A massive line of vegetation in the Sahel may intensify the West African monsoon, simulations show Africa’s “Great Green Wall” initiative is a proposed 8,000-kilometer line of trees meant to hold back the Sahara from expanding southward. New climate simulations looking to both the region’s past and future suggest thisContinue Reading
New rovers started exploring the Red Planet while other missions launched to asteroids While a flurry of missions crowded around Mars this year, some lesser-explored parts of the solar system are about to get fresh eyes. Three countries visited the Red Planet in 2021, sending orbiters, landers, rovers and evenContinue Reading
The skeleton has been unearthed at Herculaneum. The skeleton of a man killed by the deadly eruption of Mount Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago has been unearthed from an ancient beach at Herculaneum — possibly as he ran in an attempt to escape the disaster. The man was killed justContinue Reading
A mysterious burst of extragalactic light appears to have spawned a small, compact object A cosmic flare-up called the Cow seems to have left behind a black hole or neutron star. When the flash was spotted in June 2018, astronomers debated its origins. Now, astrophysicist DJ Pasham of MIT andContinue Reading
The newfound planet is smaller than Earth, as dense as iron and hot enough to melt A newly discovered exoplanet is really making astronomers prove their mettle. Planet GJ 367b is smaller than Earth, denser than iron and hot enough to melt, researchers report in the Dec. 3 Science. “WeContinue Reading
Probably not. But there’s more to the story than meets the eye. There’s a story that Benjamin Franklin thought the turkey should be the national bird instead of the eagle. In a 1784 letter addressed to Sarah, his daughter, Franklin wrote: “For my own part I wish the bald eagleContinue Reading
“Such inoculation should be common everywhere.” A letter written by Russian empress Catherine the Great on April 20, 1787, stressing the importance of the smallpox vaccine to the count of Malorossiya (modern-day Ukraine), will go up for auction on Dec. 1 at MacDougall’s in London, according to news reports. ThatContinue Reading
Rebel Maccabees stormed and defeated a stronghold of the Seleucid Empire. Archaeologists have discovered the burned remains of an ancient Hellenistic fortress in Israel that fell to Jewish rebels more than 2,000 years ago. A guerrilla army called the Hasmoneans, also known as the Maccabees, defeated and set fire toContinue Reading
The gaseous structure bridges two of the galaxy’s spiral arms A long, thin filament of cold, dense gas extends jauntily from the galactic center, connecting two of the galaxy’s spiral arms, astronomers report November 11 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. This is the first time that such a structure, whichContinue Reading
A recent deathbed confession has the FBI investigating a former toxic waste dump in New Jersey… again. The FBI is surveying a former New Jersey landfill — once condemned as an environmental disaster site — as part of the agency’s long-running investigation into the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, the infamousContinue Reading