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A new map reveals the remnants of ancient continents that lurk beneath Antarctica's ice. The map shows that East Antarctica is made up of multiple cratons, which are the cores of continents that came before, according to study leader Jörg Ebbing, a geoscientist at Kiel University in Germany. "This observation leads back to the break-up of the supercontinent Gondwana and the link of Antarctica to the surrounding continents," Ebbing told Live Science. The findings help reveal fundamental facts about Earth's tectonics and how Antarctica's land and ice sheets interact, he wrote in an email. Because the continent is so remote...

All birds evolved from feathered theropods — the two-legged dinosaurs like T. rex — beginning about 150 million years ago, and developed into many lineages in the Cretaceous period, between 146 and 65 million years ago. But after the cataclysm that wiped out most of the dinosaurs, only one group of birds remained: the ancestors of the birds we see today.Why did only one family survive the mass extinction? The newly-discovered fossil from one of those extinct bird groups, enantiornithines, deepens that mystery. ..." Mirarce eatoni’s breast bone or sternum, where flight muscles attach, is more deeply keeled than other...

Under the guise of security and convenience, a Swedish company wants to microchip hundreds of thousands of employees at British companies. Who’s doing this? The company, Biohax,  is working with a number of UK legal and financial firms are negotiating programs to implant staffers with the devices, according to The Telegraph. “One prospective client, which cannot be named, is a major financial services firm with ‘hundreds of thousands of employees,’ ” the report stated. ”These companies have sensitive documents they are dealing with,” Jowan Osterlund, the founder of Biohax and a former professional body piercer, told the news outlet....

Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates. They have human-like long-term memory, routinely use a variety of sophisticated tools in the wild and construct elaborate sleeping nests each night from foliage and branches. ..." “The hook-bending task has become a benchmark paradigm to test tool innovation abilities in comparative psychology,” said co-author Dr. Alice Auersperg, a scientist at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna.“Considering the speed of their hook innovation, it seems that orangutans actively invented a solution to this problem rather than applying routined behaviors.”“In the study, we confronted Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii) with a vertical tube containing...

Discovered by the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN) spacecraft, the unusual phenomenon is thought to have been caused by the effects of the solar winds and could help to shine more light on how the Martian atmosphere escaped in to space. "We found that Mars' magnetic tail, or magnetotail, is unique in the Solar System," said NASA scientist Gina DiBraccio. "It's not like the magnetotail found at Venus, a planet with no magnetic field of its own, nor is it like Earth's, which is surrounded by its own internally generated magnetic field." "Instead, it is a hybrid between...

WASHINGTON — The moon may be the next space destination for American astronauts, but the frontier of Mars still beckons, NASA chief Jim Bridenstine says. Monday evening (Nov. 8), a crowd of reporters, scientists, politicians and space enthusiasts gathered here at National Geographic headquarters to celebrate and discuss Season 2 of the National Geographic series "Mars" and the Project Mars competition's film and poster winners. Bridenstine addressed the crowd, saying he was excited about the return of "Mars," the competition, and the steps the U.S. is taking to get back to the moon and then the Red Planet.  "We're going...

PORTLAND, OREGON—Venus flytraps have a well-known way of dispatching their victims: They snare inquisitive insects that brush up against trigger hairs in their fly-trapping pods (above). But now, physicists have discovered that the triggering process may involve the release of a cascade of exotic chemicals similar to the whiff of ozone that tingles your nose after a lightning bolt. To study this process, scientists used an electrical generator to ionize air into a “cold plasma,” which they then gently blew toward a flytrap in their lab. Normally, the flytrap’s closure is caused by an electrical signal created when two or...

The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) is investigating the appearance of an unidentified flying object (UFO) after a number of sightings off the coast of Ireland last Friday morning. A British Airways flight — call sign Speedbird 94 — contacted Shannon Air Traffic Control to find out if military operations were taking place within the craft’s airspace, saying that an object “moving so fast” had been sighted by the pilot. […] Two more aircraft can then be heard reporting the sighting to Shannon Air Traffic Control. A Virgin Airlines plane — call sign Virgin 76 — suggests that the sighting could...

Scientists have demonstrated a "commercially viable" quantum accelerometer that could provide navigation without GPS or other satellite technology. The device uses lasers to cool atoms to extremely low temperatures, and then measures the quantum wave properties of those atoms as they respond to acceleration. [T]his quantum 'compass' isn't ready to replace the accelerometer in your phone. It's only truly ready for ships, trains and other large vehicles where size and power requirements aren't major factors. It could keep transportation networks humming even if GPS fails outright. The researchers also expect the underlying concepts to help with science studies, such as...

