Newsdesk Archive
Last week, astronomers announced that our nearest neighboring star hosts an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone—an exciting prospect for alien life, and a possible second home for humanity. But before we assemble the interstellar welcoming party to greet our cosmic neighbors, we need to figure out whether Proxima b is capable of supporting life at all. Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, that question could be answered in less than three years.
An independent scientist has confirmed that the paper by scientists at the Nasa Eagleworks Laboratories on achieving thrust using highly controversial space propulsion technology EmDrive has passed peer review, and will soon be published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
A strange and almost perfect circular island sits near the northeastern edge of Argentina, which is said to float on its own axis in the middle of a swampy marsh.
Called 'The Eye', this mysterious land is surrounded by a tiny channel of clear water and some believe it is camouflage for a massive alien base that lays quietly beneath the surface.
Video here
Related: Meet the (alleged) aliens of Proxima b
Related: Medieval wall painting found in Transylvania church could be the first ever depiction of aliens
?Timbers believed to be from a unique 5,000-year-old logboat have been discovered on a building site in Wales.
?The prehistoric remains found at Monmouth have been radiocarbon-dated to 3,210 BC, in the New Stone Age.
An ancient tablet recently unearthed in Tuscany has revealed its first secret: the engraved name of a goddess linked to fertility.
The 500-pound (227 kilograms) stone slab, or stele, was unearthed earlier this year at Poggio Colla, a sixth century B.C. site built by the Etruscans.
While excavating the ancient Roman site of Ad Putea in modern Riben, Bulgaria, researchers made a startling discovery – an artifact that they believe may be one of the earliest attempts of writing in the world. This intriguing piece was found in a previously unknown settlement that lay below the Roman site.
Seven thousand years ago, in Northern Israel’s Tel Beit She’an Valley, ancient residents ate wheat, barley, buckwheat, lentils and peas.
They also raised herds of goats, sheep, cattle and pigs, which were eaten mainly during festive events.
An Egyptian mummy's head and face have been reconstructed with forensic science and 3D printing, offering scientists a tantalizing glimpse of the individual's life and death.
The mummified head was discovered by accident in the collections of the University of Melbourne in Australia.
Patience is a virtue. Don’t bug your partner about their weight. Try not to vex your boss. As a new translation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs reveals, the fundamental rules of human behavior have changed little in the last 4,000 years—and wisdom from the times of the pharaohs still rings wry and insightful today.
Writings from Ancient Egypt (Penguin Classics) is an anthology of millennia-old papyrus, letters, and stone carvings, selected and translated into sparkling contemporary English by Cambridge University Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson.
Before the infamous Black Death, the first great plague epidemic was the Justinian plague, which, over the course of two centuries, wiped out up to an estimated 50 million (15 percent) of the world's population throughout the Byzantine Empire—and may have helped speed the decline of the eastern Roman Empire.
No one knows why it disappeared.
More than 15 ancient cooking hearths unearthed in Alaska are turning up surprising new clues about the lives and diets of Sub-Arctic hunters during the Ice Age.
The fire pits have been found to contain an abundance of salmon remains, archaeologists say, and the oldest of the pits — dated to at least 11,800 years old — has revealed the earliest evidence yet of salmon cooking in the New World.
Scientists today announced the discovery of a new species of pterosaur from the Patagonia region of South America. The cranial remains were in an excellent state of preservation and belonged to a new species of pterosaur from the Early Jurassic. The researchers have named this new species 'Allkauren koi' from the native Tehuelche word 'all' for 'brain', and 'karuen' for 'ancient'.
Alt: Revealed: 200 million-year-old intact skull of a new species of pterosaur is found in Patagonia
The huge herbivores of the Ice Age were ecosystem engineers. Wherever they went, mastodons, sloths, bison, and their ilk changed the landscape by eating, defecating, trampling, and otherwise going about their plant-mashing business. But they were not isolated agents. Following out the engineer analogy, Ice Age megaherbivores had managers. These were the sabercats, hyenas, wolves, and other predators past.
For flowering plants to reproduce sexually, they need to disperse pollen so that the male gametes in the pollen can reach and fertilize the egg in the plant embryo sac. Plants have evolved a variety of mechanisms to disperse pollen.
A University of Adelaide-led project has overturned the theory that the evolution of human intelligence was simply related to the size of the brain—but rather linked more closely to the supply of blood to the brain.
The international collaboration between Australia and South Africa showed that the human brain evolved to become not only larger, but more energetically costly and blood thirsty than previously believed.
The ancient human ancestor known as Lucy may have met her death more than 3m years ago when she tumbled out of a tree and crashed to the woodland floor, a team of US researchers claim.
Located outside of Rosh HaAyin and Tel Aviv, Qesem Cave was accidentally discovered during road work 16 years ago; since then, the cave has revealed a wealth of information on early humans, and helps shed light on the evolution of humanity.
