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The earliest fossil animal embryos, dating from the Precambrian era, were found by American, Taiwanese, and Chinese scientists in phosphate deposits in China’s Guizhou province. Some of these remarkably preserved, 570-million-year-old fossils are no larger than a grain of sand and show detailed multiple-cell division. This discovery indicates that multicellular animal life evolved earlier than researchers had previously thought.
Simulating nuclear-weapon explosions requires the ability to calculate what happens to billions of data points in a fraction of a second. The Department of Energy (DOE) has contracted IBM Corporation to build a 10-trillion-operation-per-second computer system so that it can calculate the effects of weapons in our nation’s stockpile without detonating real nuclear bombs.
Researchers exploring a mile-deep area of a Mexican cavern called Cueva De Villa Luiz (Cave of the Lighted House), in the state of Tabasco, discovered strange viscous colonies of single-cell organisms hanging from the cave’s limestone walls and ceiling. The unidentified bacteria were dubbed “snot-tites” because they hang in slimy white masses resembling stalactites. These bizarre microorganisms—found nowhere else—get most of their energy by oxidizing sulfur from the noxious hydrogen-sulfide fumes in the cave. They excrete drops of acid as strong as battery acid.
Two new fossil animals with distinct imprints of feathers and many dinosaur features were found in China’s Liaoning province. Dating back more than 120 million years, the feathered specimens add considerable weight to the theory that birds evolved directly from dinosaurs.
Scientists have long thought that the effect of gravity between the galaxies would eventually slow the acceleration rate of the expanding universe that was created by the force of the Big Bang. This assumption is now being questioned. Astronomers studying supernovas (exploding stars) have discovered evidence that the universe may in fact be gaining momentum.
NASA researchers observing a disk of matter surrounding a black hole in the constellation Aquilla have discovered that the disk periodically hurls jets of hot gas in opposite directions from the black hole at nearly the speed of light (650 million miles per hour). At half-hour intervals the black hole replenishes the disk by pulling fresh material from the surface of a nearby “companion” star and then undergoing another disruption, behaving much like a heavenly version of Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone Park. Each eruption is estimated to eject 100 trillion tons of matter, using an amount of energy equivalent to six trillion times the annual energy consumption of the entire United States.
A 113-million-year-old baby dinosaur fossil was found in the Pietraroia limestone formation in Italy’s Benevento province with much of its soft tissue intact, including muscles, intestines, and liver. The extraordinary discovery of this prehistoric creature’s fossilized organs is expected to provide scientists with important information about dinosaur anatomy.
Einstein’s theory of relativity predicts that large rotating objects should drag space and time around themselves as they turn. The first direct evidence of this phenomena was announced in March 1998 by an international team of NASA and other scientists, who discovered that Earth does indeed drag time and space around itself as it rotates. The researchers detected this effect, called “frame-dragging,” by precisely measuring shifts in the orbits of two Earth-orbiting satellites (LAGEOS I and II). The team found that the plane of the orbits of the two satellites shifted about six feet (two meters) per year in the direction of Earth’s rotation.
NASA astronomers have discovered evidence of a solar system like our own forming around a youthful star known as HR 4796, some 220 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. (A light-year is about 5.88 trillion miles.) An infrared image taken by NASA shows a swirling disc of dust around the star. In the middle of the disc is an empty region that may have been swept clean when its dusty material was pulled into newly formed planetary bodies. Scientists think that this may be what our solar system looked like at the end of its main planetary formation phase.
In April 1998 a team of U.S. astronomers reported finding a massive concentration of water vapor within the Orion molecular cloud, a giant interstellar gas cloud located near the Orion nebula. This gas cloud, which is a trillion miles across, generates enough water molecules in a single day to fill the Earth’s oceans 60 times over.
Scientists have confirmed that an assembly of huge stone slabs in Egypt’s Sahara Desert is the oldest known astronomical alignment of megaliths in the world. Known as Nabta, the site is 6,500 to 6,000 years old, predating Stonehenge and similar prehistoric sites by about 1,000 years.
Dolly, the first mammal successfully cloned from an adult cell, gave birth to a healthy female lamb named Bonnie on April 14, 1998, at Roslin Institute in Edinburgh. The birth of Dolly’s lamb confirmed the ability of clones to produce healthy offspring naturally. Dolly was mated with David, a 4-year-old Welsh Mountain ram.
Duke University scientists studying hypoglossal canal size in fossil skulls of Neanderthals and other ancestral humans have found evidence that some of these ancient species were probably capable of human speech as long as 400,000 years ago.
In May 1998 astronomers announced that they had measured the most violent explosion ever found in the cosmos—a stupendous gamma-ray burst that released a hundred times more energy than they had theorized previously, making it the most powerful explosion since the Big Bang. The unprecedented gamma-ray burst, designated GRB 971214, was observed by researchers using satellites from NASA’s Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (which measured brightness) and the Italian/Dutch BeppoSax (which pinpointed location). Although the burst was discovered in mid-December 1997, its distance from Earth had just been calculated.
Overwhelming evidence from the largest evolutionary study of gene sequences ever performed suggests that the major group of mammals and birds emerged well before the mass extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Psychologists studying patients with brain damage have concluded that the left side of the brain is used for language tasks and the right side for spatial and pictorial information. Scientists who make images of the brain at work, however, have concluded that the left side is used for memorization and the right side for retrieval.
In 1998 astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope took the first direct photograph of what may be a planet outside our solar system. Previous extrasolar planets have been discovered only by indirect means such as gravitational wobbles in their parent stars. The young planet, called TMR 1C, is located within a star-forming region in the constellation Taurus. It appears to lie at the end of a 130-billion-mile-long filament structure, suggesting that it had been flung from the vicinity of a newly forming pair of binary stars.
A controversial study by researchers at the University of Florida and Carnegie Institution theorizes that space dust in Earth’s atmosphere and changes in the planet’s orbit may have started the gradual extinction of dinosaurs and other life thousands of years before a massive asteroid collision dealt the final blow.
Roundup of Recent Science Discoveries
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The Mother Lobe of Genius
- The Mother Lobe of Genius
TrendingHere are the facts and trivia that people are buzzing about.
Did Birds Evolve from Dinosaurs?
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
Current Events This Week: January 2023
African Americans by the Numbers
Andersen’s Fairy Tales: Contents
The Celtic Twilight: A Teller of Tales
TrendingHere are the facts and trivia that people are buzzing about.
Did Birds Evolve from Dinosaurs?
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
Current Events This Week: January 2023
African Americans by the Numbers
Andersen’s Fairy Tales: Contents
The Celtic Twilight: A Teller of Tales
- Did Birds Evolve from Dinosaurs?
- The Twelve Dancing Princesses
- Current Events This Week: January 2023
- African Americans by the Numbers
- Andersen’s Fairy Tales: Contents
- The Celtic Twilight: A Teller of Tales
