A research group at The University of New Mexico has identified how an unusual prehistoric plant may provide new ways to interpret Earth’s ancient climate conditions. Led by UNM Earth and Planetary Sciences Professor Zachary Sharp, the team published its findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study, titled “Extreme…
Gareth Lewis,Wales political editor and Steffan Messenger,Wales environment correspondent BBC Work will begin next year, with the aim of generating power by the mid 2030s A first-of-its-kind nuclear power station is to be built on Anglesey, bringing up to 3,000 jobs and billions of pounds of investment. The plant at Wylfa, on the Welsh island’s…
Francis Crick (right) and James Watson in 1953 as they modelled DNA A. BARRINGTON BROWN, GONVILLE & CAIUS COLLEGE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Crick: A mind in motion – from DNA to the brainMatthew Cobb, Profile Books, UK; Basic Books, US Francis Crick missed a crucial seminar in 1951, probably because he was seeing a lover. James…
A newly identified carnivorous reptile may look like a dinosaur at first glance, but researchers have confirmed that it was actually an early relative of modern crocodiles. The species is named Tainrakuasuchus bellator, a title partly inspired by the Latin word for “warrior” or “fighter.” This armored animal lived 240 million years ago, during a…
Ryan Wills; Barry Hetherington; ESA; NASA; AdobeStock Richard Binzel has been watching the skies for hazardous asteroids for more than 50 years. In 1995, he proposed the Near-Earth Object Hazard Index, later renamed the Torino scale, which rates asteroids from 0 to 10 based on how certain we are that they could hit Earth –…
Artist’s impression of a coronal mass ejection on a star Olena Shmahalo/Callingham et al. A cloud of plasma ejected by a star 130 light years away has been detected by a radio telescope on Earth, giving astronomers their first definitive observation of a coronal mass ejection (CME) from a star beyond our sun. CMEs occur…
Recently, Halloween may have brought thoughts of skeletons, but the true “skeleton age” began long ago during the early Cambrian Period, roughly 538 to 506 million years ago. During this transformative era, many of Earth’s major animal groups independently figured out how to create mineralized skeletons or shells. They typically did this in one of…
Researchers at the University of Houston have achieved a major scientific milestone in the study of heat transfer. Their new findings overturn long-standing assumptions about thermal conductivity and reveal that boron arsenide (BAs) can conduct heat more effectively than diamond, which has long been considered the benchmark among isotropic materials. The research team discovered that…
Artist’s impression of a coronal mass ejection on a star Olena Shmahalo/Callingham et al. A cloud of plasma ejected by a star 40 light years away has been detected by a radio telescope on Earth, giving astronomers their first definitive observation of a coronal mass ejection (CME) from a star beyond our sun. CMEs occur…
An international group of scientists has confirmed the discovery of three Earth-sized planets within the binary stellar system known as TOI-2267, located roughly 190 light-years from Earth. The finding, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, offers new insight into how planets can form and remain stable in double-star systems, which were once thought too chaotic for…
