Newsdesk Archive
Studying historical, astronomical and biblical records, Grant Mathews, University of Notre Dame professor, believes the event that led the Magi was an extremely rare planetary alignment occurring in 6 B.C., and the likes of which may never be seen again.
Lucy, the world famous early bipedal hominin, was a swinger. Scans of her skeleton confirm that she had an exceptionally powerful upper body, thanks to spending a lot of time climbing trees.
Alt: Human ancestor 'Lucy' was a tree climber, new evidence suggests
Sixteen years ago, road workers detonated a controlled explosive to remove a large limestone boulder blocking a planned roadway outside of Tel Aviv in Israel. Soon after the dust settled, it became clear that the road would need to be rerouted.
Two long-awaited studies published December 1 in the Journal of Psychopharmacology attest to this. One conducted at NYU involved 29 patients; another, done at Johns Hopkins University, had 51. Both studies followed similar protocols, and both found that after being given psilocybin, 80 percent of patients experienced a drop in anxiety and depression that lasted for six months or more.
Alt: Magic mushroom chemical psilocybin could be key to treating depression - studies
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given the green light to phase three trials of MDMA to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, the final phase of validation required to turn the party drug into a legal medicine.
Alt: MDMA could be on the market legally by 2021
The Dáil has passed a bill to make cannabis available in Ireland for medicinal use, after the Government said it would not oppose the legislation.
Related: Health care refugees: Medical marijuana and new hope
Related: Alcohol intake associated with increased risk of melanoma
Are you a pessimist or an optimist? If you're anything like pigs, your outlook on life may depend on your personality and mood, according to a new study.
Plant-based diets are tied to a lower risk of health problems like heart disease, diabetes, obesity and certain cancers - and pretty much anyone can eat this way, according to a leading group of nutritionists.
Archaeologists working in Mexico City have uncovered a circular temple built more than 650 years ago to worship a god of wind.
It was excavated at a site discovered two years ago when a mid-20th-century supermarket was demolished.
A team of international archaeologists believe a pair of mummified legs on display in an Italian museum may belong to Egyptian Queen Nefertari – the favourite wife of the pharaoh Ramses II.
Alt: Mystery Mummy Legs Belonged to Egyptian Queen Nefertari
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will sign an agreement with Egypt today (Nov. 30) that will restrict the importation of Egyptian artifacts to the United States.
A mass burial of bodies, known to be victims of the Black Death, has been discovered at the site of a 14th-century monastery hospital at Thornton Abbey, Lincolnshire.
Archaeologists from the University of Sheffield revealed 48 skeletons, many of which were children, at the extremely rare Black Death burial site.
Sutton Hoo in East Anglia is one of the most important archaeological sites in England. The weapons, clothing and other objects buried in the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries show that trade networks in the 6th and 7th century reached as far away as Europe and Asia.
Large-scale forest fires started by prehistoric hunter-gatherers are probably the reason why Europe is not more densely forested. This is the finding of an international team, including climate researcher Professor Jed Kaplan of the University of Lausanne and archaeologist Professor Jan Kolen of Leiden University.
As little as 6,000 years ago, the vast Sahara Desert was covered in grassland that received plenty of rainfall, but shifts in the world's weather patterns abruptly transformed the vegetated region into some of the driest land on Earth.
An annual study released by the Brazilian government estimates that the rate of deforestation in the Amazon has increased by 29 percent over last year.
That's the second year in a row that deforestation in the Amazon quickened; last year, the pace rose by about 24 percent.
The technosphere is comprised of all of the structures that humans have constructed to keep them alive on the planet – from houses, factories and farms to computer systems, smartphones and CDs, to the waste in landfills and spoil heaps.
Dallas, Texas is about to become one of the greenest cities in America – by building the country’s largest urban nature park. Dallas’ new “Nature District” will comprise a staggering 10,000 acres, including 7,000 acres of the Great Trinity Forest. The Trinity River Park designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates could revitalize a Dallas floodplain into a lush green recreation space.
Religious and spiritual experiences activate the brain reward circuits in much the same way as love, sex, gambling, drugs and music, report researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine.
Never go to bed angry, the old saying goes, or bad feeling will harden into resentment. Now scientists have found evidence to support the idea that negative emotional memories are harder to reverse after a night’s sleep.
