The chemical building blocks of life have been found, among many other complex chemical compounds, in the grainy dust of an asteroid called Bennu, an analysis reveals. Samples of the space rock, which were scooped up by a Nasa spacecraft and brought to Earth, contain a rich array of minerals Read more…
Astronomers have discovered a newly identified asteroid that has a 1-in-83 chance of striking Earth on December 22, 2032, though the most likely scenario is a close miss. Designated as 2024 YR4, the asteroid measures in at 196 feet wide and is currently 27 million miles away. The near-Earth object Read more…
More than 40% of individual corals monitored around a Great Barrier Reef island were killed last year in the most widespread coral bleaching outbreak to hit the reef system, a study has found. Scientists tracked 462 colonies of corals at One Tree Island in the southern part of the Great Read more…
What happened during the “Snowball Earth” period is perplexing: Just as the planet endured about 100 million years of deep freeze, with a thick layer of ice covering most of Earth and with low levels of atmospheric oxygen, forms of multicellular life emerged. Why? The prevailing scientific view is that Read more…
Electric vehicles dominated Norway’s new car sales in 2024, capturing 88.9% market share versus 82.4% in 2023, the Norwegian Road Federation said. Tesla led sales, followed by Volkswagen and Toyota, as the Nordic nation approaches its 2025 goal of selling only zero-emission vehicles.
Scientists have discovered that great whales can live well beyond previously estimated lifespans, according to research published in Science Advances. The study found that southern right whales can survive past 130 years, while their heavily hunted northern counterparts rarely live beyond 47 years. The findings support earlier evidence from Arctic Read more…
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered Zhulong, the most distant grand-design spiral galaxy identified so far, located at a redshift of approximately 5.2. The galaxy was named Zhulong, after a giant red solar dragon and god in Chinese mythology. […] Its mass was found to be comparable Read more…