Powerful Solar Storm Likely Detonated Sea Mines During Vietnam War By Brett Carter | November 9, 2018 3:46 pm Solar flares captured on sun. (Credit: NASA/SDO)On Aug. 4, 1972, the crew of a U.S. Task Force 77 aircraft flying near a naval minefield in the waters off Hon La observed 20 to 25 explosions over about 30 seconds. They also witnessed an additional 25 to 30 mud spots in the waters nearby.Destructor sea mines had been deployed here during Operation Pocket Money, a mining campaign launched in 1972 against principal North Vietnamese ports.There was no obvious reason why the mines...

Kul-Oba an ancient archaeological site, a Scythian burial tumulus (kurgan), located near Kerch in eastern Crimea. Kul-Oba was the first Scythian royal barrow to be excavated in modern times. Uncovered in 1830, the stone tomb yielded a wealth of precious artifacts which drew considerable public interest to Scythian world. Of particular interest is an intricately granulated earring with two Nike figurines and Serpent-Legged Goddess, now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.The tomb was built around 400 to 350 BC. The body of the king lay by the east wall on a sumptuous wooden couch. His social position was highlighted by...

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California suspect that midsize black holes might be just the right size to provide enough gravitational force to reignite a dead white dwarf star — the stellar corpse of a star that's about the mass of the sun and that's used up its nuclear fuel. To test their idea, the team members ran supercomputer simulations of dozens of different close-encounter scenarios between these dead stars and midsize black holes. Every time a white dwarf got close to the Goldilocks black hole, the star reignited. The gravitational force from the black hole would cause the...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slmL71jr0hM

Posted on November 9, 2018November 9, 2018 by Evan Gough Not all the Earth’s Water Came From Comets We have comets and asteroids to thank for Earth’s water, according to the most widely-held theory among scientists. But it’s not that cut-and-dried. It’s still a bit of a mystery, and a new study suggests that not all of Earth’s water was delivered to our planet that way.Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and it’s at the center of the question surrounding Earth’s water. This new study was co-led by Peter Buseck, Regents’ Professor in the School of...

The stereotypical image of an astronaut is shaped by their spacesuit, with its puffy, white body and boxy backpack holding the life-support system. Dava Newman, an aerospace engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wants to change that. She is designing what she hopes will be the next generation of spacesuits — which will give the life-saving devices the bulk and style of something more like athletic or camping equipment. "We're going to Mars not to sit in the habitat — we're going there to explore," Newman said. "We don't want you to fight the suit. We want you to...

At least four Kouros-type statues from the Archaic era were among four unearthed during excavations in October by the ephorate of antiquities of Fthiotida and Evrytania in the wider area of Atalanti in central Greece. Archaeologists commenced digging in the area after a landowner in Atalanti reported that he found the trunk of a naked male statue as he was tilling his field. Kouros is the name given to free-standing ancient Greek sculptures representing nude male youths. They first made their appearance in the Archaic period. Their figures began to appear in Greece about 615-590 BC. While many aspects of...

A board coated in the new polymer paint stays significantly cooler than its surroundings, even in direct sunlight, as seen under ultraviolet lights. (Image courtesy of Columbia University.) ___________________________________________________________________ A team of engineers from Columbia University has created a polymer coating that uses nano-to-microscale air voids to reflect sunlight and cool down buildings. Passive daytime radiative cooling (PDRC) is a phenomenon where a surface spontaneously cools by reflecting sunlight and radiating heat to a cooler atmosphere. PDRC works best if a surface has high solar reflectance—meaning that most of the sun’s radiation is reflected away—and a high thermal emittance—meaning that...

Although the mere thought of a swarm of microrobots burrowing into an eyeball is enough to make some people squirm, scientists believe tiny, controllable delivery vehicles could be the future of eye medicine. Now, researchers have developed a tiny, rotini-shaped spiral that could one day be deployed in the thousands for targeted drug delivery. Current treatments for eye diseases such as glaucoma or diabetic macular edema are delivered through direct injection or eyedrops. Those methods are effective but imprecise, often blanketing the entire eye in medication. So scientists used nanoscale 3D printing to create spiral-shaped robots small enough to pass...

NASA’s Juno orbiter has detected ‘wave trains’ — massive structures of moving air that appear like waves — in the atmosphere of Jupiter Wave trains are towering atmospheric structures that trail one after the other as they roam Jupiter.They were first detected by NASA’s Voyager missions during their flybys of the giant planet in 1979.“Juno’s imager called the JunoCam has counted more distinct wave trains than any other spacecraft mission since Voyager,” said Juno team member Dr. Glenn Orton, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.“The trains, which consist of as few as two waves and as many as several dozen, can...

No, you're not looking at a strange alien planet or the Earth through an Instagram filter – this orange glow is known as an airglow, courtesy of NASA. According to the space agency, the airglow is "diffuse bands of light that stretch 50 to 400 miles into our atmosphere."  It typically occurs when  molecules, largely nitrogen and oxygen, are  "energized by ultraviolet radiation from sunlight." From there, the atoms "in the lower atmosphere bump into each other and lose energy in the collision. The result is colorful airglow," NASA wrote on its website. The image was taken by an astronaut onboard the...