A deep look back to the early universe by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed a surprisingly rowdy bunch of galaxies. Within a large galaxy sample, Spitzer witnessed around 15% of galaxies undergoing bouts of extreme starmaking, called starbursts. The...
October 31, 2017
ESA and NASA space telescopes have revealed that, unlike Earth’s polar lights, the intense auroras seen at Jupiter’s poles unexpectedly behave independently of one another. Auroras have been seen in many places, from planets and moons to stars, brown...
October 30, 2017
Research led by a Stirling academic, Dr. Tom Bradwell, has revealed how glaciers disappeared from Scotland at the end of the last Ice Age. Bradwell led a research team in taking samples offshore around the north-west of Scotland, and Shetland. The activity was part...
October 29, 2017
Scientists from MIT and other institutions, working closely with amateur astronomers, have spotted the dusty tails of six exocomets — comets outside our solar system — orbiting a faint star 800 light years from Earth. These cosmic balls of ice and dust,...
October 29, 2017
A recent article in Reviews of Geophysics explored how regional climate and weather is interconnected across space and time. Weather patterns are generally described in regional terms but they do not occur in isolation because they are part of the global atmospheric...
October 28, 2017
The Sun and Earth both produce powerful magnetic fields, and their intersection develops a complex system of physics that determines the space weather experienced by our planet. The solar wind - a constant stream of charged particles (plasma) emitted from the Sun -...
October 28, 2017
A new geological record of the Yellowstone supervolcano's last catastrophic eruption is rewriting the story of what happened 630 000 years ago and how it affected Earth's climate. This eruption formed the vast Yellowstone caldera observed today, the second...
October 27, 2017
Scientists at the University of California, Riverside have detected spontaneous tectonic tremor - a signature of slow earthquakes deep below the earth’s surface - in the Anza Gap region of the San Jacinto Fault. Tectonic tremors are believed to increase the...
October 27, 2017
Kyushu University-led researchers identified strong influence of pre-existing fault and plate structure on earthquake location and behavior in the Nankai Trough offshore of Japan. The islands of the Japanese archipelago are affected both by frequent, low-magnitude...
October 26, 2017
A rash of earthquakes in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico recorded between 2008 and 2010 was likely due to fluids pumped deep underground during oil and gas wastewater disposal, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study. The study, which took place in...
October 26, 2017
Seismic waves generated by tornadoes when they touch down could be used to measure a twister’s intensity, according to a new study. The new research examined a catastrophic tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri in May 2011 and revealed the size of seismic waves...
October 26, 2017
Southern California has the highest earthquake risk of any region in the U.S., but exactly how risky and where the greatest risks lie remains an open question. Earthquakes occur infrequently and depend on complex geological factors deep underground, making them hard...
October 26, 2017
Researchers previously thought that X-rays and gamma radiation produced by lightning only lasted for a very short time, about one ten-thousandth of a second. However, a new study reveals that the ionizing radiation of lightning appears to emit much longer than...
October 25, 2017
Giant lateral collapses are huge landslides occurring at the flanks of a volcano. Giant lateral collapses are rather common events during the evolution of a large volcanic edifice, often with dramatic consequences such as tsunami and volcano explosions. These...
October 25, 2017
On Saturday, March 22, 2014, a devastating landslide roared across the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, near Oso, Washington. The landslide killed 43 people as it plowed through the Steelhead Haven neighborhood. When it stopped, after crossing the river, the...
October 24, 2017
Whales and dolphins (Cetaceans) live in tightly-knit social groups, have complex relationships, talk to each other and even have regional dialects - much like human societies. A major new study, published recently in Nature Ecology & Evolution, has linked the...
October 24, 2017
Researchers in Germany have recovered an unusual set of teeth estimated to be 9.7 million years old. The teeth are unlike any found in Europe or Asia, but closely resemble the teeth of Lucy, the famed female specimen of the hominin species Australopithecus...
October 24, 2017