Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, according to estimates. However, rocks dating back to the planet’s earliest days are extremely rare. Hence the excitement over the discovery in northern China of some of the oldest known rocks on Earth, dating back 3.95 billion years. And one of the reasons for all the attention is that they’re revealing new clues about how Earth’s crust formed and evolved.
Author: Michael
Three men set sail off Australia’s coast in April 2007 and were never seen again. Days later, their yacht was found drifting at sea, with its engine running, food still on the table, and nobody aboard. What happened to the crew of the Kaz II remains a mystery nearly 20 years later. On April 15, Derek Batten, 56, Peter Tunstead, 69, and James Tunstead, 63, left Airlie Beach in Queensland aboard a 40-foot catamaran. They were heading to Townsville before continuing along Australia’s northern coastline and eventually returning home to Western Australia. The three men had some sailing experience and…
A burial ground on Spain’s southern coast suggests ancient communities may have continued building massive shared tombs during the Bronze Age, rather than simply reusing older monuments. A 3,800-year-old burial mystery on Spain’s southern coast is challenging what archaeologists thought they knew about prehistoric burial traditions. At a time when communities across the Iberian Peninsula […]
Some governments moved to confirm chip supply commitments, while others are monitoring the impact on local projects or addressing ongoing investigations.
Nearly 3 million years after the Taung Child lived, its fossil is challenging long-held assumptions about humanity’s origins, suggesting our ancient family tree was far more diverse than scientists once believed. A century ago, a child’s fossil helped establish Africa as the birthplace of humanity. Now, that same discovery is raising another question about our […]
It’s more apparent than ever just how harmful social media is to the impressionable minds of teens. But that’s not a story that social platforms want you to hear. According to explosive new reporting by Bloomberg, both Meta and TikTok secretly paid off a dozen teen plaintiffs in settlements most of which ranged anywhere from $2 million to $2.5 million in a bid to keep their claims out of the public eye. The teen plaintiffs accused the companies of causing their depression, self-harm, eating disorders, and anxiety. According to the publication’s insider sources, Meta paid just two teens a combined…
“It isn’t clear that ice baths really are the best way to recover post exercise”
Lake Baikal in Siberia holds around 20% of the world’s surface freshwater, making it the most voluminous freshwater lake (Lake Superior on the United States–Canada border is the largest by surface area). This makes the lake one of the most important environments for biodiversity—in fact, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1996 because of this. Yet it has shown considerable decline over the last century, with aridification spreading across East Asia.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has completed a major alignment milestone, bringing its instruments into precise synchronization for scientific observations. The achievement strengthens the observatory’s ability to maintain exceptionally stable pointing while preparing to study distant galaxies, dark energy, and planets hidden in the glare of nearby stars. Why NASA’s Roman Telescope Needs Such Extreme Precision According to NASA, the achievement follows a series of observations designed to measure subtle changes in the telescope’s optical alignment. Although Roman’s mirrors and instruments were carefully positioned before launch, vibrations during liftoff, temperature variations, and the transition to microgravity can alter their…
It seems straight out of a Disney movie—wild animals from two different species becoming inseparable friends. And yet that’s what happened at the Raven Ridge Wildlife Center in southeastern Pennsylvania, between a turkey and a mourning dove. Last spring, the wildlife center received two likely orphaned turkey poults (young turkeys). To calm them down, the team put them with a feather-duster as a stand-in mother turkey. Because turkey poults are easily stressed, they are difficult to rehabilitate, according to a Facebook post by the wildlife center. In fact, one of them didn’t make it. “Since we never raise baby animals…