Tiny frozen world unexpectedly appears to have an atmosphere

 

Image courtesy of NAOJ/Ko Arimatsu.

Joel Kontinen

A tiny The object, located in the Kuiper Belt of distant frozen bodies at the edge of the solar system, is formally named (612533) 2002 XV93, after the date of its discovery nearly a quarter of a century ago. It has a diameter of less than 500 kilometres.

he object also belongs to a class of objects known as plutinos because they are in the same stable orbit as Pluto, completing three revolutions around the sun for every two made by Neptune.

It seems that this object, though it is small,  has an atmosphere,   

On 10 January 2024, 2002 XV93 passed in front of a distant star, causing what is called an occultation. Ko Arimatsu at Kyoto University and his colleagues observed this event from three locations in Japan.

The team saw the star gradually fade and recover over about 1.5 seconds near the edge of the shadow.

“These gradual changes are best explained if the star’s light was bent by a very thin atmosphere around 2002 XV93,” says Arimatsu.

The team estimates a surface pressure of about 100 to 200 nanobars, roughly 5 million to 10 million times thinner than Earth’s atmosphere and about 50 to 100 times thinner than Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere.

“You could not breathe it, feel wind from it, or see anything like Earth’s sky,” says Arimatsu. “But it is not negligible scientifically because even such a thin atmosphere can measurably bend starlight, and it tells us that volatile gases are present or being supplied around a very small icy body.”

The team couldn’t determine the composition of the atmosphere directly from the data. Arimatsu suggests methane, nitrogen and carbon monoxide are the most plausible candidates because they are among the few substances volatile enough to become gases at the very low temperatures of the outer solar system.

“This discovery challenges our conventional view of small worlds in the outer solar system,” says Arimatsu. “Until now, clearly detectable atmospheres in the solar system were essentially associated with planets, dwarf planets and some large satellites. 2002 XV93 appears to be one of the smallest solar system bodies yet with a clearly detected atmosphere.”

Souurse:

James Woodford 2026 Tiny frozen world unexpectedly appears to have an atmosphere | New Scientist 4 May

 

Human heads have changed shape a lot in the past 100 years

 

Image courtesy of Zeresenay Alemseged

Joel Kontinen

Since the early 20th century, people’s skulls have got rounder and their jaws have got wider, probably because of changes in health, diet and environment.

In the past 100 years, the heads of Japanese people have got rounder, with narrower cheekbones, wider upper jaws and slimmer, more prominent noses.

While changes outside Japan may vary, the overall trend is probably common across the globe, says Shiori Usui at the National Research Institute of Police Science in Chiba, Japan.

Humans are the only primate that has a chin. This is not according to Darwinian evolution but according to creation.  

Source:

Christa Lesté-Lasserre 2026 Human heads have changed shape a lot in the past 100 years | New Scientist 30 April 

 

100-year-old assumption about the universe may soon be overturned

 

Image courtesy of NASA, ESA, IPAC/Caltech, STScI, Arizona State University.

Joel Kontinen

Some scientists may be in for a surprise.   A recent survey has said that the universe in surprising lumpy.  

Assumptions that physicists have made about the universe for over a century may be about to be overturned. Evidence is emerging that it is far lumpier than we had thought – a finding that could solve some of today’s most puzzling cosmological mysteries.

When modelling the universe, cosmologists can’t describe every single galaxy, so they make simplifications. Typically, they assume that the universe on the largest scales is homogeneous and isotropic, meaning that it is roughly the same no matter where you look.

Our universe may look surprising lumpy, but that is the way God made it,   For example, our solar system is very different from other solar systems.

 Source:

Matt von Hippel 2026 100-year-old assumption about the universe may soon be overturned | New Scientist 27 April 

 

Scorpions reinforce their claws and stingers with metals

 

Image courtesy of Erwin Niemand/Shutterstock

Joel Kontinen

Some animals use metals to strengthen their body parts- just like the teeth in Komodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis), for instance, and the scorpions also use metals such as iron, zinc and manganese, and also copper, nickel, silicon, chlorine, titanium and bromine.

Sam Campbell at the University of Queensland, Australia, and his colleagues examined the claws and stingers of 18 species of scorpion from around the world to determine the extent and composition of their metal reinforcements.

The metals are largely found within the tips of the stingers and along the cutting edge of the claws, as well as in their mouth and teeth and in their tarsal claws, making their weapons “like a steel-toe-capped boot”, Campbell says. The rest of the animal’s exoskeleton is still hard, but much softer in comparison.

Scorpions all fluoresce light green or blue under ultraviolet light. But metal-enriched parts of the body don’t glow when exposed to UV, the team found.

It isn’t yet known how the scorpions obtain the metals that they incorporate into their exoskeletons, though their prey is the most likely source.

The team also found that different scorpion species had more metal in different parts of their bodies, and this is related to their behaviour. “What we identified was that when zinc was high in the claws, it would be low in the stinger, and vice versa,” says Campbell. “Because scorpions use their weapons so differently, it is possible that metal enrichment has adapted to provide beneficial biomechanical properties in the weapons where it is most needed by the scorpion.”

