Bampot

You interact with about two-thirds of the elements of the periodic table every day. Some, like carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, make up our bodies and the air we breathe.

Yet there is also a class of elements so unstable they can only be made in a lab.

These superheavy elements are the purview of a small group stretching the boundaries of chemistry. Can they extend the periodic table beyond the 118 in it now?

Find out scientists are using particle accelerators to create element 120 and why they’ve skipped over element 119.

Plus, if an element exists for only a fraction of a second in the lab, can we still say that counts as existing?

Here we present evidence for a two-phase accumulation of the Mediterranean salt layer based on the chlorine stable isotope composition of halite.

During the first phase, lasting approximately 35 kyr, halite deposition occurred only in the eastern Mediterranean, triggered by the restriction of Mediterranean outflow to the Atlantic, in an otherwise brine-filled Mediterranean basin.

During the second phase, halite accumulation occurred across the entire Mediterranean, driven by a rapid (<10 kyr) evaporative drawdown event during which sea-level dropped 1.7–2.1 km and ~ 0.85 km in the eastern and western Mediterranean, respectively. During this extreme drawdown event, the eastern Mediterranean basin lost up to 83% of its water volume, and large parts of its margins were desiccated, while its deep Ionian and Herodotus sub-basins remained filled with >1 km-deep brine.

Pig Pen, glowing tails and shooting stars

Comet Encke is the so-called parent comet of the Taurid meteors. It’s relatively small, just over 3 miles (almost 5 kilometers) in diameter, and crosses inside Earth’s orbit and back out every 3.3 years.

As Encke moves, it sheds dust wherever it goes, like the Peanuts character Pig Pen. A meteor shower occurs when that dust and debris light up while entering Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds. Ultimately, they vanish into an incandescent puff of vapor with a glowing tail, creating the illusion of a “shooting star.”

But dust isn’t all that breaks off the comet. So do bigger chunks, the size of pebbles and stones. When they collide with the air, they create the much brighter fireballs, which sometimes explode.

As our planet warms up and rain patterns shift, the feathers and skin of many species are changing colors, often getting lighter. Snails in the Netherlands are going from brown to yellow. In a species of tropical bee in Costa Rica, the proportion of orange to blue individuals is increasing. Lizards in France are turning lighter, and so are many insects and birds across the globe.

The Greater Antillean islands (Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico) are a natural laboratory for studying speciation. Although these islands were once connected and share many geographical characteristics, they have been separated for millions of years. This prolonged isolation with natural barriers allows each island's species to evolve in their own unique directions.

These conditions have led to explosive diversification in various groups, resulting in highly endemic species with unique adaptations. Spiders, particularly tarantulas, show remarkable diversification in this region.

Skull whistle sounds attract mental attention by affectively mimicking other aversive and startling sounds produced by nature and technology. They were psychoacoustically classified as a hybrid mix of being voice- and scream-like but also originating from technical mechanisms. Using human neuroimaging, we furthermore found that skull whistle sounds received a specific decoding of the affective significance in the neural auditory system of human listeners, accompanied by higher-order auditory cognition and symbolic evaluations in fronto-insular-parietal brain systems. Skull whistles thus seem unique sound tools with specific psycho-affective effects on listeners, and Aztec communities might have capitalized on the scary and scream-like nature of skull whistles.

Astronomers are continuing to find ultra-massive galaxies in the early history of the Universe. The three galaxies have a similar mass to the Milky Way, despite being within the first billion years after the Big Bang. These galaxies are forming stars nearly twice as efficiently as lower-mass galaxies or galaxies later on in the Universe. Although they're still within standard theories of cosmology, they demonstrate how much needs to be learned about the early Universe.

The early Earth was bombarded by rocks from space, even after life had formed. Researchers are studying the implications of a meteorite that pummeled our planet 3.26 billion years ago. According to their calculations, this space rock was 200 times bigger than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, triggering a tsunami that mixed up the ocean and flushed debris from the land. With the newly available organic material, bacteria and other organisms flourished.

The primates in Pineda-Munoz and Alroy (2014) dataset are specialized plant-eaters. There is little argument that meat was not the main food of early hominins, but it appears that at least 3.2 Mya, australopiths may have increased the portion of meat in their diet.

The appearance of the genus Homo was associated with a gradual increase of the animal component in the diet. Early Homo has initially expanded the diet from major reliance on plant foods to scavenging of bone marrow and brains and meat. Consistent signs of increased concentration on animal-sourced foods appear in H. erectus .

Most of the evidence that has been collected and analyzed in this article points to a carnivore trophic level for humans during most of the Paleolithic, starting with H. erectus.

The 2023 Planetary Defense Strategy focuses on six goals in total across Federal Departments and Agencies for the decade ahead:

Goal 1: Enhance NEO detection, tracking, and characterization capabilities. Early detection and tracking of a potential NEO impact threat provides the greatest leverage to adequately respond in time to prevent loss of life and damage to critical infrastructure.

Goal 2: Improve NO modeling, prediction, and information integration. Departments and Agencies will coordinate the development of validated modeling tools and simulation capabilities that aid in characterizing and mitigating NO impact risks while integrating and streamlining data flows to support effective decision-making.

Goal 3: Develop technologies for NO reconnaissance, deflection, and disruption missions. NASA will continue to lead development of technologies that could potentially be used in fast-response NEO reconnaissance missions and timely missions to deflect or disrupt hazardous NEOS.

Goal 4: Increase international cooperation on NO preparedness. The potentially cataclysmic consequences of a NEO impact, independent of national borders and geopolitical dynamics, presents special opportunity for engagement with the international community to foster cooperation in joint research and response efforts.

Goal 5: Strengthen and routinely exercise NO impact emergency procedures and action protocols. The United States will strengthen and exercise procedures and protocols for assessment of NO threats, communication-including to the public and international community-regarding threats, and response and recovery activities.

Goal 6: Improve U.S. management of planetary defense through enhanced interagency collaboration. Actions under this goal will improve ongoing coordination and implementation on projects across Federal agency boundaries.

The dream of traversing the depths of space and planting the seed of human civilization on another planet has existed for generations. For long as we’ve known that most stars in the Universe are likely to have their own system of planets, there have been those who advocated that we explore them (and even settle on them). With the dawn of the Space Age, this idea was no longer just the stuff of science fiction and became a matter of scientific study. Unfortunately, the challenges of venturing beyond Earth and reaching another star system are myriad.

When it comes down to it, there are only two ways to send crewed missions to exoplanets. The first is to develop advanced propulsion systems that can achieve relativistic speeds (a fraction of the speed of light). The second involves building spacecraft that can sustain crews for generations – aka. a Generation Ship (or Worldship). On November 1st, 2024, Project Hyperion launched a design competition for crewed interstellar travel via generation ships that would rely on current and near-future technologies. The competition is open to the public and will award a total of $10,000 (USD) for innovative concepts.

Saber-toothed cats are iconic creatures often seen in museum dioramas, displays of fossil skeletons, and even the movie Ice Age. Now, for the first time one of these extinct predators has been spotted in the flesh. In a study published this week in Scientific Reports, researchers describe the frozen body of a saber-toothed kitten preserved for 37,000 years in the Siberian permafrost.

The carcass—containing the head, forelimbs, and front part of the animal—was discovered encased in a chunk of ice in 2020 near the Badyarikha River in northern Siberia, above the Arctic Circle. Radiocarbon dating revealed the cat—belonging to the species Homotherium latidens—lived in the late Pleistocene epoch 35,500 to 37,000 years ago.

Based on the emergence of its baby incisor teeth, researchers estimate the cub was about 3 weeks old when it died.