Back in November 2018, NASA announced that the Mars 2020 rover would land in the Jezero Crater. Jezero Crater is a geologically diverse area, with an alluvial fan of sediment deposited by an incoming river. That sediment may contain preserved ancient organic molecules, and the deposit is clearly visible in satellite images of the Crater.
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Ancient Mesopotamia, the fabled land between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, was the command and control center of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. This ancient superpower was the largest empire of its time, lasting from 912 BCE to 609 BCE in what is now modern Iraq and Syria. At its height, the Assyrian state stretched
Next to the famous Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, is an abandoned coal mine protecting a different kind of resource against the end of the world: all of GitHub’s open source code. Now, if the world ends, whatever survivors crawl out of the ashes will be able to access and use the software
Narwhal is by many measures a normal puppy. Caregivers say he likes to nibble on fingers and give kisses and wants to play with anyone nearby. On the other hand, he also has a second tail sprouting from his forehead – an appendage that’s prompted the nickname “unicorn puppy” and captivated dog lovers in the
With the help of analysis carried out on proteins in 2-million-year-old tooth enamel, researchers have charted out the family tree of the extinct Gigantopithecus blacki ape, and found it’s directly linked to one of the great apes alive on Earth today, the orangutan. What makes the research remarkable is that G. blacki hasn’t walked the
Life for dinosaurs living at the South Pole wouldn’t have been easy. Sure, it wasn’t the icy hellscape it is today, but the long, dark winters still would have been frosty. Now, we have a better idea of how at least some of these animals stayed warm. A team of scientists from Slovakia, Sweden,
There’s an unusual trend on the rise in South Korean academia: professors are naming children and teens as co-authors on their research, likely to boost their resumes for college admissions. The practice, which first prompted government scrutiny in 2017, has only grown more common since then, according to Nature News. While the South Korean
There seems to be something large lurking in the far reaches of the Solar System, messing with the orbits of some of the Kuper Belt rocks out past Neptune. Some astronomers believe it’s a planet, about five times the mass of Earth. They call it Planet Nine. But finding this potential lurker is not
Ice comes in many shapes and sizes, from mountainous icebergs to tiny flurries of snow. But few of us will ever come across a field of football-sized ‘ice eggs’. Nature just loves to keep us guessing. When amateur photographer Risto Mattila went for a Sunday stroll along Marjaniemi beach on Finland’s Hailuoto Island recently,
Japan’s Hayabusa-2 probe will leave its orbit around a distant asteroid and head for Earth on Wednesday after an unprecedented mission, carrying samples that could shed light on the origins of the Solar System. The long voyage home would begin at 10:05 am (0105 GMT), with the probe expected to drop off its precious
We’re still learning about the potential effect that extended periods spent in space could have on the human body. Now a new health threat has been identified, one which could put lives at risk on long journeys through the cosmos. The problem lies in the internal jugular vein (IJV), a major blood vessel running down
Artificial intelligence is already making great strides forward, but taking it to the next level might require a more drastic approach. According to two researchers, we could try giving AI a sense of peril and the fragility of its own existence. For now, the machines we code don’t have a sense of their own
Michael Horn, who calls himself a research scientist, has dismissed NASA’s research and suggested that they have been incorrect about their estimations about the path of the Apophis “God of Chaos” asteroid. NASA has estimated the asteroid – full name 99942 Apophis – will skim past Earth in 10 years, and has already begun preparations
Immersed in a ‘drug soup‘ of pharmaceutical pollutants, aquatic wildlife acts in ways that puts them at risk of becoming an easily meal for predators. A new study now suggests it could also affect how they themselves hunt for food. When researchers looked at the way eastern mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki) foraged in groups, they
A beautifully preserved insect in amber is giving us new insight into the reproductive life of plants from 99 million years ago. The ancient beetle died with its legs coated in pollen, and its remains have now pushed back physical evidence of insect pollination by at least 50 million years. This could explain how
Atmospheric gases on Mars sure provide us with plenty of mystery. First, there was that business with the disappearing, reappearing methane. Now, oxygen levels have been observed rising and falling over the Gale Crater, by amounts that just don’t fit any known chemical processes. The data comes from Curiosity, the Mars rover that’s been making
