A horse is a horse, of course, of course — except when it isn’t

Analysis of ancient DNA reveals a previously unrecognized genus of extinct horses that once roamed North America

 

Date: November 28, 2017

Source: University of California – Santa Cruz

Summary:  Scientists have discovered a previously unrecognized genus of extinct horses that roamed North America during the last ice age.

The new findings are based on an analysis of ancient DNA from fossils of the enigmatic ‘New World stilt-legged horse’ excavated from sites such as Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming, Gypsum Cave in Nevada, and the Klondike goldfields of Canada’s Yukon Territory.

Read Article:  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171128090948.htm

How planets, in particular, Earth and Mars are formed.

This is a snapshot of a computer simulation of two (relatively small) planets colliding with each other. The colours show how the rock of the impacting body (dark grey, in centre of impact area) accretes to the target body (rock; light grey), while some of the rock in the impact area is molten (yellow to white) or vaporized (red).

Credit: Philip J. Carter

Analysing a mixture of earth samples and meteorites, scientists have shed new light on the sequence of events that led to the creation of the planets Earth and Mars.

Read Article:  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170927133629.htm

A fascinating science article about how Earth may once have resembled a steaming jelly doughnut called a synestia.

Synestia
\sin-es-ti-ə \ n.

A large spinning hunk of hot, vaporized rock that forms when rocky, planet-sized objects collide

Earth may have taken on a jelly doughnut shape early in its history. The rocky planet was spinning through space about 4.5 billion years ago when it smacked into a Mars-sized hunk of rotating rock called Theia, according to one theory (SN: 4/15/17, p. 18). That hit may have turned Earth into a synestia, a blob of mostly vaporized rock with an indented center, resembling a slightly squished jelly doughnut, new simulations suggest. This synestia wouldn’t have had much of a solid or liquid surface. And the structure could have spread to about 100,000 kilometers across or more, much larger than its original 13,000 kilo­meters or so. The added girth would have come from rock vaporizing and continuing to spin quickly, which would puff up and flatten the shape.

Read Article:  https://www.sciencenews.org/article/earth-might-once-have-resembled-hot-steamy-doughnut?tgt=nr

Read about how single atoms magnets may be a breakthrough in data storage technology.

NEW ORLEANS — ­The tiniest electronic gadgets have nothing on a new data-storage device. Each bit is encoded using the magnetic field of a single atom — making for extremely compact data storage, although researchers have stored only two bits of data so far.

“If you can make your bit smaller, you can store more information,” physicist Fabian Natterer of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland said March 16 at a meeting of the American Physical Society. Natterer and colleagues also reported the result in the March 9 Nature.

Read Article:  https://www.sciencenews.org/article/single-atom-magnets-store-bits-data