An Ignoble Experiment: 'Cannibal' coronal mass ejection will hit Earth tonight, scientists say

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March 31, 2022

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Hubble spots most distant star ever seen, 28 billion light-years away

(NASA/ESA/Brian Welch (JHU)/Dan Coe (STScI)/Alyssa Pagan (STScI))

Hubble Space Telescope recently detected a star that is the most distant ever seen. Located 28 billion light-years from Earth, the ancient object — which could be a single star or a double-star system — may be up to 500 times more massive than our sun; it's also millions of times brighter than the sun and was born when the universe was young.

Hubble was able to spot the distant star during a nine-hour exposure because of the star's fortuitous alignment in the background of a cluster of galaxies. Gravity from the massive foreground galaxies warped space itself; this created an effect known as gravitational lensing that magnified the star's light tens of thousands of times, making it visible to Hubble's instruments, scientists reported on Wednesday (March 30) in the journal Nature.

Full Story: Live Science (3/30)

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Russia-Ukraine War

Radioactive material stolen from Chernobyl monitoring lab: Here's what that means.

(Pavel Gospodinov via Getty Images)

Sometime during Russia's invasion of Chernobyl in Ukraine, looters stole radioactive material from a radiation monitoring laboratory near the defunct nuclear power plant. There seems to be a low risk that this material would be used in so-called dirty bombs, an expert told Live Science.

The looters took pieces of radioactive waste, which could theoretically be used to create a dirty bomb, a device that combines radioactive material with a conventional explosive, Anatolii Nosovskyi, director of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv, told Science. They also swiped radioactive isotopes — radioactive chemical elements with different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei — that are usually used to calibrate instruments in the monitoring lab, Nosovskyi said.

On March 25, Science reported that the radioactive material had been stolen. New Scientist later confirmed these reports with an ISPNPP scientist, who spoke with reporters on the condition of anonymity. The source said that the earlier Science report was "accurate based on the information available."

Full Story: Live Science (3/30)

History & Archaeology

Drought helped push the Vikings out of Greenland, new study finds

(Tobias Schneider)

Scientists may have found an important factor behind why the Norse mysteriously abandoned their largest settlement on Greenland. And it wasn't cold weather, as some had long thought.

Rather, drought might have played a major role in the abandonment of the Eastern Settlement of Vikings around 1450, new research suggests.

Full Story: Live Science (3/30)

Your Health

Bruce Willis diagnosed with aphasia: The science behind the disorder

(TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)

Actor Bruce Willis, whose one-liners are a mainstay of blockbuster action movies, is stepping away from his career due to a diagnosis of aphasia, a neurological disorder that impacts language and speech, according to news reports.

Willis' family said on social media that the actor was having "cognitive" issues due to his recent diagnosis. The disorder stems from damage to the language part of your brain, typically the left side, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. That damage can be the result of stroke, head injury, a brain tumor, some sort of infection or dementia. Symptoms — which involve difficulty with speech and comprehension — can come on suddenly after a stroke or head trauma, or gradually as a result of brain tumor or progressive disease.

Full Story: Live Science (3/30)

Astronomy & Astrophysics

'Cannibal' coronal mass ejection will hit Earth tonight, scientists say

(NASA)

The dazzling northern lights could light up the skies as far south as the northern United States after the detection of 17 solar eruptions blasting from a single sunspot, two of which are headed straight to Earth.

The two Earth-directed eruptions have merged into a "cannibal coronal mass ejection" and are barreling toward us at 1,881,263 mph (3,027,599 km/h). When it crashes into the Earth's magnetic field from the night of March 30 to April 1, the result will be a powerful G3 geomagnetic storm, according to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). G3 storms are classified as strong geomagnetic storms, meaning that the oncoming sun blast could bring the aurora as south as Pennsylvania, Iowa and Oregon.

Full Story: Live Science (3/30)

Curious Creatures

Weird-eyed strawberry squid spotted in 'twilight zone' off California's coast

On a recent deep dive into the twilight zone, a submersible hundreds of feet underwater filmed an unusual fruit-colored creature: a bright-red strawberry squid with eerie eyes — one small and black and the other large, bulbous and yellow.

Oblivious to the video camera, the strawberry squid (Histioteuthis heteropsis) cruised through its dark ocean home, occasionally twisting and curling its eight arms and two tentacles as its ghostly white fins rippled.

Full Story: Live Science (3/30)

'Berserker' geckos slam scorpions into oblivion before eating them, epic new footage shows

(Grace Freymiller)

Geckos that are typically placid and mild-mannered become violent, head-shaking "berserkers" when subduing a scorpion meal, new research reveals.

When a western banded gecko (Coleonyx variegatus) bites down on its scorpion prey, it repeatedly whips its head from side to side, slamming the scorpion into the ground over and over again. The geckos are "the least intimidating animal you've probably ever met," lead author Malachi Whitford, who conducted the research as part of his doctoral degree in ecology at San Diego State University (SDSU), said in a statement. "But then they see a scorpion — they go like, berserker mode."

Full Story: Live Science (3/31)