Earth

Tiny 'dracula' with a taste for dinosaur blood

Paris - Muslimchronicle

Dinosaurs, the most fearsome creatures ever to walk the Earth, were bugged already 100 million years ago by a paltry pest that still plagues animals today: the bloodsucking tick, scientists have discovered. Preserved for eternity in amber, fossilised tree resin, researchers have found a hard tick -- uncannily similar to those we know -- clinging to a 99-million-year-old dinosaur feather, a teamRead more

NASA successfully fires Voyager 1 thrusters after 37 years

Washington - Muslimchronicle

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft -- cruising interstellar space billions of miles from Earth -- was back on the right track Friday thanks to thrusters that were fired up for the first time in 37 years. The unmanned spaceship was launched along with its twin, Voyager 2, more than 40 years ago to explore the outer planets of our solar system,Read more

Photographer captures human face

Washington - Muslimchronicle

Can you love an animal to death? A new book by British photographer Tim Flach documents some of Earth's most treasured species pushed to the brink of extinction by manmade crises, from pangolins hunted for their scales to Brazil's pied tamarin threatened by urbanisation. "Most of the changes in the past have been driven by natural forces, but onRead more

Cigar-shaped asteroid came

Hawaii - Muslimchronicle

Last month, astronomers running the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii spotted an intriguing object moving through our solar system and it became clear pretty quickly that the object, whether it was a comet or an asteroid, had come from outside of our solar system. Now, in a paper published this week in the journal Nature, researchers have described theRead more

Neutron star smash-up the 'discovery of a lifetime'

Paris - Muslimchronicle

"Truly a eureka moment", "Everything I ever hoped for", "A dream come true" -- Normally restrained scientists reached for the stars Monday to describe the feelings that accompany a "once-in-a-lifetime" event. The trigger for this meteor shower of superlatives was the smash-up of two unimaginably dense neutron stars 130 million years ago, when T-rex still lorded over our planet. Read more

As Paris climate goals recede, geoengineering looms larger

Berlin - Muslimchronicle

Even if you are terrified of heights, jumping out of a plane with a makeshift parachute may begin to look like a good idea once you know the aircraft is running out of fuel. That, arguably, is akin to the mindset of climate scientists and policymakers brainstorming in Berlin this week on how to compensate for humanity's collective failure toRead more

Close call: passing asteroid to test

Paris - Muslimchronicle

A house-size asteroid will give Earth a near-miss Thursday, passing harmlessly inside the Moon's orbit while giving experts a rare chance to rehearse for a real-life strike threat. Dubbed 2012 TC4, the space rock will shave past at an altitude of less than 44,000 kilometres (27,300 miles) -- just above the 36,000-km plane at which hundreds of geosynchronous satellites orbitRead more

Meteors splashing into warm ponds sparked life on Earth

McMaster University - Muslimchronicle

How did life on Earth begin? A study out Monday backs the theory that meteorites splashing into warm ponds leached essential elements that gave rise to the building blocks of life billions of years ago. The report is based on "exhaustive research and calculations" in astrophysics, geology, chemistry and biology, according a summary provided by McMaster University. "Because there areRead more

Life on Earth may date back 3.95 bn years: study

Labrador - Muslimchronicle

Rudimentary life may have existed on Earth 3.95 billion years ago, a time when our infant planet was being bombarded by comets and had hardly any oxygen, researchers said Wednesday. A team presented what they say is the oldest-known fossil evidence for life on the Blue Planet -- grains of graphite, a form of carbon, wedged into ancient sedimentary rocksRead more

For some, lunar village takes shape

Paris - Muslimchronicle

By 2040, a hundred people will live on the Moon, melting ice for water, 3D-printing homes and tools, eating plants grown in lunar soil, and competing in low-gravity, "flying" sports. To those who mock such talk as science fiction, experts such as Bernard Foing, ambassador of the European Space Agency-driven "Moon Village" scheme, reply the goal is not only reasonableRead more