Sunday, February 06, 2022

SPLATTER ART

The heart of the Milky Way looks like contemporary art in this new radio image

Wispy filaments accent the brightest spot, supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*

The MeerKAT telescope array in South Africa provided this image of radio emissions from the center of the Milky Way. Stronger radio signals are shown in red and orange false color. Fainter zones are colored in gray scale, with darker shades indicating stronger emissions.
I. HEYWOOD/SARAO

By Lisa Grossman
FEBRUARY 3, 2022 AT

An image that looks like a trippy Eye of Sauron or splatter of modern art is actually a new detailed look at the Milky Way’s chaotic center, as seen in radio wavelengths.

The image was taken with the MeerKAT radio telescope array in South Africa over the course of three years and 200 hours of observing. It combines 20 separate images into a single mosaic, with the bright, star-dense galactic plane running horizontally. The MeerKAT team describes the image in a paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal.

MeerKAT captured radio waves from several astronomical treasures, including supernovas, stellar nurseries and the energetic region around the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center (SN: 8/31/21; SN: 9/17/19). One puffy supernova remnant can be seen in the bottom right of the image, and the supermassive black hole shows up as the bright orange “eye” in the center

The supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, which sits at the center of the Milky Way, shines in the lower center of this closeup image from the MeerKAT radio telescope. Mysterious thin filaments accent the galaxy’s center.

I. HEYWOOD/SARAO

Other intriguing features are the many wispy-looking radio filaments that slice mostly vertically through the image. These filaments, a handful of which were first spotted in the 1980s, are created by accelerated electrons gyrating in a magnetic field and creating a radio glow. But the filaments are hard to explain because there’s no obvious engine to accelerate the particles.

“They were a puzzle. They’re still a puzzle,” says astrophysicist Farhad Yusef-Zadeh of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who discovered the filaments serendipitously as a graduate student.

Previously, scientists knew of so few filaments that they could study the features only one at a time. Now MeerKAT has revealed hundreds of them, Yusef-Zadeh says. Studying the strands all together could help reveal their secrets, he and colleagues report in a paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. “We’re definitely one step closer to seeing what these guys are about,” he says.

The observatory released the data behind the imagery as well, so other scientists can run their own analyses on it. “There’s going to be a lot of science coming,” Yusef-Zadeh says.

Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org

CITATIONS

I. Heywood et al. The 1.28 GHz MeerKAT galactic center mosaic. arXiv:2201.10541. Submitted January 25, 2022.

F. Yusef-Zadeh et al. Statistical properties of the population of the galactic center filaments: The spectral index and equipartition magnetic field. arXiv:2201.10552v1. Submitted January 25, 2022.

About Lisa Grossman is the astronomy writer. She has a degree in astronomy from Cornell University and a graduate certificate in science writing from University of California, Santa Cruz. She lives near Boston.

Too Many Disk Galaxies Than Theory Allows

Prof. Dr. Pavel Kroupa (left) and Moritz Haslbauer (right) with a projection of the Andromeda galaxy. CREDIT Photo: Volker Lannert/University of Bonn

February 6, 2022

By Eurasia Review

The Standard Model of Cosmology describes how the universe came into being according to the view of most physicists. Researchers at the University of Bonn have now studied the evolution of galaxies within this model, finding considerable discrepancies with actual observations. The University of St. Andrews in Scotland and Charles University in the Czech Republic were also involved in the study. The results have now been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Most galaxies visible from Earth resemble a flat disk with a thickened center. They are therefore similar to the sports equipment of a discus thrower. According to the Standard Model of Cosmology, however, such disks should form rather rarely. This is because in the model, every galaxy is surrounded by a halo of dark matter. This halo is invisible, but exerts a strong gravitational pull on nearby galaxies due to its mass. “That’s why we keep seeing galaxies merging with each other in the model universe,” explains Prof. Dr. Pavel Kroupa of the Helmholtz Institute for Radiation and Nuclear Physics at the University of Bonn.

