Tag: discoveries

CERN boss: Big physics may be in a funk, but we need it more than ever

The particle physics discoveries have dried up but in politically uncertain times CERN’s cooperative model is an example to the world, says its chief Fabiola Gianotti Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24432570-600-cern-boss-big-physics-may-be-in-a-funk-but-we-need-it-more-than-ever/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Something Strange Seems To Be Causing Distant Galaxies To Synchronize

pgmrdlm quotes Futurism: Massive StructuresGalaxies 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 with large-scale structures,…

Astronomers catch a record-setting X-ray burst

The sudden spike of X-rays released as much energy in 20 seconds as our sun does in nearly 10 days. Turns out it was a massive thermonuclear flash on a pulsar, the crushed remains of a star that exploded as a supernova long ago. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/record-setting-x-ray-burst-j1808-pulsar…

TESS spacecraft is finding hundreds of exoplanets

… and it’s poised to find thousands more. But will we find another Earth? Source: https://earthsky.org/space/tess-spacecraft-finding-exoplanets…

TESS planet-hunter shows you the southern sky

Mosaic of the southern sky constructed from 208 images by NASA’s TESS spacecraft, taken during the mission’s first year of science operations. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/tess-panorama-southern-sky-video…

Origin of Modern Humans ‘Traced To Botswana’

dryriver shares a report from the BBC: Scientists have pinpointed the homeland of all humans alive today to a region south of the Zambesi River. The area is now dominated by salt pans, but was once home to an enormous lake, which may have been our ancestral heartland 200,000 years ago. Our ancestors settled for 70,000 years, until the local climate…

An update on that ‘gel’ on the moon

China’s Yutu-2 rover has sent back a new image of the unusual “gel-like” material it found last July, which seems to confirm that it’s not gel at all. Instead, it now appears it’s probably impact glass from a meteorite impact. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/gel-on-the-moon-impact-glass-china-yutu-2…

Did the Viking landers find life on Mars in 1976?

For a brief time in 1976, it seemed as if NASA’s Viking landers had found microbes on Mars! Those results have been soundly disputed in the years since, but the original experiment’s principal investigator, Gilbert Levin, still maintains they really did detect Martian microbes. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/viking-lander-life-on-mars-gilbert-levin…