Nature Hub

 From - Sky & Telescope By- Javer Barbuzano Edited by Amal Udawatta The newly discovered giant volcano on Mars is located just south of the planet’s equator, in eastern Noctis Labyrinthus, west of the Valles Marineris canyone system. The volcano sits on the eastern edge of a broad regional topographic rise called Tharsis, home to three other well-known giant volcanoes: Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Arsia Mons. Although more eroded and lower than these giants, the newly discovered volcano rivals the others in diameter (red dashed circle). Background: NASA / USGS; interpretation and annotations by Pascal Lee and Sourabh Shubham It's not every day that a giant volcano is discovered hiding in plain sight. By reviewing satellite imagery from many missions, scientists have spotted the remains of a colossal volcano on Mars. The volcano, provisionally named “Noctis Mons,” had been imaged repeatedly since the early 1970s, but extensive erosion had concealed it from view. Researchers

       From -  Independent Magazine      By - David Keys      Edited  by - Amal Udawatta New research has pinpointed the likely time in  prehistory  when humans first began to speak. Analysis by British archaeologist Steven Mithen suggests that early humans first developed rudimentary  language  around 1.6 million years ago – somewhere in eastern or southern Africa. “Humanity’s development of the ability to speak was without doubt the key which made much of subsequent human physical and cultural  evolution  possible. That’s why dating the emergence of the earliest forms of language is so important,” said Dr Mithen, professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading. Until recently, most human evolution experts thought that humans only started speaking around 200,000 years ago. Professor Mithen’s new research, published this month, suggests that rudimentary human language is at least eight times older. His analysis is based on a detailed study of all the available archaeological

    From- Sky & Telescope     Edited by -  Amal Udawatta THESE ARE THE STAGES OF A TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE. THE PARTIAL PHASES LAST ABOUT AN HOUR . AND 20 MINUTES. The next total solar eclipse to visit North America will be April 8, 2024 . The duration of totality will be up to 4 minutes and 27 seconds, almost double that of The Great American Eclipse of August 21, 2017. The 2017 total solar eclipse was witnessed by about 20 million people from Oregon to South Carolina, and the upcoming 2024 Great American Eclipse is sure to be witnessed by many millions more. Because of what they saw — the exquisite beauty of the Sun’s corona hanging in the suddenly darkened sky — many millions more will know that a total solar eclipse is something truly worth seeing. In the US, totality will begin in Texas at 1:27 pm CDT and will end in Maine at 3:35 pm EDT on April 8, 2024.

  (Image credit:  By - Christine Ro Edited by -Amal Udawatta A lone female stingray recently fell pregnant, despite having no male companions in her tank. What are "virgin births" and why are they happening more frequently for animals in captivity? I It is an event that appears to defy the laws of nature. In February 2024, a female stingray, named Charlotte,  fell pregnant at a small aquarium in Hendersonville , North Carolina, US – even though she had not encountered a male stingray in over eight years. It left scientists at the Team Ecco Aquarium & Shark Lab stumped. How exactly Charlotte conceived four stingray pups, while floating around in her tank without a mate, was a mystery. One theory pointed the finger (or fin) at two white-spotted bamboo sharks who share the tank with Charlotte, due to some suspicious bite marks found on the stingray's body. Such marks can be a sign of mating behaviour in sharks.  But that would lead to an unusual shark-stingray hybrid. In

 From- Sky &Telescope  By - Kit Gilchrist, Edited by  - Amal Udawatta This artist’s impression shows the record-breaking quasar J059-4351, the bright core of a distant galaxy that is powered by a supermassive black hole. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, this quasar has been found to be the most luminous object known in the universe to date. The supermassive black hole, seen here pulling in surrounding matter, has a mass 17 billion times that of the Sun and appears to be growing in mass by the equivalent of another Sun per day. ESO / M. Kornmesser   In a new study, astronomers have identified a quasar more luminous and voracious than any found to date. Quasars are among the most distant known celestial phenomena. They’re powerful enough to show up in our skies as star-like specks, but in fact each quasar is the luminous region surrounding a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy. As the ravenous black hole gobbles up gas from the surrounding disk, the supe

  From - BBC World News Edited by Amal Udawatta By Kevin Gepford 20th February 2024 An army of reptilian bulldozers is helping a Galápagos island make an ecological comeback. E Española's burgeoning tortoise population – made up of the children and grandchildren of Diego, one of the archipelago's most beloved tortoise residents – is helping to restore the island's lost ecosystem. Before the arrival of humans, Española had as many as 8,000 resident tortoises. However, in the 1800s,  pirates and whalers nearly stripped Española  and neighbouring islands of their tortoises for their meat. These sailors also left behind goats, which went wild, multiplied, and devoured native vegetation. By the 1970s much of the pristine habitat was wrecked. Española was down to its last 14 tortoises; 12 females, and two males. These were brought back to the  Darwin Research Station's  breeding programme on Santa Cruz between 1964 and 1974, and were later joined by Diego who was  discovered