This crash has two effects, the physicist explains: “First, the galaxies penetrate in the process, destroying the disk shape. Second, it reduces the angular momentum of the new galaxy created by the merger.” Put simply, this greatly decreases its rotational speed. The rotating motion normally ensures that the centrifugal forces acting during this process cause a new disk to form. However, if the angular momentum is too small, a new disk will not form at all.

Large discrepancy between prediction and reality

In the current study, Kroupa’s doctoral student, Moritz Haslbauer, led an international research group to investigate the evolution of the universe using the latest supercomputer simulations. The calculations are based on the Standard Model of Cosmology; they show which galaxies should have formed by today if this theory were correct. The researchers then compared their results with what is currently probably the most accurate observational data of the real Universe visible from Earth.

“Here we encountered a significant discrepancy between prediction and reality,” Haslbauer says: “There are apparently significantly more flat disk galaxies than can be explained by theory.” However, the resolution of the simulations is limited even on today’s supercomputers. It may therefore be that the number of disk galaxies that would form in the Standard Model of Cosmology has been underestimated. “However, even if we take this effect into account, there remains a serious difference between theory and observation that cannot be remedied”, Haslbauer points out.

The situation is different for an alternative to the Standard Model, which dispenses with dark matter. According to the so-called MOND theory (the acronym stands for “MilgrOmiaN Dynamics), galaxies do not grow by merging with each other. Instead, they are formed from rotating gas clouds that become more and more condensed. In a MOND universe, galaxies also grow by absorbing gas from their surroundings. However, mergers of full-grown galaxies are rare in MOND. “Our research group in Bonn and Prague has uniquely developed the methods to do calculations in this alternative theory,” says Kroupa, who is also a member of the Transdisciplinary Research Units “Modelling” and “Matter” at the University of Bonn. “MOND’s predictions are consistent with what we actually see.”

Challenge for the Standard Model

However, the exact mechanisms of galaxy growth are not yet fully understood, even with MOND. Additionally, in MOND, Newton’s laws of gravity do not apply under certain circumstances, but need to be replaced by the correct ones. This would have far-reaching consequences for other areas of physics. “Nevertheless, the MOND theory solves all known extragalactic cosmological problems despite being originally formulated to address galaxies only,” says Dr. Indranil Banik, who was involved in this research. “Our study proves that young physicists today still have the opportunity to make significant contributions to fundamental physics,” Kroupa adds.

New insight into blobs improves understanding of a universal process

by Raphael Rosen, Princeton University

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have gained insight into a fundamental process found throughout the universe. They discovered that the magnetic fields threading through plasma, the charged state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei, can affect the coming together and violent snapping apart of the plasma's magnetic field lines. This insight could help scientists predict the occurrence of coronal mass ejections, enormous burps of plasma from the sun that could threaten satellites and electrical grids on Earth.

The scientists focused on the role of guide fields, magnetic fields threading through plasma blobs, or chunks, known as plasmoids. The guide fields add rigidity to the system and ultimately affect the ratio of large plasmoids to small ones and help determine how much reconnection occurs.

Plasmoid reconnection resembles the parallel computing that occurs in smart phones or in high-powered computers that model the weather. During this computing, many processors are calculating simultaneously and making the overall calculation rate quicker. Similarly, plasmoids speed up the overall rate of reconnection by making it occur in many places at once.

"Understanding how guide magnetic fields affect plasmoids could give us a better idea of what affects magnetic reconnection on the sun and stars, and throughout the cosmos," said Stephen Majeski, lead author of a paper reporting the results in Physics of Plasmas and a graduate student in Princeton University's Program in Plasma Physics. "Guide fields are a knob we can turn up to reveal new information."

The results provide insight into the ejection of large masses of plasma that speed across space and strike the Earth's magnetosphere, the sheath of magnetic field lines surrounding our planet that protects us from high-energy particles. These giant plasma burps, if large enough, could damage the satellites that enable smart phones to provide driving directions and other applications. The burps could also damage electrical power grids on Earth. "This is all something you definitely want to be aware of," Majeski said.

