Around AD 1085 AD, along the southern rim of Northern Arizona’s elevated Colorado Plateau a volcano erupted, forever changing ancient Puebloan fortunes and all nearby life.
Among the 600 or so volcanoes that dot the landscape of the San…
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Major Drought in Middle Ages Could Have Parallels to Climate Change Today
The transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age was apparently accompanied by severe droughts between 1302 and 1307 in Europe; this preceded the wet and cold phase of the 1310s and the resulting great famine of 1315-21.
In the…
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Primordial Black Holes & Search For Dark Matter From Multiverse
The Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) is home to many interdisciplinary projects which benefit from the synergy of a wide range of expertise available at the institute.
One such project is the study of…
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Discovery Boosts Theory That Life on Earth Arose From RNA-DNA Mix
Chemists at Scripps Research have made a discovery that supports a surprising new view of how life originated on our planet.
In a study published in the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, they demonstrated that a simple compound called…
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Volcanic Eruptions Directly Triggered Ocean Acidification During Early Cretaceous
Around 120 million years ago, the earth experienced an extreme environmental disruption that choked oxygen from its oceans.
Known as oceanic anoxic event (OAE) 1a, the oxygen-deprived water led to a minor — but significant — mass extinction…
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Key Building Block for Organic Molecules Discovered in Meteorites
Scientists from Japan and NASA have confirmed the presence in meteorites of a key organic molecule which may have been used to build other organic molecules, including some used by life.
The discovery validates theories of the formation of organic…
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Climate Change Caused Demise of Central Asia’s River Civilizations, Not Genghis Khan
A new study challenges the long-held view that the destruction of Central Asia’s medieval river civilizations was a direct result of the Mongol invasion in the early 13th century AD.
The Aral Sea basin in Central Asia and the major rivers flowing…
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A Non-Destructive Method for Analyzing Ancient Egyptian Embalming Materials
Ancient Egyptian mummies have many tales to tell, but unlocking their secrets without destroying delicate remains is challenging.
Now, researchers reporting in ACS’ Analytical Chemistry have found a non-destructive way to analyze bitumen —…
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Newly Discovered Fossils Prove ‘Shangri-La’-Like Ecosystem in Central Tibet
Despite decades of investigation, Tibet’s ancient topography and its role in climatic and biotic evolution remain speculative due to a paucity of quantitative surface height measurements through time and space, and sparse fossil records.
During…
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Inouye Solar Telescope Releases First Image of a Sunspot
The world’s largest solar observatory, the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, just released its first image of a sunspot.
Although the telescope is still in the final phases of completion, the image is an…
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