A giant tectonic plate under the Indian Ocean, known as the India-Australia Capricorn plate, is breaking apart at about 1.7 mm (0.07 mm) per year, according to a new study. At this pace, it would take a million years for the two broken pieces to be 1.7 km (1 mile)...
May 24, 2020
In the year 1100, the Moon vanished from the night sky, leaving people in full darkness for several consecutive months. 920 years later, researchers at the University of Geneva in Switzerland believe they may have finally solved the mystery as their findings showed...
May 20, 2020
Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa-2 has reported new observations of Ryugu, revealing more secrets about the object's remarkable history-- particularly signs of a close encounter with the Sun. Hayabusa-2 launched in December 2014 and reached Ryugu in 2018. In...
May 19, 2020
New research reveals that Hawaii's Pūhāhonu volcano is the largest and hottest shield volcano on Earth, although it is barely visible as only a portion of its tip is exposed above the seafloor. Pūhāhonu, a Hawaiian word which means "turtle surfacing for...
May 15, 2020
The closest black hole to Earth-- lying just 1 000 lightyears away-- has been discovered by a team of astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and other institutes. Scientists say more similar black holes could be found in the future. "We were...
May 10, 2020
A high-resolution satellite has captured detailed images of a rocky cliff on Mars, revealing the first evidence of ancient rivers that existed for more than 100 000 years on the surface of the planet, 3.7 billion years ago. The international team of scientists used...
May 07, 2020
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Copenhagen's Center for Ice and Climate are proposing a new hypothesis for how Greenland's "Grand Canyon" formed: a series of catastrophic floods abruptly drained huge...
May 06, 2020
A new study shows that natural hazards on Earth, specifically earthquakes and tsunamis, can create much more disturbances in the ionosphere than previously assumed. The researchers studied the catastrophic 2011 M9.0 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and found...
May 06, 2020
Researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) discovered more than 500 towering hydrothermal chimneys on the seafloor off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, in an area known as the Endeavor Segment of the Juan de Fuca Ridge. Research on the...
May 06, 2020
A study by an international team of researchers found considerable variation in trends even among adjacent sites but an average decline of terrestrial insect abundance by ~9% per decade and an increase of freshwater insect abundance by ~11% per decade. This study...
May 05, 2020
A new study by an international team of geoscientists shows that a strange reversal of ground motion occurred prior to two of the biggest earthquakes in history-- the M8.8 great Maule quake in 2010 and the M9 Tohoku-Oki quake in 2011, which triggered a catastrophic...
April 30, 2020
A study by researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) suggests that the laws of nature are not as constant as previously assumed-- it may break down at the edge of the universe, making it possible to slightly bend the laws of the universe. In the...
April 29, 2020
Uppsala University researchers discovered how a supervolcano in the Andes-- on the border with Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia-- holds molten magma for millions of years without fully solidifying or erupting. "Huge volcanic eruptions from so-called supervolcanoes...
April 29, 2020
In a new study, physicists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison help explain why the solar wind's temperature becomes 10 times larger than expected when it reaches the Earth. Previously, researchers thought the solar wind has to cool down very rapidly as it...
April 24, 2020
Marine scientists at the University of South Flordia (USF) have concluded the first Gulf of Mexico-wide survey of oil pollution 10 years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster-- the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. On April 20, 2010,...
April 24, 2020
The United States Geological Survey (USGS), in collaboration with NASA and the Lunar Planetary Institute, has released the Unified Geologic Map of the Moon-- the first time the entire lunar surface has been completely mapped. "People have always been fascinated...
April 21, 2020
Researchers from the University of Mississippi are using an array of 12 infrasound sensors positioned across a pasture north of Huntsville in an effort to improve tornado warning methods. Each sensor includes a 12-volt marine battery, cabling, domed windscreen,...
April 19, 2020