Ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti, thought to have ruled as Pharaoh, might be buried near Tutankhamun. Credit: Filo/Getty Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings has long puzzled archaeologists. Might hidden chambers — suspected to hold the remains of Nefertiti — lie beyond its walls? Now, researchers say they have found new evidence pointing to
Time’s Second Arrow: Evolution, Order, and a New Law of Nature Robert M. Hazen and Michael L. Wong W. W. Norton (2026) Like evolution by natural selection, some ideas that start out as revolutionary can become so intuitive that they seem banal to future generations. Mineralogist Robert Hazen and planetary scientist Michael Wong must hope
A negative leap second could mean computer systems no longer run like clockwork. Credit: Florian Gaertner/Photothek/Getty The leap second could be scrapped as soon as October. The periodic adjustment to the world’s clocks, which has been done every few years since 1972, was already set to end by 2035. But authorities are considering an immediate
Modelling the time-varying gravity field The gravitational potential for Mars, U(r, λ, ϕ), can be expressed as a sum over 4π-normalized spherical harmonic coefficients Cℓm and Sℓm: $$U(r,\lambda ,\phi )=\fracCheck back often for more exciting news!Check back often for more exciting news!\left[1+\mathopKeep following us for the latest insights.\limits_{{\ell }=2}^{{\rm{\infty }}}{\left(\frac{{R}_{m}}{r}\right)}^{{\ell }}\mathop{\sum }\limits_{m=0}^{{\ell }}({C}_{{\ell }m}\cos m\lambda +{S}_{{\ell }m}\sin
The ocean floor has been mapped in much less detail than the surface of Mars.Credit: US Geological Survey/Scientific Photo Library The depths of the ocean are among the final frontiers of scientific exploration. Scientists have visually studied less than 0.001% of the seafloor, but oceanography is essential to understanding the climate, ecosystems, and processes deep
When tectonic plates move away from each other, lava can spill onto the sea floor along mid-ocean ridges.Credit: Doug Perrine/Nature Picture Library/SPL Geophysicists have captured, for the first time, the ocean floor in the act of separating at one of its seams. Using a set of more than 20 measuring stations placed in a 100-kilometer-long
