Stephanie Pappas writes: Fossils called stromatolites from Western Australia were created by microbes 3.48 billion years ago. Layered rocks in Western Australia are some of Earth’s earliest known life, according to a new study.  The fossils in question are stromatolites, layered rocks that are formed by the excretions of photosynthetic microbes. The oldest stromatolites that scientists agree were made by living organisms date back 3.43 billion years, but there are older specimens, too. In the Dresser Formation of Western Australia, stromatolites dating back 3.48 billion years have been found.  However, billions of years have wiped away traces of organic matter in these older stromatolites, raising questions about whether they were really formed by microbes or whether they might have been Read More ›

The Artemis I mega Moon rocket is on the launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is getting ready to launch the Orion spacecraft and its European Service Module. The first opportunity for launch is November 16 at 1:04 a.m. EST/local time (07:04 CET, 06:04 GMT). Artemis I is the first mission in a large program to send astronauts around and on the Moon sustainably. This uncrewed first launch will see the Orion spacecraft travel to the Moon, enter an elongated orbit around our satellite, and then return to Earth. The Orion spacecraft is powered by the European-built module that supplies electricity, propulsion, fuel, water, and air in addition to keeping the spacecraft operating Read More ›

Adam Frank writes: KEY TAKEAWAYS When you look at a picture of a galaxy that is 75 million light-years away, you are seeing that galaxy at a time when dinosaurs ruled the Earth.  Distance translates into time because the speed of light is finite.   What you perceive as “now” is really layer after layer of light reaching your eye from many different moments in the past. Light from the time of the dinosaurs When you look at a picture of a galaxy that is 75 million light-years away, you are not seeing it as it is right now, but as it was when that light you are seeing left it 75 million years ago. That means you are seeing that galaxy Read More ›

A peculiar property of the Earth’s magnetic field could help us to work out how our planet was created 4.5 billion years ago, according to a new scientific assessment. There are several theories about how the Earth and the Moon were formed, most involving a giant impact. They vary from a model where the impacting object strikes the newly formed Earth a glancing blow and then escapes, through to one where the collision is so energetic that both the impactor and the Earth are vaporized. Now scientists at the University of Leeds and the University of Chicago have analysed the dynamics of fluids and electrically conducting fluids and concluded that the Earth must have been magnetized either before the impact Read More ›

Elaborated Tunnel Architectures in Enzyme Systems point to a designed setup https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2062-proteins-how-they-provide-striking-evidence-of-design#9672 RNA and DNA belong to the four basic building blocks of life. They are complex macromolecules made of three constituents: the base, the backbone, which is the ribose five-carbon sugar, and phosphate, the moiety which permits DNA polymerization and catenation of monomers, to become polymers. The nucleobases are divided into pyrimidine and purines. These bases must be made in complex biosynthesis pathways in the cell, requiring several molecular machines, and enzymes, that perform the gradual, stepwise operations to yield the nucleobases, which, in the end, are handed over for further processing. Pyrimidines, one of the two classes, require 7 enzymes, of which Carbamoyl phosphate synthase II is the first in Read More ›