There is earthquake activity around two supervolcanoes, one in North Korea and the other in the United States. Earthquake swarms in such areas can indicate magma movement, and scientists are studying both volcanoes. A thousand years ago the eruption of Mount Paektu in what is now North Korea was probably the largest in human history. The eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano would devastate the United States. In addition to these two restless supervolcanoes, large-scale earthquake activity is continuing. Like the meteor count Unknowncountry reported on earlier this week, the earthquake count has been rising worldwide for a number of years.
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The Red Planet is in the news again this week: it appears that the planet which is in line for a bashing next year from Comet Siding Spring could once have supported life, as there is ice in the Martian soil. Does it support life now? There’s no evidence of natural life there, and the lack of free methane in the atmosphere suggests that not even bacteria live on Mars now. But generally dismissed and debunked features such as the Mars Face remain as a testament to the planet’s mysteries. For example, the photo accompanying this story was debunked as a ‘tiny rock’ on BadAstronomy.com and false stories that it had been ‘photoshopped,’ such as the one linked here, were widely circulated.read more

We are currently living under very volatile skies. Less than one year after a 10,000 ton meteorite exploded above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in the Urals injuring 950 people, Russian scientists reveal that a nearby area of the country narrowly missed an impact from a 15 meter asteroid which skimmed past Earth last weekend. The asteroid, which was moving at 16km per second, passed within 11,300km of the Earth’s surface, an altitude which is below the orbit of geostationary satellites. It was discovered during its near miss by the Master Tunka station near Lake Baikal. The asteroid was not previously known.
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A recent study by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has proved beyond any reasonable doubt that global warming is not a natural phenomena, but caused directly by the impact of human greenhouse gas production. But how this is affecting climate is still open to question, as the report also states that temperatures have not increased as much as global warming models predicted given the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

This first instalment of a three part report, which will be released over the next 12 months, is set to provide the most accurate and thorough appraisal of the climate change issue, in which it claims that humans are the ‘"dominant cause" of the problem which was identified in the 1950s.
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