Northern Venezeula hit by pair of major Earthquakes, leaving at least 164 dead.

The United States Geological Survey recorded a Magnitude 7.2 Earthquake at a depth of 20.3 km, roughly 23 km to the southeast of the town of Yumare in Yaracuy State on the north coast of Venezuela, slightly before 6.05 pm local (slightly before 10.05 pm GMT) time on Wednesday 24 June 2026. This was followed after 39 seconds by a Magnitude 7.5 Earthquake 4 km to the southeast of the original event, at a depth of 10 km. 

The approximate location of the second 24 June 2026 Yaracuy Earthquake. USGS.

At least 164 people are known to have died as a result of this event, with another 971 injured. However, more than a hundred buildings have collapsed as a result of the Earthquakes, it is thought likely that many thousands more people may be trapped or dead beneath the rubble. The worst of the damage occurred in the State of La Guaira, to the east of the epicentres of the events.

A partially collapsed apartment building in the city of Catia La Mar in the State of La Guaira, Venezuela. Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images.

The northern coast of Venezuela forms the boundary between the South American Plate, which is being pushed to the west by the expansion of the Atlantic, and the Caribbean Plate, which is also being pushed westward, but at a slower rate due to a collision with the Cocos Plate (which lies to the west of Central America). This means that the two plates are moving past one-another, creating a transform plate margin. This is not a smooth process, rather the plates constantly stick together, causing pressure to build up, then break apart in often spectacular earthquakes.

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The June Bootid Meteor Shower.

The June Bootid Meteor Shower is visible each year between 26 June and 2 July, typically peaking on 27 June. This meteor shower if highly unpredictable in nature, with most years producing very few meteors, but the shower occasionally having peak years, in which hundreds of meteors are visible each hour; the most recent major peak year happened in 1998 (a smaller peak was recorded in 2004), with the three peaks prior to that happening in 1927, 1921, and 1916. The shower has a radiant point (point from which the meteors appear to radiate) in the constellation of Boötes, close to the North Pole, making the shower possible to spot from anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, but hard to see in the Southern Hemisphere. Unfortunately, this year's peak activity comes only two days before the Full Moon on 29 June, which means that good observation of the meteors may be hampered by the brightness of the Moon.

The radiant point of the June Bootid Meteor Shower. Space Weather.

Meteor showers are thought to be largely composed of material from the tails of comets. Comets are composed largely of ice (mostly water and carbon dioxide), and when they fall into the inner Solar System the outer layers of this boil away, forming a visible tail (which always points away from the Sun, not in the direction the comet is coming from, as our Earth-bound experience would lead us to expect). Particles of rock and dust from within the comet are freed by this melting (strictly sublimation, transforming directly from a solid to a gas due to the low pressure on it's surface) of the comet into the tail and continue to orbit in the same path as the comet, falling behind over time.

The Earth passing through a stream of comet dust, resulting in a meteor shower. Not to scale. Astro Bob.

The June Bootids Meteor Shower is caused by the Earth passing through the trail of comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke, where it encounters thousands of tiny dust particles shed from the comet as its icy surface is melted (strictly sublimated) by the heat of the Sun. 7P/Pons-Winnecke visits the Inner Solar System every 6.37 years, most recently in May 2021, and last came close to the Earth in 1939.

How the passage of the Earth through a meteor shower creates a radiant point from which they can be observed. In The Sky.

7P/Pons-Winnecke was discovered on 12 June 1819 by French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons, then based at Marseilles Observatory, and rediscovered by Friedrich August Theodor Winnecke at Pulkovo Observatory near Saint Petersburg. The designation 7P/Pons-Winnecke implies that it was the seventh comet discovered (7/ - strictly speaking people had been observing comets for thousands of years, but it was not until the mid-eighteenth century that it was realised that they were predictable objects that returned cyclically), that it is a periodic comet (P - again, most comets are periodic, but the term 'periodic comet' is reserved for those with periods of less than 200 years, since these can be reliably predicted), and that it was discovered by Pons and Winnecke.

7P/Pons-Winnecke immaged on 23 September 2015 from Kiev, Ukraine. The image is a single 300 second exposure, with the slightly elongate objects being stars that have moved over the course of the exposure. Alexander Baransky/Kiev Comet Station/Fachgruppe Kometen.

Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke currently completes one orbit every 2326 days (6.37 years) on an eccentric orbit tilted at 22.3° to the plane of the Solar System, that takes it from 1.26 AU from the Sun (126% of the average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun) to 5.61 AU from the Sun (5.61 times as far from the Sun as the Earth, and slightly outside the orbit of Jupiter). As a comet with a period of less than 20 years with an orbit angled at less than 30° to the plane of the Solar System, 7P/Pons-Winnecke is considered to be a Jupiter Family Comet.

The orbit and current position of 7P/Pons-Winnecke. JPL Small Body Database.

This orbit means that 7P/Pons-Winnecke occasionally comes close to the Earth, with the last close approach having happened on 1 July 1939, when it reached a distance of 0.11 AU from the Earth (11% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or 16 052 000 km). The comet will next come close to us in June 2062, when it will reach a distance of 0.17 AU from the Earth.

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Microeledone galapagensis: A new species of Incirrate Octopus from the Galápagos Islands.

Incirrate, or Finless, Octopuses are one of the two major divisions of the Octopoda, and the one most familiar to most people. Whilst many species living on coastal shelves and the upper part of the water column have been studied extensively, they are also a major part of the deep-sea fauna, although these are much less well known. The Family Megaleledonidae comprises large Incirrate Octopuses with a single sucker-row. These were originally described from the deep waters of the Southern Ocean, and for a long time were assumed to be restricted to the Antarctic, but recently have been found living as far north as Iceland, suggesting a much wider distribution. 

In a paper published in the journal Zootaxa on 25 May 2026, Janet Voight and Stephanie Smith of the Negaunee Integrative Research Center of the Field Museum of Natural History, Salome Buglass of the Charles Darwin Fundación and the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia, and Alexander Ziegler of the Bonner Institut für Organismische Biologie at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, describe a new species of Megaleledonid Octopus from a seamount in the Galápagos Islands.

The species is described from a single female specimen which was recovered by the Remote Operated Vehicle Hercules from a seamount 25 km to the northwest of Isla Darwin, during a ten day voyage of the Research Vessel Nautilus to the Galápagos Marine Reserve. While this specimen was the only one directly examined, two other Octopus apparently belonging to the same species were observed within 1-2 km of the site where the specimen was caught.

The new species is placed in the Genus Microeledone, the first new species added to the genus since it was first described in 2004, and given the specific name galapagensis, meaning 'from the Galápagos'. As the name suggests, members of this genus are smaller than is typical for members of the Megaleledonida, with the single known specimen of Microeledone galapagensis having a mantle-length of only 31.5 mm. It is squat in form, with a head narrower with than the mantle and eyes which do not meet at the midline, and short arms, reaching only 1.4 times the length of the mantle, each of which has up to 30 suckers arranged in a single row. These suckers are tall and straight, with an approximately similar diameter along the tentacle, although they are sightly larger close to the body and slightly smaller at the tip.

Microeledone galapagensis in its natural environment. Voight et al. (2026).

Microeledone galapagensis lacks colouring on its outer mantle, but is heavily pigmented on the inner lining of the dorsal mantle muscles. This is thought to be an adaptation to its habitat and diet. In shallow-water Octopuses, pigment cells on the outer mantle allow the Octopus to change colour in order to blend in with its environment to avoid predators. All known specimens of Microeledone galapagensis were found living at depths of between 1770 and 1800 m beneath the sea surface. At these depths, there is no natural light, and therefore no need for Octopuses to camouflage themselves in this way. However, many available food species bioluminess when threatened, potentially giving away the location of anything consuming them to larger predators. The thick pigmentation on the inner lining of the dorsal mantle should hide such luminescence, thus protecting the Octopus from predation.

Interestingly, the only other known species of Microeledone, Microeledone mangoldi, lacks pigmentation on the inner lining of the dorsal mantle muscles, but has pigmented sheaths over its internal organs, apparently another way to deal with the problem of bioluminescent prey. This implies that the two species independently evolved different solutions to the same problem, which in turn suggests that their last common ancestor did not face this problem, and therefore must have lived in a different environment, presumably a more shallow one.

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Unusual Corded Ware Culture burial discovered in Germany.