You’re not going to wake up one morning to see Jupiter hanging in the sky, but two stunning animations show what it would look like if you did. Nicholas Holmes, an amateur astronomer, makes videos about space on his YouTube channel, Yeti Dynamics. One of his creations, which has gone viral a few times
Ultima Thule, the farthest cosmic body ever visited by a spacecraft, has been renamed Arrokoth, or ‘sky’ in the Native American Powhatan language, following a backlash over the previous name’s Nazi connotations. The icy rock, which orbits in the dark and frigid Kuiper Belt about a billion miles beyond Pluto, was surveyed by the
In the Marshall Islands, locals have a nickname for the Runit Dome nuclear-waste site: They call it ‘The Tomb’. The sealed pit contains more than 3.1 million cubic feet (87,800 cubic meters) of radioactive waste, which workers buried there as part of efforts to clean hazardous debris left behind after the US military detonated nuclear
Saint Malachy was the Archbishop of Armagh, to whom several miracles were attributed to in the 12th-century. In 1139, Malachy went to Rome from Ireland to give an account of his affairs, when he reportedly received a strange vision about the future, including the names of 112 future popes. His prediction for the 112th and current
The river Nile is one of the most awe-inspiring natural wonders of the world. And it may have been that way for an astonishingly long time. New research suggests it’s been bringing water, irrigation and life for as long as 30 million years. This latest study also presents a solution to a long-standing mystery
Spread across the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico lie the ‘ghost tracks’ of long-dead mammoths. Now, researchers using a special type of scan have revealed other footprints; they belong to ancient humans walking deliberately inside mammoth tracks. It’s a fascinating glimpse into life some 12,000 years ago at the end of the
The headlines are stark: “Climate threat from inhalers can prove costly“ “Asthma carbon footprint ‘as big as eating meat‘ “ “How One Commonly Used Asthma Inhaler is Damaging the Planet“ They’re all attached to news coverage of a study published recently in the journal BMJ Open, which found that certain inhalers commonly used by
A very rare species of small, deer-like animal thought to be on the verge of extinction has been spotted in the northwestern jungle of Vietnam for the first time in nearly 30 years. Known as the silver-backed chevrotain or mouse deer, a specimen was last recorded in 1990, according to a study published Monday
Galaxies millions of light years away seem to be connected by an unseen network of massive intergalactic structures, which force them to synchronize in ways that can’t be explained by existing astrophysics, Vice reports. The discoveries could force us to rethink our fundamental understanding of the universe. “The observed coherence must have some relationship
Hurricanes are the costliest natural disasters in the United States. Hurricane Harvey, which ravaged parts of Texas in August 2017, cost the US US$125 billion (yes, billion with a ‘b’). Harvey’s total came second only to that of Hurricane Katrina, which hit Louisiana in 2005 and cost approximately US$161 billion, according to the National Oceanic
For the last time in this decade, Mercury has passed in front of the Sun in what’s known as a transit – a rare chance to see a planet cross the face of our home star. And the images are truly something to behold. From where Earth sits in the Solar System, the only
A surge of frigid air is barreling across the eastern half of the nation, unleashing snow and, in many locations, the coldest weather on record for this time of year. The National Weather Service is calling it “the coldest surge of arctic air so far this season,” predicting 385 cold records to fall from the
You might take it for granted that you can load up Twitter or browse through Reddit whenever you like, but around half of the 7.7 billion people living on the planet right now aren’t yet able to get online. And that’s a big problem, according to one researcher. Merten Reglitz, a philosopher and global
There are no gender differences in the brain when it comes to maths processing ability, a new study has confirmed. This could be a step towards finally laying to rest long-standing prejudices that girls can’t do sums as well as boys. Researchers looked at MRI brain scans of 104 youngsters aged 3 to 10
What is the deadliest weapon of the 20th century? Perhaps you think first of the atomic bomb, estimated to have killed as many as 200,000 people when the United States dropped two on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. But another weapon is responsible for far more deaths – numbering up
The great white shark is often viewed as the most hardcore thing in the ocean. The top of the food chain. The silent slayer in the dark. But evidence is increasingly emerging that even the great white isn’t safe. In fact, these fish too are prey. Their predator? The orca (Orcinus orca): they of
