Educational

New extremely distant Solar System object found during hunt for Planet X

Carnegie’s Scott Sheppard and his colleagues—Northern Arizona University’s Chad Trujillo, and the University of Hawaii’s David Tholen—are once again redefining our Solar System’s edge. They discovered a new extremely distant object far beyond Pluto with an orbit that supports the presence of an even-farther-out, Super-Earth or larger Planet X. The newly found object, called 2015 TG387, was announced …

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Visitors to the Museum’s Spitzer Hall of Human Origins can see how modern humans differ from early humans and primate relatives, including in our ability to walk upright. D. Finnin/© AMNH

When Did Human Feet Become “Made for Walking”?

How and when did early humans start walking upright? For clues, researchers have been looking at feet—and, more specifically, at toes. Bipedalism was a critical step in human evolution, and one that affected so many subsequent evolutionary changes in our lineage, from social behavior to the development of material culture, says Sergio Almécija, a senior research …

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Geologists uncover new clues about largest Mass Extinction ever

A new study could help explain the driving force behind the largest mass extinction in the history of earth, known as the End-Permian Extinction. The event, also known as the Great Dying, occurred around 250 million years ago when a massive volcanic eruption in what is today the Russian province of Siberia sent nearly 90 …

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A timescale for the origin and evolution of all of life on Earth

A new study led by scientists from the University of Bristol has used a combination of genomic and fossil data to explain the history of life on Earth, from its origin to the present day. Palaeontologists have long sought to understand ancient life and the shared evolutionary history of life as a whole. However, the …

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Old Species Learn New Tricks Very Slowly

A quick look at the fossil record shows that no species lasts forever. On average, most species exist for around a million years, although some species persist for much longer. A new study published in Scientific Reports from paleontologists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama shows that young species can take advantage of new opportunities …

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Oldest-ever Igneous Meteorite Contains Clues to Planet Building Blocks

Scientists believe the solar system was formed some 4.6 billion years ago when a cloud of gas and dust collapsed under gravity, possibly triggered by a cataclysmic explosion from a nearby massive star or supernova. As this cloud collapsed, it formed a spinning disk with the sun in the center. Piece by piece, scientists have …

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A dozen new moons of Jupiter discovered, including one “oddball”

Twelve new moons orbiting Jupiter have been found—11 “normal” outer moons, and one that they’re calling an “oddball.”  This brings Jupiter’s total number of known moons to a whopping 79—the most of any planet in our Solar System. A team led by Carnegie’s Scott S. Sheppard first spotted the moons in the spring of 2017 while they …

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CLIMATE CHANGE IS MAKING NIGHT-SHINING CLOUDS MORE VISIBLE

Increased water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere due to human activities is making shimmering high-altitude clouds more visible, a new study finds. The results suggest these strange but increasingly common clouds seen only on summer nights are an indicator of human-caused climate change, according to the study’s authors. Noctilucent, or night-shining, clouds are the highest clouds …

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