'Powerful auroras' on alien planets may be sending strange radio signals toward Earth
Posted on April 30, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 555 words
| Patria Henriques
Four brand-new alien planets have potentially been discovered after scientists detected the shimmering radio flashes of auroras in those planets' atmospheres, a new study says.
Auroras occur when solar wind — intense gusts of electric particles belched out by the sun — smash into a planet's magnetic shield. Earth experiences auroras near the north and south poles, where miraculous displays of color and light streak through the evening sky.
[Read More]Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier Just Lost Enough Ice to Cover Manhattan 5 Times Over
Posted on April 30, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 637 words
| Arica Deslauriers
An enormous iceberg about five times the size of Manhattan broke off Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier yesterday (Oct. 29), a mere month after a crack first appeared, satellite imagery shows.
"I was a bit surprised" it broke off that quickly, said Stef Lhermitte, an assistant professor in the Department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.
Since spotting the crack in early October, Lhermitte had guessed that the icebergs would take weeks or months to calf, "
[Read More]Caribbean Crustacean Named for Bob Marley
Posted on April 30, 2023
| 2 minutes
| 422 words
| Patria Henriques
The late Jamaican musician Bob Marley has joined the "I have a species named after me" club, as a parasitic crustacean has been donned Gnathia marleyi, researchers announced today (July 10).
This blood feeder infests certain fish that live among the coral reefs of the shallow eastern Caribbean Sea.
"I named this species, which is truly a natural wonder, after Marley because of my respect and admiration for Marley's music," Paul Sikkel, an assistant professor of marine ecology at Arkansas State University, said in a statement.
[Read More]Deep-sea sponges caught 'sneezing' in time-lapse photos
Posted on April 30, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 569 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
To the naked eye, deep-sea sponges seem to sit totally still, confined to one spot on the ocean floor. But in reality, the squidgy creatures move quite a bit and sometimes let out mighty "sneezes" by contracting their entire bodies at once.
You may miss your chance to say "gesundheit," though, because sponge sneezes happen in slow motion, according to a recent study.
Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) caught the behavior on camera using time-lapse photography, according to a statement describing the study.
[Read More]Fracking Practices to Blame for Ohio Earthquakes
Posted on April 30, 2023
| 4 minutes
| 754 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Wastewater from the controversial practice of fracking appears to be linked to all the earthquakes in a town in Ohio that had no known past quakes, research now reveals.
The practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves injecting water, sand and other materials under high pressures into a well to fracture rock. This opens up fissures that help oil and natural gas flow out more freely. This process generates wastewater that is often pumped underground as well, in order to get rid of it.
[Read More]How Politicians Answer Questions Without Actually Answering
Posted on April 30, 2023
| 2 minutes
| 372 words
| Fernande Dalal
Research has confirmed that politicians are smooth talkers. A study found they evade answering tough questions during debates by addressing similar, though not identical, questions.
"When you pay attention to it, communicators are often evading questions that are asked," said Todd Rogers, a political psychologist and executive director of the Analyst Institute, a group focused on understanding voter communication. "Unless you are asked to pay attention to it, they can get away with it.
[Read More]How to Avoid a Shark Attack
Posted on April 30, 2023
| 5 minutes
| 1036 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
The seventh fatal shark attack in four years struck this past weekend at a surfer's paradise in the Indian Ocean.
Yet teaching people when and where to swim to avoid sharks, and improving the emergency response to shark bites, can significantly reduce the number of deaths due to shark attacks, according to shark-attack statistics.
The 13-year-old boy killed this past weekend was surfing in an off-limits area at La Reunion Island, located east of Madagascar, according to news reports.
[Read More]Huge cemetery with at least 250 rock-cut tombs discovered in Egypt
Posted on April 30, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 585 words
| Fernande Dalal
About 250 tombs, some with fancy layouts and hieroglyphics, have been discovered cut into a hill at Al-Hamidiyah cemetery to the east of Sohag, in Egypt's Eastern Desert, about 240 miles (386 kilometers) southeast of Cairo, Egypt's antiquities ministry said.
The tombs were constructed at different times in Egypt's history, the archaeologists said in a statement from the ministry. The earliest were constructed about 4,200 years ago, at a time when Egypt's "
[Read More]Massive stone structures in Saudi Arabia may be some of oldest monuments in the world
Posted on April 30, 2023
| 5 minutes
| 877 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
They number in the hundreds, can be larger than an NFL football field and are found across Saudi Arabia, including on the slope of a volcano. Sprawling stone structures reported in 2017 now appear to be some of the oldest monuments in the world, dating back some 7,000 years, archaeologists now report.
A new study of the mysterious stone structures — once called "gates" but now referred to as "
[Read More]Mega plasma ball erupted from a sun-like star. It was 10 times larger than any ever seen.
Posted on April 30, 2023
| 4 minutes
| 844 words
| Trudie Dory
A baby version of the sun recently let off an eruption of magnetic plasma gas 10 times larger than any ever seen from a sun-like star, according to new research.
The star, EK Draconis, is only about 100 million years old, meaning it looks like Earth's sun about 4.5 billion years ago, said study leader Yuta Notsu, a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
[Read More]