Scientists have found an explanation for a 'gravity hole' in the Indian Ocean. A gravity hole is an area where gravitational pull is low, causing the seafloor to sink. Deep beneath the ocean, there is one that is three million square kilometers in size and previously it has confused scientists. Now two researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, Debanjan Pal and Attreyee Ghosh, think they have solved the mystery. More than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) beneath Earth's crust, they found cold, dense remnants of an ancient ocean plunged into a 'slab graveyard' beneath Africa some 30 million years ago, stirring up hot molten rock. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Pal and Ghosh retraced the formation of the massive geoid by modeling how tectonic plates skimmed over Earth's mantle for the past 140 million years. They ran simulations and compared the shape of the oceanic low those models predicted with observations of the dent itself. The models that reproduced the Indian Ocean geoid low in its current form all had one thing in common: plumes of hot, low-density magma wafting up beneath the low. These plumes, as well as a distinctive mantle structure, are what created the geoid low; if they rise high enough, Pal and Ghosh reckon. "In short, our results suggest that to match the [shape and amplitude of the] observed geoid low, plumes need to be buoyant enough to come up to mid-mantle depths," the pair wrote. The first of these plumes appeared about 20 million years ago, to the south of the Indian Ocean geoid low, and around 10 million years after the old Tethys Sea sank into the lower mantle. As the plumes spread beneath the lithosphere and inched towards the Indian peninsula, the low intensified. But more research needs to be done to work out what is really going on as not all scientists are convinced. Science is crazy. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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New findings have revealed that time ran five times slower in the early universe, after scientists published new research into quasars. A quasar is a luminous active galactic nucleus and studying them has allowed scientists to measure time. The variation in brightness of quasars from the early universe has been measured to determine time dilation back to a billion years after the Big Bang. Experts have found that there was an era in which clocks moved five times slower than they do in the present day. The findings come as a relief to many cosmologists who have been perplexed by previous results that have come from studying quasars. The discovery that the universe is expanding led to the theorisation of “time dilation” – the idea that time moved slower the smaller the universe was. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Professor Geraint Lewis of the University of Sydney, the lead author of a new study, said in a statement: “Looking back to a time when the universe was just over a billion years old, we see time appearing to flow five times slower.” He continued, explaining: “If you were there, in this infant universe, one second would seem like one second – but from our position, more than 12 billion years into the future, that early time appears to drag.” To measure the extent of time dilation, scientists turned to quasars, as they are able to measure their change in brightness over a period they can estimate. The most distant quasar that is visible is 13 billion back in time and can still be seen despite its far distance. Their brightness varies due to turbulence and lumpiness in their accretion disks. Lewis explained the phenomenon as being “a bit like the stock market”. He said: “Over the last couple of decades, we’ve seen there is a statistical pattern to the variation, with timescales related to how bright a quasar is and the wavelength of its light.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

There are eight planets in our solar system – plus poor old Pluto, which was demoted in 2006 – but what if there were more? Turns out that might be the case. Astronomers have calculated there is a 7 per cent chance that Earth has another neighbour hiding in the Oort cloud, a spherical region of ice chunks and rocks that is tens of thousands of times farther from the sun than we are. “It’s completely plausible for our solar system to have captured such an Oort cloud planet,” said Nathan Kaib, a co-author on the work and an astronomer at the Planetary Science Institute. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Hidden worlds like this are “a class of planets that should definitely exist but have received relatively little attention” until now, he said.. If a planet is hiding in the Oort cloud, it’s almost certainly an ice giant. Large planets like Jupiter and Saturn are generally born as twins. They have huge gravitational pulls of their own, however, and sometimes destabilise one another. That could have led to a planet to be nudged out of the solar system entirely – or exiled to its outer reaches, where the Oort cloud resides. “The survivor planets have eccentric orbits, which are like the scars from their violent pasts,” said lead author Sean Raymond, researcher at the University of Bordeaux’s Astrophysics Laboratory. That means that the Oort cloud planet could have a significantly elongated orbit, unlike the near-perfect circle Earth tracks around the sun. Trouble is, when things are that far away, they’re pretty difficult to spot. “It would be extremely hard to detect,” added Raymond. “If a Neptune-sized planet existed in our own Oort cloud, there’s a good chance that we wouldn’t have found it yet,” said Malena Rice, an astronomer at MIT not involved in this work. “Amazingly, it can sometimes be easier to spot planets hundreds of light-years away than those right in our own backyard.” Time to crack out the telescope. