A team of University of Utah seismologists discovered and made images of a reservoir of hot, partly molten rock about 19 to 45 km (12 to 28 miles) beneath the Yellowstone supervolcano, and it is 4.4 times larger than the shallower, long-known magma chamber.

The hot rock in the newly discovered, deeper magma reservoir would fill the 1 000-cubic-mile Grand Canyon 11.2 times, while the previously known magma chamber would fill the Grand Canyon 2.5 times, says postdoctoral researcher Jamie Farrell, a co-author of the study published yesterday in the journal Science.

“For the first time, we have imaged the continuous volcanic plumbing system under Yellowstone,” says first author Hsin-Hua Huang, also a postdoctoral researcher in geology and geophysics. “That includes the upper crustal magma chamber we have seen previously plus a lower crustal magma reservoir that has never been imaged before and that connects the upper chamber to the Yellowstone hotspot plume below.”

Nanoflares are eruptions on the Sun which are billion times less energetic than ordinary flares but still have the power that belies their name. 

They appear as little brightenings of the solar surface at extreme ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths and they might solve a long-standing mystery in solar physics:  What causes the Sun's corona to be so hot?

Physicist David Smith of the UC Santa Crus says a typical 'nanoflare' has the same energy as 240 megatons of TNT, or something like 10 000 atomic fission bombs.

A large green fireball accompanied by sonic booms was observed over European countries of Germany, Austria and Switzerland at 19:44 UTC on March 15, 2015.

Markus Griesser from the Eschenberg Observatory in Switzerland said the information they received clearly indicates that it was a meteorite. He added it is too early to determine where the meteorite may have crashed.

Witnesses told Swiss newspaper Le Matin that they saw a “flash, like a lightning bolt” and others reported hearing a dull thunder accompanying the meteorite as it passed through the sky, TheLocal.fr writes. 

Some reported hearing two loud explosions on top of seeing the greenish light.

Swiss-made, 100% solar-powered airplane took off from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates on Monday, March 9, 2015 in a first ever attempt to fly around the world in a plane powered entirely by energy received from the Sun.

On the same day, the plane successfully completed the first of 12 parts of its trip, flying from Abu Dhabi to Muscat, Oman. It was a relatively easy part that lasted 13 hours but the real challenges are yet to come; like the stretch from Nanjing, China to Hawaii, a 8 000 km (5 000 miles) journey of some 120 hours or 5 days.

At 02:35 UTC today, the plane took off on its second flight, from Muscat to Ahmedabad, India. This part is 1 465 km long (910 miles) and the estimated flight time is 16 hours.