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Map of normalized channel steepness (ksn) as a reference for stream power. Credit: Nature Geoscience (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-024-01535-w Mount Everest (also known as Chomolungma or Sagarmāthā) is famously the highest mountain in the Himalayas and indeed on Earth. But why? At 8,849 meters above sea level, Everest is around 250m taller than the other great…
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Enrico Fermi’s lunchtime question at wartime Los Alamos, “Where is everybody?” has been both a gift and a problem to scientists ever since. Known as “Fermi’s Paradox,” it simply asks, why, since life on Earth is ubiquitous and developed very early in Earth’s history, and the galaxy is very old and…
Complete radial velocity time series for HD 86728. The NEID data are shown as light (Run 1) and dark (Run 2) blue circles. Credit: Gupta et al., 2024. An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new extrasolar world orbiting a nearby star known as HD 86728. This is the first exoplanet detection…
Excavated in Canada, this Eastern red cedar log turned out to be remarkably well-preserved for its age: 3,775 years old. Credit: Mark Sherwood, University of Maryland A new study published in the journal Science suggests that an ordinary old log could help refine strategies to tackle climate change. A team of researchers led by University…
The newly-discovered GS-NDG-9422 galaxy appears as a faint blur in this James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) image. It could help astronomers better understand galaxy evolution in the early Universe. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Alex Cameron (Oxford) The discovery of a “weird” and unprecedented galaxy in the early universe could “help us understand…
This multiwavelength image of the Cloverleaf ORC (odd radio circle) combines visible light observations from the DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument) Legacy Survey in white and yellow, X-rays from XMM-Newton in blue, and radio from ASKAP (the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder) in red. Credit: X. Zhang and M. Kluge (MPE), B. Koribalski (CSIRO) An…
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Utilizing one of the longest-running ecosystem experiments in the Arctic, a Colorado State University-led team of researchers has developed a better understanding of the interplay among plants, microbes and soil nutrients—findings that offer new insight into how critical carbon deposits may be released from thawing Arctic permafrost. Estimates suggest that Arctic…
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Mount Everest is about 15 to 50 meters taller than it would otherwise be because of uplift caused by a nearby eroding river gorge, and continues to grow because of it, finds a new study by UCL researchers. The study, published in Nature Geoscience, found that erosion from a river network…
Droplet-like, rounded iron-sulfide grains embedded within Chang’ e-5 glasses of different Ti content. Credit: IGCAS The research team led by Li Yang and Cao Zhi at the Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences confirmed for the first time that submicroscopic magnetite particles are common throughout the lunar surface. This information updates our…
A map depicting the region where the discovery of an ancient seafloor was made. Credit: Jingchuan Wang, University of Maryland. University of Maryland scientists uncovered evidence of an ancient seafloor that sank deep into Earth during the age of dinosaurs, challenging existing theories about Earth’s interior structure. Located in the East Pacific Rise (a tectonic…