"This is new territory for plasmoid reconnection research," said Hantao Ji, professor of astrophysical science at Princeton University and distinguished research fellow at PPPL, who helps manage PPPL's Magnetic Reconnection Experiment (MRX) that studies reconnection. "Majeski has added to our knowledge about guide fields to make progress toward understanding large-scale reconnection based on plasmoids. Nobody has looked at guide fields in this way before."

Plasmoid reconnection with guide fields also occurs in doughnut-shaped tokamaks, the most widely used type of fusion facility around the world that use powerful magnets to confine plasma in the effort to harness on Earth fusion, the power that drives the sun and stars. Fusion combines light elements in the form of plasma to generate massive amounts of energy, a process that scientists are seeking to replicate for a virtually inexhaustible supply of power to generate electricity.

The researchers plan to make the models more accurate by including more physical effects, like the speed at which plasmoids combine. They also intend to perform experiments using MRX and PPPL's new Facility for Laboratory Reconnection Experiment (FLARE), the large successor to MRX. FLARE will help probe how quickly reconnection takes place in large laboratory plasmas that are more relevant to astrophysical plasmas, and how the magnetic energy turns into explosive thermal energy.Research reveals how plasma swirling around black holes can produce heat and light

More information: Stephen Majeski et al, Guide field effects on the distribution of plasmoids in multiple scale reconnection, Physics of Plasmas (2021). DOI: 10.1063/5.0059017

Journal information: Physics of Plasmas

Provided by Princeton University

Astronomers set up anti-satellite initiative

Sky watchers don’t want satellite constellations getting in the way of astronomy observations or “humanity’s enjoyment of the night sky”

Astronomers from across the world have launched an initiative to curb the impact of artificial satellites on important astronomical research, arguing for tighter regulations on projects like Elon Musk’s Starlink network.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) announced the creation of the Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky on Thursday, with president Debra Elmegreen saying it would help ensure that technological advances “do not inadvertently impede our study and enjoyment of the sky.”

The center describes its main mission as being to “mitigate the negative impact of satellite constellations on ground-based optical and radio astronomy observations as well as humanity’s enjoyment of the night sky.”

The body will engage with policymakers around the world in an attempt to tighten regulations on man-made satellites and space infrastructure. It will also push companies like Elon Musk's Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper to minimize light pollution created with their satellites.

The work will be led by the US National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) in Tucson, Arizona, which is a center for optical astronomy, and the Square Kilometre Array Organisation (SKAO), which is headquartered in Manchester, UK and is delivering the world’s most powerful networks of radio telescopes.

Satellite networks delivering broadband internet are of the biggest concern for the scientists, as thousands of objects orbit the Earth at a relatively low altitude of only a few hundred kilometers. Their quick movement during dusk and dawn leaves bright lines that can be traced by telescopes and interfere with the readings. The satellite transmissions can also meddle with radio telescopes and astronomy antennas.

Astronomers Join Forces to Prevent

Starlink, Satellite Swarms From Polluting

Skies

The International Astronomical Union creates a new

coordination center devoted to the protection of night

skies from satellite mega-constellations, including

SpaceX's Starlink.

By Michael Kan
February 4, 2022

Satellite streaks from SpaceX's Starlink network.

(Photo: Mike Lewinsky via IAU)

The astronomical community is setting up a center to work with companies and governments on preventing satellite networks, including SpaceX’s Starlink, from polluting the night sky.

The effort comes from the International Astronomical Union, which is made up of 12,000 members across the globe. On Thursday, the union announced a new “IAU Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference.”

The center was created out of concern that next-generation satellite networks will one day interfere with astronomical observations. SpaceX’s Starlink, for example, is designed to deliver high-speed broadband to millions of users across the planet. But to do so, the company needs to launch tens of thousands of satellites into orbit, which risk causing streaks across the night sky. Other companies, including Amazon, have proposed large constellations too.

The streaks won't just photo-bomb astronomy images; they could also disrupt scientific observations, including of near-Earth asteroids, the IAU said in a press briefing on Thursday.

