Columbus, OH

ScienceAlert

Last week, Earth was treated to a rare event: not one, but two large asteroids, passing by within hailing distance. Neither 2024 MK nor 2011 UL21, as the asteroids are named, came close enough to pose a hazard, but both were within range of radar imaging systems. So NASA got a few happy snaps to mark the occasion.

NASA Reveals Images of Large Asteroids That Just Sailed Past Earth

The Milky Way is not alone in its little corner of the Universe. Tiny, faint dwarf galaxies, many with as few as a thousand stars, swoop around our cosmic neighborhood on long graceful circuits. It's unclear exactly how many there are, but there should be a lot more than the 60 or so we've found to date.

Missing Dwarf Galaxies Found Near The Milky Way in The Worst Place


 Saturn has its famous hexagon, and  Jupiter has just now been caught throwing mad shapes too.
High up in its atmosphere, astronomers have identified strange, glowing new features, in the region above the tempestuous Great Red Spot.



					
			

There, in the ionosphere, concentrations of ionized hydrogen cause a near-infrared glow in arcs, bands, and spots that suggest the wild planet is far wilder than we even suspected.
"We thought this region, perhaps naively, would be really boring," says planetary scientist Henrik Melin of the University of Leicester in the UK. "It is in fact just as interesting as the northern lights, if...

Strange, Glowing Shapes Have Been Identified in Jupiter's Atmosphere


It's long been thought that a monumental surge in oxygen fuelled the Cambrian explosion some 540 million years ago, breathing life into Earth's biosphere to generate a rich array of stunningly complex animal species.



					
			

Whether oxygen truly played such a critical role is hotly debated though, with other factors potentially igniting Earth's greatest evolutionary burst – from the near-collapse of Earth's magnetic field to the erosion of Gondwanian 'supermountains', asteroid dust and even marine worms.
Now, new research scouring the globe for geological data suggests oxygen didn't flood the atmosphere and oceans a little over half a billion years ago, so much...

Life Only Needed A Small Amount of Oxygen to Explode, Scientists Find


A little over a decade ago, a robotic rover on  Mars finally uncovered an answer to a pressing question. It's now clear that the red planet does, indeed, have organic material buried in the sediment of its ancient lakebeds.



					
			

Since then, we've continued to find organic molecules on Mars distributed in a way that suggests carbon chemistry is widespread across our small rusty neighbor.
This doesn't mean we've found signs of alien life. Far from it; there are many non-biological processes that can produce organic molecules. But exactly where the material came from has posed a bit of a puzzle.
Now, a...

Chemistry Discovery on Mars Hints at The Origins of Life on Earth


As extreme storms, floods, fires, droughts, cold snaps, and heat waves hit us harder and more often than ever, more than half of our planet is predicted to shift into new climate zones by the end of the century.



					
			

A new interactive map, The Future Urban Climates, allows you to explore how your home's climate will be impacted.
Using data from the Intergovernmental Panel on  Climate Change (IPCC), University of Maryland spatial ecologist Matthew Fitzpatrick matches 40,581 places around the globe to nearby locations currently experiencing their future predicted climate in 2080.
For example, a trip to northern Mississippi today would allow...

This New Map Reveals The Predicted Future Climate Where You Live


Scientists have identified a unique form of cell messaging occurring in the human brain, revealing just how much we still have to learn about its mysterious inner workings.
Excitingly, the discovery hints that our brains might be even more powerful units of computation than we realized.



					
			

Back in 2020, researchers from institutes in Germany and Greece reported a mechanism in the brain's outer cortical cells that produces a novel 'graded' signal all on its own, one that could provide individual neurons with another way to carry out their logical functions.
By measuring the electrical activity in sections of tissue removed during surgery on...

A First-of-Its-Kind Signal Was Detected in Human Brains

Lancaster County, PA

Community Voices represent independent, third-party users who have joined our contributor program but not yet verified their accounts. Community Voices are expected, like all users, to adhere to our Community Standards.

community_voice

NewsByJoshua

Fans of Frisco's Chicken were left reeling as the beloved Peruvian-style eatery announced the closure of all its locations in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The chain, known for its delicious food and strong community values, posted a heartfelt note on its doors, informing customers of the devastating news.

Favorite Chicken Chain Suddenly Closes All Stores, Heartfelt Message Found on Doors

San Francisco, CA


Long COVID is a brutal illness without a known mechanism or cure. Far from being psychosomatic in nature, a new study adds weight to the idea that this misunderstood disease is very much biological.
The lingering toll the SARS-CoV-2 virus exacts on the immune system is widespread and hiding in plain sight, argue researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, CellSight Technologies, and Kaiser Permanente South San Francisco Medical Center.
When 24 patients who had recovered from COVID-19 had their whole bodies scanned by a PET (positron emission tomography) imaging test, their insides lit up like Christmas trees.
A radioactive drug called...

COVID's Hidden Toll: Full-Body Scans Reveal Long-Term Immune Effects

Without easy access to freshwater lakes, streams, and dams, roughly one out of every four humans depends on reservoirs beneath Earth's surface for survival. By the end of the century, tens to hundreds of millions could be deprived of even this tenuous supply of moisture as rising temperatures risk turning shallow groundwater supplies into toxic sumps.

