earth

Via NPR:

A century ago, miners working in California's Death Valley reported seeing boulders on the desert floor with long trails behind them — as if the stones had been pushed across the sand. But despite 60 years of trying, no one ever saw what moved them.

Now scientists think they've solved the mystery of the "slithering rocks of Death Valley." Using GPS tags pasted to the boulders, and a video camera, a geologist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and his engineer cousin have evidence that broad, jagged panes of melting ice push the stones across the desert, nudged in one direction or another by the breeze. The team details their results in the current issue of the journal Plos One.

The hunt for alien life has been given a boost after scientists discovered a habitable planet almost the same size as Earth.

Astronomer Thomas Barclay from Nasa's Ames Research Centre in California made the discovery using data collected by the Kepler space telescope.

The unnamed planet was found orbiting an unidentified star in its so-called Goldilocks zone - a region around the star that emits just enough energy, light and temperature for liquid surface water to appear.

This piece of rock is 4.4 BILLION years old. DAYUM!

esearchers involved in the discovery said that the discovery was of high scientific value. Earth's crust formed relatively quickly after the formation of our planet, and this little gem is a remnant of the original crusty crew. According to the University of Wisconsin scientist who led the investigation, John Valley, the survival of the crystal suggests that the early planet was not quite as harsh a place as commonly accepted in the scientific community. It lends support to the "cool early Earth" theory, which says that hydrosphere and liquid water existed before 4.3 billion years ago.