“Astronomy is facing a watershed moment of increasing interference with observations and loss of science,” said Connie Walker, a scientist at the NOIRLab, an astronomy research lab. “At the moment there is little to no regulation in space with respect to optical astronomy,” she added.

However, the IAU's new center isn’t necessarily trying to stop the satellites from launching. Instead, the effort is about “mitigating” the negative effects from the upcoming constellations as companies develop them. The IAU also emphasized the center is focused on taking a “cooperative approach” with the satellite industry.

According to Walker, the IAU has already established relationships with three satellite internet companies including SpaceX, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, and OneWeb, and is talking with others. “A guidelines agreement with industry is in process at this moment,” she added. “We have confidence we can agree on some mitigation solutions, specifically before the design of the satellites has actually started.”

In addition, the center plans on coming up with best practices companies can implement when building their satellites to prevent them from reflecting too much light in the night sky. (SpaceX itself has already been designing new satellites to limit their brightness.)

At the same time, IAU plans to lobby lawmakers and policy makers—such as the FCC, Congressional committees, and the United Nations—on the need for better regulations.

“The goal of these kinds of policy activities is to make sure that good intentions of industry can also be codified into achieving regulations for all space actors,” said Richard Green, an astronomer at the University of Arizona. “If the profit motive (from companies) does start to intrude and make these mitigations difficult for them, we have some backup to say it really is a requirement that they look into these issues."

A Tracking System is now Scanning the Entire sky Every 24 Hours Looking for Dangerous Asteroids

FEBRUARY 4, 2022 BY ANDY TOMASWICK
As evidenced by a recent Netflix movie, dangerous asteroids can come from anywhere. So there was an obvious weakness in our asteroid defense system when only one of the hemispheres was covered by telescopes that constantly scan the sky. That was the case until recently, with the expansion of the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) system into the southern hemisphere.
ATLAS, funded by NASA and run by the University of Hawai’i, was originally just two telescopes set up on Haleakal? and Maunaloa, two separate parts of Hawai’i. After becoming fully operational in 2017, the system was able to scan the sky every 24 hours, barring any cloud cover, to watch for any potential moving asteroids. But from their vantage point, they could only scan half of the sky.
One of the telescopes being lifted into place in South Africa.
Credit – Willie Koorts (SAAO)
NASA funded two more telescopes in the southern hemisphere to rectify that problem – one located in South Africa and one in Chile. The one in South Africa was contracted to the South African Astronomical Observatory, while the Chilean telescope was supported by a public-private consortium that included the Millennium Institute for Astrophysics and Obstech, a company that runs a private observatory.
The Covid pandemic slowed down the installation process and bungled up some supply chains, but recently both telescopes achieved first light. Importantly, they did so at different times of the day, allowing observes located in Hawai’i to remotely monitor the dark sky over South Africa and Chile during the daytime on their island.
ATLAS telescope located on Maui
Credit – Henry Weiland
Those observations have already been a success, with the South African observatory identifying its first Near-Earth Object on January 22nd. 2022 BK, as it is now known, is a 100-m asteroid that poses no threat to Earth. However, asteroids of a similar size could potentially wipe out an entire region if they impact the planet. ATLAS would be capable of providing about three weeks warning of any asteroid large enough to cause such devastation. Even for smaller asteroids, such as a 20-m asteroid that could wipe out a city, it was capable of providing at least 24 hours’ notice.
While that might not seem like a lot of time, it is the best system so far for providing such detections. However, it does work with other systems, such as Pan-STARRS and the Catalina Sky Survey, to fully understand what hazardous asteroids may be in the area. Humanity could use all the help it could get in that regard.
Learn More:
University of Hawai’i at Manoa – Expanded UH asteroid tracking system can monitor entire sky
NASA – NASA Asteroid Tracking System Now Capable of Full Sky Search
Republicworld.com – NASA’s Enhanced ATLAS Observatory To Scan Entire Sky For 24 Hrs To Track Killer Asteroids
ATLAS – Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System
NASA State-of-the-Art Asteroid Tracking System Now Capable of Full Sky Search