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Researchers in China have developed an artificial intelligence tool capable of designing a working computer in under five hours. The team of 19 computer scientists from five different institutions made the AI breakthrough after setting out to prove that machines can create computer chips in a similar way to humans. The feat was performed 1,000 times faster than a human team could have achieved it, the researchers claimed, marking a major step towards building self-evolving machines. “Design activity... distinguishes humanity from other animals and traditional machines, and endowing machines with design abilities at the human level or beyond has been a long-term pursuit,” the scientists wrote in a paper detailing their research. “We present a new AI approach to automatically design a central processing unit (CPU), the brain of a computer, and one of the world’s most intricate devices humanity has ever designed.” The project involved the layout of an industrial-scale RISC-V CPU, capable of running the Linux operating system and achieving an accuracy of 99.99 per cent in validation tests. The AI bypassed the manual programming and verification process of the typical design cycle, which the researchers said “consumes more than 60-80 per cent of the design time and resources” of human teams. The AI was also able to autonomously make discoveries involving computer design, uncovering something called the von Neumann architecture, first invented in 1945. The overall performance of the CPU is relatively modest compared to modern computers, with the researchers saying it can perform at a similar level to a 1991 Intel 80486SX CPU. Developing the AI approach, however, has the potential to “reform the semiconductor industry by significantly reducing the design cycle”, the researchers said. The research is detailed in a study, titled ‘Pushing the limits of machine design: Automated CPU design with AI’. Leading AI chip maker Nvidia has previously used artificial intelligence to optimise its computer chip designs, publishing a new approach to AI-powered chip design in March that could significantly improve the cost and performance of CPUs. Read More 10 ways AI will change the world – from curing cancer to wiping out humanity Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot Google’s DeepMind unveils AI robot that can teach itself unsupervised Robots can now learn new skills like picking up knives by watching YouTube videos

Scientists believe they have discovered the cause of the megalodon's extinction – and no, it’s not Jason Statham. Experts have been conducting research on fossils of teeth from the biggest species of shark the world has ever seen, which went extinct around 3.6 million years ago and measured at least 15 metres long. Research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explains that the animal was actually partially warm-blooded. Unlike most cold-blood sharks, the body temperature is thought to have been around 27 degrees. The temperature is higher than the sea temperatures around the time. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Study co author Robert Eagle, who is professor of marine science and geobiology at UCLA, said [via CNN]: “We found that O. megalodon had body temperatures significantly elevated compared to other sharks, consistent with it having a degree of internal heat production as modern warm-blooded (endothermic) animals do.” They were able to prove that the animals were warm-blooded by analysing how carbon-13 and oxygen-18 isotopes were closely bonded together in the fossilised teeth. Senior study author Kenshu Shimada is a paleobiologist at DePaul University in Chicago, who said: “A large body promotes efficiency in prey capture with wider spatial coverage, but it requires a lot of energy to maintain. “We know that Megalodon had gigantic cutting teeth used for feeding on marine mammals, such as cetaceans and pinnipeds, based on the fossil record. The new study is consistent with the idea that the evolution of warm-bloodedness was a gateway for the gigantism in Megalodon to keep up with the high metabolic demand.” The fact it was warm-blooded means that regulating body temperature could have been the cause of its eventual demise. The Earth was cooling when the animal went extinct, which could have been a critical factor. “The fact that Megalodon disappeared suggests the likely vulnerability of being warm-blooded because warm-bloodedness requires constant food intake to sustain high metabolism,” Shimada said. “Possibly, there was a shift in the marine ecosystem due to the climatic cooling,” causing the sea level to drop, altering the habitats of the populations of the types of food megalodon fed on such as marine mammals and leading to its extinction. “One of the big implications for this work is that it highlights the vulnerability of large apex predators, such the modern great white shark, to climate change given similarities in their biology with megalodon,” said lead study author Michael Griffiths, professor of environmental science, geochemist and paleoclimatologist at William Paterson University. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