Chimpanzees and bonobos are our closest relatives, and gorillas are only a little further away. But when it comes to violence, there are clear differences between the species. While bonobos are known to live in fairly harmonious societies, the same cannot be said either for us or for chimps.
Life at the bottom of the social ladder can be damaging to health – even for monkeys.
A study of rhesus monkeys has revealed the stress of low social status can be damaging to the immune system of the animals.
An increasing number of African elephants are now born tuskless because poachers have consistently targetted animals with the best ivory over decades, fundamentally altering the gene pool.
What if humans could regrow an amputated arm or leg, or completely restore nervous system function after a spinal cord injury?
A new study of one of our closest invertebrate relatives, the acorn worm, reveals that this feat might one day be possible.
Honey bee brood – the larvae and pupae of drones – has great potential as a food source. It is already eaten as a delicacy in many countries, including Mexico, Thailand and Australia. It has a nutty flavor with a crunchy texture when eaten cooked or dried, and is a versatile ingredient used in soups and egg dishes. It also has high nutritional value, similar to beef in terms of protein quality and quantity, say researchers.
Insects aren’t the first thing that come to mind when we think of Antarctica, but as the discovery of a rare Antarctic beetle shows, this frozen continent was quite different millions of years ago.
As the short Antarctic spring ends and long summer days approach, geoscientists are flocking to the frozen continent to start a new kind of exploration.
In December, the first drill designed to search for a scientifically useful sample of ice that is at least 1.5 million years old will begin its work.
It’s a well-known fact that water, at sea level, starts to boil at a temperature of 212 degrees Fahrenheit, or 100 degrees Celsius. And scientists have long observed that when water is confined in very small spaces, its boiling and freezing points can change a bit, usually dropping by around 10 C or so.
Related: Physicists' prediction of gas 'droplets' confirmed
Assessing a person’s trustworthiness and innocence based on their facial characteristics may seem like a very judgmental thing to do, but several studies have tried to show that these criticisms could hold some water. Nineteenth century criminologist Cesare Lombroso theorized that some people were ‘born criminal’, manifesting in certain facial features.
AN ARTIFICIAL intelligence system can predict how a scene will unfold and dream up a vision of the immediate future.
Given a still image, the deep learning algorithm generates a mini video showing what could happen next. If it starts with a picture of a train station, it might imagine the train pulling away from the platform, for example.
Hanneke De Bruijne is completely paralyzed – including her breathing, which requires the use of a ventilator – by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – the rapidly progressive and ultimately fatal neurological disease that attacks the nerve cells responsible for controlling voluntary muscle actions. But she is not completely locked in this non-functioning body. Hanneke can communicate with the world by thought alone because of implants in her brain.
In the late 1960s, he went to Brazil in search of an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon rain forest called the Mayoruna. McIntyre was dropped off on a riverbank, and followed the tribe into the forest. Before long he was unable to find his way back and ended up missing his return flight. McIntyre lived with the tribe for two months. Although they shared no common language, he discovered he could communicate with the chief via telepathy, in a manner he began to call “beaming.” This skill, he later learned, was known to the tribe as the “other language,” a way of communicating possessed only by the elders.
Somewhere between Earth's creation and where we are today, scientists have demonstrated that some early life forms existed just fine without any oxygen.
While researchers proclaim the first half of our 4.5 billion-year-old planet's life as an important time for the development and evolution of early bacteria, evidence for these life forms remains sparse including how they survived at a time when oxygen levels in the atmosphere were less than one-thousandth of one percent of what they are today.
Scientists have persuaded living organisms to make silicon-carbon bonds—something only chemists had done before.
The team at Caltech “bred” a bacterial protein to have the ability to make the man-made bonds, a finding that has applications in several industries.
Alt: For the first time, living cells have formed carbon-silicon bonds
Starch is only produced by plants and algae. Now, it can also be produced by yeast - or, at any rate, by the yeasts in labs, report scientists. The researchers have succeeded in implanting yeast with the machinery that plants use to create this stored form of glucose.
New research is helping to tease out the mechanics of how the gut microbiome communicates with the cells of its host to switch genes on and off. The upshot of the study, another indictment of the so-called Western diet (high in saturated fats, sugar and red meat), reveals how the metabolites produced by the bacteria in the stomach chemically communicate with cells, including cells far beyond the colon, to dictate gene expression and health in its host.
