Cosmic Event May Have Jumpstarted Earth Life

 Life's building blocks can form in the harsh environment of deep space, a new study suggests,

Man with tattoos and piercings all over his body

A heavily tattooed and pierced man who goes by the name The Creature says his appearance is so bizarre that even his five-year-old daughter is scared of him.

Asteroid, Earth Set For Close Encounter On March 9

A newly discovered asteroid the size of a football field will cruise through Earth's neighborhood this

Baby is killed by loving dad’s kiss

 Little Kaiden McCormick was struck down by a cold sore virus caught from Carl Maclaren, 34.

Verizon explores merger with Vodafone

 Verizon and Vodafone want to square away their long-standing relationship -- tied together by Verizon Wireless -- this year, according a report from Bloomberg.

Top 10 Universities in the World 2012/2013

The Times Higher Education released its 2012 Reputation Rankings for universities across the world. Only three countries, the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan could make it to top 10 list. Harvard University tops the list followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge.

Cheap car insurance quotes

Today almost everyone can easily go online and start looking for the cheapest car insurance quotes. The reason behind the popularity of the internet is the easy operation and availability of useful resources. Especially various comparison sites have been embraced by consumers and suppliers as the common meeting point. Sellers used to bring their goods to markets in old days. Now they display them on comparison sites which usually take consumers straight to chosen supplier.

Creepy girls

7-year-old killed in dog attack

A seven-year-old boy died of injuries he suffered when a dog attacked him at a Galesburg, Illinois home.

Vodafone unveils 4G

Vodafone last Thuersday announced the launch of new 4G mobile internet services - which runs at speeds 10 times faster than the existing network.

Discovered: The most adorable planet yet

Planets are like puppies. They’re born litters, they stay close to their mama (in this case, their star),

Solved: The mystery of Mercury surface

 Researchers have revealed the surface of Mercury was once covered with a vast ocean of magma.

Scientists analysing data from a spacecraft orbiting the plan have been baffled by odd readings that showed unexplained chemical differences between rocks.

Now they say the differences may have been caused by a vast ocean of magma that created layers of crystals, which melted then erupted.

Scientists at MIT have proposed that Mercury may have harbored a large, ocean of magma very early in its history, shortly after its formation about 4.5 billion years ago.

The scientists analyzed data gathered by Messenger, a NASA probe that has orbited the planet since March 2011.

Scientists analyzed X-ray fluorescence data from the probe, and identified two distinct compositions of rocks on the planet’s surface  -but were baffled by the differences.

The MIT team used the compositional data to recreate the two rock types in the lab, and subjected each synthetic rock to high temperatures and pressures to simulate various geological processes.

From their experiments, the scientists came up with only one phenomenon to explain the two compositions: a vast magma ocean that created two different layers of crystals, solidified, then eventually remelted into magma that then erupted onto Mercury’s surface.

'The thing that’s really amazing on Mercury is, this didn’t happen yesterday,' said Timothy Grove, a professor of geology at MIT.

'The crust is probably more than 4 billion years old, so this magma ocean is a really ancient feature.'

The team translated the chemical element ratios from the surface into the corresponding building blocks that make up rocks, such as magnesium oxide, silicon dioxide and aluminum oxide.

The researchers then consulted what Grove refers to as a 'pantry of oxides' — finely powdered chemicals — to recreate the rocks in the lab.

'We just mix these together in the right proportions and we’ve got a synthetic copy of what’s on the surface of Mercury,' Grove says.

The researchers then melted the samples of synthetic rock in a furnace, cranking the heat up and down to simulate geological processes that would cause crystals — and eventually rocks — to form in the melt.

'You can tell what would happen as the melt cools and crystals form and change the chemical composition of the remaining melted rock,' Grove says.

'The leftover melt changes composition.'
After cooling the samples, the researchers picked out tiny crystals and melt pockets for analysis. Grove found the two compositions were too different to have originated from the same region, and instead may have come from two separate regions within the planet.

The easiest explanation for what created these distinct regions, Grove says, is a large magma ocean, which over time likely formed different compositions of crystals as it solidified.

This molten ocean eventually remelted, spewing lava onto the surface of the planet in massive volcanic eruptions.

Grove estimates that this magma ocean likely existed very early in Mercury’s existence — possibly within the first 1 million to 10 million years — and may have been created from the violent processes that formed the planet.

As the solar nebula condensed, bits and pieces collided into larger chunks to form tiny, and then larger, planets.

That process of colliding and accreting may produce enough energy to completely melt the planet — a scenario that would make an early magma ocean very feasible.

'The acquisition of data by spacecraft must be combined with laboratory experiments,' Charlier says.

'Although these data are valuable by themselves, experimental studies on these compositions enable scientists to reach the next level in the interpretation of planetary evolution.'

Dangerous hsteroids hunt to get help from private companies, NASA says

 NASA is slated to get some help in the search for potentially hazardous asteroids,

Son posed with mother's severed head

The son charged with murdering and dismembering his mother's body allegedly posed with his mother's severed head in a photo taken on his cellphone.

Mother kills 9-year-old son for having small penis

An Indonesian woman drowned her nine-year-old son in the bath, claiming she was worried that his "small penis" would affect his prospects for the future, a police spokesman said Thursday.

Black Hole 'Mystery Wave' Takes Astronomers By Surprise

 Astronomers studying an unusual black hole system have spotted a never-before-seen structure in the disk of matter encircling the system.