Once this iceberg drifts into the ocean, the shelf behind it might collapse. That’s similar to what happened at Larsen B, which will likely disintegrate completely by 2020. However, NASA JPL ice shelf scientist Ala Khazendar cautions that Larsen C’s future remains uncertain. Ice shelves naturally shed icebergs, and this ice shelf could recover and avoid the fate of Larsens A and B.
If the floating Larsen C does collapse, it won’t raise sea levels directly. But once an ice shelf ...read more
Astronomers are cracking the secrets of our solar system within the oldest rocks — on Earth and beyond.
The oldest object known to humans fell from the sky on Feb. 8, 1969, with the furor of a divine omen. The blue-white fireball streaked over northern Mexico at 1:05 a.m., ending with a staccato of booms heard from hundreds of miles away. A small asteroid had struck Earth’s atmosphere and exploded — raining thousands of fragments over the desert. NASA dispatched scientists ...read more
With a series of papers out today, Homo naledi gets both a birthdate and more complete.
Discovered in a South African cave, H. naledi first came to light in 2015, in a paper by University of the Witwatersrand anthropologist Lee Berger. Though the remains were undated at the time, estimates put them at anywhere from 100,000 to several million years old. This was based on a physical analysis of the bones, which contained a curious mixture of modern and archaic traits. Now, aft ...read more
The filagree of atmospheric patterns at Jupiter's south pole bears an eerie resemblance to a phenomenon here on Earth
When I spotted this image of Jupiter on NASA's website, I felt a bit disoriented.
At first glance, it looked like a fanciful artist's conception of the giant planet. But it's actually a real image of Jupiter's south polar region, acquired by the Juno spacecraft. (Make sure to click on it, and then click again to enlarge it.)
The image has been enhanced to help bring ...read more
A new paper in the prestigious journal PNAS contains a rather glaring blooper.
The paper, from Oxford University researchers Eiluned Pearce et al., is about the relationship between genes and social behaviour. The blooper is right there in the abstract, which states that "three neuropeptides (β-endorphin, oxytocin, and dopamine) play particularly important roles" in human sociality. But dopamine is not a neuropeptide.
Neither are serotonin or testosterone, but throughout the paper, Pea ...read more
