Science & TechnologyS


Tsunami

4-story rogue wave that randomly appeared in the Pacific Ocean is the 'most extreme' ever detected

Harry Baker
Live Science
Tue, 15 Feb 2022 00:00 UTC
wave simulation
© MarineLabsA simulation of the rogue wave based off movement from a monitoring buoy.
Scientists describe it as a "once in a millennium" occurrence.

A four-story-tall rogue wave that briefly reared up in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Canada in 2020 was the "most extreme" version of the freaky phenomenon ever recorded, scientists now say.

Rogue waves, also known as freak or killer waves, are massive waves that appear in the open ocean seemingly from nowhere.

The rogue wave was detected on Nov. 17, 2020, around 4.3 miles (7 kilometers) off the coast of Ucluelet on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, by an oceanic buoy belonging to Canadian-based research company MarineLabs. Now, in a new study published online Feb. 2 in the journal Scientific Reports, scientists have revealed that the Ucluelet wave was around 58 feet (17.6 meters) tall, making it around three times higher than surrounding waves. Rogue waves this much larger than surrounding swells are a "once in a millennium" occurrence, the researchers said in a statement.

"Proportionally, the Ucluelet wave is likely the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded," lead author Johannes Gemmrich, an oceanographer at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said in the statement.
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Telephone

Thanks for the memories: AOL is finally shutting down its dial-up service

Benj Edwards
Ars Technica
Mon, 11 Aug 2025 15:23 UTC
AOL early internet screenshot
© AOLA classic AOL login screen.
Around 175,000 households still use dial-up Internet in the US.

After decades of connecting Americans to its online service and the Internet through telephone lines, AOL recently announced it is finally shutting down its dial-up modem service on September 30, 2025. The announcement marks the end of a technology that served as the primary gateway to the World Wide Web for millions of users throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

AOL confirmed the shutdown date in a help message to customers: "AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet. This service will no longer be available in AOL plans."

Along with the dial-up service, AOL announced it will retire its AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser on the same date. The dialer software managed the connection process between computers and AOL's network, while Shield was a web browser optimized for slower connections and older operating systems.

Comment: Fun fact from Ars Technica commentor jranson:
While AOL did offer dial-up service (in the 80's as Quantum Link and in the 90's as AOL), they didn't actually offer true internet access to all customers (e.g., ability to read newsgroups, use gopher, the world wide web, etc) until March 1994. Before then it was a completely closed system that could not access anything not running on an AOL server.


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Cassiopaea

Meet the Cosmic Horseshoe: 'Most massive black hole ever discovered'


Royal Astronomical Societ
Mon, 11 Aug 2025 20:29 UTC
cosmic horseshoe black hole
© NASA/ESAThe Cosmic Horseshoe gravitational lens. The newly discovered ultramassive blackhole lies at the centre of the orange galaxy. Far behind it is a blue galaxy that is being warped into the horseshoe shaped ring by distortions in spacetime created by the immense mass of the foreground orange galaxy
Astronomers have discovered potentially the most massive black hole ever detected.

The cosmic behemoth is close to the theoretical upper limit of what is possible in the universe and is 10,000 times heavier than the black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy.

It exists in one of the most massive galaxies ever observed - the Cosmic Horseshoe - which is so big it distorts spacetime and warps the passing light of a background galaxy into a giant horseshoe-shaped Einstein ring.

Such is the enormousness of the ultramassive black hole's size, it equates to 36 billion solar masses, according to a new paper published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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Fireball 2

Scientist says meteorite that ripped through Georgia homeowner's roof is 20 million years older than Earth


CBS News
Sat, 09 Aug 2025 19:59 UTC
meteorite georgia, south carolina
© 10 WBMSMeteorite caught on camera June 26, 2025 near Atlanta, GA
A meteorite that ripped through the roof of a home in Georgia earlier this summer is older than Earth itself, according to a scientist who examined fragments of the space rock.

A mysterious fireball blazed across the sky in broad daylight on June 26, sparking hundreds of siting reports in Georgia and South Carolina. According to NASA, the meteor exploded over Georgia, creating booms heard by residents in the area.

University of Georgia planetary geologist Scott Harris said in a press release Friday that he examined 23 grams of meteorite fragments recovered from a piece the size of a cherry tomato that struck a man's roof like a bullet and left a dent in the floor of the home outside Atlanta.
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Jupiter

Venus and Jupiter conjunction: How to watch the 2 brightest planets 'kiss' on Aug. 12

Gretchen Rundorff
Live Science
Sat, 09 Aug 2025 00:00 UTC
Jupiter
© NASA/JPLJupiter's Great Red Spot could be visible through telescopes during its close conjunction with Venus on August 12
Venus and Jupiter will meet in a conjunction in the early morning hours of Aug. 12. Here's everything you need to know to spot the two brightest planets at their best.

Just as the Perseid meteor shower approaches its peak, two luminous planets are getting in on the night-sky action.

Venus and Jupiter, the two brightest planets in the sky, will meet in a conjunction very early on Tuesday morning (Aug. 12). On this morning, the two planets will be less than a degree apart — approximately the length of your pinkie when held up to the sky at arm's length. Because they'll appear close together, you'll be able to view both simultaneously through skywatching binoculars or a backyard telescope.

But if you want to see the conjunction, you'll have to either stay out late or get up early: Venus and Jupiter rise together around 3 a.m. local time and set together around 6 a.m. local time. However, these times vary slightly depending on your exact location. You can use Time and Date to check the precise rise and set times for your area.

