Study designate that "megavolcanes" swab out half the world's species Agencies

New techniques for dating rocks confirmed that a chain of giant volcanic eruptions 200 million years ago caused the sudden extinction of half the species now inhabiting the Earth.

The result of the research provides far more precise date of when this occurred, for 564 000 201 000 000 000 years ago, in the Triassic extinction event known as Final, or fourth mass extinction, when the eruption of a volcano chain revolutionized the climate by emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to the report in the journal Science.

Scientists capture the image of a extraordinary object orbiting two stars giant

Two years ago, gave scientists reported in the journal Science the existence, 200 light years away from Earth, a planet with two suns, like the fictional world Tatooine , home of the young Skywalker of Star Wars. Later, astronomers found new examples of similar worlds and suggested that there may be millions of them. Now, an international team of scientists led by Philippe Delorme space, Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has taken what may be the first photograph of a planet orbiting two suns.

Young, hot and blue

The universe is very old - well 13.8 billion years. Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is also very old - some of their stars bring it to more than 13 billion years (eso0425).

Nevertheless, there is much going on: New objects are created, others are destroyed. In this picture you can see some of the newcomers: young stars that make up the star cluster NGC 2547.

But how young these cosmic youngsters really are? Although her exact age remains uncertain,