People who struggle to maintain a healthy weight after dieting may do so because their gut bacteria retains a “memory” of their past weight, according to scientists.
Related: Why diet drinks with aspartame may actually help make you fatter
You probably can’t remember life as a 2-year-old. But memory traces from our earliest years might stay in our brains, ready to be reactivated with the right trigger, according to research in rats.
The percent of older US adults with dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, declined from 11.6 percent in 2000 to 8.8 percent in 2012, a decrease of nearly a quarter, scientists reported on Monday.
Related: People over 80 who use technology feel healthier
Conspiracy theorists claim to have found evidence of 'ancient walled cities' on Mars in their latest bizarre theory.
Related: British policeman was 'ABDUCTED by aliens after UFO stalked him' 36 years ago TODAY
Related: Wierdest UFO ever? Photographer captures bizarre 'sky portal' on camera
Related: Mass UFO Sightings Reported in Multiple Turkish Cities
Related: Are aliens watching LIVERPOOL? Two blue 'UFO' spheres are spotted flying erratically above a housing estate
Related: An Astrolinguist Explains How to Talk to Aliens
An Antarctic mountain with a unique, pyramid-like shape is suddenly internet-famous, with countless theorists contemplating its origin. Some are wondering whether an ancient civilization created the rocky, pyramidal structure, and others are pointing toward outer space, speculating about the involvement of aliens.
Within a decade, the Yakama people of south-central Washington State should be able to harvest salmon once again with spears, nets, and other traditional methods along tributaries of the Yakima River.
“We want to return to serving as stewards of the land,” says Philip Rigdon, the deputy director of natural resources for the Yakama Nation.
Sinkholes are like Earth’s way of reminding us that no matter how smart we get, it can always mess with us by taking the ground out beneath our feet without a moment’s notice.
Japanese researchers have revealed a relationship between helium levels in groundwater and the amount of stress exerted on inner rock layers of the earth, found at locations near the epicenter of the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake. Scientists hope the finding will lead to the development of a monitoring system that catches stress changes that could foreshadow a big earthquake.
Madagascar, the big island off the east coast of Africa with the lemurs and baobabs, is thought to be sitting in the middle of an old tectonic plate, and so, by the rules of plate tectonics, should be tectonically quiet: few earthquakes and no volcanoes.
For the first time, researchers have confirmed the existence of the largest exposed fault on Earth, and it could explain how a 7.2-km-deep (4.5-mile) abyss formed in the Pacific Ocean.
Just off the coast of southern Sweden, researchers have discovered what is thought to be the submerged remains of an ancient Stone Age lagoon community.
The findings include a 9,000-year-old pick axe sculpted from elk antlers, and eight fish traps made of braided hazel rods.
Evidence of complex and gruesome funeral rites found in the Lapa do Santo cave in Brazil have shocked researchers yet again. The researchers have discovered evidence of the mutilation of corpses, including the removal of flesh, muscles, and teeth, exposure to fire, and possible cannibalism. This is added to a previous discovery of a decapitated skull found at the site last year.
Concealed inside a key building in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, researchers from The University of Nottingham have used the latest scanning technology to reveal in 3D a hiding-hole used by 17th-Century Catholic priests escaping religious persecution.
It’s sort of like the evil eye, but in reverse: the good eye, brought on by an application of lead-based kohl makeup that was unknowingly poisonous to ancient Egyptians but also had anti-microbial properties. Plus there was the magical aspect of invoking the gods Horus and Ra with an application of the black makeup and further protective properties.
Picture a dinosaur about the size of a golden retriever. Make it walk on two legs. Give it freckles. Then give it a dark back and a light belly. That’s a pretty good picture of one plant-eating dinosaur.
Previous archaeological evidence suggests that humans settled in North America roughly 13,000 years ago when the Clovis hunter-gatherer tribes crossed the Bering Strait from Asia using now-melted bridges of icy land. Evidence for this theory comes mainly in the form of flint tools found throughout the southwestern United States.
Scientists from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen discovered that Neanderthals modified their survival strategies even without external influences, such as environmental or climate changes.
