A group of theoretical physicists led by controversial Oxford University mathematical physicist Roger Penrose has offered new evidence that there may have been older universes that came before our own, by finding the ghosts of black holes that existed in those ancient universes.
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Early last year, a little-regarded atmospheric phenomenon gained the attention of researchers when citizen scientists drew attention to it on social media: Giving it the highly-scientific name of "Steve", this luminous purple ribbon that occasionally streaks across the sky is a fast-moving stream of hot gases that occurs high in the atmosphere. Initially assumed to be part of the aurora borealis, a recent study of the phenomenon has found that it has nothing to do with the display of charged particles that light up the polar atmosphere — so, just what is Steve?
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One of the ways that scientists propose that we tackle the problem of global warming is to actively remove greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, from the atmosphere. To be an effective compliment to reducing our CO2 output from transport and industry, carbon sequestration will have to be done on a massive scale, meaning that the materials used in the process will need to be plentiful. One of those materials, magnesite, readily absorbs CO2, but there are both practical and economic limits keeping industry from mining the mineral in quantities large enough to be effective. However, researchers in Canada have discovered a way to quickly produce the mineral artificially.read more
A series of 70 major earthquakes that have occurred around the Pacific Ocean’s Ring of Fire has prompted fears that California may be hit by the dreaded "Big One", an anticipated earthquake with a magnitude powerful enough to have catastrophic consequences for the state. The sequence of earthquakes struck Indonesia, Bolivia, Japan and Fiji, but so far no major seismic activity has been reported in California. But could this recent rash of earthquakes mean that the "Big One" could be close behind?
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