By NASA FEBRUARY 3, 2022
The NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS)—a state-of-the-art asteroid detection system operated by the University of Hawai‘i (UH) Institute for Astronomy (IfA) for the agency’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO)—has reached a new milestone by becoming the first survey capable of searching the entire dark sky every 24 hours for near-Earth objects (NEOs) that could pose a future impact hazard to Earth. Now comprised of four telescopes, ATLAS has expanded its reach to the southern hemisphere from the two existing northern-hemisphere telescopes on Haleakala and Maunaloa in Hawai‘i to include two additional observatories in South Africa and Chile.
From left to right: Sutherland ATLAS station during construction in South Africa. Credit: Willie Koorts (SAAO); Chilean engineers and astronomers installing the ATLAS telescope at El Sauce Observatory. Credit: University of Hawaii; Illustration of NASA’s DART spacecraft and the Italian Space Agency’s (ASI) LICIACube prior to impact at the Didymos binary system. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins, APL/Steve Gribben; Illustration of the NEO Surveyor spacecraft
“An important part of planetary defense is finding asteroids before they find us, so if necessary, we can get them before they get us” said Kelly Fast, Near-Earth Object Observations Program Manager for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office. “With the addition of these two telescopes, ATLAS is now capable of searching the entire dark sky every 24 hours, making it an important asset for NASA’s continuous effort to find, track, and monitor NEOs.”
UH IfA developed the first two ATLAS telescopes in Hawai‘i under a 2013 grant from NASA’s Near-Earth Objects Observations Program, now part of NASA’s PDCO, and the two facilities on Haleakala and Maunaloa, respectively, became fully operational in 2017. After several years of successful operation in Hawai‘i, IfA competed for additional NASA funds to build two more telescopes in the southern hemisphere. IfA sought partners to host these telescopes, and selected the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in South Africa and a multi-institutional collaboration in Chile. The ATLAS presence augments already substantial astronomical capability in both countries.
Each of the four ATLAS telescopes can image a swath of sky 100 times larger than the full moon in a single exposure. The completion of the two final telescopes, which are located at Sutherland Observing Station in South Africa and El Sauce Observatory in Chile, enable ATLAS to observe the night sky when it is daytime in Hawai‘i.
To date, the ATLAS system has discovered more than 700 near-Earth asteroids and 66 comets, along with detection of 2019 MO and 2018 LA, two very small asteroids that actually impacted Earth. The system is specially designed to detect objects that approach very close to Earth – closer than the distance to the Moon, about 240,000 miles or 384,000 kilometers away. On January 22, ATLAS-Sutherland in South Africa discovered its first NEO, 2022 BK, a 100-meter asteroid that poses no threat to Earth.
The addition of the new observatories to the ATLAS system comes at a time when the agency’s Planetary Defense efforts are on the rise. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)—the world’s first full-scale mission to test a technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid impacts—launched November 24, 2021 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. DART will deflect a known asteroid, which is not a threat to Earth, to slightly change the asteroid’s motion in a way that can be accurately measured using ground-based telescopes.
Additionally, work on the agency’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope (NEO Surveyor) is underway after receiving authorization to move forward into Preliminary Design, known as Key Decision Point- B. Once complete, the infrared space telescope will expedite the agency’s ability to discover and characterize most of the potentially hazardous NEOs, including those that may approach Earth from the daytime sky.
“We have not yet found any significant asteroid impact threat to Earth, but we continue to search for that sizable population we know is still to be found. Our goal is to find any possible impact years to decades in advance so it can be deflected with a capability using technology we already have, like DART,” said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA Headquarters. “DART, NEO Surveyor, and ATLAS are all important components of NASA’s work to prepare Earth should we ever be faced with an asteroid impact threat.”
The University of Hawai‘i ATLAS is funded through a grant from the Near-Earth Object Observations Program administered by NASA’s PDCO. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab manages the DART mission for NASA’s PDCO as a project of the agency’s Planetary Missions Program Office (PMPO). NEO Surveyor is being developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the University of Arizona and managed by NASA’s PMPO with program oversight by the PDCO. NASA established the PDCO in 2016 to manage the agency‘s ongoing efforts in Planetary Defense.

