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A team of planetary scientists at the Australian National University found that our planet is made of the same elements as the Sun but has less of the volatile elements such as hydrogen, helium, oxygen and nitrogen. Wang et al compared new protosolar elemental abundances with recent estimates of bulk Earth composition. Image credit: Orlando PIRO4D. “The composition of a rocky planet is one of the…

In June 2018, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) spacecraft and sample return mission Hayabsua-2 arrived at the near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu. The first scientific results from the mission, published this week in a trio of papers in the journal Science, portray Ryugu as a porous ‘pile of rubble.’ This image of the asteroid Ryugu was captured by the Optical Navigation Camera –…

A team of professional and amateur archaeologists believe they may have discovered the monastery of Aebbe (615-683 CE), a powerful Anglo-Saxon woman who helped shape British history. Coldingham Priory. Image credit: DigVentures / Aerial Cam. Born a pagan princess, Aebbe (Æbbe of Coldingham) was the daughter of King Ethelfrith of Bernicia and Acha of Deira. Bernicia and Deira were Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in…

The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, also known as Clovis comet hypothesis, posits that the hemisphere-wide debris field of a large, disintegrating asteroid (or comet) struck North America, South America, Europe, and western Asia approximately 12,800 years ago. This event triggered extensive biomass burning, brief impact winter, climate change, and contributed to extinctions of late Pleistocene megafauna….

A new study published in the journal Scientific Reports provides evidence that sun bears (Helarctos malayanus), a typically solitary species, have the ability to mimic the expressions of their conspecifics and that they do so by matching the exact facial variants they interact with. It is the first time exact facial mimicry has been seen outside of humans and gorillas. The sun bear (Helarctos malayanus)…

Physicists from the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) Collaboration at CERN have observed, for the first time, the matter-antimatter asymmetry known as charge-parity (CP) violation in the decays of a D0 meson, a subatomic particle made up of a charm quark and an up antiquark. The LHCb magnet. Image credit: CERN. The term CP refers to the transformation that swaps a particle with the mirror image…

Drinking hot tea elevates the risk of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, one of the two major types of esophageal cancer, by about 90%, according to a new study. Drinking hot tea increases the risk of esophageal cancer. Image credit: Fxxu. “Our results substantially strengthen the existing evidence supporting an association between hot beverage drinking and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC),”…

It’s widely accepted that continental Sahul, the combined landmass of Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania, was settled very early in human history. But the exact entry point and timing of ancient human migration into Sahul, which was eventually split by rising sea levels, is a question that has plagued paleoanthropologists. That is until now. And unexpectedly it’s a virus called hepatitis B providing…

A team of planetary scientists at the Australian National University found that our planet is made of the same elements as the Sun but has less of the volatile elements such as hydrogen, helium, oxygen and nitrogen. Wang et al compared new protosolar elemental abundances with recent estimates of bulk Earth composition. Image credit: Orlando PIRO4D. “The composition of a rocky planet is one of the…

It’s widely accepted that continental Sahul, the combined landmass of Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania, was settled very early in human history. But the exact entry point and timing of ancient human migration into Sahul, which was eventually split by rising sea levels, is a question that has plagued paleoanthropologists. That is until now. And unexpectedly it’s a virus called hepatitis B providing…