Venus and Jupiter will rise in the east with the constellation Gemini and will ascend to about 20 degrees above the horizon before sunrise. Because they're fairly low on the horizon, you'll want to observe them in a mostly flat area without many trees, buildings or other obstructions to the east.
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Comet 2

A comet going 130,000 mph is visiting our solar system from another star


CBS News
Fri, 08 Aug 2025 17:51 UTC
comet 103,000 mph 3I-Atlas
© Associated PressThis image provided by NASA/European Space Agency shows an image captured by Hubble of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on July 21, 2025, when the comet was 277 million miles from Earth.
The Hubble telescope just took its picture.

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the best picture yet of a high-speed comet visiting our solar system from another star.

NASA and the European Space Agency released the latest photos Thursday.

Discovered last month by a telescope in Chile, the comet known as 3I-Atlas is only the third known interstellar object to pass our way and poses no threat to Earth.

Astronomers originally estimated the size of its icy core at several miles across, but Hubble's observations have narrowed it down to no more than 3.5 miles. It could even be as small as 1,000 feet, scientists say, according to a new paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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Music

Got rhythm? Research finds cockatoos have at least 30 moves in their dance repertoire

Rudy Molinek
Smithsonian Magazine
Thu, 07 Aug 2025 20:21 UTC
dance cockatoo
© Irena Schulz
A new study of the birds in online videos and at an Australian zoo revealed 17 dance moves never before documented by scientists

Scrolling through TikTok, you might have come across videos of dancing cockatoos and thought, "it looks like that bird is having fun," or maybe, "I can dance better than that." But in a new study, scientists broke down the dancing parrots' steps and found that not only do the cockatoos seem to be having a good time, they probably have more moves in their repertoire than most of us do.

"Dance behavior is more varied and complex than previously thought," Natasha Lubke, an animal scientist at Charles Sturt University in Australia and lead author of the paper published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, says in a statement. The finding "supports the anecdotal belief that these parrots can experience pleasure and enjoy dancing."
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Moon

Sturgeon Moon 2025: What makes August's full moon a special 2-night affair

Jamie Carter
Live Science
Wed, 06 Aug 2025 00:00 UTC
Sturgeon Moon
© Javier Zayas Photography/Getty ImagesThe "Sturgeon Moon" will look its best this month on two successive evenings.
In a rare skywatching treat, you can see August's full Sturgeon Moon rise soon after sunset on both Saturday, Aug. 9 and Sunday, Aug. 10.

A full moon will rise this weekend — but, unlike most, there will be two opportunities to see it appear on the eastern horizon at dusk.

The Sturgeon Moon will officially reach its full moon phase at 3:55 a.m. ET on Saturday, Aug. 9, which will create opportunities for those in North America to see the full moon rise twice in successive evenings.

The best time to see a full moon rise is just after sunset, typically on the day it officially becomes full. Not only is the full moon 100% illuminated then, but it also appears in the eastern sky when it's just dark enough for the moon to be easily visible while the landscape in front of it is still bathed in the light of dusk.

However, there are occasional months when two successive evenings can deliver similarly impressive full moonrises.
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Info

Ocean sediments might support theory that comet impact triggered Younger Dryas cool-off

Gaby Clark
Phys Org
Wed, 06 Aug 2025 15:09 UTC
Impact Sediments
© Moore et al., 2025, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0Examples of Fe-rich and silica-rich impact microspherules (a and b) and metallic dust particles (MDPs; c and d) interpreted as cometary dust from Baffin Bay cores. Yellow arrows show particles of FeSi, FeS, and FeCr on microspherules (a and b) and NiFe, low-O2 Fe, and native Fe on metallic particles (c and d). Note folded edges of MDP in panel d.
Analysis of ocean sediments has surfaced geochemical clues in line with the possibility that an encounter with a disintegrating comet 12,800 years ago in the Northern Hemisphere triggered rapid cooling of Earth's air and ocean. Christopher Moore of the University of South Carolina, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in the journal PLOS One on August 6, 2025.

During the abrupt cool-off — the Younger Dryas event — temperatures dropped about 10 degrees Celsius in a year or less, with cooler temperatures lasting about 1,200 years. Many researchers believe that no comet was involved, and that glacial meltwater caused freshening of the Atlantic Ocean, significantly weakening currents that transport warm, tropical water northward.

In contrast, the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis posits that Earth passed through debris from a disintegrating comet, with numerous impacts and shockwaves destabilizing ice sheets and causing massive meltwater flooding that shut down key ocean currents.

However, the impact hypothesis has been less well supported, lacking any evidence from ocean sediments. To address that gap, Moore and colleagues analyzed the geochemistry of four seafloor cores from Baffin Bay, near Greenland. Radiocarbon dating suggests the cores include sediments deposited when the Younger Dryas event began.
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Info

1.5 million-year-old stone tools from mystery human relative discovered in Indonesia

Kristina Killgrove
Live Science
Wed, 06 Aug 2025 14:55 UTC
A handful of stone tools found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi has pushed back the date that human relatives arrived in the region.
Ancient Fossil
© M.W. MooreOne of the stone tools discovered on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia dates back at least 1 million years.
Stone tools discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi are rewriting what experts thought they knew about human evolution in this region. The tools date to about 1 million to 1.5 million years ago, which suggests that Sulawesi was occupied by an unknown human relative long before our species evolved.

"These are simple, sharp-edged flakes of stone that would have been useful as general-purpose cutting and scraping implements," study co-author Adam Brumm, professor of archaeology at Griffith University in Australia, told Live Science in an email.

In a study published Wednesday (Aug. 6) in the journal Nature, researchers analyzed a set of stone tools that represent the oldest evidence of human relatives in Wallacea, a vast expanse of islands that lie between the Asian and Australian continental shelves.
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