isles. The Heaning Wood Bone Cave in Cumbria was first excavated in 1958 by E.G.…

The World’s oldest and first swords ever discovered The 5,000-year-old swords found 43 years ago during the excavations in the old mud-brick palace structure in Malatya Arslantepe Mound are the oldest swords in the world. Many archaeologists believed that the earliest swords only dated to around 1600 or 1500 BCE before the discovery of a cache of swords at the archaeological site of Arslantepe in Turkey. The nine swords from the archaeological site of Arslantepe (Melid) attest to the use of this weapon for the first time in the world – at least a millennium before the already-known examples. They date back…

The list of extinct species has been growing for decades, but happy news about the rediscovery of certain creatures, such the night parrot, has been spreading on social media. For the first time in 100 years, a species thought to be extinct has been seen on video in Western Queensland’s Pullen Pullen Reserve. According to The Guardian, its stunning photographs have left birdwatchers “elated.” A group of four Broome friends (Bruce Greatwich, George Swann, Adrian Boyle, and Nigel Jackett) made the finding after seven years of expertise spotting wildlife birds. Bruce Greatwich told Guardian Australia, “We are pretty experienced in…

Colossal Biosciences plans to de-extinct the dodo, but some scientists question whether it’s ethical—or even plausible The dodo, now extinct, weighed about 50 pounds, had blue and grey feathers and couldn’t fly. David Tipling / Education Images / Universal Images Group via Getty Images Over the past year and a half, a biotechnology company has made headlines with its ambitious plans to genetically recreate members of two extinct species—the woolly mammoth and the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. On Tuesday, the company, called Colossal Biosciences, added a third animal to its de-extinction bucket list: the dodo bird. “I’ve always been fascinated with the dodo,” Beth Shapiro, the…

Out of the millions of asteroids in our solar system, there’s a very small fraction known to potentially impact Earth. But scientists found a new one just two weeks ago that so far seems to pose one of the greatest risks of them all. The asteroid, known as 2023 DW, was only first discovered on Feb. 26, according to the European Space Agency. It’s now been added to the agency’s Risk List, a catalog of space objects that could potentially have some kind of impact on Earth, and because of what scientists have so far seen – it’s ranking on the…

Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona formed when an asteroid hit about 50,000 years ago. The blast sent catastrophic winds out at some 900 mph (1,500 km/h) across the immediate area, instantly killing animals unfortunate enough to witness the impact close up. If the Barringer Meteor Crater impact event in Arizona occurred in a modern city, it would completely destroy it. As the question implies, distance from the point of impact is directly related to one’s survival. The key to determining a safe distance lies in the energy of the impact event. Estimates of that energy exist, but the range of…

Have you ever seen a 9-gigapixel map of the Milky Way Galaxy? The jaw-dropping image contains around 84 million stars and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The original image has 24.6 gigabytes. How would I define it? COSMIC LOVE. This is just one SMALL part of the massive 9-gigapixel image. Image credit ESO. The image below shows a breathtaking view of the core of our galaxy, the Milky Way, as seen by the VISTA telescope from the European Space Agency. With the naked eye, you’d probably see the center of the Milky Way—with countless stars and cosmic dust clouds—occupying…