If most people know one thing about black holes, they probably know that nothing can escape from them, not even light.
Yet this most basic tenet about black holes has actually been disproven by the theory of quantum mechanics, explains theoretical physicist Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, in an essay published online today (Aug. 2) in the journal Science.
[Full Story:
Black Holes: Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong]
The fastest cheetah on Earth has done it again, breaking her previous world record for the 100-meter dash and setting a new best time of 5.95 seconds.
This feat surpasses the fastest of all human 100-meter sprinters by almost four seconds. Usain Bolt, a Jamaican sprinter now competing at the 2012 London Olympics, holds the human world record at 9.58 seconds in the 100-meter dash.
[Full Story: Wow! 11-Year-Old Cheetah Breaks Land Speed Record]
More than a dozen glaciers that dot Greenland's desolate northwest coastline appear to move in fits and starts, according to new research, sliding into the sea and bleeding ice with sudden vigor for years at a time, then mysteriously slowing, only to swing back into action up to a decade later.
The research, published today (Aug. 2) in the journal Science, used aerial photographs taken in the 1980s to peer back beyond the advent of satellite records of glacier activity in the region. The study shows that in the last 25 years the area has suffered two prolonged periods of sudden ice loss, separated by 10 years of relative quiet.
[Full Story: Old Photos of Glaciers Show Their Fickle Speed]
The cluster of major earthquakes that struck the globe during the past decade can be explained by nothing more than random chance, researchers say in a new study.
Since 2004, devastating quakes have rocked Sumatra, Chile, Haiti and Japan, leading to speculation that we might be living in an age of great earthquakes, similar to a global cluster of temblors seen in the 1960s. Some researchers have even suggested that large quakes are linked across the globe, possibly triggering each other.
[Full Story: Major Quakes in Last Decade Not Linked, Study Finds]
On Tuesday (July 31), aquarium biologists at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco introduced the nocturnal sharks (four females and two males) to their neighbors in nature, as both species live in the wild off the South African coast.
The 2-year-old pyjama sharks, which the biologists say are docile and mild-mannered, are expected to spend much of their time in the exhibit's man-made underwater caves; since the two species rub shoulders in the wild, they should pose no threat to each other.
[Full Story: African Penguins Get New Shark 'Roommates' At California Aquarium]
A group of African penguins that live on an indoor beach in California greeted some toothy new neighbors this week: six striped pyjama sharks.
"During yesterday's event, the sharks were let into the tank two at a time, which piqued the interest of the penguins," biologists at the California Academy told LiveScience, collectively, in an email. "The penguins reacted with curiosity, some diving into the water to get a closer look at and feel for their new neighbors. Overall, the penguins reacted quite positively."
[Full Story: African Penguins Get New Shark 'Roommates' At California Aquarium]
So-called "fire rainbows" are neither on fire nor are they rainbows, but they sure are stunning.
They are technically known as iridescent clouds, a relatively rare phenomenon caused by clouds of water droplets of nearly uniform size, according to a release by NASA. These clouds diffract, or bend, light in a similar manner, which separates out light into different wavelengths, or colors.
[Full Story: Amazing Photo: 'Fire Rainbow' Over South Florida]
A camera attached to a South American seabird allowed scientists to directly watch its deep-diving feeding techniques for the first time.
Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society fitted a small camera to the back of an imperial cormorant in Punta León, a coastal protected area in Argentine Patagonia.
[Full Story: Camera-Toting Seabird Captures Own Deep Dive]
Most of the time, Chris Kirby chases storms, but sometimes they come to him. During a drive through the mountains this Saturday afternoon (July 28) near his home in Aurora, Colo., to photograph mountain goats and test radio equipment, he got quite a surprise: a rare, high-elevation tornado.
Kirby, who's a registered storm-spotter with the National Weather Service (NWS), took a photo of the thin twister as it briefly touched down on the side of Mount Evans, he told OurAmazingPlanet. He sent his picture to weather service staff, who used maps and line-of-sight analysis to determine that the twister touched down at 11,900 feet (3,627 meters), making it the second-highest tornado ever recorded in American history, said David Barjenbruch, a meteorologist with the NWS in Boulder.
[Full Story: Rare Colorado Tornado Is Second-Highest in US History]
A new, extremely deep photo of the site of a supernova explosion that was observed in 1957 has revealed X-rays emanating from the source.
The photo, taken by NASA's Chandra X-Ray space telescope, is the first to spot X-ray light coming from the remains of the dead star that sparked the explosion, and indicates that the supernova likely transformed the star into a pulsar. Pulsars are super-dense, fast-rotating objects that have been compressed so tightly they are composed only of neutrons.
[Full Story: Spiral Galaxy Photo Sheds New Light on Recent Star Explosion]
When NASA’s newest rover arrives on Mars Sunday night (Aug. 5), it will be carrying a host of state-of-the-art instruments, including the head-mounted, rock-zapping laser called ChemCam.
The 1-ton Curiosity rover aims to determine if its landing site, the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater, can or ever could support microbial life. ChemCam will play a vital role in this quest by allowing the rolling robot to study the composition of rocks from afar.
[Full Story:
Why NASA's Big Mars Rover Has a Laser to Zap Rocks]