It’s a question that’s fascinated mankind for centuries – but could there really be life out there in the universe? Now, more than ever, the search is taking place in earnest and there have been plenty of developments in 2023. So, on World UFO Day these are the 9 biggest UFO stories of the year so far. 'Alien spacecraft' found at the bottom of Pacific Ocean For years people have been looking to the skies for signs of alien life - but maybe, they should have been looking at the bottom of the ocean this whole time. A Harvard physicist has claimed that parts of an alien 'spacecraft' could have been uncovered under the sea. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Professor Avi Loeb set off on a search along the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and found 50 iron pieces that originated from the IM1 meteor. IM1 crashed off the coast of Papua New Guinea and Leob believes it could contain key information in the search for life out there in the universe, saying he hasn’t discounted the idea of the pieces being evidence of a “spacecraft” from an “extraterrestrial technological civilization” which crashlanded on Earth.' Alien in New York' video sparks fresh speculation about UFOs in the United States More so-called footage of aliens on Earth has gone viral on social media - this time supposedly showing an extraterrestrial in a backyard in New York. The footage comes just days after a family in Las Vegas reportedly found aliens on their property before it was widely debunked by fact-checkers as nothing more than CGI. There had also been false claims that the family in question had gone 'missing' which was quickly dismissed. Inevitably another video has now gone viral on TikTok, racking up more than 300,000 views at the time of writing. UFO expert claims that the south pole is an 'air traffic control' for aliens Ufologist Dr. Steven Greer recently hosting a conference on the subject of UFOs. A range of people were invited to share their insights as part of an event streamed online and it saw Eric Hecker describe the south pole as an “air traffic control” hub for aliens. The conspiracy theorist made some pretty out-there claims at the conference, but it’s the discussion about the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station that was most significant. He claimed the station actually operated as an “air traffic control” centre for UFOs and communicated with “exotic” crafts by sending neutrino rays up into space. Nasa astronaut claims that aliens have prevented a nuclear war on Earth Could we have aliens to thank for preventing a nuclear war on Earth? That’s what one former Nasa astronaut has claimed. Edgar Mitchell, who was involved in the Apollo 14 mission, gained a reputation for sharing conspiracy theories when he arrived back from the moon in 1971. Mitchell was the sixth man on the moon and was the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 14. Before his death in 2016, Mitchell spoke at length claiming that aliens visited Earth. Speaking to the Mirror, he alleged that aliens were responsible for preventing nuclear war between the US and the Soviets at the height of Cold War tensions. Pentagon whistleblower claims that ‘UFOs have killed humans’ A whistleblower who claims that the US government has been operating UFO retrieval research in secret has reportedly said that UFOs have been responsible for the deaths of humans. David Grusch worked for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and was involved with the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. He claimed that some of the “non-human intelligences” discovered have malevolent intentions and have killed people. The US government has apparently found an 'intact' alien aircraft One former US agent has claimed materials have been recovered that could support the existence of UFOs. David Charles Grusch, an ex-member of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Reconnaissance Office, claimed the US government has a 'non-human origin' in-tact craft that they're keeping from the public. Speaking to NewsNation, Grusch said: "These are retrieving non-human origin technical vehicles, call it a spacecraft if you will, non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed." UFO spotted on Google Earth near Harry and Meghan's home A flying saucer was allegedly been found near Harry and Meghan’s £11 million mansion. The mysterious circular object was spotted by an eagle-eyed UFO hunter on Google Earth. Alien boffin Tony Moreno’s finding could be embarrassing for NASA. It comes as the space agency prepares to publish findings from its own nine-month probe into unidentified anomalous phenomena this summer. Logan Paul shares the one thing that could 'validate' the most 'compelling' UFO video ever Logan Paul has possession of the “best UFO footage ever”, or so he claims. It comes after documentary filmmaker James Fox spoke on The Joe Rogan Experience about a video rumoured to have been uncovered by UFO specialist Chuck Clark around 30 years ago. Fox claimed that the clip shows two men in the Nevada desert encountering a UFO, and he believes that if Paul released the footage it could be key to changing people’s perceptions about alien sightings. Now, Paul has stated that he does indeed have a copy of the video. He claimed that he tried to purchase the footage from Clark for $100,000. After the offer was turned down, he then used a hidden camera to record the footage after he was invited to a screening. Model captures 'best UFO footage ever' from her private plane A model has shared what some are describing on social media as the 'best UFO footage ever' after spotting something strange during a flight. Valentina Rueda Velez, a Colombian model who goes by the username @Valentinarueda.v on Instagram, shared a clip during a recent journey on a private plane. Valez, who has worked with the likes of Pretty Little Thing during her career, claims to have seen something strange pass by her window while flying on April 4. UFO enthusiasts have seized on the footage, which appears to show an object appearing against the clear blue sky. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Scientists have found an explanation for a 'gravity hole' in the Indian Ocean. A gravity hole is an area where gravitational pull is low, causing the seafloor to sink. Deep beneath the ocean, there is one that is three million square kilometers in size and previously it has confused scientists. Now two researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, Debanjan Pal and Attreyee Ghosh, think they have solved the mystery. More than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) beneath Earth's crust, they found cold, dense remnants of an ancient ocean plunged into a 'slab graveyard' beneath Africa some 30 million years ago, stirring up hot molten rock. