On July 5, 2024, at around 1 a.m., Earth reached its farthest point from the Sun, known as aphelion. This annual event raises an intriguing question: why are we experiencing summer heat when our planet is at its greatest distance from the Sun?

Understanding Aphelion

During aphelion, Earth is about 94.5 million miles (152 million kilometers) away from the Sun. This contrasts with perihelion, which occurs in early January, when Earth is closest to the Sun at approximately 91.4 million miles (147 million kilometers).

An archaeological team in Venezuela has uncovered 20 ancient rock art sites in Canaima National Park in the southeastern part of the country, consisting of both pictograms and petroglyphs, estimated to be about 4,000 years old.

This discovery reveals a previously unknown culture, even though similar rock art has been found elsewhere in South America.

The newfound rock art, referred to as pictograms, was painted in red and featured geometric shapes such as dotted lines, rows of X’s, star-shaped patterns, and interconnected straight lines. Additionally, there are simple depictions of leaves and stick figure drawings of people. Some images, known as petroglyphs, were incised into the rock and exhibit similar geometric designs.

Pixelate the world.

Researchers are seeing how fast data can be delivered amid rising demand for bandwidth.

Renewable generation should be around 50 per cent of supply on Australia’s main grid by July, 2026, although it might be a bit less depending on progress on the second stage of Golden Plains, which will be the country’s biggest wind farm – at least for a time – when complete.

To get to 80 per cent by 2030 will partly depend on what happens to demand. If demand is flat, then capacity capable of supplying around 67 terawatt hours (TWh) a year will be needed. After allowing for rooftop solar, I reckon that equates to about 25 gigawatts of new capacity, maybe a bit more.

That’s a heck of an ask, but in my opinion still possible and broadly in line with the objectives and scale of the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS). I’ll have more to say on the role of the CIS once I get round to talking about ITK’s price forecasts, but that can wait. We’re talking capacity and output in this not.

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Researchers have made the most precise measurement to date of the excited nuclear state of thorium-229, a candidate isotope for an ultraprecise nuclear clock.

Bone remains found in a Tibetan cave 3,280 m above sea level indicate an ancient group of humans survived here for many millennia, according to a new study published in Nature.

The Denisovans are an extinct species of ancient human that lived at the same time and in the same places as Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Only a handful of Denisovan remains have ever been discovered by archaeologists. Little is known about the group, including when they became extinct, but evidence exists to suggest they interbred with both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.

A research team led by Lanzhou University, China, the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, CAS, China, and involving the University of Reading studied more than 2,500 bones from the Baishiya Karst Cave on the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau, one of the only two places where Denisovans are known to have lived.