Tag: Earth

A mysterious Bronze Age wooden circle known as “Seahenge” on England’s east coast was built more than 4,000 years ago in an effort to bring back warmer weather during an extreme cold spell, a new study suggests. The theory is a new attempt to explain the buried structure — a rough circle about 25 feet (7.5 meters) across, made from 55 split oak trunks surrounding a “horseshoe” of five larger oak posts around a large inverted oak stump — that was controversially dug up and moved into a museum in…

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Summer will officially arrive in the Northern Hemisphere on Thursday (June 20) at 4:51 p.m. EDT (2051 GMT) — the June Solstice.   At that moment, the sun will reach the point at which it’s farthest north of the celestial equator. To be more precise, when the solstice occurs, the sun will appear to be shining directly overhead for a point on the Tropic of Cancer (latitude 23.5 degrees north) in the eastern Pacific Ocean, roughly 1,100 statute miles (1,800 kilometers) southwest of Los Angeles.   From mid-northern latitudes, we…

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Dozens of Alaskan rivers have turned bright orange in recent years because melting permafrost has released high levels of toxic metals into the waterways, a worrying new study reveals. The colorful contamination, which can be seen from space, is a potential ecological nightmare — and is likely to get even worse in the coming years, researchers say. In the new study, which was published May 20 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, researchers identified at least 75 orange rivers and streams in a Texas-size area of Alaska’s Brooks mountain…

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After surveying 661 employees affiliated with astronomy and geophysics professions, the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) has stressed an “urgent” need to address bullying and harassment across the fields.  In short, 44% of respondents reported suffering in the workplace during the two years preceding the survey, and 65% of those respondents said reported concerns were either “ignored” or that their reports were unsatisfactorily handled. To be clear, the survey was conducted in 2020, and a soft-launch of the data was released in 2021. However, a full-fledged analysis of the results that…

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With La Nina conditions evolving in the Pacific and near-record warm waters in the Atlantic, scientists expect the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season to be a busy one. Forecasters at the Climate Prediction Center (CPC), part of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Service, release an outlook every year ahead of hurricane season that includes what kind of storm activity they predict between June 1 and Nov. 30.  CPC researchers say there’s an 85% chance that this year’s hurricane season will be more active than normal, with…

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Satellite images taken earlier this month offer a spaceborne perspective of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. They include scenes such as a before-and-after sequence that illustrates Palestinian civilians fleeing Rafah, a view of damaged buildings in the region and conglomerates of Israeli hardware.  For the past several months, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have destroyed major portions of areas in which Palestinian civilians live as a response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel, an attack orchestrated by the radical militant group Hamas. As Reuters reported on May 14, Israel says…

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