The recent Fagradalsfjall eruption in the southwest of Iceland has enthralled the whole world, including nature lovers and scientists alike.
The eruption was especially important as it provided geologists with a unique opportunity to study magmas…
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Scientists uncover traces of fire-use 800,000 years ago
Scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science have been able to detect nonvisual traces of fire dating back at least 800,000 years, one of the earliest known examples for the controlled use of fire.
It has been speculated that the ancient…
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Droughts in the sixth century paved the way for Islam
Extreme dry conditions contributed to the decline of the ancient South Arabian kingdom of Himyar.
Combined with political unrest and war, the droughts left behind a region in disarray, thereby creating the conditions on the Arabian peninsula that…
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Telescope reveals images of supermassive black hole at centre of galaxy
Astronomers have revealed images of a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a telescope array consisting of a global network of radio telescopes.
The researchers had previously…
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Neanderthals of the north
Were Neanderthals really as well adapted to a life in the cold as previously assumed, or did they prefer more temperate environmental conditions during the last Ice Age?
To answer these questions, it is worthwhile to examine Neanderthal sites on…
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Ancient oak trees to shed light on the climate of the past 4500 years
Researchers will soon be able to reconstruct the climate of north-west Europe including the UK over the last 4500 years, and to date wooden buildings and objects more accurately, by analysing the chemistry of ancient oak trees, through a new…
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Marine mollusc shells reveal how prehistoric humans adapted to intense climate change
Current global climatic warming is having, and will continue to have, widespread consequences for human history, in the same way that environmental fluctuations had significant consequences for human populations in the past.
The so-called ‘8.2…
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Why did the Vikings abandon Greenland?
A study led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and published recently in Science Advances, upends the previously accepted theory on why the Vikings abandoned Greenland.
Greenland, or Grœnland in Old Norse, was settled by Norwegian and…
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Researchers open lunar time capsule from Apollo 17 mission
Scientists from NASA have opened a lunar time capsule from the Apollo 17 mission conducted in 1972.
The Apollo mission was the final mission of NASA’s Apollo program, in which Commander Eugene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt…
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Scientists solve solar secret
The further we move away from a heat source, the cooler the air gets. Bizarrely, the same can’t be said for the Sun, but University of Otago scientists may have just explained a key part of why.
Study lead Dr Jonathan Squire, of the Department…
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