Science & TechnologyS


Comet 2

The mystery of the Ohio and Texas fireballs


SpaceWeather
Wed, 25 Mar 2026 20:13 UTC
Fireballs Reports
© NASA
Is Earth under siege? If you've been reading headlines about space rocks falling over Ohio and Texas, you might be wondering what's going on. According to NASA, it's nothing unusual, yet still a little mysterious.

"Spring is fireball season," says Bill Cooke of the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office. "For reasons we don't fully understand, the rate of very bright meteors climbs 10% to 30% during weeks around the vernal equinox."

The Ohio and Texas meteors landed squarely in the middle of the season. Onlookers saw the Ohio fireball on March 17th only 3 days before the equinox. The Texas fireball appeared one day after the equinox on March 21st. Both were visible in broad daylight, with sonic booms and meteorites. One fragment reportedly punched through the roof of a home in suburban Houston.

"Meteorite falls--fragments that actually hit the ground--are more common in spring as well," says Cooke.

Comment: The previous narrative used to be 'once in a lifetime'. Fast forward to multiple witnesses in over 15 states, as well as in Canada, Europe and Russia, all within less than one month. The narrative is obviously now "it's nothing unusual". See also:

Fire in the Sky

Caltech astrophysicist fatally shot on porch of his rural home
At the time of his death, he was focused on studying comets and asteroids that could pose a hazard to Earth.


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Evil Rays

Data centers suspected of producing mysterious 'hum' heard across several US states

Stacy Liberatore
The Daily Mail
Mon, 23 Mar 2026 19:15 UTC
data center new jersey mysterious hum
© Data OneThe 2.4 million-square-foot data center is being built on South Lincoln Avenue in Vineland, New Jersey. It is owned by the company Data One
Residents report vibrating homes and sleepless nights

A mysterious humming noise has been reported in neighborhoods across several US states, rattling homes and leaving residents struggling to sleep.

The latest reports come from Vineland, New Jersey, where locals say the sound began after construction started on a massive 2.5-million-square-foot data center, though officials have not confirmed a direct link.

Residents say the constant noise is disrupting daily life. 'That is not construction, and that monstrosity is only partially built,' Scott Montgomery told ABC 6. 'It is infringing on our peace of mind and our tranquility.'

Similar complaints have surfaced in parts of Virginia, home to hundreds of data centers, and in Connecticut earlier this year, though officials in those areas have yet to identify a confirmed source.

Experts noted that data centers can produce continuous low-frequency humming caused by powerful cooling systems and electrical equipment operating around the clock.

Comment: The problem is likely vibration in the infrasound range. Wind turbines are another culprit. Some frequencies of infrasound have been found to produce negative effects on biological organisms.


Nearby wind park blamed for health issues and cow deaths by French farmer
Infrasound and your health: What scientists know about its effects

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Snowflake Cold

Snow flies found to create their own heat plus other strategies to avoid freezing

Amanda Morris
Northwestern Now
Tue, 24 Mar 2026 18:58 UTC
snow fly close up
© Håkan SöderholmThe first study to sequence the snow fly’s genome shows the insects use a surprising combination of strategies to survive in freezing conditions. The findings shed light on how life has adapted to survive extreme environments and could inform new strategies for protecting cells, tissues and materials from cold damage.
New study finds specialized 'snow flies' produce bursts of heat and antifreeze proteins

Snow flies might be undergoing an identity crisis.

In a new study, Northwestern University scientists explored how snow flies — small, wingless insects that crawl across snow to find mates and lay eggs — survive in freezing cold temperatures. They discovered this snow-dwelling fly uses a surprising combination of strategies: it generates its own body heat like a mammal and produces antifreeze proteins like an Arctic fish.

While sub-zero temperatures are a death sentence for most other insects, these adaptations allow snow flies to remain active at temperatures as low as -6 degrees Celsius (or 21.2 degrees Fahrenheit).

The findings, published in the journal Current Biology, shed light on how life has adapted to survive in extreme environments and potentially could inform new strategies for protecting cells, tissues and materials from cold damage.
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Bulb

High school student invents filter that eliminates 96 percent of microplastics from drinking water

Ramsha Waseem
Smithsonian Magazine
Fri, 20 Mar 2026 19:38 UTC
microplastics
Microplastics now contaminate the entire planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans.
Virginia teenager Mia Heller's filtration system harnesses the power of ferrofluid, a magnetic oil that binds to microplastics in flowing water

A few years ago, teenager Mia Heller came across an article in her local newspaper about ongoing water quality issues in her neighborhood in Warrington, Virginia. Tests had revealed that the water available for daily consumption was highly contaminated with PFAS and microplastic pollution. The article further reported that government agencies would not be providing any funds for filtering the water.

"It was up to people to provide their own filtration," says Heller.

