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Categories: Anthropology: General, Space: Astronomy

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In 2022 NASA embarked on a bold experiment to see if they could change an asteroid's velocity by smacking it with a ballistic probe -- kind of like hitting it with a hammer. This experiment was to test a potential technique to someday deflect an asteroid on a collision course to Earth. Perhaps, for the first time in the history of the universe, an intelligent planetary species sought ways to avoid its own potential extinction by threats from outer space (something the dinosaurs, who were wiped out 65 million years ago by a rogue asteroid, never evolved to accomplish).

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A world-first model of paleoclimate and hydrology in Iran has highlighted favourable routes for Neanderthals and modern human expansions eastwards into Asia. The findings reveal that multiple humid periods in ancient Iran led to the expansions of human populations, opening dispersal route across the region, and the possible interactions of species such as Neanderthals and our own Homo sapiens.

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Astronomers offer new insight into how deflection missions can protect the planet from future Earth-bound asteroids and comets.

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A new study reports on genomic data from a 23,000-year-old individual who lived in what was probably the warmest place of Europe at the peak of the last Ice Age. The oldest human genome recovered from the southern tip of Spain adds an important piece of the puzzle to the genetic history of Europe.

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Scientists identified about 140,000 molecular clouds in the Milky Way Galaxy from large-scale data of carbon monoxide molecules, observed in detail by the Nobeyama 45-m radio telescope. Using artificial intelligence, the researchers estimated the distance of each of these molecular clouds to determine their size and mass, successfully mapping the distribution of the molecular clouds in the Galaxy in the most detailed manner to date.

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In 2011, scientists recorded a previously unknown feeding strategy in whales around the world. Now, researchers in Australia think they may have found evidence of this behaviour being described in ancient accounts of sea creatures, recorded more than 2,000 years ago. They believe that misunderstandings of these descriptions contributed to myths about medieval sea monsters. Whales are known lunge at their prey when feeding, but recently whales have been spotted at the surface of the water with their jaws open at right angles, waiting for shoals of fish to swim into their mouths. A clip of this strategy was captured in 2021 and went viral on Instagram. This strategy seems to work for the whales because the fish think they have found a place to shelter from predators, not realising they are swimming into danger. It's not known why this strategy has only recently been identified, but scientists speculate that it's a result of changing environmental conditions -- or that whales are being more closely monitored than ever before by drones and other modern technologies.

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Cartilaginous fish have changed much more in the course of their evolutionary history than previously believed. Evidence for this thesis has been provided by new fossils of a ray-like shark, Protospinax annectans, which demonstrate that sharks were already highly evolved in the Late Jurassic.

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Scientists have detected the heaviest and youngest infant star ever discovered close to the black hole at the center of our Galaxy. They also identified the region where this 'impossible star' may have formed.

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A liquid nitrogen spray can remove almost all of the simulated moon dust from a space suit, potentially solving what is a significant challenge for future moon-landing astronauts.

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Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope's first year of interstellar observation, an international team of researchers was able to serendipitously view an exploding supernova in a faraway spiral galaxy.

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While analyzing data from the first images of a well-known early galaxy taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers discovered a companion galaxy previously hidden behind the light of the foreground galaxy -- one that surprisingly seems to have already hosted multiple generations of stars despite its young age, estimated at 1.4 billion years old.

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By simulating early Earth conditions in the lab, researchers have found that without specific amino acids, ancient proteins would not have known how to evolve into everything alive on the planet today -- including plants, animals, and humans.

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An object near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy has drawn the interest of scientists because it has evolved dramatically in a relatively short time. A new study suggests that the object, called X7, could be a cloud of dust and gas that was created when two stars collided. The researchers believe it will eventually be drawn toward the black hole and will disintegrate.

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Astronomers have discovered a rapidly growing black hole in one of the most extreme galaxies known in the very early Universe. The discovery of the galaxy and the black hole at its center provides new clues on the formation of the very first supermassive black holes.

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Scientists who study the origins and evolution of the plague have examined hundreds of ancient human teeth from Denmark, seeking to address longstanding questions about its arrival, persistence and spread within Scandinavia.

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Six massive galaxies discovered in the early universe are upending what scientists previously understood about the origins of galaxies in the universe.

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Enceladus, the sixth largest of Saturn's moons, is known for spraying out tiny icy silica particles -- so many of them that the particles are a key component of the second outermost ring around Saturn. Scientists have not known how that happens or how long the process takes. A study now shows that tidal heating in Enceladus' core creates currents that transport the silica, which is likely released by deep-sea hydrothermal vents, over the course of just a few months.

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Astronomers have discovered an unusual planetary system in which a large gas giant planet orbits a small red dwarf star called TOI-5205. Their findings challenge long-held ideas about planet formation.

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A recent excavation in Megiddo, Israel, unearthed the earliest example of a particular type of cranial surgery in the Ancient Near East -- and potentially one of the oldest examples of leprosy in the world.

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A team of international researchers have identified six candidate galaxies that existed roughly 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang and are about as big as the modern Milky Way Galaxy -- a feat that scientists didn't think was possible.