800-YEAR-OLD HOARD UNEARTHED IN NORTHERN GERMANY
The front of one gold earring in the Byzantine style that a metal detectorist found in Germany. A trainee metal detectorist in northern Germany recently hit on something…
Nitrous Oxide Could Help Detect Extraterrestrial Life on Exo-Earths
Nitrous oxide (also known as laughing gas) — a product of microbial nitrogen metabolism — is a compelling exoplanet biosignature gas with distinctive spectral features in the near-…
Glimpsing the hearts of galaxies
Inside all huge galaxies lies a supermassive black hole. Some are shining brightly, while others are barely visible — but all of them can teach us something about…
Paleontologists Redescribe Enigmatic Jurassic Shark Species
Paleontologists from the University of Vienna and elsewhere have revised a controversial species of the elasmobranch Protospinax annectans based on new specimens from the Late Jurassic Konservat-Lagerstätte of the Solnhofen…
Small Asteroid Flew Safely Past Earth This Week
A small near-Earth asteroid designated 2023 BU made its closest approach on January 26, 2023 at 7:29 p.m. EST (4:29 p.m. PST, or January 27, 2023 at 00:29…
Astronomers Identify Four Classes of Planetary System Architecture
Dr. Lokesh Mishra and his colleagues from the University of Bern and Geneva Observatory propose that the space of planetary system architectures be partitioned into four classes: similar,…
CEMETERY FOUND IN MEXICO CITY REFLECTS CHANGING BURIAL CUSTOMS
Cemetery Found in Mexico City Reflects Changing Burial Customs INAH experts recovered the skeletal remains of 21 individuals during the construction of the so-called “Pavellón Escénico“, in Chapultepec…
Supernova remnants found in most detailed radio image of Milky Way yet
Our galaxy should be full of traces of dead stars. Until now, we have found surprisingly few of these supernova remnants, but a new telescope collaboration is changing…
A nearby supernova could have caused the Devonian mass extinction
Finding the cause of mass extinction events is important for understanding the history of our planet and future threats. This artist’s concept shows dust forming around a newly…
The physics of accretion: How the universe pulled itself together
To form a celestial object, start with a gas cloud and add gravity. Then, it gets complicated. Material from an accretion disk swirls around the young star FU…
NEW THOUGHTS ON AN UNUSUAL BURIAL IN SARDINIA
Archaeologists have dated the unusual face-down burial of the young woman at the Monte Luna necropolis in Sardinia to late in the third century B.C. or early in…
If the universe is 13.8 billion years old, shouldn’t other life have existed before us?
The Drake equation is used to estimate the number of advanced civilizations in the Milky Way. Because researchers work with a number of uncertainties within each variable, the…