Earth Sciences

Fossils push human emergence back to 195,000 years ago

When the bones of two early humans were found in 1967 near Kibish, Ethiopia, they were thought to be 130,000 years old. A few years ago, researchers found 154,000- to 160,000-year-old human bones at Herto, Ethiopia. Now, a new study of the 1967 fossil site indicates the earliest known members of our species, Homo sapiens, roamed Africa about 195,000 years ago. “It pushes back the beginning of anatomically modern humans,” says

A key first step has been taken in the construction of IceCube, a giant neutrino telescope spanning a volume of one cubic kilometer of ice at the South Pole: Working under harsh Antarctic conditions, an international team of scientists, engineers and technicians – among them scientists from the DESY research center – has successfully deployed a first critical part of the telescope, a string of 60 optical detectors, in a 2.4-kilometer-deep hole drilled into the Antarctic ice. Comprising a total of

Working under harsh Antarctic conditions, an international team of scientists, engineers and technicians has set in place the first critical elements of a massive neutrino telescope at the South Pole.

The successful deployment – in a 1.5 mile-deep hole drilled into the Antarctic ice – of a string of 60 optical detectors designed to sample phantom-like high-energy particles from deep space represents a key first step in the construction of the $272 million telescope known as IceCu

A surprising link may exist between ocean fertility and air pollution over land, according to Georgia Institute of Technology research reported in the Feb. 16 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research — Atmospheres. The work provides new insight into the role that ocean fertility plays in the complex cycle involving carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in global warming.

When dust storms pass over industrialized areas, they can pick up sulfur dioxide, an acidic trace gas e

Researchers at Oregon State University, NASA and other institutions announced today the discovery of a method to determine from outer space the productivity of marine phytoplankton – a breakthrough that may provide a new understanding of life in the world’s oceans.

Phytoplankton are the incredibly abundant microscopic plant forms that provide the basis for most of the marine food chain, half the oxygen in our atmosphere and ultimately much of the life on Earth. They have

Study in Science may help change the broad understanding of how they are formed

Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, have produced new findings that may help alter commonly held beliefs about how chains of undersea mountains formed by volcanoes, or “seamounts,” are created. Such mountains can rise thousands of feet off the ocean floor in chains that span thousands of miles across the ocean.

Since the mid-20th centu