Radioactive Decay Fuels Earth's Inner Fires

 Posted on October 10, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  379 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Half of the extraordinary heat of the Earth that erupts on its surface volcanically and drives the titanic motions of the continents is due to radioactivity, scientists find. This new discovery shows that the planet still retains an extraordinary amount of heat it had from its primordial days. To better understand the sources of the Earth's heat, scientists studied antineutrinos, elementary particles that, like their neutrino counterparts, only rarely interact with normal matter. [Read More]

Renaissance-era letter sealed for centuries just virtually unfolded and read for the first time

 Posted on October 10, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  633 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

More than 600 years ago, someone intricately folded, sealed and posted a letter that was never delivered. Now, scientists have digitally "unfolded" this and other similarly locked letters found in a 17th-century trunk in The Hague, using X-rays.  For centuries prior to the invention of sealed envelopes, sensitive correspondence was protected from prying eyes through complex folding techniques called "letterlocking," which transformed a letter into its own secure envelope. However, locked letters that survive to the present are fragile and can be opened physically only by slicing them to pieces. [Read More]

South Dakota: Latest updates on coronavirus

 Posted on October 10, 2022  |  7 minutes  |  1453 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Last updated on April 27 at 6 p.m. EDT. South Dakota has 2,245 confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to the state's health department(opens in new tab). An additional 14,130 tests have come back negative for the virus. At least 1,316 patients have recovered from the virus, and 150 have been hospitalized. The state has so far seen 11 deaths from COVID-19.  More than 80% of the state's COVID-19 cases have been tied to a local outbreak at the Smithfield pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, the most populous city in South Dakota. [Read More]

Stan the T. rex just became the most expensive fossil ever sold

 Posted on October 10, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  802 words  |  Patria Henriques

A 67 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex specimen nicknamed Stan has just shattered a record; on Tuesday (Oct. 6), Stan was sold at Christie's New York for nearly $32 million. That makes it the most expensive fossil ever sold at an auction. Previously, the priciest fossil to hit the auction block was an incredibly complete T. rex known as Sue, which sold for $8.36 million in 1997 ($13.5 million in today's dollars, given inflation) to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. [Read More]

Strange Particles May Travel Faster than Light, Breaking Laws of Physics

 Posted on October 10, 2022  |  5 minutes  |  887 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

This story was updated at 6:20 p.m. EDT. Nothing goes faster than the speed of light. At least, we didn't think so. New results from the CERN laboratory in Switzerland seem to break this cardinal rule of physics, calling into question one of the most trusted laws discovered by Albert Einstein. Physicists have found that tiny particles called neutrinos are making a 454-mile (730-kilometer) underground trip faster than they should — more quickly, in fact, than light could do. [Read More]

The Surprising Source of Most Mercury Pollution

 Posted on October 10, 2022  |  5 minutes  |  959 words  |  Trudie Dory

If, as Robert Frost wrote, "nothing gold can stay," then mercury sticks around forever. Mercury has an uncanny ability to bind to precious metals, and for millennia, people have used it to mine gold and silver. Small-scale, or "artisanal," mining — which makes use of mercury in this way — has recently become the leading source of mercury pollution, several recent studies show. Mining releases mercury into the air when it is burned off to isolate gold from a chunk of rock or slurry; it also seeps into the soil and rivers from water used in the process and runoff from rainwater, contaminated by materials left behind from mining operations. [Read More]

2012 Second Costliest Year for Natural Disasters

 Posted on October 9, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  309 words  |  Patria Henriques

Hurricane Sandy and an extensive drought made 2012 the United States' second costliest year for natural disasters since 1980, federal officials said today (June 13). Weather and climate disasters racked up $110 billion in damages across the country last year, according to a report released today by the National Climate Data Center (NCDC). There were 11 events in 2012 that each incurred at least $1 billion in damages, including spring tornado outbreaks in the Midwest and Texas, a derecho that plowed from the Plains to the Northeast, and the yearlong drought and its associated heatwaves and wildfires that burned more than 9. [Read More]

Awww! 12 Incredible Interspecies Moms in the Animal Kingdom

 Posted on October 9, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  715 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Different species? No problemMother's Day is a time to celebrate the important role that moms play in the lives of their children. But human mothers aren't the only ones worth celebrating. There are plenty of hardworking mothers in the animal kingdom that also deserve recognition for their parenting. In fact, some animals' maternal instincts even go beyond the bounds of their species. Check out these incredible stories of interspecies parenting — from a French bulldog that adopted wild boar piglets to a cat that nursed baby chicks. [Read More]

Bizarre Fish Are Deadly Deep-Sea Predators (And Twitter Stars)

 Posted on October 9, 2022  |  5 minutes  |  900 words  |  Fernande Dalal

See morePictured above: A frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus anguinensis), identified by John Sparks, curator of ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Blobby fish with bulging and reflective eyes, protruding jaws crammed with spiky teeth, and peculiar structures dangling from bodies are finding an appreciative audience on land. That's because a Russian fisherman named Roman Fedortsov shared photos on Twitter of these mysterious denizens of the deep. Fedortsov hails from Murmansk, a port city on Russia's northwest coast near the Barents Sea, according to his Twitter bio. [Read More]

Cloudiest Places on Earth Revealed in Stunning New Image

 Posted on October 9, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  375 words  |  Trudie Dory

"No more cloudy days," The Eagles promise to a new love interest in the 2006 song of the same name. Keeping that promise might require going off-planet. As a new NASA image reveals, the Earth is a cloudy place. According to the space agency, clouds cover about 67 percent of the Earth's surface at any given time, and less than 10 percent of the skies over the ocean are sunny and blue. [Read More]