billionyearold

By MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen June 12, 2023Artist’s imagination of an assemblage of primordial eukaryotic organisms of the ‘Protosterol Biota’ inhabiting a bacterial mat on the ocean floor. Based on molecular fossils, organisms of the Protosterol Biota lived in the oceans about 1.6 to 1.0 billion years ago and are our earliest known ancestors. Credit: Orchestrated in MidJourney by TA 2023A multinational research team has found ancient protosteroids in rocks, indicating that…

A rock that smashed into a home in New Jersey this year has been confirmed as a rare meteorite believed to be roughly 4.6 billion years old. The confirmation comes after much testing and observation of the small rock, which scientists say is a class of meteorite known as a stony chondrite. Nathan Magee, the chair of the physics department at the College of New Jersey (TCNJ), was contacted to inspect the rock after Hopewell Township police responded to the discovery. The rock was originally found on May 8, and…

In 2011, nomads roaming the western Sahara encountered precious time capsules from Mars: coal-black chunks of a meteorite, strewn across the dunes. “Black Beauty,” as the parent body came to be known, captivated scientists and collectors because it contained crystals that formed on Mars more than 4.4 billion years ago, making it older than any native rock on Earth. Jérôme Gattacceca, a paleomagnetist at the European Centre for Research and Teaching in…

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) January Image of the Month features a spectacular picture taken by the Webb Space Telescope. The image features several bright galaxies in the background, as well as a highly detailed capture of LEDA 2046648, a billion-year-old spiral galaxy. Launched in December 2021, Webb began its scientific endeavors in July 2022. Since then, the space telescope has captured images of distant galaxies and exoplanets, and even revealed new information about our local solar system, including…

Scientists have detected a record-breaking radio signal from atomic hydrogen in a very distant galaxy. The galaxy that the signal originated from is believed to have come from a galaxy at redshift z=1.29. Because of the galaxy’s immense distance, the emission line had shifted to a 48 cm line from the 21 cm line they had expected. This discovery is phenomenal because the galaxy that it originated from is believed to have existed when the universe was only 4.9 billion years old – making the source of the…

A group of researchers managed to do something intriguing and revolutionary. According to a new study published in Nature Microbiology, international researchers have managed to revive ancient CRISPR ancestors that date back as far as 2.6 billion years ago. These ancestors, they say, contain working systems that could have revolutionary applications. Gene editing has taken a massive swing in recent years, with tons of advanced being made over the past couple of years alone. From trying to create hypoallergenic…