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,...

Hurricane Florence is currently a powerful Category 4 hurricane over the Atlantic Ocean, threatening the Southeastern United States and the U.S. Mid-Atlantic states. The sixth named storm, third hurricane and the first major hurricane of the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season, Florence originated from a...

Blue diamonds—like the world-famous Hope Diamond at the National Museum of Natural History—formed up to four times deeper in the Earth’s mantle than most other diamonds, according to new work published on the cover of Nature. These so-called type IIb diamonds are tremendously valuable, making them hard...

Brazil’s oldest and most important historical and scientific museum, Brazil’s National Museum has been consumed by a massive fire destroying much of its 20 million archived artifacts – losses were too great to be calculated The museum, which is located in Rio de Janeiro, is a former a royal...

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...

The Alps are on the go: The mountain range drifts northwards an average of one-half millimeter every year and rises 1.8 millimeters. However, there are strong regional variances. In order to follow these movements, researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have evaluated measurements made...

There are a couple of key features that make a turtle a turtle: its shell, for one, but also its toothless beak. A newly-discovered fossil turtle that lived 228 million years ago is shedding light on how modern turtles developed these traits. It had a beak, but while its body was Frisbee-shaped, its...

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...

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,...

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...

The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is regarded by scientists as a large and crucial absorber of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. New findings from autonomous floats deployed in the Southern Ocean, however, provide the first comprehensive data to suggest that, in winter, the open water nearest...

Algae and corals have been leaning on each other since dinosaurs roamed the earth, much longer than had been previously thought, according to new research led by scientists at Oregon State University and Penn State. The findings, published today in Current Biology, are a key advance toward a better understanding...

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...

A team of scientists including Carnegie’s Michael Ackerson and Bjørn Mysen revealed that granites from Yosemite National Park contain minerals that crystallized at much lower temperatures than previously thought possible. This finding upends scientific understanding of how granites form and what they...

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...

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, provides critical energy for society, but also uses large amounts of fresh water while producing corresponding amounts of wastewater. Water-based foams, which use about 90 percent less water than fracking fluids, provide an alternative, but the mechanism for foam-driven...

Keeping global warming to within 1.5-2°C may be more difficult than previously assessed. An international team of scientists, with the participation of Center from Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, University of Copenhagen, shows that even if the carbon emission reductions called for in the Paris...

At an archaeological site in northeastern Jordan, researchers have discovered the charred remains of a flatbread baked by hunter-gatherers 14,400 years ago. It is the oldest direct evidence of bread found to date, predating the advent of agriculture by at least 4,000 years. The findings suggest that...

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...

Tracing a chemical signature of helium in seawater, an international team of scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United Kingdom’s (U.K.) Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) has discovered a previously unknown volcanic hotspot beneath the massive West Antarctic...