The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced last week the space probe, New Horizons, has made observations of an object in the Kuiper Belt, some 3 billion miles from the sun, according to csmonitor.com.

The space probe, which made its historic flyby of Pluto last year, was able to use a Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager to take pictures of what is known as a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO), in this case, identified as 1994 JR1.  The probe last took images of the KBO when it was 170 million miles away at the end of last year, which was then the record for closest image of a KBO.  The new images were taken from a mere 69 million miles from the object on April 6th and 7th.

The two observations, combined with the 2015 data, allowed scientists to determine a more complete assessment of the location of 1994 JR1, accurate to about 600 miles, said New Horizons team member Simon Porter.

The images enabled the research team to determine the minor planet has a rotation of about 5.4 hours, significantly shorter than the 6.4 days Pluto, its neighbor, takes to complete a daily rotation.  Team member John Spencer noted that was relatively fast for a KBO.

New Horizons, on its path into space, could record data from as many as 20 other KBOs, and the research team said this new information was good to have in preparation for observations of those other objects along the path.  The probe is expected to fly much closer to some of the other KBOs and perhaps even sharper images can be taken.

The mission is the first of the agency’s New Frontiers program, and will continue to send data back to Earth from its flyby of Pluto, while headed to the KBO 2014 MU69, which it is estimated to reach in January of 2019.

The team has submitted a proposal to NASA to extend the mission through 2021, and that could allow the probe to image an additional two billion miles of deep space toward the end of our solar system.

“This is all part of the excitement of exploring new places and seeing things never seen before,” Spencer added.

Beneath the icy covering on Jupiter’s moon Europa, could there be an Earth-like ocean that just might be developing life forms, much like our own ocean did eons ago?  That is a question that is intriguing scientists as they are learning more and more about the distant moon, according to discovery.com.

Researchers believe the moon has a subsurface ocean, that is protected from bombarding space radiation by a thick covering of ice, and they also suspect the ocean contains many of the same chemicals that sparked life on Earth.  Now, some scientists are beginning to believe the nutrients in the water could even sprout multi-celled organisms as well.

Of course at this point it is all theory, but Steve Vance, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said they were studying an alien ocean by using methods that were devised to study the movement of nutrients and energy in oceans on the Earth.

“The cycling of oxygen and hydrogen in Europa’s ocean will be a major driver for Europa’s ocean chemistry and any life there, just it is on Earth,” added Vance.

The scientists believe Europa contains a rocky core, complete with fissures that have filled with liquid water.  The interactions between the water and the minerals in the core forms new minerals, and at the same time, releases huge amounts of hydrogen into the air.

As radiation pummels the icy surface, it breaks down the chemical bonds of the water, producing oxidants, molecules of oxygen atoms that combine with other chemicals.  Kevin Hand, also of JPL, said the oxidants are similar to a positive terminal of a battery, and the chemicals on the seafloor are like the negative terminals.

“Whether or not life and biological processes complete the circuit is part of what motivates our exploration of Europa,” continued Hand.

In short, it may appear that Europa has a similar situation to what the Earth had at the beginning of life on our planet.  And if it is found to be true, how many more worlds are out there with the same possibilities?

The findings from this research were published in the journal Geophysical Research.

Archaeological finds in a sink hole in Florida have been determined to be from a period of time some 14,500 years ago, a thousand years earlier that it had been previously thought people had come to the Americas, according to The Christian Science Monitor.

The artifacts, including stone tools and mastodon bones with distinct cut marks, were actually discovered beneath 30 feet of water by a diver in the 1980s, but scientists at the time dismissed the findings since they thought the first Americans could not have entered the area before 13,500 years ago.  Their reasoning was massive ice sheets covered much of North America, and humans traversing from Siberia across a land bridge were stranded in the Alaska area for quite a while, since no route to the south was available.

Around 13,500 years past, the ice began to melt, leaving a corridor through which the Clovis people, considered the first Americans, spread across the country.  These findings show that humans were in the Florida area more than a thousand years before the ice melted.

Jon Erlandson, an archeologist and director of the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon, said when the Clovis theory was on top, the scientists had it all figured out.  But now, he says, the Clovis-first model is “dead in the water,” thanks to the Florida find as well as other finds in North and South America and new genetic data.  Erlandson, who was not involved with the Florida excavation, says the climate today is more accepting of people believing there were humans here before Clovis.

The site was first discovered by a US Navy Seal, Buddy Page, while diving in the Aucilla River.  The site was named Page-Ladson, after the diver and the owner of the property where the site was located.

The findings at the site seem to also suggest that humans and mastodons lived together for longer than previously thought, with the giant beasts becoming extinct some 2,000 years later.  Many think the humans hunted the mastodons into extinction, but some think it may have been a number of factors, including human predation and climate change.

The researchers say they are not even sure if the mastodon bone with the cut marks was actually killed by the early humans, since they found no spear points or other indicators of a kill.  The humans may have just been the beneficiaries of finding an already dead mastodon carcass on which to feed.

The new findings from the site have been published in the journal Science Advances.