When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide gets the lion’s share of global attention.

But methane is the second-largest contributor to human-caused global warming. A high proportion of methane emissions comes from the energy sector, often from concentrated “point sources” such as flare stacks, coal vents and open-pit mines. To help reduce those emissions, we must first identify the major culprits — and new satellite data is helping us do just that.

Using high-resolution observations from the GHGSat satellite constellation, researchers have produced a global, facility-level view of methane emissions, identifying thousands of individual oil, gas and coal sites that are releasing the greenhouse gas into Earth’s atmosphere.

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“This is the first global gridded estimate of annual methane emissions from facility-scale measurements, an advancement in measurement-based accounting that is due to the comprehensive scale of GHGSat’s satellite constellation to measure methane worldwide,” said Dylan Jervis of GHGSat Inc., lead author of a new study on the findings published Dec. 11 in the journal Science.

“This information will be useful to improve understanding and predictions of methane emissions, and, therefore, provide information that is useful to direct mitigation efforts,” Jervis told Space.com.

Traditionally, scientists have measured methane emissions with a mix of bottom-up inventories, which estimate emissions based on industry activity but can miss short-term fluctuations like leaks, and top-down atmospheric measurements, which detect methane concentrations directly but lack the resolution to pinpoint specific sources. Neither can paint a very precise picture of global methane emissions from the energy sector. But the GHGSat constellation, run by the Canadian company GHGSat, bridges that gap by combining meter-scale spatial resolution with global coverage.

Analyzing GHGSat observations of methane plumes collected in 2023, the team estimated annual methane emissions from 3,114 oil, gas and coal facilities worldwide that totaled about 9 million tons (8.3 million metric tons) per year.

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Example GHGSat methane plumes, detected from a coal vent, oil & gas flare stack, and open-pit coal mine. (Image credit: GHGSat)

Geographically, the biggest emitters stood out clearly in the satellite data. “The countries where we measure the largest oil and gas methane emissions are Turkmenistan, the U.S., Russia, Mexico and Kazakhstan,” said Jervis. “The countries where we measure the large coal emissions are China and Russia.”

While bottom-up inventories are fairly good at estimating methane emissions on such large scales as countries, they aren’t nearly as precise when you zoom in. “We found moderate agreement between GHGSat-measured emission estimates and bottom-up inventory predictions at the country level, but very little agreement at 0.2 degree x 0.2 degree [about 20 by 20 kilometers] spatial resolution,” Jervis said. Thus, effective change may need to happen at the facility level, not at the country level.

The researchers tracked how often individual facilities emitted detectable methane plumes, a metric they call persistence.

“Persistence of emissions depends more on sector than region,” said Jervis. For coal facilities, methane plumes were detected about half the time on average. Oil and gas sites, by contrast, were far more intermittent, emitting detectable methane in only about 16% of satellite observations on average. That variability makes oil and gas emissions especially difficult to capture with infrequent monitoring.

For the most accurate and actionable methane estimates, detailed surveys like the ones provided by GHGSat are crucial — which is why GHGSat is growing its constellation. Two new satellites were launched in June, and two more in November, bringing the company’s total to 14 satellites. “This will enable better coverage, both spatially and temporally, allowing us to detect more emissions and monitor them more frequently,” said Jervis.

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After a multi-decade-year mission to understand the nature of the universe, a telescope perched in the mountain plateaus of northern Chile said goodbye in 2022. Now, its final data release is revealing the telescope’s legacy: a field in tension.

In October 2007, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) saw its first light. But it was not light from a star, or even a distant galaxy. Instead, ACT was designed to hunt for microwaves, especially the kind of microwaves left over from some of the earliest epochs of the universe. This “fossil” light, known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB), was emitted when the universe was just 380,000 years old.

The CMB offers cosmologists a pristine look at the infant cosmos. ACT was designed to complement other surveys, like the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite. The Planck mission launched an orbiting spacecraft to provide a whole-sky census of the CMB. But its resolution was limited, especially in studies of the CMB’s polarization (the direction in which oscillations in the CMB’s magnetic and electric field point as the light travels). In contrast, even though ACT is ground-based, it could search deeper into smaller pockets of the CMB sky at a very high resolution.