Thousands of years ago, people were performing a form of surgery called "trepanation" that involves boring holes through a person's skull
For a large part of human prehistory, people around the world practised trepanation: a crude surgical procedure that involves forming a hole in the skull of a living person by either drilling, cutting or scraping away layers of bone with a sharp implement.
A Crusades-era hand grenade that was retrieved from the sea off the Israeli coast several years ago has been handed over to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) by a family that inherited it.
Made from heavy clay and gorgeously embossed, the incendiary weapon would have been used like some sort of a molotov cocktail. It was filled with naphtha -- a flammable sticky liquid known as Greek fire -- then sealed and hurled onto enemies.
Ancient items of jewellery found by archeologists on Taymyr peninsula are stone labrets which were inserted into the face below the bottom lip.
The discovery was made during the summer 2016 archeological season at a location some 600 kilometres above the Arctic Circle. The site in the far north of Krasnoyarsk region is believed to date as far back as three or four millennium BC.
Many of us are quick to make subconscious assumptions about people when we're in a room full of strangers. The less we know about a person, the more likely we are to jump to conclusions about their behaviors. Research from Georgetown University has found placing a genuine smile on our face can deter strangers from making negative conclusions, including gender bias and ethnic stereotyping.
Smell plays a large evolutionary part in picking potential mates. Our noses know how to diversify our gene pools, when fertility is at its height — and also detect who will agree with our political stance. Sense of smell even correlates with social circle size.
Compared with other bodily excretions, tears are vastly understudied. Collecting the salty drops is tedious—weepy donors are rare, men hardly ever sign up and tears must be “fresh” for their makeup to be properly analyzed. As a result, researchers lack a consensus about the purpose of a basic human behavior.
Leaving a child unattended is considered taboo in today’s intensive parenting atmosphere, despite evidence that American children are safer than ever. So why are parents denying their children the same freedom and independence that they themselves enjoyed as children?
Related: Robot Babies Meant to Prevent Teen Pregnancy May Actually Promote It
Dogs have the ability to distinguish vocabulary words and the intonation of human speech through brain regions similar to those that humans use, a new study reports. Attila Andics et al. note that vocabulary learning "does not appear to be a uniquely human capacity that follows from the emergence of language, but rather a more ancient function that can be exploited to link arbitrary sound sequences to meanings."
Alt: You can’t trick your dog by being mean in a happy voice
More than 300 wild reindeer were recently killed by lightning at a Norwegian national park, officials say.
The Norwegian Environment Agency has released haunting images of reindeer—including 70 calves—that seemingly fell over where they stood in the grasses of Hardangervidda, the largest high mountain plateau in northern Europe.
Alt: How exactly did lightning kill 323 reindeer in Norway?
It’s a cat-and-mouse tale with a difference. The lesser salmon catfish has been found feasting on mice. But how does it catch them?
Some catfish are known to ambush unwary pigeons at the water’s edge, giving them the nickname “freshwater killer whales”. But the lesser salmon catfish might just be an opportunist, gobbling up animals when they drown.
A remarkable discovery has been made: that orcas evolve according to culture, just like we do. And yet we cull them in coves and parade them in aquariums
Related: Anti-whalers enlist fast ship to fight off Japanese
The planet is warming at a pace not experienced within the past 1,000 years, at least, making it “very unlikely” that the world will stay within a crucial temperature limit agreed by nations just last year, according to Nasa’s top climate scientist.
Images of mysterious circles in Aberdeen grass that sparked social media speculation have been explained.
Dozens of the patches were photographed in the Seaton area of the city. Suggestions from members of the public as to the cause included aliens.
Related: Facts About Microbursts
Related: Huge crop circle SWASTIKA appears in a field in Wiltshire (Is it a Nazi symbol or Indian symbol of positivity?)
Meteorites that crashed onto Earth billions of years ago may have provided the phosphorous essential to the biological systems of terrestrial life. The meteorites are believed to have contained a phosphorus-bearing mineral called schreibersite, and scientists have recently developed a synthetic version that reacts chemically with organic molecules, showing its potential as a nutrient for life.
Earlier this year, NASA scientists predicted that it's possible that the universe is filled with microscopic black holes that formed before our universe's existed. The NASA study reported that these black holes could speed through space like cosmic bullets every 1,000 years. Astrophysicists are proposing that our Universe is surrounded by infinite number of black holes that have formed 13.8 billion years ago.
SETI researchers are buzzing about a strong spike in radio signals that seemed to come from the direction of a sunlike star in the constellation Hercules, known as HD 164595.
The signal conceivably fits the profile for an intentional transmission from an extraterrestrial source – but it could also be a case of earthly radio interference, or a microlensing event in which the star’s gravitational field focused stray signals coming from much farther away.
The Milky Way has a dark twin. A dimly lit massive galaxy, called Dragonfly 44, consists of a record 99.99 per cent dark matter, and could help rewrite our theories of galaxy formation.