Ice Age woolly mammoth and rhino remains found in Devon cave

Andy Wells
·Freelance Writer
Thu., February 3, 2022

A mammoth tusk is boxed up and sent away to be analysed. (SWNS)

An “exceptional” discovery of the remains of several huge extinct beasts has been described as a “brilliant insight” into life in Ice Age Britain thousands of years ago.

The finds at Sherford, a new town being built in Devon, include a woolly mammoth, rhino and wolf and are estimated to be from the last Ice Age, around 30,000-60,000 years ago in the Middle Devensian period.

They have been described as "rare and nationally significant" and have been painstakingly recovered by a specialist and highly skilled team from across the UK for analysis.

The detailed samples taken from the site have so far uncovered partial remains of a woolly mammoth, including a tusk, molar tooth and other bones and partial remains of a woolly rhinoceros, including an incomplete skull and lower jaw.

There is also a virtually complete wolf skeleton and partial remains of hyena, horse, reindeer, mountain hare and red fox.

An ancient wolf skull was among the finds at the site in Devon. (SWNS)

Woolly rhinoceros remains were found at the site. (SWNS)

Bones of various small mammals such as bats and shrews are also present and it is anticipated that further bones of small mammals will be identified during post-excavation laboratory analysis.

The ‘megafauna’ – large animals now extinct – are hoped to provide new insights into early Britain and enrich what is already known.

Understanding the range of mammals present, particularly herbivores and their food sources, also provides an insight into the plants that may have existed in the local environment, for which little evidence survives today.

Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England, said: "This discovery is exceptional.

The molar of a mammoth is just one of the incredible finds at the site. (SWNS)

Partial remains of a woolly rhinoceros, including an incomplete skull and lower jaw, were discovered. (SWNS)

"To have found partial remains of such a range of species here in Devon gives us a brilliant insight into the animals which roamed around Ice Age Britain thousands of years ago, as well as a better understanding of the environment and climate at the time.

"We are delighted that this important part of our history will be preserved for future generations."

The town of Sherford is is a new 5,500-home community still under development on the edge of Plymouth, and is already home to over 1,500 people.

It was excavation during infrastructure work on site that led to the discovery of the remains.

Samples taken from the site have so far uncovered partial remains of a woolly mammoth, including a tusk, molar tooth and other bones. (Getty/stock picture)

Archaeologists recover ancient woolly rhinoceros remains. (SWNS)

The area where the remains were found will be preserved and no construction will take place on top of it.

Rob Bourn, managing director of Orion Heritage and lead archaeologist on the project for the Sherford Consortium, added: “This is a major discovery of national significance – a once in a lifetime experience for those involved.

"Construction happening at Sherford is the sole reason these findings have been discovered and it is remarkable that they have laid undisturbed until now.

"To find such an array of artefacts untouched for so long is a rare and special occurrence. Equally rare is the presence of complete or semi-complete individual animals.

Parts of a woolly rhinoceros were discovered, including an incomplete skull and lower jaw. (Getty/stock photo)

An archaeologist team member in Devon recording deposits by the wolf skull. (SWNS)

"We look forward to reaching the stage where the discoveries can be shared and displayed, so that everyone can find out more about our distant past.”

Mr Bourn said working theories of how they ended up there included some of the creatures falling into a pit and unable to escape while carnivorous scavengers followed and met a similar fate – or the animals died elsewhere and the bones washed there over a period of time.

It is expected that the full archive of remains will return to Devon, into the care of The Box – a new museum in Plymouth.

Watch: Mammoth tusk holds clues to Ice Age extinctions

Remains of woolly mammoth found on Devon building site

Bones of ice age mammoth, bison, rhinoceros, wolf and hyena uncovered by digger on outskirts of Plymouth

A section of mammoth tusk in the cave system uncovered during the construction of a new town.

