Hiding

Mountain-size chunk of rock hiding under Japan is channeling earthquakes

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An underground mountain-sized chunk of rock may be affecting paths of large earthquakes in southern Japan. The dense igneous rock, known as the Kumano pluton, is lurking about 3.1 miles (5 kilometers) below the surface beneath Japan’s Kii Peninsula. It sits in the crust of the continental Eurasian plate. Under this slab of continental crust, … Read more

Scientists spot supermassive black hole hiding inside thick cosmic dust

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A supermassive black hole masked by a cloud of cosmic dust was found at the center of an active galaxy in new images from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The galaxy, known as Messier 77 or NGC 1068, is a barred spiral galaxy located about 47 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Cetus. Taken … Read more

‘Treasure Map’ Predicts The Hiding Places of 300,000 Meteorites Across Antarctica

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Although meteorites are known to fall all over the world, the environment and unique processes in Antarctica make them somewhat easier to find on the pristine, snowy landscape. Still, collecting meteorites in Antarctica is physically grueling and hazardous work.   But what if there was a “treasure map” which showed the most probable places to … Read more

‘Killer Lake’ in Africa Looks Like Paradise, But It’s Hiding a Deadly Secret

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The engineers aboard the floating power station on Lake Kivu could only watch nervously as the volcano in the distance erupted violently, sending tremors rumbling through the water beneath them.   It was not the lava shooting from Mount Nyiragongo last May that spooked them, but the enormous concentrations of potentially explosive gases within Kivu, … Read more

The Moon That Resembles The Death Star Has Been Hiding Another Epic Secret

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The Solar System may be an even soggier place than we suspected. New analysis of one of Saturn’s moons suggests that it may harbor a liquid ocean. No, not the usual suspects – the new culprit is Mimas, the little moon with a big crater, which gives it more than a passing resemblance to the … Read more

‘Mini’ monster black hole discovered hiding in a dwarf galaxy

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The dwarf galaxy Mrk 462. (Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Dartmouth Coll./J. Parker & R. Hickox; Optical/IR: Pan-STARRS) A newly discovered “mini” supermassive black hole could help reveal some of the secrets behind the biggest black holes in the cosmos. Researchers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory recently discovered a monstrous black hole that was “buried” in dust … Read more

Saturn: Planet’s moon Mimas may be hiding an impossible ocean

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Mimas doesn’t show any hints of liquid water, and it seems impossible that it could have an ocean under its surface, but that’s exactly what a new set of simulations suggest Space 11 January 2022 By Leah Crane Mimas, a moon of Saturn, imaged by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute Saturn’s moon Mimas may … Read more

Astronomers Spot Two Dust Bunnies Hiding in the Early Universe

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Christopher Intagliata: This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Christopher Intagliata. If you’ve ever looked up at the Milky Way, you’ve seen what’s known as cosmic dust. Pascal Oesch: When you see this band of the Milky Way, you can see these dark patches. So that’s really just dust that is obscuring the stars behind it. Intagliata: Pascal … Read more