NexusRhythms Nurtures

How Did Humans Evolve? Gradual changes to our DNA have led us to where we are today. But how did humans evolve and will we continue to do so?

Watch that last step … it’s a doozy!

Scientists using data from our NuSTAR and NICER telescopes have found that Einstein was right yet again. This time, it was a prediction of how matter plunges into a black hole.

From far enough away, the gravity of a black hole isn’t all that special — stuff can orbit a black hole just like it can orbit a star or planet. However, in Einstein’s theory of gravity, if you get close enough to a black hole, objects can’t orbit in a circle. Instead, there’s a region called the “plunging region” where stuff will just fall right in. Kind of like suddenly finding yourself going over a waterfall on a river!

The researchers have found the first evidence of light emitted by material in that plunge region of a black hole. Learn more: https://www.nustar.caltech.edu/news/nustar240516

Indiana Jones’ Dream 🔎

In 1976, in the village of Orce on the high plateau of Granada in southern Spain, a farmer east of town unearthed some unusual fossilized bones in a field near the Rio Orce that helped turn the town into a destination for archaeological research.

Once archaeologists began digging, they discovered that calcareous muds formed in ponds near the shores of an ancient lake had preserved vast troves of fossils. Among them was a child’s tooth that was 1.4 million years old. According to some experts, that meant the fossils in this area represented some of the oldest examples of hominins in Western Europe. Other fossils discovered in this area include saber-toothed tigers, hyenas, hippos, horses, deer, bovids, mammoths, rhinoceroses, wild dogs, and wolves. https://go.nasa.gov/3K9oP9c

Following Canada’s extreme wildland fire season in 2023, unusually early and intense blazes are already raging in 2024.

Although wildfire activity does not typically become widespread or intense in British Columbia until several weeks later in the summer, NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of smoke from several fires in British Columbia on May 11, 2024.

Terra and other NASA satellites observed the plume as it was lofted several kilometers into the air and spread eastward, reaching as far as the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes regions of the U.S.

The situation echoes 2023, when intense fires also burned in British Columbia in May.
Learn more: https://go.nasa.gov/3wCRIrb