Where's the best place to start when retracing the life of a person who lived 4,000 years ago? Turns out, it's simple—you start at the beginning.
Using a method known for helping forensic scientists solve cold cases, University of Florida doctoral student Ashley Sharpe created a map for determining the birthplace of ancient people and animals in Central America.
Pinpointing birth and death locations will help Sharpe and other archaeologists track the movement of prehistoric Maya and potentially solve mysteries surrounding the civilization's origins and eventual demise.
A 5,000-year-old hill fort is being damaged by the "illicit use of metal detectors", police say.
Related: Ancient settlement discovered on controversial A6 route
Passengers simmered in Jacuzzis and feasted on gourmet cuisine this summer as the 850-foot cruise ship Crystal Serenity moved through the Northwest Passage.
But in the summer of 1778, when Capt. James Cook tried to find a Western entrance to the route, his men toiled on frost-slicked decks and complained about having to supplement dwindling rations with walrus meat.
The drugs that have protected us from virulent bacteria for more than seventy years are slowly losing their edge, and we need new weapons. Disease-causing bacteria are becoming impervious to antibiotics that once wiped them out, including some drugs once considered last-resort.
A World War One antiseptic could step in both as a frontline anti-viral treatment and a key to the fight against antibiotic resistance.
Researchers in Melbourne, Australia, show the coal tar-derived acriflavine activates the immune system – even going so far as to offer protection against the common cold.
Not quite two centuries after researchers and healers started making huge strides in medicine, some diseases stubbornly elude cures. In these cases, many people resort to imploring God to heal patients. However, about 2,000 years ago, in the ancient world of Italy and Greece, there was “temple medicine”—a type of medical practice that relied more on gods, oracles and divine intervention than on professional healers.
This is one explanation for the multitudes of ancient bronze, clay, wood and terracotta figurines and body parts found in various places
New research on three archaeological sites of the famed Indus Valley civilization (3000-1500 BC) in north-west India has revealed that domesticated rice farming in South Asia began far earlier than previously believed, and may have developed in tandem with — rather than as a result of — rice domestication in China.
Related: Over 300 ancient manuscripts on yoga yet to be deciphered
Engineering projects don’t come any bigger than this. If India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, gets his way, work could soon begin on a project to link large rivers in the Himalayas and Deccan Peninsula via 30 mega-canals and 3000 dams.
In the not-too-distant future, our fields could be tilled, sown, tended and harvested entirely by fleets of co-operating autonomous machines by land and air.
And they'll be working both day and night.
Related: Can you hear the corn grow? Yes!
The Canadian government is accelerating its transition from traditional coal power to cleaner alternatives, aiming to mostly run on clean energy by 2030. The announcement was made in an official government press release by the Office of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change.
Related: Scientists say climate change wiped out an entire underwater ecosystem. Again.
Related: Arctic ice melt could trigger uncontrollable climate change at global level
Related: West Antarctic ice shelf breaking up from the inside out
New technology has been developed that uses nuclear waste to generate electricity in a nuclear-powered battery. A team of physicists and chemists from the University of Bristol have grown a man-made diamond that, when placed in a radioactive field, is able to generate a small electrical current.
Related: Cold Fusion Lives On, with Experiments Creating Energy When None Should Exist
Water is not just vital to life on Earth – it turns out that it may have been a crucial ingredient of the primordial body that split apart 4.5 billion years ago to become Earth and the moon.
The latest evidence for this, from lab simulations of how minerals formed in the early moon, may settle a long-running debate about whether the early moon and Earth contained water from the outset, or whether it arrived later through collisions with water-bearing comets or asteroids.
A group of researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the University of Tokyo, and the Astrobiology Center among others has observed the transit of a potentially Earth-like extrasolar planet known as K2-3d using the MuSCAT instrument on the Okayama Astrophysical Observatory 188-cm telescope.
Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been gaining a lot of traction as of late with various industry experts, government officials, and financial experts expressing the need to explore the possibilities of implementing a basic income program.
This is why Eight, a charity founded in 2015, is conducting a pilot study in an undisclosed village in the Fort Portal region of Uganda.
Related: Another Nation Has Developed a National Currency That’s Entirely Digital
You may get better at creative problem solving as you age, new research suggests.