In November, the ACT team released their sixth and final public dataset as three articles published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. While cosmologists will continue to mine the data for many years to come, the core team also provided their final suite of analyses and studies before saying farewell for good.

Their findings matched what surveys like Planck had already identified: that something funny is going on with the expansion of the universe. Measurements of the present-day expansion rate, known as the Hubble rate or Hubble constant, taken with early-universe probes like Planck and ACT, reveal a number that is quite a bit slower than estimates based on nearby measurements, like supernova dimming.

This discrepancy has come to be known as the Hubble tension, and it is perhaps the greatest unsolved mystery in modern cosmology. But ACT didn’t just confirm the existence of the tension; it also destroyed some very good ideas.

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A map of microwave intensity (orange to blue) overlaid with the direction of magnetic polarization in those microwave emissions. Studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is helping astronomers fine tune measurements of the universe’s expansion. (Image credit: The Atacama Cosmology Telescope collaboration)

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The U.S. Space Force is turning to some unlikely sources of inspiration for naming its spacecraft and space weaponry.

At the 3rd Annual Spacepower Conference, held in Orlando, Florida from Dec. 10 to Dec. 12, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman told attendees that Space Force is adopting new naming schemes for each of its different mission areas that will “cement the identities of space weapon systems” much like the names of iconic aircraft, such as the A-10 Thunderbolt II or F-22 Raptor, have done for the U.S. Air Force.

But while symbols for some of Space Force’s mission areas will be similarly borrowed from real-life animals, others are more mythological in nature, Saltzman said. “These include Norse Pantheon, representing the power and dominance of orbital warfare; mythological creatures, conjuring the cunning and adaptability of cyber warfare systems; constellations, reflecting the reach and enduring connection of satellite communications; and ghosts, evoking the silent presence of space domain awareness, just to name a few,” Saltzman said at the conference.

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Seven different naming categories were chosen, one for each of Space Force’s mission areas:

After announcing the new naming scheme, Saltzman explained two specific names that had been chosen for specific spacecraft. The first, a communications satellite in geostationary orbit previously known as the Ultra-High Frequency Follow-On system, will now be known as as Ursa Major.

“The Big Dipper — as you all know, part of the Ursa Major constellation — famously points to Polaris, our north star, always linking us to our most important missions,” Saltzman said.

An illustration of a constellation in the shape of the Space Force Delta, the official logo of the U.S. Space Force. (Image credit: US Space Force/Airman 1st Class Chauncey Glenn)

Another spacecraft operated by Space Force’s 1st Space Operations Squadron (1 SOPS) used to track satellites in high orbits will now be taking a name from Norse mythology: Bifrost.

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“Bifrost is a bridge between Earth and the realm of the gods,” Saltzman explained, “just as the Bifrost system in low Earth orbit bridges the divide between the Earth and the higher geostationary orbit of the other 1 SOPS systems.”

An illustration of a Valkyrie, a powerful being in Norse mythology that guides the souls of slain warriors to Valhalla. The U.S. Space Force will now use the names of figures from Norse myths for its orbital warfare platforms. (Image credit: US Space Force/Airman 1st Class Charlotte Taylor)

Saltzman stressed that the new naming scheme will help the newest branch of the U.S. military establish its own identity. “These symbols conjure the character of the systems, the importance of their mission, and the identity of the Guardians who employ them,” Saltzman said. The new names will serve as “a way to own the identity of our space systems as they enter the joint fight,” he added.

Unlike the U.S. Air Force’s iconic aircraft or the U.S. Army’s ground vehicles such as tanks, the public rarely gets a glimpse at Space Force’s assets in orbit. This is partly by design; many of Space Force’s spacecraft are highly classified, which can make it difficult for the service to communicate its missions and capabilities both to the public and throughout the U.S. armed services.

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A sea raiders’ boat that sank off the coast of Denmark 2,400 years ago has been hiding a fingerprint, as well as several chemical clues that are now helping researchers uncover just where these raiders came from millennia ago, a new study finds.

The vessel, known as the Hjortspring boat, is the oldest known wooden plank boat in Scandinavia, and is currently on display at the National Museum of Denmark. But its origins have long been an enigma.