Not long after the article came out, Heller's parents invested in an advanced water filtration system at her home. The system, however, required constant upkeep. Seeing her mother replace the water filter membranes time and again, Heller set out to find a better solution.
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Saturn

More moons for Jupiter and Saturn! New totals here

Kelly Kizer Whitt
EarthSky
Mon, 23 Mar 2026 15:34 UTC
Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede
© NASAOnly the largest and brightest moons of Jupiter and Saturn get proper names. For example, Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, has a proper name. The Cassini spacecraft captured this image of the pair on December 3, 2000.
On March 16, 2026, the Minor Planet Center announced an additional 11 moons for Saturn, bringing its total to a whopping 285. Plus, Jupiter's moon count has finally cracked 100, with the addition of four newly discovered moons. Jupiter's grand total now stands at 101.

The newly discovered moons are all quite small, at least as far as moons are concerned. That's why they haven't been discovered until now. These faint, distant space rocks are around 2 miles wide (3 km) with magnitudes of +25 to +27. The lower the number, the brighter it is. And truly bright objects even have negative numbers, like the sun (-26) and Venus (-4). So these moons are extraordinarily faint. They also orbit far from their planet, making them harder to track down.

In fact, the moons of Saturn are so spread out, they span the width of about five full Earth moons as seen from our location here on Earth. So, as you look toward the ringed planet, imagine its entourage of satellites extending for vast distances on either side of it.
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Info

BIG NEWS: 3 million year old ice cores flummox researchers — CO2 is irrelevant

Jo Nova
joannenova.com.au
Thu, 19 Mar 2026 03:41 UTC
For the first time Antarctic ice core teams have got hold of ice that is 3 million years old and the results have confounded them.
A windy day at Allan Hills in December 2022.
© Peter Neff/COLDEXIt’s a tortured headline in ScienceAlert.
The way CO2 responds in ice cores is canon to "the faith" so this is more important than it seems at first glance. Believers are really struggling.

Three million years ago the world was warmer, and about to cool into the violent ice age cycles. The ice core experts were expecting to confirm that CO2 levels were about 400ppm, as other proxies had shown, and they thought that greenhouse gases might fall and lead the cooling shift. But instead of CO2 being at 400 parts per million, and then leading the cooling, the bubbles trapped in ice were only 250 parts per million to start with and they stayed constant through important temperature swings. Sacre Bleu! CO2 did not appear to have any role in causing the warmth that was, or the cooling that followed. And nor did methane. O' the dilemma?

Some sacred cows have to be sacrificed. Either CO2 is not a major driver of climate change, or the ice cores are wrong (or both!).

Watch the last few addicts coping with this news. Follow the 'reasoning' — it still "might" be worse than we thought, you know! I mean, it's possible, that tiny changes in CO2 that are too small to measure could be affecting the Earth...

It's like the homeopathy of climate science, except homeopathy has more data to support it.
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Blue Planet

Now They Are Actually Admitting That There Is A Massive "Gravity Hole" Underneath Antarctica?

Michael Snyder
End Of The American Dream
Tue, 17 Feb 2026 17:12 UTC
Gravity hole in Antarticas graphic
For decades, we were told to ignore any of the strange reports that we were hearing about Antarctica. Experts assured us that nothing unusual was going on and that there wasn't anything to be concerned about. Of course we couldn't go investigate for ourselves, because as you will see below, there are 72 areas of Antarctica that only those with a special permit are allowed to enter. And if you try to fly to Antarctica without authorization, you will get into all sorts of trouble.

So why all the secrecy?

What are they trying to hide from all the rest of us?
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Gem

Chinese scientists construct rare 'hexagonal diamond' that's harder than natural diamond

Damien Pine
Live Science
Sun, 15 Mar 2026 15:45 UTC
hexagonal diamond artificial harder than natural
© FlashMovie via Getty ImagesIllustration of a hexagonal diamond, the super strong mineral that may finally have been proven to exist.
In physics first, Chinese scientists create rare 'hexagonal diamond' that's harder than natural diamond

Researchers in China have made what they claim to be the first samples of pure hexagonal diamond, a theorized rare variant of superstrong diamond found in meteorites from shattered dwarf planets.

Natural diamond, also called cubic diamond, has been considered the hardest natural material on Earth for so long that the Mohs hardness scale, which rates minerals' resistance to scratching, uses diamond as the scale's upper limit. It's called cubic diamond for its neat arrangements of carbon atoms in a cubic structure. In contrast, hexagonal diamond organizes carbon atoms in a lattice made of hexagons, like a honeycomb.
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Helm

Earth's magnetic field during solar flare, January 2026


The European Space Agency
Mon, 16 Mar 2026 21:44 UTC
Earth's magnetic field
It seems improbable that a satellite designed to monitor polar ice sheets and floating sea ice could accurately measure a disturbance in Earth's magnetic field. But that is just what ESA's CryoSat mission did earlier this year.

