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Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus probably harbour vast oceans under their icy crusts. Could life survive within them? A new NASA experiment suggests that, if these oceans support life, organic molecules like amino acids and nucleic acids could survive just under the ice’s surface. The findings have implications for sampling depths and locations […]

Sea-level rise due to climate change has already begun to effect low-lying communities and ecosystems around the world. An Australian researcher has published a summary which warns about the potential effects of sea-level rise on the country’s southeastern coast. Kathleen McInnes is a research scientist at the Climate Science Centre, part of the CSIRO – […]

The excavation of 2 skeletons with severe fracture and trauma injuries has provided new insights into the destruction of Pompeii. A new study in Frontiers in Earth Science reports the injuries are consistent with building collapse caused by earthquakes that would have shaken the ground as Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE. “We proved that seismicity […]

A new geological dating technique might just have settled one of the longest running debates on human evolution and expansion – when and where did the first hominids arrive in Europe? Hominids are the group of primates which includes modern humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans plus all their immediate ancestors. Sites at in the Baza […]

An incompletely rifted and submerged microcontinent has been recognised tens of millions of years after the tectonic shifts which birthed it began. Understanding how microcontinents are born may help in disaster prevention during earthquakes. The newly recognised microcontinent exists on a tectonic plate boundary between Canada and Greenland which has formed the Davis Strait. This […]

In an unusual study to test human embarrassment, scientists have asked teenage girls to sing karaoke songs and then watch the recording back. It’s enough to make anyone blush. The researchers did it to image the brain regions involved in blushing, because we know surprisingly little about the mechanisms behind the behaviour. “Blushing is a really […]

Deforestation in Australia is dragging down the global carbon budget of forests, according to a new analysis. The study, published in Nature and done by an international team of researchers, assesses the uptake of CO2 by forests worldwide since the 1990s. While the global balance was steady on average, with a slight overall decline, Australia […]

The anticoagulant heparin could be repurposed as a cheap and effective drug to treat cobra bites across Asia and Africa. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), up to 2 million people are envenomed by snakes each year in Asia, while in Africa there are an estimated 435,000 to 580,000 snake bites annually that need […]

An international team of astronomers has found a huge exoplanet with a “super-eccentric” orbit, more elliptical than any previously discovered. The bizarre planet, which also orbits backwards, could help to solve the mystery of how “hot Jupiters” form. The exoplanet, called TIC 241249530b, is about 1,100 light-years away from Earth and 5 times more massive […]

A new powerful type of particle accelerator is being built in the UK which could advance accelerator physics. Particle accelerators currently use protons, electrons and ions to collide matter and probe its composition. Such experiments have recently led to the discovery of the “God particle” the Higgs boson. These accelerators are used to measure the […]