Warming Groundwater Could Be Undrinkable For Half a Billion People by 2100

A loss of controlled inhibition of overly excited brain cells might explain how a common knock-out anesthesia drug works. A new animal study led by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has found that propofol, a sedative used to safely lull people into unconsciousness for medical procedures, disrupts the brain's normal ability to regain control of highly excitable neurons.

Common Sedative Could Break Consciousness by Tipping Your Brain Into Chaos

Little more than a handful of corroded bronze wheels and heavily encrusted gears now remains of the ancient artifact called the Antikythera mechanism, leaving archaeologists to speculate over its functionality and purpose. After decades of study, it's largely agreed that the millennia-old device was something of an analog computer capable...

Gravitational Wave Research Reveals Missing Details on The Mysterious Antikythera Mechanism


For some planets, the meteorite bombardment just never stops.
New analysis of data collected by a seismometer on  Mars has revealed that space rocks slam into the red planet far more frequently than we ever suspected.



					
			

In fact, it seems Mars is copping an absolute thrashing. Based on the number of nearby impact-related tremors detected by the Mars InSight lander during its tenure, a team of scientists has estimated that Mars experiences almost daily impacts from rocks the size of a basketball smashing into its surface.
"This rate was about five times higher than the number estimated from orbital imagery alone," says...

Quakes on Mars Reveal Red Planet Is Constantly Bombarded by Meteorites

Once upon a time, Earth was barren. Everything changed when, somehow, out of the chemistry available early in our planet's history, something started squirming – processing available matter to survive, to breed, to thrive.



					
			

What that something was, and when it first squirmed, have been burning questions that have puzzled humanity probably for as long as we've been able to ask "what am I?"
Now, a new study has found some answers – and life emerged surprisingly early.
By studying the genomes of organisms that are alive today, scientists have determined that the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), the first organism that spawned...

Gobsmacking Study Finds Life on Earth Emerged 4.2 Billion Years Ago

New York City, NY

Writers represent independent, third-party users who have joined our contributor program and self-verified their accounts. Writers are expected, like all users, to adhere to our Community Standards.

writer

Cheryl E Preston

Yesterday was the third time this year that an ad stating Chelsea Clinton lives in a beautiful Virginia home popped up on my laptop. My computer did not warn me this was a dangerous site, so this time, I clicked on the link.

Chelsea Clinton is rumored to be living in Virginia but probably still in NYC


An exoplanet identified in 2017 as one of the most promising locations for life to flourish outside the Solar System has just become even more promising – and a whole lot weirder.



					
			

The alien world LHS-1140b shows signs of being an 'eyeball' planet, with a global ocean capped in ice, and a single, iris-like region some 4,000 kilometers (around 2,500 miles) across permanently gazing at its host star. 
"Of all currently known temperate exoplanets, LHS-1140b could well be our best bet to one day indirectly confirm liquid water on the surface of an alien world beyond our Solar System," says astrophysicist...

Giant 'Eyeball' a Perfect Place to Look For Life Outside The Solar System


Some butterflies may be able to journey across entire oceans with the help of the wind.
A world-first study has now shown that the painted lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui) can cross the world's second-largest ocean, the Atlantic, covering 4,200 kilometers (2,610 miles) in as few as five to eight days.



					
			

The trip, researchers claim, "is among the longest documented for individual insects, and potentially the first verified transatlantic crossing."
The incredible discovery was made after more than a decade of mystery.
It all started in 2013, when a flock of fatigued butterflies landed on the beaches of French Guiana with torn and tattered wings....

Butterflies Can Make Epic Atlantic Ocean Voyages, Shocking Scientists

A pair of lion brothers have been captured on video taking a death-defying 1-kilometer (0.6-mile) swim across a Ugandan river packed with predators – a sign of increasing human-caused pressures forcing animals to take more risks. The brothers, Jacob and Tibu, crossed the Kazinga Channel at night. It's the...

Lion With 3 Legs Makes Death-Defying Swim Across Predator-Infested River

The shape of the Solar System was once a little more on the doughy side.
Before it arranged itself into a flattened disk, the distribution of dust and rocks had more in common with a donut than a pancake. This is the conclusion scientists reached after studying iron meteorites from the outer Solar System, finding that they can only be explained if the Solar System's shape was once toroidal.



					
			

This is information that can help us interpret other emerging planetary systems and determine the order in which they assemble.
The formation of a planetary system around a star starts in a molecular cloud...

The Shape of The Solar System Has Changed Dramatically, Scientists Say

New evidence from the US has backed up previous findings that as of early 2023, an estimated 6.9 percent of American adults – or some 17.8 million US citizens – have ever had long COVID. The data reveal some clear demographic differences among US adults, showing which groups...

Almost 18 Million Adult Americans Have Had Long COVID

NewsBreak

This Mysterious Black Hole at The Dawn of Time Weighs a Billion Suns


A  black hole discovered lurking in the Cosmic Dawn is just way too big to easily explain. Sitting at the center of a galaxy called...

This Mysterious Black Hole at The Dawn of Time Weighs a Billion Suns

Comments / 0