Cupid was late this year. More than eight months late. Hundreds of people reported on social media that overnight on November 8 they had received texts from partners, employers and even dead family members that were originally meant to arrive in February. Many were sent on Valentine’s Day. Alana Johnson, a children’s librarian at
The smears of light you can see arcing across a new Hubble photo aren’t strange artefacts or smudges on the space telescope’s lens. Rather, they’re the light of a galaxy 11 billion light-years away, distorted and replicated by gravity in the foreground. At least 12 copies of the galaxy – called PSZ1 G311.65-18.48 and
Benjamin Schreiber is very much alive. But that hasn’t stopped him from arguing that he died four years ago. After the convicted murderer collapsed in his prison cell in 2015, doctors restarted his heart five times. Recovering back at the Iowa State Penitentiary, Schreiber filed a novel legal appeal. Because he died before he was
NASA recently detected a massive thermonuclear explosion coming from outer space. The culprit seems to be a distant pulsar, the space agency reports, which is the stellar remains of a star that blew up in a supernova but was too small to form a black hole. NASA spotted the burst because it sent out an
A bizarre blacked-out structure in Antarctica has sparked a frenzy of debate about a possible top-secret government cover-up – or a subterranean alien base. The mysterious footage released on YouTube conspiracy page thirdphaseofmoon showed a row of identical structures lined up in Antartica on Google Earth. The site was claimed to be located at 75°
Our Lady of Fatima is the Catholic title given to the Virgin Mary based on the famous Marian apparitions reported in 1917 by three children in Portugal. Lucia dos Santos, one of the apparent witnesses, revealed two secrets she claimed were passed by the Virgin Mary in the Thirties, but one was withheld. The third secret, a vision of
Forget nuclear weapons, biological warfare, and the slew of other ways humanity could cause its own destruction for a moment. If you take into account only naturally occurring phenomena — supervolcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, and the like — researchers from the University of Oxford recently determined that the probability of our entire species going extinct
When dinosaurs ruled the Earth, the planet was on a completely different side of the galaxy. A new animation by NASA scientist Jessie Christiansen shows just how long the dinosaurs’ reign lasted, and how short the era of humans has been in comparison, by tracing our solar system’s movement through the Milky Way. Our
From reporting election results to issuing weather forecasts, maps offer a powerful, accessible and visually appealing way to convey complex information. But as a researcher focusing on data visualisation, I’m aware that even the most beautiful maps can introduce some degree of misrepresentation. To see how, consider the latest statistics on deprivation released by
There is no doubt that climate change is a very serious (and worsening) problem. According to a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), even if all the industrialized nations of the world became carbon neutral overnight, the problem would continue to get worse. In short, it’s not enough to stop
Software detected the woman almost six seconds before Uber’s self-driving car struck her, investigators say, in the crash that would lead to her death and prompt the ride-share giant to slam the brakes on its autonomous vehicle testing. But the SUV didn’t start to stop until about a second before impact. One big reason:
Filling your house with potted plants might make you happier and more productive, but it’s not going to make the air you breathe any cleaner. That is, unless you had a ludicrous number of indoor plants: somewhere between 10 and 1,000 for every square metre of your living space. A critical review, drawing on
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. It is still a mystery what exactly happened to the plane but a shock theory was explored in 2019 Channel 5 documentary ‘Flight MH370’. The theory centres around the idea that a hijacker
For the first time in more than 40 years, NASA scientists have opened up a sample of Moon matter collected during the Apollo missions. Thanks to new analysis tech developed over those decades, this precious artefact could now reveal new insights into the celestial body closest to Earth. The sample of regolith (a top
For the first time, astronomers have directly observed the massive outflow of gas extending hundreds of thousands of light-years from a galaxy. It is, they say, the first direct evidence of how galactic winds feed the circumgalactic medium – the vast clouds of gas that wrap around galaxies as they float in intergalactic space. But
Electron microscopes are great at producing high-resolution images of a material’s atomic structure – if the material is hard, that is. Unfortunately, the devices’ electron beams can destroy softer materials, so scientists typically rely on X-rays, which can’t reach atomic resolution, to image those. But scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National