Steven Morris
THE GUARDIAN
Thu 3 Feb 2022

The remains of a woolly mammoth, rhinoceros, bison, wolf and hyena have been found in a cave system uncovered by a digger during the building of a new town in the south-west of England.

Experts said the find at Sherford, a 5,500-home development on the outskirts of Plymouth, was “exceptional” and gave an astonishing glimpse into the megafauna that roamed what is now Devon between 30,000 and 60,000 years ago.

More than 200 clusters of bones have been carefully removed from the cave and they will be examined to try to help paint a picture of what life was like in ice age Britain.

The samples taken from the site have so far uncovered:

Partial remains of a woolly mammoth, including a tusk, molar tooth and other bones

Partial remains of a woolly rhinoceros, including an incomplete skull and lower jaw

A virtually complete wolf skeleton

Partial remains of hyena, horse, reindeer, mountain hare and red fox

Bones of various small mammals such as bats and shrews. It is anticipated that further bones of small mammals will be identified during post-excavation laboratory analysis.

Woolly mammoth molar.

Whether all of the creatures uncovered at Sherford coexisted or lived at different points over a much longer time span is uncertain. One theory is that some of the creatures fell into a pit and were unable to escape, and carnivorous scavengers followed and met a similar fate – or the animals died elsewhere and the bones washed into the area over a period of time.

Understanding the range of mammals present, particularly herbivores, will also provide an insight into the plants that may have existed at the time.

Huge ‘sea dragon’ named one of UK’s greatest fossil finds

Danielle Schreve, professor of quaternary science at Royal Holloway University of London, was one of those who crawled into the cave to help supervise the recovery work. “It’s really extraordinary to go into a cave and find remains of things like woolly mammoth tusks,” she said. “It’s pretty special.”

Schreve said it was probably the most significant find of its kind since the discovery of the Joint Mitnor cave in Devon more than 80 years ago.

The animal bones and environmental samples have been recorded and removed from the ground and are undergoing academic analysis and conservation.

It is expected that the full archive of remains will return to Devon, into the care of The Box, Plymouth’s revamped museum. Developers have said the area where the remains were found would be conserved and nothing would be built on top, but the entrance to the cave will be sealed.

Woolly rhinoceros mandible with teeth attached.

Rob Bourn, the managing director of Orion Heritage and lead archaeologist on the project for the Sherford Consortium, said: “This is a major discovery of national significance, a once in a lifetime experience for those involved. To find such an array of artefacts untouched for so long is a rare and special occurrence.”

Bourn said the south-west of England was very different in the time of the mammoth. “It was an area where mammoths and other creatures thrived, roaming great distances across a landscape that looked very different to today, with glaciers not far away in south Wales and a volatile climate prone to huge floods.”

Duncan Wilson, the chief executive of Historic England, said: “This discovery is exceptional. To have found partial remains of such a range of species here in Devon gives us a brilliant insight into the animals which roamed around ice age Britain thousands of years ago, as well as a better understanding of the environment and climate at the time.”

New discovery of ice age fossils in Devon

by Royal Holloway, University of London

Fossils of extinct species, including mammoth, rhinoceros and wolf, have been discovered in a Devon cave by a team of archaeologists, including an academic from Royal Holloway, University of London.

Excavations at Sherford, a new town in Plymouth, uncovered the approximate 30-60,000-year-old fossils, belonging to wooly mammoths, wooly rhinoceros, hyena, horse, reindeer, mountain hare and red fox, giving an incredibly rare insight into Britain during the last ice age.

Speaking about the discovery, Professor Danielle Schreve, Head of the Department of Geography and a member of the Centre for Quaternary Research at Royal Holloway, said: "To find a previously unknown cave system is a really special discovery. The fossil bones and teeth not only allow us to reconstruct what conditions were like in the past—a cool, open grassland patrolled by huge herds of grazing animals and across which Neanderthals and then modern humans hunted—but knowledge of how species responded to rapid climate change by shifting their range, evolving or going extinct can help us make better conservation decisions today."