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Pal and Ghosh retraced the formation of the massive geoid by modeling how tectonic plates skimmed over Earth's mantle for the past 140 million years. They ran simulations and compared the shape of the oceanic low those models predicted with observations of the dent itself. The models that reproduced the Indian Ocean geoid low in its current form all had one thing in common: plumes of hot, low-density magma wafting up beneath the low. These plumes, as well as a distinctive mantle structure, are what created the geoid low; if they rise high enough, Pal and Ghosh reckon. "In short, our results suggest that to match the [shape and amplitude of the] observed geoid low, plumes need to be buoyant enough to come up to mid-mantle depths," the pair wrote. The first of these plumes appeared about 20 million years ago, to the south of the Indian Ocean geoid low, and around 10 million years after the old Tethys Sea sank into the lower mantle. As the plumes spread beneath the lithosphere and inched towards the Indian peninsula, the low intensified. But more research needs to be done to work out what is really going on as not all scientists are convinced. Science is crazy. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

There are eight planets in our solar system – plus poor old Pluto, which was demoted in 2006 – but what if there were more? Turns out that might be the case. Astronomers have calculated there is a 7 per cent chance that Earth has another neighbour hiding in the Oort cloud, a spherical region of ice chunks and rocks that is tens of thousands of times farther from the sun than we are. “It’s completely plausible for our solar system to have captured such an Oort cloud planet,” said Nathan Kaib, a co-author on the work and an astronomer at the Planetary Science Institute. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Hidden worlds like this are “a class of planets that should definitely exist but have received relatively little attention” until now, he said.. If a planet is hiding in the Oort cloud, it’s almost certainly an ice giant. Large planets like Jupiter and Saturn are generally born as twins. They have huge gravitational pulls of their own, however, and sometimes destabilise one another. That could have led to a planet to be nudged out of the solar system entirely – or exiled to its outer reaches, where the Oort cloud resides. “The survivor planets have eccentric orbits, which are like the scars from their violent pasts,” said lead author Sean Raymond, researcher at the University of Bordeaux’s Astrophysics Laboratory. That means that the Oort cloud planet could have a significantly elongated orbit, unlike the near-perfect circle Earth tracks around the sun. Trouble is, when things are that far away, they’re pretty difficult to spot. “It would be extremely hard to detect,” added Raymond. “If a Neptune-sized planet existed in our own Oort cloud, there’s a good chance that we wouldn’t have found it yet,” said Malena Rice, an astronomer at MIT not involved in this work. “Amazingly, it can sometimes be easier to spot planets hundreds of light-years away than those right in our own backyard.” Time to crack out the telescope. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Dolly Parton has spoken of how she is concerned that using artificial intelligence (AI) technology will keep her soul “grounded” on earth. The 77-year-old country music star was at a press conference in London on Thursday to talk about her new album Rockstar. Her first rock and roll record has seen her collaborate with famous faces including Lizzo, Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Elton John. I have to decide how much of that high-tech stuff I want to be involved because I don't want to leave my soul here on this earth Dolly Parton When asked about living on in an artificial form in the future, Parton said: “I think I’ve left a great body of work behind. “I have to decide how much of that high-tech stuff I want to be involved because I don’t want to leave my soul here on this earth. “I think with some of this stuff I’ll be grounded here for ever … I’ll be around, we’ll find ways to keep me here.” Abba last year launched a purpose-built stadium in London featuring four 3D digital versions of the group’s younger selves singing and dancing to 20 or so of their hits. Sir Mick Jagger has said the virtual concert technology offers bands such as The Rolling Stones a “breakthrough” to secure their legacies. Parton also joked that “any intelligence” she had and “everything” about her was artificial. She has made numerous references in the past to cosmetic surgery she has had. Parton also clarified whether the album was inspired by her 2022 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She initially resisted the honour, saying she would “respectfully bow out” of the process, before later saying she would try to “live up to the honour”. Speaking at the Four Seasons Hotel London on Thursday, Parton said: “I didn’t want to take (the honour) because I didn’t think I had earned it. That’s the main reason I went ahead (with rock music).” Rockstar includes nine original songs and 21 well-known rock anthems. The album is due for release on November 17 2023. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Glastonbury festival-goers use data equivalent to 400 HD film downloads an hour The different types of public EV chargers explained Emergency number back in use after nationwide technical fault

Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. sent paying customers to the edge of space for the first time, a milestone