An enormous “solar tornado” the size of 14 Earths stacked on top of each other recently raged on the sun’s surface for three whole days. The enormous plasma twister may be one of the largest ever recorded. The solar tornado emerged near the sun’s north pole on March 15 and continued to grow and shape-shift … Read more
Could an alien mothership be hovering around the solar system, sending out tiny probes to explore planets? According to a Harvard scientist and a Pentagon official, it’s possible. In a draft paper, the pair said it is feasible an extraterrestrial spaceship could be in our galactic neighborhood, exploring the region by the means of “dandelion … Read more
The universe could, in fact, be a giant doughnut, despite all of the evidence suggesting it’s as flat as a pancake, new research suggests. Strange patterns found in echoes of the Big Bang could be explained by a universe with a more complicated shape, and astronomers have not fully tested the universe’s flatness, the study … Read more
Stonehenge is a massive stone monument located on Salisbury Plain in southern England. It was built roughly 4,000 to 5,000 years ago and was part of a larger sacred landscape. The bigger stones at Stonehenge, known as sarsens, weigh 25 tons (22.6 metric tons) on average and are widely believed to have been brought from … Read more
Planetary scientists have found groundbreaking evidence of recent volcanic activity on Venus. Archives from NASA’s Magellan mission show telltale signs that Maat Mons, a 5-mile-high (8 kilometers) volcano on Earth’s hellish twin, was active in 1991. Magellan, launched in May 1989, was the first spacecraft to map the entire surface of Venus. The mission’s radar … Read more
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured a dazzling image of a star about to go supernova in a massive explosion. The picture, released by NASA on Tuesday (March 14), shows the star WR 124 in the middle of a spectacular cosmic cloud. As it goes supernova, the star, which is about 30 solar … Read more
New “unprecedented” animations of the Earth show how the planet’s surface has shifted and changed over the past 100 million years. These animations are the most detailed view of the history of Earth’s topography ever, depicting the rise of mountains, the development of basins, and the transport of large masses of sediments around the globe … Read more
The moon crashing into Earth may sound like an unrealistic doomsday scenario or the stuff of sci-fi disasters. But for some planets in other star systems, such catastrophic collisions may be common. New research published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society uses computer simulations to show that collisions between exoplanets and … Read more
Depleting oxygen and rising hydrogen sulfide levels in the oceans may have been responsible for one of Earth’s most significant mass extinctions more than 350 million years ago, a new study finds. The changes were likely driven by rising sea levels and have some spooky parallels to conditions seen today. Researchers studied samples of black … Read more
The ancient Celts were fierce warriors who lived in mainland Europe. But during the Renaissance, an idea took hold that they lived in the British Isles. The term “Celts” is used today to describe the cultures, languages and peoples that are based in Scotland; Ireland; other parts of the British Isles; and Brittany, in France. … Read more