Metal enrichment in animal tissues appears to be more common than once thought, says Aaron LeBlanc at King’s College London. “A growing number of studies are pointing this out in vertebrate teeth as well,” he says. “The next logical step after discovering these features is to try to understand how they have evolved across major lineages, and this study is a pioneering one for that reason.”

Source:

 James Woodford 2026 Scorpions reinforce their claws and stingers with metals | New Scientist29 April 

10,000 new planets found hidden in NASA telescope data

 

An artist’s impression of a star with two planets transiting across it. Image courtesy of NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI).

Joel Kontinen

How many planets are there? A recent survey says that there might be some 10, 000. This is according to a NASA research. But we do now know how many can harbour life, as only God can give  it.

Astronomers have identified more than 10,000 candidate planets in data from a NASA telescope, the most ever found in a single life.

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was launched in 2018. It is tasked with looking at stars across the sky for planets in orbit, known as exoplanets. It identifies these exoplanets by looking for brief dips in the brightness of the light reaching Earth from each star – a sign that an exoplanet orbiting the star has passed in front of it.

Source:

 Jonathan O’Callaghan 2026 10,000 new planets found hidden in NASA telescope data | New Scientist 27 April 

Strange mammal ancestor laid huge, leathery eggs — and it was key to surviving the world's worst mass extinction

 

Image courtesy of Professor Julien Benoit.

Joel Kontinen

Evolutionists think that mass extinctions killed most of the animals before the giant universal deluge that took place at the time of Noah.

Using synchrotron X-ray CT scans of a fossilized, intact embryo, researchers found evidence that the plant-eating mammal Lystrosaurus laid eggs, which answers a key question about mammalian evolution. Scientists have cracked a major mystery about mammal evolution after discovering a 250 million-year-old fossilized egg from before the time of the dinosaurs. Researchers say the specimen, which holds a curled-up embryo of the plant-eating animal Lystrosaurus, is the first known egg ever found from a mammal ancestor, proving that mammals' ancestors laid eggs.

The egg could help paleontologists better understand how these animals survived the Permian-Triassic extinction, also known as the Great Dying, which occurred around 252 million years ago. During this event, Earth faced brutal heat, drought, volcanic eruptions and ocean acidification, and 90% of Earth's species died.

"It reveals how reproductive strategies can shape survival in extreme environments: by producing large, yolk-rich eggs and precocial young, Lystrosaurus was able to thrive in the harsh, unpredictable conditions following the end-Permian mass extinction," Julien Benoit, a paleontologist and associate professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa's Evolutionary Studies Institute, said in a statement.

Source:

Kenna Hughes-Castleberry 2026 Strange mammal ancestor laid huge, leathery eggs —‬ and it was key to surviving the world's worst mass extinction | Live Science April 15

 

 

 

Archaeopteryx, one of the world's first proto birds, has a set of weird, never-before-seen features

 

Illustration by Ville Sinkkonen

Joel Kontinen

Some evolutionist think that Archaeopteryx is a a proto bird that is one the way to being a real bird. But that’s not the way these animals become birds. This is what told Live Science says  about this:

Iconic transition species between dinosaurs and birds may have had weird 'teeth' on roof of its mouth and a highly mobile tongue, study reveals searchers have uncovered an intriguing set of never-before-seen features in the skull of Archaeopteryx, an iconic dinosaur that is considered a key transitional fossil in the evolution of birds, a new study reports.

The features — which are absent in nonflying dinosaurs but are widespread in living birds — may have enabled Archaeopteryx to acquire, manipulate and process food more efficiently, the research team proposed in the study, which was published Feb. 2 in the journal The Innovation.

The newly discovered features include a tiny bone that indicates Archaeopteryx had a highly mobile tongue. The researchers also identified "weird" soft tissue traces interpret but this is qhat science daily ed as oral papillae — small, tooth-like projections on the roof of the mouth, Jingmai O'Connor, an associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum in Chicago and lead author of the study, in an email. Finally, the team found "unusual" openings near the tip of Archaeopteryx's jaw that suggest a nerve-rich structure and may represent an early analogue of what is known as a bill-tip organ in modern birds.

he identification of these features in Archaeopteryx marks their earliest known appearance in the fossil record, according to the study, suggesting these characteristics evolved during or close to the emergence of avian dinosaurs — known as birds — which is thought to have occurred during the Late Jurassic period (roughly 161.5 million to 143 million years ago). he identification of these features in Archaeopteryx marks their earliest known appearance in the fossil record, according to the study, suggesting these characteristics evolved during or close to the emergence of avian dinosaurs — known as birds — which is thought to have occurred during the Late Jurassic period (roughly 161.5 million to 143 million years ago).

Modern birds are the only dinosaur lineage that survived the mass extinction event 66 million years ago. Archaeopteryx, which lived around 150 million years ago in what is now Germany, is among the oldest — if not the earliest — known dinosaur that can also be considered a bird under a broad definition, although it was probably not the first bird to evolve, O'Connor said.

Furthermore, Archaeopteryx is unlikely to have been a direct ancestor of modern birds, research suggests. According to O'Connor, Archaeopteryx represents the earliest known dinosaur with good evidence for active, feather-driven flight, although this was likely limited to brief, powered bursts

Source: 

 Aristos Georgiou 2026 Archaeopteryx, one of the world's first proto birds, has a set of weird, never-before-seen features, new study reveals | Live Science February 13