Science

Horseshoe crabs are an ancient lineage with an evolutionary history stretching back 450 million years (Ordovician period) and are generally considered to be examples of ‘living fossils.’ A paleontologist from West Virginia University has described a new genus and species of true horseshoe crab from a Silurian-age specimen unearthed in Indiana, the United States. The species bridges the 80-million-year gap …

Get ready stargazers! In just one week, Earth’s shadow will roll across the lunar surface, giving rise to a spectacular ‘blood moon’ total lunar eclipse on Sept. 7-8. A total lunar eclipse occurs when Earth passes between the moon and sun, casting its shadow over our natural satellite. The tilted orbit of Earth’s moon prevents us from experiencing a total …

Heads up aurora chasers! A powerful solar storm is on its way and could supercharge the skies with northern lights just in time for the Labor Day holiday. A long-duration M2.7 flare erupted from sunspot Active Region 4199 on Aug. 30, launching a fast-moving, Earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME). The CME is expected to reach Earth late on Sept. 1 …

This week in science: The US puts together new guidelines for blood pressure; sections of the seafloor found to be strangely upside down; the brightest radio flash ever detected; and much more! Wax moldings of faces and body parts, in jars at a museum. (Matthew Hatcher/AFP) The Mütter medical museum in the US will no longer accept donations of unidentified …

Scientists have discovered that large sections of the seafloor beneath the North Sea appear to be flipped upside down, unveiling a rare geological process that could reshape how we understand sediment movement and subsurface stability. The formations were identified using seismic imaging techniques that revealed large-scale structural inversions. According to Science Alert, these findings are based on data showing dense …

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A team of computer scientists led by the University of Colorado Boulder has developed a new artificial intelligence platform that automatically seeks out “questionable” scientific journals. The study, published Aug. 27 in the journal “Science Advances,” tackles an alarming trend in the world of research. Daniel Acuña, lead author of the study and associate professor in the Department of Computer …

A new tectonic fault could be emerging beneath the Atlantic Ocean, raising the risk of powerful earthquakes and tsunamis that could ripple across the basin. That’s according to a new study published this week in Nature Geoscience. For centuries, scientists have puzzled over why Portugal has suffered huge earthquakes despite lying far from the world’s major fault lines.  On 1 …

A human-occupied vehicle (HOV) probing the deep Pacific Ocean has cast a light upon a massive undersea ‘metropolis’. The tortuous system of deep craters and dolomite walls blows the Atlantic Ocean’s famous ‘Lost City’ out of the water. Through a curtain of falling marine ‘snow’, the ghostly carbonate walls and jagged rocks around twenty hydrothermal vents shimmer in the heat …

Giant worlds beyond the Solar System could be the probe we need to figure out how dark matter manifests in the Universe. According to a new study, one particular dark matter model could see the mysterious mass accumulating in the cores of giant planets, collapsing into tiny black holes destined to consume the surrounding material over time. If we can …