In the News

A story that swept across various media this week - drought lay behind Attila the Hun's war on Rome - see for example https://phys.org/news/2022-12-drought-attila-huns-roman-empire.html ...

Robert sent in two links. The first one is intriguing - see https://scienceandstuff.com/china-just-discovered-a-new-mineral-and-it-could-power-nuclear-fusion-devices/ ... but it involves mining the moon. His other link is https://scienceandstuff.com/the-universe-may-not-be-homogeneous-after-all/

The Hubble telescope detected a ghostly glow overriding our solar  system. This arose as a result of the SKYSURF project. Some 200,000 Hubble archived images

William sent in this link to https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/mars-didnt-just-oceans-had-140001878.html ... which is aptly on Yahoo's 'entertainment' page. We are told that during the Hesparian Period on Mars,

Defying the origins of the solar system. Not my words, this is the headline at https://phys.org/news/2022-12-unexpected-space-defies-theories-solar.html ... an unexpected space traveller defies theories about the

At https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04377-x ... we have a new study that concerns the NE part of Greenland, presumably facing the Atlantic. In the present world this is

At https://phys.org/news/2022-12-black-hole-spun.html ... we have an interesting headline - without more data a black hole's origins can be spun in any direction. However, in spite

At https://phys.org/news/2022-12-lightning-zigzag-mystery.html ... around 8.6 million lightning strikes occur worldwide, every day. Mostly in the tropics. Why does it zigzag - or rather, proceed in

At https://www.sepp.org, and the newletter of 3rd December, 2022, we have an intriguing discussion of climate science, and what is going on the heads of

Something like an echo from the past has come back from the grave of  climate science, the dust bowl event  that lay at the heart

At https://phys.org/news/2022-11-archeologists-ancient-peruvian-fresco-lost.html ... archaeologists have discovered a pre Hispanic frescoe depicting mythological scenes in northern Peru. At https://phys.org/news/2022-11-focus-ancient-campus-mounds-insight.html ... the mounds in Louisianna include some

This isa fascinating disvoery, see https://phys.org/news/2022-11-gold-troy-poliochni-ur.html ... but something doesn't quite ring true as they seem to be saying the gold in the Royal Tombs

William sent in the link https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/astronomical-community-accurately-predicted-asteroid-1801326877.html ... which throws open a new view on the Ontario fireball - see earlier post at https://www.sis-group.org.uk/news/2022/11/23/meteors-and-asteroids-2/ ... as

At https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mammoths-extinct-earlier-edna-evidence ... we are told paleontologists may be led astray by ancient DNA. For example, in 2021, an analysis of plant and animal DNA

At https://spaceweather.com [November 24th 2022] we have news of a 'cryovalcanic' eruption on a comet issued by the British Astronomical Association. This comet is classified

At https://www.newscientist.com/article/2347552-gigantic-turtle-from the dinosaur-era-almost-metres-big/ ... a giant turtle from the Cretaceous, dated around 80 million to 70 million years ago, was the size of a

At https://jennifermarohasy.com/2022/08/latest-survey-of-coral-cover-fundamentally-unscientific/... and https://www.aims.gov.au/monitoring-great-barrier-reef/gbr-conditon-summary-2021-22/...not only has Austalia been getting a lot more rain as a result of successive La Nina events, three in a row,

At https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/26/physics-particles-physicists ... back in September of 2022, Sabine Hossenfelder had a fascinating article in The Guardian. The subject was particle physics - and the

At https://www.spaceweather.com [November 21st 2022] we learn that two months after NASAs DART spacecraft slammed into asteroid Dimorphos, debris from the collision is still visible.

William brought up this subject by asking me if I had seen the Nextflix programme. I don't have Netflix, so no. However, it then cropped