Researchers on CERN’s multipurpose Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector have spotted downright weird bumps in their most recent data. The team at CMS think they might have discovered a mysterious particle with twice the mass of a carbon atom. The find comes from two separate pieces of analysis from the CMS team. In both, the…

The cause? A strange radiation anomaly over the Atlantic ocean. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured this night image of the South Atlantic. The red dot several hundred kilometers off the coast of Brazil is a thermal anomaly—an area of Earth’s surface flagged by the satellite as being unusually warm. Of…

by Kathryn Hansen NASA Earth Observatory Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The October 2018 puzzler is above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us what we are looking at and why it is interesting. How to answer. You can use a few words or several paragraphs. You might simply tell us…

Guest essay by Eric Worrall The University of New South Wales, birthplace of the Ship of Fools, sees no connection between the arrival of Australian Aboriginals, and the subsequent rapid demise of a dangerous apex predator which dominated Australia for millions of years. Climate change the likely killer of Australian marsupial lion 19 OCT 2018…

This isn’t our usual fare here, but I found it very interesting on several levels, so I’m sharing it. -Anthony Bombing raids by Allied forces during the Second World War not only caused devastation on the ground but also sent shockwaves through Earth’s atmosphere which were detected at the edge of space, according to new…

And it isn’t what anyone thought in previous speculations, which included aliens, strange celestial objects, NASA’s recent launch of a solar probe, or a mercury spill from the “float bearing” of the main telescope. No, it’s far worse than any of those things. From KTSM-TV in El Paso: By Aaron Bracamontes A federal search warrant reveals…

UPDATE 9/12/18 4PM PST The issue may be related to Mercury (the metal, not the planet). On a tip from a science journalist friend who covers telescopes and who has been there, I verified the observatory uses a vat of liquid mercury as a float bearing for the giant solar telescope. According to an internal NSO/NMSU…

Via NASA: extra water vapor in the mesosphere is creating more glowing nighttime clouds This summer, something strange has been happening in the mesosphere. The mesosphere is a layer of the atmosphere so high that it almost touches space. In the rarefied air 83 km above Earth’s surface, summertime wisps of water vapor wrap themselves…