Over recent months, the archaeological team has conducted a detailed analysis of the findings. The work has been led by an expert team including academics from Winchester University and the University of Manchester, Orion Heritage and Exeter-based AC Archaeology, supported by Devon County Council and the South West Science Advisor from Historic England.

Whether all of the fossils uncovered are from a similar time period or existed at different points over a longer time span is under investigation. The remains of megafauna—which are large animals of a geological period that are extinct—as well as a complete skeleton of a wolf, suggest that they probably met an accidental death, falling in through an opening to the ground surface and unable to escape.

It is expected that the full archive of remains will return to Devon, into the care of The Box museum in Plymouth, just a few miles from where they were discovered.

Sherford is a new 5,500-home community under development in Plymouth. The Sherford Consortium—a partnership of Taylor Wimpey and Vistry Partnerships—instigated archaeological work at the start of construction in 2015 and have remained committed to funding an ongoing program of archaeological investigation ever since. Excavation during infrastructure work led to the discovery of these fossils, in an area near Sherford Quarry.New discovery of the earliest known hippo fossil in the UK

Provided by Royal Holloway, University of London

How fault lines in a kitchen sink are changing what we know about geology

by University of Massachusetts Amherst

In a new paper recently published in the journal Geology, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst unveiled a physical model that yields an unprecedented, high-resolution look at the slip rates of faults, which determine the likelihood of earthquakes.

When most of us picture a fault line, we imagine a giant crack in the earth where two tectonic plates smash into each other. When geologists think of faults, however, they see a branching system made up of thousands of individual faults. "The closer you look," says Michele Cooke, one of the paper's co-authors and a professor of geosciences at UMass Amherst, "the more you find, and when you look in detail, the picture gets very complicated."

Such complexity makes it difficult to accurately understand what is happening at any given place in the system—let alone to predict when an earthquake will occur, and where. To blur the picture even more, the vast majority of individual faults are buried under feet of dirt or obscured by vegetation, and so can't be directly observed. Finally, fault systems evolve over the course of thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of years. Therefore, geologists have traditionally generated generalized slip rates for entire fault systems and theorized broadly about how fault systems evolve.

In a new study, the authors used a physical model, "about the size of a kitchen sink," says Hanna Elston, the paper's lead author and a graduate student in geosciences at UMass Amherst, and filled it with a carefully composed kaolin clay, "about the consistency of Greek yogurt," that behaves much like the earth's crust. At the bottom of the model are two plates that can be precisely moved. Elston and her co-authors then carefully cut the clay, to form a fault, and, over the course of four hours, which simulated a million years, moved the plates 12 centimeters, all the while taking pictures with an array of overhead cameras, which they could then analyze to uncover the slip rates and mechanics of their modeled faults.

The precision of the first-of-its-kind technique that Elston and her co-authors developed allows them to track slip rates at specific locations along faults, with an unprecedented fidelity, which can then provide a record that researchers can directly compare to field studies to estimate the slip rate at any particular point along a fault.

Not only does the model perform in ways that mirror real-life faults, it allowed Elston and her colleagues, including Cooke and Alex Hatem, now at the U.S. Geological Survey, to observe two different phenomena that no one else has seen before. First, the model shows that slip rates can change at a particular site on the fault as that fault evolves. Second, the team showed that slip rates are interactive: the rate can change at many different points along one fault in response to changing slip rates at other, nearby faults.

"This study gives us the finest-grained picture yet into how faults evolve, which could be used to help the assessments of seismic hazards," says Elston—and it's only the start. The research in this paper, which was supported by the National Science Foundation, represents a proof-of-concept for the team's analytical techniques. Future will detail make 3D reconstructions of different faults' evolution.

A video overview of the team's model is available from YouTube:

More information: Non-steady-state slip rates emerge along evolving restraining bends under constant loading, Geology (2022). DOI: 10.1130/G49745.1

Journal information: Geology

Provided by University of Massachusetts Amherst

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