Today’s historic solar eclipse will be followed by another astronomical display. The largest asteroid ever tracked will whiz past Earth on Sept. 1, 2017.

NASA reported that the asteroid, which is dubbed “Florence”, will pass by our planet at a safe distance of 4.4 million miles. This means that the distance between the 2.7-mile piece of rock and Earth is 18 times larger than that from the Earth to the Moon.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said this asteroid is the largest ever tracked, which means that the flyby will allow the space agency’s experts to monitor an asteroid closer than before.

All other asteroids that passed by us were smaller than Florence, the agency reported. NASA said Florence is the largest asteroid to come so close to the Earth since the agency rolled out its near-Earth asteroid detection program.

NASA to Use Radar Technology on Florence

NASA wants to employ the California-based Goldstone Solar System Radar and the Puerto Rico-based Arecibo Observatory to keep an eye on the space rock as it flies by our planet.

The radar will enable astronomers to detect small details on the surface of the asteroid with a base resolution of 30 feet. The details could provide helpful information on the asteroid’s size, rotation, shape, and morphology.

Researchers used the same radar on the 2014 JO25 asteroid, which got within four lunar distances from our planet in the fall of 2014. The approach enabled researchers to get excellent resolution in studying the asteroid.

Florence was first spotted in 1981 by Australia’s Siding Spring Observatory when it zoomed by the Earth in 1980. The next flyby will be so close in the next 500 years, so scientists have a short time frame to anlyze it.
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A team of Australian scientists believes to have found the answer to one of science’s most relevant questions, how life evolved on Earth. According to their research, a thawing planet and the spread of algae led to the appearance and development of life as we know it now.

More exactly, they consider that the melting of the ‘snowball Earth’ led to an explosion of algae blooms which then resulted in a diversification of plants and then animals.

Algae Fed on Nutrients Carried by the Melting Glaciers

Scientists determined that, for some billions of years, Earth was inhabited solely by simple microbes without a complex internal structure. Then, something happened which kickstarted the appearance and development of plants, animals, and eventually even humans.

According to an Australian National University or ANU team of researchers, this process might have been triggered by the melting of the ‘snowball Earth’. Studies show that our planet was frozen over for some 50 million years.

However, the new study shows that something happened some 650 million years ago. The research team called it a “revolution of ecosystems” generated by the “rise of algae”.

“Huge glaciers ground entire mountain ranges to powder that released nutrients, and when the snow melted during an extreme global heating event, rivers washed torrents of nutrients into the ocean,” states the team in an ANU press release.

The high levels of nutrients are believed to have combined with the global temperature changes. This would have then created the perfect conditions for the large-scale spreading of algae. In turn, this more complex life form is believed to have acted as a “burst of energy”. One that was required for the “evolution of more complex ecosystems”.

The study team reached these conclusions after studying ancient sedimentary rocks extracted from central Australia. After crushing them, the scientists were able to extract molecules from ancient organisms out of them.

Study findings are presented in a paper in the journal Nature.

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Back in 2015, scientists first found and described the fossils of a bizarre species of dinosaur, which they named the Chilesaurus. This was unearthed in Southern Chile and is considered to have lived some 150 million years ago, in the Late Jurassic Period.

Still, researchers have been having a hard time classifying this species because of its strange characteristics. Its anatomical features would link it to various and different groups of dinosaurs.

Now, a team of scientists claims that the Chilesaurus is the “missing link” between herbivorous dinosaurs and the theropods, a dino group which includes the Tyrannosaurs Rex.

Bizarre Chilesaurus Deemed to be an Ornithischia?

Matthew Baron from the Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences and his Natural History Museum colleagues are behind the new study. They used an extensive database to analyze and review over 450 anatomical features of early dinosaurs. Through this, they claim to have been able to find a place on the dinosaur family tree for this unusual species.

“Chilesaurus has long baffled scientists because it looks like it has been stitched together from different animals, it’s a sort of Frankenstein dinosaur that just didn’t seem to fit in the family tree of dinosaurs,” states Baron.

Baron and his team suggest that the bizarre Chilesaurus might be a very early member of the Ornithischia, a “bird-hipped” group.

Ornithischia dinosaurs have bird-like, inverted hips and a beak-like structure used for eating. Research points out that the inverted hips allowed a more complex and bigger digestive system. In turn, this might have led to the appearance and evolution of larger plant-eaters.

The Chilesaurus present the inverted hips but not the beak-like structure. So the team considered that it might be the missing link between the Ornithischia and theropods, with which it had been previously associated.

The research team thinks that some of the Chilesaurus chose or were forced to change their diet to a plant-based one.

Study results are available in the journal Biology Letters. The same group of researchers also considers that science needs to rethink the evolutionary history of dinosaurs and redefine, rename, and rearrange its different groups.

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Explorers with the Antarctic Heritage Trust recently discovered an exceptionally preserved fruitcake, one that is some 100 years old and which proves just how resistant this dessert can be.

The fruitcake, a popularly unpopular food which finds its way of appearing at most holidays, is nonetheless a very useful product for expeditions, say the researchers.

Exceptionally Preserved Fruitcake Still Looks Edible 100 Years Later

According to the team of researchers, this recently discovered fruitcake is anything but new. It is estimated as being some 100 years old. The fruitcake seemingly dates back to the Terra Nova Expedition, which set off in 1910 and lasted till 1913. It was launched by Robert Falcon Scott, the British explorer, and his Cape Adare-based Northern Party.

The hundred years old fruitcake was discovered in a tin-plated iron alloy tin. This, although in a rough shape, still revealed its producer. So this long lasting dessert was made by a now gone brand, Huntley & Palmers.