Archaeologists from the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology in Saxony-Anhalt, working on sites ahead of the planned construction of a power line project, have uncovered a burial associated with the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Corded Ware Culture near Gerstewitz in Burgenland district, according to a press release issued on 15 June 2026.

The burial, that of a man of about 25, was typical of the Corded Ware Culture in that he was placed in a crouched position lying on his left hand side and facing to the south (everyone was buried in this position and facing the same way, although women were always placed on their right sides while men were always placed on their left). 

The remains of a male individual excavated from a Chacolithic Corded Ware Culture burial near Gerstewitz in Saxony-Anhalt State, Germany. Christian Pabst/State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology.

However, unlike other burials from the period, he was buried within a former kiln-pit, rather than beaneath a burial mound, as was typical of the Corded Ware Culture. Furthermore, his body seems to have slipped slightly from the original position in which he was placed, possibly due to his being placed on a layer of organic material which has since decayed.

This has led to suspicions that there may have been something irregular about the burial. The man appeared to have died as a result of damage to his skull, something which could indicate that he was a murder victim, or had been killed in battle (a group of chalcolithic tribesmen, having lost a battle, might conceivably feel the need to leave the area, leading to a burial being carried out in a hurry). 

There is also another possibility. While Human remains have never been found associated with a Corded Ware Culture kiln pit in the past, the remains of Horses and Dogs have been found in these settings. The assumption in those cases was that the Animals had been ritually sacrificed before being buried, raising the question as to whether the man buried in the Gerstewitz kiln pit had met the same fate.

An archaeologist examines the Gerstewitz kiln pit burial. Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

The Corded Ware Culture gains its name from the distinctive pottery which it produced, in which rope cords were used to mark the surface of pots. The Culture first appeared in Eastern Europe around 3000 BC, and may have migrated there from the Eurasian Steppes. Genetic studies of Corded Ware individuals have concluded that they were closely related to, if not directly descended from the Yamnaya people of that area. The Corded Ware people are thought to have been one of the first Indo-European groups to move into Europe, and at there peak they occupied much of north, central, and eastern Europe, as well as parts of Scandinavia and northern Italy, as well as parts of the Caucasus and Iran. 

Corded Ware pottery in the collection of the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte in Berlin. Einsamer Schütze/Wikimedia Commons.

Like the Yamnaya people, the Corded Ware people kept both horses and cattle, consumed dairy products, and used wheeled vehicles, the first people in Europe to have done so. However, they were in many was culturally contiguous with the peoples who had lived in the area before, suggesting that they spread by intermixing with the local population as they introduced new technologies, rather than by conquest and driving the former occupants off the land.  The Corded Ware people were never really a single culture, but a series of linked cultures spread across a wide area. Over time these linked cultures evolved in different directions, and by about 2300 BC, had become distinctive enough that they are no longer referred to as Corded Ware Culture by archaeologists. 

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The Northern Solstice.

The Northern Solstice will fall on Sunday 21 June this year (2026), the day on which the Sun rises highest in the sky and the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere (where it is the Summer Solstice) and the day on which the Sun rises lowest in the sky and the shortest day in the Southern Hemisphere (where it is the Winter Solstice). Up until this date the days have been growing shorter in the Northern Hemisphere and longer in the Southern Hemisphere since the Southern Solstice in December last year (which is the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and Winter Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere), but after it the situation will be reversed, with days growing steadily longer in the Northern Hemisphere and shorter in the Southern Hemisphere until the next Southern Solstice in December. 

The solstices are entirely a product of variation in the Earth's rotation on its axis, which is at an angle of 23.5° to the plain of the Earth's orbit about the Sun. This means that in December the Earth's Southern Pole is tilted towards the Sun, while the Northern Pole is tilted away from it. This means that around the Southern Solstice the Southern Hemisphere is receiving radiation from the Sun over a longer part of the than the Northern, and at a steeper angle (so that it to pass through less atmosphere to reach the planet), creating the southern summer and northern winter.

The tilt of the Earth at the Northern Solstice. Wikimedia Commons.

The solstices are fairly noticeable astronomical events, and tied to the seasons which govern the life cycles of life on Earth, and they have been celebrated under different names by cultures across the globe, but most notably by those at higher latitudes, who are more profoundly affected by the changes of the seasons.

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