Related: Our brains have a basic algorithm that enables our intelligence
Every day in the United States, millions of expectant mothers take a prenatal vitamin on the advice of their doctor.
The counsel typically comes with physical health in mind: folic acid to help avoid fetal spinal cord problems; iodine to spur healthy brain development; calcium to be bound like molecular Legos into diminutive baby bones.
Related: Babies learn best when their brain waves are in sync with their parents
It's tough to connect with nature at this time of year.
Your days are spent under artificial lights in an office, while the last of autumn's blooms are hidden beneath piles of decaying leaves.
Related: Air pollution 'causes 467,000 premature deaths a year in Europe'
We’ve all been told to bundle up or we’ll catch cold. But science says the common cold is caused by the rhinovirus, not the weather. Actually, according to researchers at Yale University, there just might be something to this old wives’ tale.
A team of researchers led by Dr. Mark Connors of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has identified an antibody from an HIV-infected person that neutralized 98% of HIV strains tested, including 16 of 20 strains resistant to other members of its class.
Related: New HIV Genetic Evidence Dispels “Patient Zero” Myth
Related: Early study finds antibody that 'neutralizes' Zika virus
Related: One patient’s blood might hold a new weapon against HIV
The AI can translate a language pair with a reasonable amount of accuracy if it has translated both of them into another common language.
This removes a significant amount of human input, and it opens the door to AI that learn and problem solve better than ever.
Scientists from The University of Manchester working on a revolutionary telescope project have harnessed the power of distributed computing from the UK's GridPP collaboration to tackle one of the Universe's biggest mysteries – the nature of dark matter and dark energy.
Related: World's fastest quantum simulator operating at the atomic level
Related: Atomic beltway could solve problems of cosmic gravity
Scientists behind a theory that the speed of light is variable - and not constant as Einstein suggested - have made a prediction that could be tested.
Einstein observed that the speed of light remains the same in any situation, and this meant that space and time could be different in different situations.
Related: Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion [TEDx Video]
In 2007, NASA’s unmanned Spirit Rover wheeled across Mars, taking photographs and data, until it eventually got stuck in soft red soil two years later. Photographs of hot spring silica deposits were seen, but was thought to be just another geological structure.
An ice sheet with more water than Lake Superior may slake the thirst of future astronauts living on Mars.
Using radar soundings from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, scientists probed what lies in Utopia Planitia, a 2,000-mile-wide basin within an ancient impact crater.
The search for mysterious “fast radio bursts” – very brief but intense pulses of radio waves from outer space – is heating up. Nobody knows what causes these powerful bursts, but some have even speculated that the signals could be transmitted by distant alien civilisations. In fact, astronomers are so perplexed by the phenomenon that it is driving a renaissance in radio astronomy.
Sitting in a drab industrial neighborhood surrounded by warehouses and factories, Astroscale’s Tokyo office seems appropriately located for a company seeking to enter the waste management business.
Former NASA researcher and current University of Central Florida professor Dr. Phil Metzger presented a proposal stating that mining and manufacturing outside of our planet is currently possible with the technology we have today, and it would be advantageous to Earth, as well (as opposed to a money drain).
Using an airborne version of the Teledyne Optech lidar device, the team was able to create a 3-D model of the surface. They were also able to generate as a ‘bare-earth” version of the area that showed what the land looked like without all of the concealing features – i.e. rocks, trees and grass – that hide its past.
Did the Vikings visit Pre-Columbian Mexico? The depiction of white people on Chichen Itza murals in the Temple of the Warriors probably represent Vikings - the major European navigators around the time this temple was built. This suggests the tradition of the “White Lords” who had visited Mexico before the Spanish were the Vikings.
Related: Early America: Evidence of original 1620 Plymouth settlement discovered
Related: Ancient Romans explored North America
Archaeologists working in Egypt have uncovered an intricate tableau of boats inside a subterranean vault belonging to the funerary complex of Senwosret III, who passed away in 1839 BCE.
Related: Anchoring Bangladesh's Ancient Boatbuilding Technology
Should a crop circle be described as such if there are no crops and it’s not really a circle? That’s the first question to ask about a new report from Russia of a mysterious large design that seemingly appeared overnight on the icy surface of Lake Sinara. Are crop circle makers looking for something to do to stay in shape during the off-season?