The Antarctic Trust Fund stated that “Although the tin was in poor condition, the cake itself looked and smelt (almost) edible.”

It also pointed out that “It’s [the fruitcake] an ideal high-energy food for Antarctic conditions, and is still a favorite item on modern trips to the Ice.”

This exceptionally preserved fruitcake required to extra conservation work, but its tin container was another thing altogether. It required a rust removal process and also a chemical stabilization and coating of its remnants. The container also had to be deacidified.

This long lasting fruitcake and its tin container are just one of the almost 1,500 artifacts discovered by the Trust in Cape Adare. A team of four conservation specialists has been working on preserving the discovered remains.

After finishing with these artifacts, the team is now looking to begin the conservation work on the Cape Adare buildings themselves. Initially built in 1899 by the expedition of the Norwegian Carsten Borchgrevink, Captain Scott later used them after his arrival there in 1911.

The huts are of historical importance as they are held as being the first buildings raised in Antarctica and the only examples left of this initial established trace of humanity on the icy continent.

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The Hubble telescope has been searching the heavens for decades, finding one amazing discovery after another. This time, it appears to have found a surprising new example of a Hot Jupiter exoplanet, complete with a stratosphere. What is perhaps even more important, is that the team found signatures of water around that planet.

This Hot Jupiter Exoplanet has a Cooler Interior

The planet is a gas giant about 880 light years from Earth, known as WASP-121b. It was noted to orbit very close to its parent star, completing a revolution every 1.3 days. It is called a hot Jupiter exoplanet because, while it is of similar size to our own king of planets, its upper atmosphere reaches temperatures of 2,500 degrees Celsius or 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

One of the most interesting inferences made by this discovery is that this planet seems to get cooler as you head toward the interior. The outer layers of the stratosphere are highly excited, probably from the intense solar radiation the planet receives. That is how the water signatures were discovered.

“The question [about] whether stratospheres do or do not form in hot Jupiters,” said mission leader, Thomas Evans from the University of Exeter, “has been one of the major outstanding questions in exoplanet research since at least the early 2000s. Currently, our understanding of exoplanet atmospheres is pretty basic and limited. Every new piece of information that we are able to get represents a significant step forward.”

That is another exciting part of this discovery, the knowledge that we can determine atmosphere compositions of distant exoplanets. Hubble was able to examine the various spectra of light off of the planet to gauge what elements surround it. Science has yet to develop the technology needed for exploring smaller, rocky bodies like Earth and Mars, but the team has no doubt that future astronomers will develop the techniques and tools.

Image Credits: NASA

Water bears or tardigrades as they are also commonly known might be closer to revealing some more of their secrets thanks to a new set of DNA tests. A team of scientists went to sequence the genetic data of these very resistant and resilient creatures.

Famous for their capacity of surviving even in the harshest conditions, tardigrades once again hit the spotlight as a study revealed that they are most likely to survive until the Sun itself dies out.

Previous research suggested that these animals have a very varied genome, one containing foreign gene sequences from a number of bacteria and animals. Theories stated that this might be a reason behind their unquestionable resistance.

However, a new study goes against these results and shows that the water bears’ genome is, in fact, quite normal.

Latest Water Bears DNA Tests Reveals Their Place in the Animal Kingdom

An international team of scientists led by the Edinburgh University in Scotland and Keio, Japan one are behind this new research. They sequenced gene samples taken from two tardigrade species. Namely, they analyzed the Ramazzottius varieornatus and the Hypsibius dujardini. Then, they compared the results to data from other animals.

This helped them establish which species the tardigrades most resemble. Tests helped reveal that water bears actually belong to their own phylum, one called Tardigrada.

This new research also looked to understand what genes were involved in tardigrades’ survival process. Namely, in the one that helps them withstand almost complete desiccation.

Earlier research tied this survival to a type of protein-based “bioglass”. The latest study went further and mapped out the genes involved. A significant amount of the expressed genes was noted to be involved in the process of DNA repair.

This feature might also be used as the animal ‘repairs’ itself after being hit with a significant radiation dose.

Other of the involved genes helped protect the water bears’ DNA from oxidation damage.

The research team mapped out these gene expressions as the study’s water bears were rehydrating after being dried out.

Study results are available in the PLOS journal.

Image Source: Wikimedia

In a new image from the Hubble telescope, NASA took a series of 13 photos over 22 minutes to more closely examine the Red Planet. What surprised astronomers most was the fact that is was Mars’s moon Phobos who made the most spectacular showing as it progressed across the image. It twinkled like a star as it shot across the the red face of Mars at an extremely short orbital distance of only 3,700 miles.

Phobos is a Sparkling Tiny Moon

Phobos itself is only is no longer than 16.5 miles at its largest dimension. It is one of the smallest moons in the solar system and orbits at the closest altitude to its planet known. However, it is still larger than its Martian sibling Deimos.

The time lapse video shows just an arc of the moon’s total seven hours and thirty-nine minutes orbit of the planet. While it may be beautiful, the photos showed more evidence that gravitational and other forces are gradually destroying the moon. Long grooves showed in close ups of the moon’s surface, sure signs of structural weaknesses in its composition.

Terry Hurford of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center said in a statement prior to the new image, “We think that Phobos has already started to fail, and the first sign of this failure is the production of these grooves.”

Mars’s moon is believed to be mostly just a conglomerate of rough material held together by a thin crust. The tidal forces of Mars have twisted it, and eventually, it will break up into many smaller pieces. This moon is getting almost seven feet closer to Mars with every passing year, and that means it will only be about 30 to 50 million years until it either crashes into the planet’s surface or breaks up into a ring around the Red Planet.

Image Source: Wikimedia