Time-resolved 2-million-year-old supernova activity discovered in Earth’s microfossil record

Massive stars, which terminate their evolution in a cataclysmic explosion called a type-II supernova, are the nuclear engines of galactic nucleosynthesis. Among the elemental species known to be produced in these stars, the radioisotope 60Fe stands out: This radioisotope has no natural, terrestrial production mechanisms; thus, a detection of 60Fe atoms within terrestrial reservoirs is proof for the direct deposition of supernova material within our solar system. We report, in this work, the direct detection of live 60Fe atoms in biologically produced nanocrystals of magnetite, which we selectively extracted from two Pacific Ocean sediment cores. We find that the arrival of supernova material on Earth coincides with the lower Pleistocene boundary (2.7 Ma) and that it terminates around 1.7 Ma (details).

ChronoZoom is aimed at visualizing the history of everything

ChronoZoom is an open source community project owned by the Outercurve Foundation and dedicated to visualizing the history of everything.  ChronoZoom bridges the gap between the humanities and sciences using a notion of “Big History” to easily understand all this information. This project has been funded and supported by Microsoft Research Connections in collaboration with University California at Berkeley, Moscow State University and University of Washington Information School (iSchool), and The Center for Web and Data Science (WDS) departments.

You can browse through all of history on ChronoZoom to find data in the form of articles, images, video, sound, and other multimedia. ChronoZoom links together a wealth of information that has been curated by experts and enthusiasts to tell important stories from history. By drawing upon the latest discoveries from many different disciplines, you can visualize the temporal relationships between events, trends, and themes. Some of the disciplines that contribute information to ChronoZoom include biology, astronomy, geology, climatology, prehistory, archeology, anthropology, economics, cosmology, natural history, and population and environmental studies.

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The observer effect

We all are going to die, and that make us lucky

Musical Creativity and the Brain

On the spot, as great jazz performers expertly improvise solo passages, they make immediate decisions about which musical phrases to invent and to play. Researchers, like authors Mónica López-González and Dana Foundation grantee Charles J. Limb, are now using brain imaging to study the neural underpinnings of spontaneous artistic creativity, from jazz riffs to freestyle rap. So far, they have found that brain areas deactivated during improvisation are also at rest during dreaming and meditation, while activated areas include those controlling language and sensorimotor skills. Even with relatively few completed studies, researchers have concluded that musical creativity clearly cannot be tied to just one brain area or process.

Scale of the Universe

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Trailblazing

The Trailblazing website provides a timeline with key articles and historical events mapped out. Very nice and well worth spending a lunch-hour perusing!

Mark Twain, illuminated

From a 1895 article called Tesla's Osillator and Other Inventions, a photo of Mark Twain with one of Tesla's marvelous contraptions.