A cloud of mystery looms over the ringforts that speckle the countryside of Ireland. More than 45,000 ringforts have been documented throughout Northern Europe and yet little is known about the date, occupancy, and function of these structures. Perhaps this mystery persists due to the mythology surrounding them; that they exist as the gate way to the realm of the fairies and are protected pieces of Irish history that few dare to disturb. Accounts of missing livestock, trances, death, and other misfortune have kept the fairy forts protected for many years
Related: Shamanic Explorations of Supernatural Realms: Cave Art - The Earliest Folklore
Have you had your heart set of getting a wrestling scholarship but no schools offered you one? Do you think you can use your skills to wrestle demons instead? A new school in Argentina may be for you.
World leaders called for the decriminalization of drugs on Monday, in a report released by a commission that includes the former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and former presidents of Colombia, Mexico and Brazil.
Related: Ecstasy ingredient touted as treatment for anxiety in autism
Related: Cocaine roadside test developed in effort to reduce drug-driving
Two people have died in Melbourne, Australia, from a rare phenomenon known as "thunderstorm asthma", after a storm hit the city late on Monday local time.
Paramedics and hospitals were stretched to their limits as thousands phoned to report breathing problems.
When you can order a new body part online, you’ll have this doctor to thank
In a harshly lit laboratory in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, there sits a machine that is, in many ways, similar to a standard-issue desktop printer. It has ink reservoirs and nozzles, an internal fan to keep it cool, and a set of input jacks that can be used to connect it to a nearby computer. It is subject to the occasional jam. And yet the 800-pound steel and plastic device is unlike anything you’ve ever encountered, because what it prints is alive
Related: Synthetic Organs: We’re One Step Closer to Having Bioartificial Kidneys
Spoiler alert: this article contains sensitive information about Santa Claus. Children may wish to look away now.
Two psychologists have raised the spectre of children’s moral compass being permanently thrown off-kilter by what is normally considered a magical part of the Christmas tradition.
Although recent election coverage may suggest otherwise, research shows that people are more likely to use positive words than negative words on the whole in their communications. Behavioral scientists have extensively documented this phenomenon, known as language positivity bias (LPB), in a number of different languages.
Before the smartphone or even Morse code, some rural peoples “spoke” long distance by whistling. Linguists are racing to study the dying languages
Related: Can music change the taste of chocolate? Take the test to find out how different sounds trick your tastebuds
The indigenous Huaorani people of Ecuador are looking to tourism to spread a message of hope and counter the forces of resource exploitation
Related: Rare Photos of Brazilian Tribe Spur Pleas to Protect It
The thought of 2.8 billion disposable coffee cups a year being dumped in landfill sites across Germany is enough to leave a bitter taste in the mouth of any consumer.
Related: Eat It, Don't Leave It: How London Became A Leader In Anti-Food Waste
Related: Science explains why refrigerators sap the flavor from ripe tomatoes
Conservationists hope to boost livelihoods along the poverty-stricken Arizona–Mexico borderlands by repairing habitat for more than 900 species of wild pollinators
Related: Health Canada proposes ban on pesticide linked to bee deaths
Related: The Bee That Breaks Your Heart
A team of researchers from France, the U.S. and Italy has found evidence from the Tohoku-Oki earthquake that sensors that measure changes in gravity might offer a way to warn people of impending disaster faster than traditional methods
Related: New Zealand earthquake raised seabeds by more than a metre
Related: In Canada, a Direct Link Between Fracking and Earthquakes
Frozen beneath a region of cracked and pitted plains on Mars lies about as much water as what's in Lake Superior, largest of the Great Lakes, researchers using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have determined.
A cauliflower-shaped structure on Mars has some researchers scratching their heads — and others wondering if it could have been created by martian microbes.
Evidence from the Viking landers from the 1970s shows that we could have overlooked some evidence for life on the planet.
Finding any confirmation of life on Mars is very unlikely, but the ability to rake another look at promising evidence is an important backbone of science.
In the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick’s spacecraft spins through the solar system like a giant, futuristic ferris wheel. The rotating craft has a suitably epic quality and, through the centripetal force, conveniently explains why there appears to be gravity inside the spaceship.