This is a story of unique innovation in satellite technology. At the end of last year, the CryoSat mission, which has been operating for almost 16 years, was given a remote upgrade of new software for its platform magnetometer. This instrument is installed on the satellite to ensure it orbits at the right altitude and directs its science instruments towards the right part of Earth's surface. The platform magnetometer is therefore an operational instrument and was not designed to produce scientific data about Earth's magnetic environment.

Comment: Signs of a weaker magnetic field... From the Laboratory of Solar Astronomy (xras.ru ), 22 January 2026:
The storm was a reaction to an X1.9 solar flare, the most powerful category, which occurred on Sunday, 18 January at around 21:00 Moscow Time. The event was registered in active region 4341, which had previously produced two large explosions in the first half of the month while still on the far side of the Sun. By the 18th, due to the Sun's rotation around its axis, it had moved to the side visible from Earth, and at the time of the explosion it was located precisely on the Sun-Earth line. This positioning partially explains the exceptional strength of the subsequent impact on the planet, but not entirely, as a number of facts are extremely difficult to reconcile with basic concepts of solar activity.
The main, difficult-to-explain consequence of the explosion was an exceptionally powerful radiation storm, accompanied by the strongest increase in the number of energetic protons (with energies above 10 MeV) in the vicinity of Earth in the 21st century. Within 24 hours, the density values rose to 37,000 units, which exceeded the "red level" thresholds by a thousand times and the indicators of the strongest flares of the current cycle by 20 times. The seemingly unbreakable records of the beginning of the century, recorded after the largest flares of the current century (about 30,000 units), were surpassed, and only slightly fell short of breaking the absolute record of 43,000 units, recorded back in the 20th century. The causes and consequences of this event (including the amount of radiation received by spacecraft during this period) are still to be investigated. It can only be noted that the increase in protons knocked out the sensors of the ACE spacecraft, which measures the speed of solar plasma in orbit, and for this reason, the speed of the plasma ejection that reached Earth is still unknown.


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Warning

'Blackwater' lakes and rivers in the Congo Basin are emitting 'ancient' carbon into the atmosphere

Sascha Pare
Live Science
Thu, 12 Mar 2026 21:33 UTC
Congo Basin ancient carbon
© Matti Barthel / ETH ZurichBlackwater lakes and rivers in the central Congo Basin are releasing carbon that is up to 3,500 years old.
Blackwater lakes and rivers in the Congo Basin are releasing ancient carbon into the atmosphere, a new study shows. Previously, scientists thought this carbon was safely stored in the surrounding peatlands, but the research reveals that's not the case.

The finding contradicts the long-held assumption that old peat carbon remains trapped underground, suggesting that some tropical peatlands could switch from being carbon sinks to major carbon sources.


Comment: That's assumptions for you! If they'd been reading the Signs, they'd have noticed northern and Arctic peatlands 'catching fire', in winter, and made the connection to carbon/methane outgassing.


"We are now faced with a 30-million-tonne question: we need to determine if this is just a small, natural leakage of ancient carbon, or the onset of broadscale destabilization," study lead author Travis Drake, a carbon biogeochemist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), told Live Science in an email.


Comment: Our informed guess is for the "onset of broadscale destabilization". See also:

Swarm reveals growing weak spot in Earth's magnetic field
Published this month in Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, the latest results from the Swarm mission reveal that while the South Atlantic Anomaly expanded steadily between 2014 and 2025, a region of the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Africa has experienced an even faster weakening of Earth's magnetic field since 2020.

"The South Atlantic Anomaly is not just a single block," says lead author Chris Finlay, Professor of Geomagnetism at the Technical University of Denmark. "It's changing differently towards Africa than it is near South America. There's something special happening in this region that is causing the field to weaken in a more intense way."
This behaviour is linked to strange patterns in the magnetic field at the boundary between Earth's liquid outer core and its rocky mantle, known as reverse flux patches.

Prof. Finlay explains, "Normally we'd expect to see magnetic field lines coming out of the core in the southern hemisphere. But beneath the South Atlantic Anomaly we see unexpected areas where the magnetic field, instead of coming out of the core, goes back into the core. Thanks to the Swarm data we can see one of these areas moving westward over Africa, which contributes to the weakening of the South Atlantic Anomaly in this region."

Comment: These researchers might already know the answer, though. They couldn't possibly ignore the fact that the Congo Basin and all the places that they studied lay atop "The Big African Blob":

Congo basin map
© WikiCongo basin map
African blob
© Nature(1,000–2,800 km depth) Edge of African Large low-shear-velocity province (LLSVP) at core mantle boundary. The cluster analyses evaluate five global tomographic models with the colour-coded voting map representing the number of models, which assign a lower than average shear wave velocity to the pixel. The average spacing of the pixels is 4°. The voting map highlights the consistency between the global models in defining the African LLSVP, as well as the similar, but more spatially complex, Pacific LLSVP.


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