Earth’s interior is a far from quiet place. Deep below our surface activities, the planet rumbles with activity, from plate tectonics to convection currents that circulate through the hot magmatic fluids far underneath the crust.

Now scientists studying satellite data of Earth have identified something inside Earth we’ve never seen before: a new type of magnetic wave that sweeps around the surface of our planet’s core, every seven years.

This discovery could offer insight into how Earth’s magnetic field is generated, and provide clues of our planet’s thermal history and evolution – that is, the gradual cooling of the planetary interior.

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Many of us were probably still figuring out how to use the copier on our third day of an internship. Well, when 17-year-old Wolf Cukier interned at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in the summer of 2019, he was already assigned with some serious tasks. Among them was examining variations in star brightness captured by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). And as if that weren’t impressive enough, he even managed to discover planet TOI 1338b, as it is known now, only three days into his internship.

This exoplanet is currently the only known planet in the TOI 1338 system. It lies in the constellation Pictor, about 1,300 lightyears away from Earth.

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We define a day as 86,400 seconds, or 24 hours – the time it takes for Earth to rotate once. However, the Earth doesn’t rotate perfectly uniformly. Usually, the Earth’s rotation is actually slowing down so that the length of the day increases by about 1.8 milliseconds per century, on average. This means that 600 million years ago a day lasted only 21 hours.

The variation in day length is due to several factors, including the tidal effects of the Moon and Sun, core-mantle coupling inside the Earth, and the overall distribution of mass on the planet. Seismic activity, glaciation, the weather, the oceans and the Earth’s magnetic field may also affect the length of the day.

In 2020 scientists made a startling discovery. They found that, instead of slowing down, the Earth has started to spin faster. It is now spinning faster than at any time in the last 50 years. In fact, the shortest 28 days on record all occurred during 2020.

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Night sky lovers can typically spot a smattering of a few planets, but in late March, a stunning visual takes shape when five planets line up beneath the moon in a display sometimes called a planetary parade or alignment.

Onlookers will be able to catch the best glimpse of the alignment — which will include Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Uranus — on Tuesday evening, just after sunset. Much of the display will become visible on Friday and will continue to be so over the next couple of weeks, according to Cameron Hummels, a computational astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology.

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link submitted by Gene Savoy Jr.

Here’s aп iпtrigυiпg idea. What if yoυ were iпformed that everythiпg iп yoυr life was pre-plaппed? Eveп crazier, what if yoυr history, preseпt, aпd fυtυre are all takiпg place right пow?

Aп iпcredible пew theory established as the “block υпiverse” theory asserts that time does пot actυally “flow like a river”; rather, everythiпg is ever-preseпt.

Dr. Bradford Skow, a philosophy professor at the Massachυsetts Iпstitυte of Techпology, proposes that if we “look dowп” oп the cosmos as if it were a piece of paper, we woυld see time stretched oυt iп all directioпs, jυst as we perceive space at aпy giveп time.

Is it possible that we oпly see time as esseпtially liпear becaυse that is what oυr hυmaп braiпs are capable of compreheпdiпg?

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It was the middle of winter under a moody Alaskan sky. On one side stretched the flat expanse of the Colville River. On the other, a soaring cliff face of frozen pewter-grey rock, backing onto hundreds of miles of desolate tundra.

Armed with an ice-axe and crampons, buffeted by frigid Arctic winds in temperatures that hovered around -28C (-20F), Pat Druckenmiller was searching for something special.

It was 2021 and just getting to the cliff had been an extreme expedition. In this remote northerly corner of Alaska, there are no roads, so the palaeontologist and colleagues from the University of Alaska travelled to the site on snow scooters, then set up a camp nearby. It was so cold, each tent was equipped with its own wood-burning stove. For the coming weeks, the team would be constantly battling frostbite – “we had some close calls,” says Druckenmiller – rockfalls, and hungry polar bears. But it was worth it.

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The last time anyone saw this Peruvian Huaca Pintada was over a century ago. Now, a team of intrepid archaeology students and their professor have painstakingly rediscovered the lost 1,000-year-old mural which they say provides evidence for the development and evolution of an ancient Peruvian cultural phenomenon.

The legendary Peruvian Huaca is a 30-metre-high (98.42 ft) rock face painted with mythological scenes including an ancient deity surrounded by indigenous warriors. An article in La República reports that the site was first rediscovered in 1916 by a group of huagueros, or treasure hunters , in Illimo, near the city of Chiclayo, the capital city of northwest Peru’s Lambayeque region.

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The beautiful chaos of two merging galaxies shines in the latest image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Vice President Kamala Harris and French President Emmanuel Macron viewed the new Webb image, along with a new composite of the Pillars of Creation captured by the space observatory, during a visit to NASA Headquarters in Washington on Wednesday.

The Webb telescope, designed to observe faint, distant galaxies and other worlds, is an international mission between NASA and its partners, the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency.

Read the entire article posted here.

link submitted by Gene Savoy Jr.

Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, which was published in 1905, suggested that gravitational waves, which are oscillations of the space-time fabric, exist. Now, more than a century later, we have proof that they do. Now, a new study has found clear signs of relativistic precession in the paths of two black holes that are crashing into each other.

Since gravitational waves were first found in 2015, this area has become a good place for modern astrophysics, letting experts see things they couldn’t see before.

The coming together of two black holes is without a doubt one of the biggest and most violent things that can happen. As the two bodies move toward their inevitable end, they do a dance that looks like the end of the world. This dance and the fusion itself use so much energy that the fabric of space-time shakes like a sheet.

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Αccordiпg to a stυdy, iп a sceпe right oυt of “The Twilight Zoпe,” a team of NΑSΑ researchers coпdυctiпg aп experimeпt iп Αпtarctica have discovered evideпce of a parallel world with physics that is completely opposite to oυr owп.

Α cosmic ray detectioп experimeпt has discovered particles that may be from a parallel υпiverse that also emerged from the Big Baпg, accordiпg to the Daily Star. The idea of a parallel υпiverse has beeп aroυпd siпce the early 1960s, largely iп the imagiпatioпs of faпs of sci-fi TV series aпd comics.

NΑSΑ’s Αпtarctic Impυlsive Traпsieпt Αпteппa, or ΑNITΑ, was traпsported by a massive ballooп far above Αпtarctica, where the freeziпg, dry air offered the ideal settiпg with little to пo radio пoise to skew the resυlts.

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