“Where these sea raiders might have come from, and why they attacked the island of Als has long been a mystery,” Mikael Fauvelle, an archaeologist at Lund University who analyzed the boat, said in a statement.

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About 2,400 years ago, about 80 sea raiders on an armada including this boat and three others attacked the island of Als, off the coast of what is now Denmark. But the raiders lost. In giving thanks for their victory, the people on Als sank the boat as an offering along with the attackers’ weapons and shields.

The sinking of the boat in the fourth century B.C. helped preserve it over the centuries, as water is a low-oxygen environment. After its discovery in the 1880s, the boat was later excavated from the bog of Hjortspring Mose in the 1920s (earning the ship its name).

“But at the time, we lacked the modern scientific methods that we needed to answer the mystery of where these attackers came from,” Fauvelle said in a video about the research.

Recently, the researchers decided to take a fresh look at the boat. Before it was put on display in the museum, the boat had been chemically preserved. So, the team sifted through archives and old records in multiple museums in an effort to uncover parts of the boat that had been left untouched.

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Finally, they found several fragments of caulking tar and rope, including a piece of tar that had the ancient fingerprint of someone who likely helped repair the vessel, a finding that Fauvelle called “really fantastic.”

“This remarkable fingerprint provides a direct link to the ancient seafarers who used this boat,” the researchers wrote in the study, which was published on Dec. 10 in the Journal PLOS One.

A caulking fragment (left) from Hjortspring boat that shows a fingerprint, and the high-resolution x-ray tomography scan (right) of the fingerprint region. (Image credit: Photography by Erik Johansson; 3D model by Sahel Ganji; CC BY 4.0)

To study the caulking tar, the researchers used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, techniques that examine the chemical makeup of samples. They found that the waterproof tar was a mixture of animal fat (likely tallow) and pine pitch, a sticky and stretchy substance also known as resin.

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“This suggests the boat was built somewhere with abundant pine forests,” Fauvelle said in the statement.

The new finding throws cold water on an old idea that the boat originated near modern-day Hamburg, Germany, as previous analyses had found that the vessel carried wood containers that looked like ceramics from the Hamburg region. It now appears that the boat may have come from much farther away in the Baltic Sea region, which has pine forests.

“Pine forests only existed in certain parts of northern Europe at this time,” Fauvelle said in the video, adding “we suggest that they came from somewhere along the coast of the Baltic to the east of the modern day island of Rügen [in Germany].”

If this idea is accurate, it suggests that the attackers sailed a great distance over open sea for the raid, Fauvelle said.

Cordage, or rope fragments from the Hjortspring boat. (Image credit: Mikael Fauvelle; CC BY 4.0)

Researchers also used carbon dating to study rope from the boat. Analyzing the lime bast cordage, which comes from the inner bark of trees, the team confirmed the boat’s previously determined timeline of between 400 B.C. and 101 B.C., which falls in the pre-Roman Iron Age of Scandinavia. The researchers carbon dated the boat to between 381 and 161 B.C., which is the first direct date from the boat’s material. The researchers also worked with rope makers to create replicas of the cordage and study the rope-making process.

Using X-ray tomography to scan the caulking and cordage in sections, the team made digital 3D models, which enabled them to study the fingerprint. Analyzing the print’s ridges didn’t narrow down the sex or identity of who made the print, however.

Going forward, Fauvelle hopes to extract human DNA from the tar to learn more about the people who made and used the boat. Understanding faraway raids such as this one could help explain ancient maritime warfare and Iron Age trading systems.

Fingerprint of ancient seafarer found on Scandinavia’s oldest plank boat – YouTube

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An entomologist at Anglia Ruskin University has discovered seven new species of leafhopper. A researcher at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in Cambridge, England has identified seven previously unknown species of a frog-like insect. The newly described insects are leafhoppers belonging to the genus Batracomorphus and were discovered by Dr. Alvin Helden during field research in […]



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Fallout Season 2 is almost here, so now is the perfect time to start a little online nuclear war of our own by ranking all the Fallout games from worst to best. Not even Vault-Tec can save you from this one.