Dragonfly 44 is the Milky Way’s doppelgänger in mass, but its opposite in number of stars and structure.
Planets that start out hot may stay hot, no matter how far they lie from their host stars.
A new study suggests that, contrary to prevailing wisdom, the temperature of a planet doesn't always stabilize over time, so hot-blooded worlds may have a hard time holding onto liquid water — even if they reside in the temperate region around their stars known as the "habitable zone."
Charles Bombardier, a Montreal-based innovator, has unveiled a concept for a hypothetical space train called Solar Express that can shuttle passengers and payloads between planets faster than any existing systems.
It would provide humankind with near limitless energy, ending dependence on fossil fuels for generating electricity.
US Government physicists have backed plans to create 'a star in a jar' - replicating on Earth the way the sun and stars create energy through fusion.
CERN’s PR department is in overdrive today, following an inexplicable prank on its grounds by a handful of researchers.
Alt: “WTF” Ritual Sacrifice Theater at CERN: Perception, Mimesis, & Hazing Rituals
Where light and matter intersect, the world illuminates. Where light and matter interact so strongly that they become one, they illuminate a world of new physics, according to Rice University scientists.
Related: Simulations show a single photon can simultaneously excite two atoms
Related: Spinning electrons could lead to new electronics
Humanity’s impact on the Earth is now so profound that a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – needs to be declared, according to an official expert group who presented the recommendation to the International Geological Congress in Cape Town on Monday.
The installed price of solar energy has declined significantly in recent years as policy and market forces have driven more and more solar installations.
Now, the latest data show that the continued decrease in solar prices is unlikely to slow down anytime soon, with total installed prices dropping by 5 percent for rooftop residential systems, and 12 percent for larger utility-scale solar farms.
The infrastructure California needs to generate energy for electricity and clean water, which will be significant, need not blight the landscape. Designs like The Pipe demonstrate how the provision of public services like these can be knitted into every day life in a healthy, aesthetically-pleasing way.
The Earth beneath your feet is "humming" all the time. Typically these vibrations are too faint and low-frequency for your ears to hear. But they can be detected by seismometers, the instruments designed to study the generally more powerful vibrations that emanate from earthquakes.
Related: Stormy 'weather bomb' reveals Earth's geological secrets
Scientists working with laser data have discovered a vast reef behind the familiar Great Barrier Reef. High-resolution seafloor data provided by LiDAR-equipped aircraft have revealed great fields of unusual donut-shaped circular mounds, each 200-300 meters across and up to 10 meters deep at the center.
Coming on the same day that President Barack Obama designated a massive expansion of a marine reserve in the Hawaiian Islands, the Russian government has expanded the Russian Arctic (Russkaya Arktika) National Park to include Franz Josef Land, the world's northernmost chain of islands.
Capping a week of 100th anniversary celebrations for the National Park Service, President Barack Obama on Friday turned to the ocean to create the largest protected area anywhere on Earth—a half-million-square-mile arc of remote Pacific waters known for both exceptional marine life and importance to native Hawaiian culture.
A team of six people have completed a Mars simulation in Hawaii, where they lived in near isolation for a year.
Since 29 August 2015, the group lived in close quarters in a dome, without fresh air, fresh food or privacy.
Scientists have engineered a bacterium that can take carbon dioxide from the air and turn it into fuel in a single enzymatic step.
The process draws on sunlight to produce methane and hydrogen inside the bacterium Rhodopseudomonas palustris, in essence reversing combustion. These engineered bacteria could guide scientists toward better carbon-neutral biofuels.
Growing demand for rechargeable lithium batteries used in consumer electronics and electric vehicles is driving efforts to expand battery recycling, primarily to recover lithium, cobalt, and other valuable metals.
Burning forests to make way for plantations to support the world's insatiable demand for palm oil is one of the main causes of the astonishing decline in numbers of this species
Related: Logging roads can rob forest soil of water
Related: Stopping deforestation will not end tropical species losses
While researching lions in Zambia, biologist Thandiwe Mweetwa noticed that lionesses within a pride will all have cubs around the same time.
When she looked into it further, Mweetwa learned lionesses sync their fertility cycles so that they can all raise their young together.
A team of researchers with members from France, Hungary and Madagascar has found that a type of carp bred to have fewer scales and subsequently released into the wild in Madagascar a century ago has devolved to get its scales back. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the team describes how they collected large numbers of specimens to study their scales and to look at their DNA and what they found.
When commercial fishers set off to trap blue crabs, they bring along buckets of small, frozen baitfish such as menhaden. They stuff the fish into the traps and lower them into the sea. The stinky, slowly rotting fish carcasses decay underwater, temping the prized crabs to crawl inside the traps.
It can be lonely at the top. Snub-nosed monkeys live at a higher altitude than any other non-human primate – but they are also among the rarest of all primates.
Related: Extreme bees live on edge of active volcano
What an awakening. A man has been roused from a minimally conscious state by stimulating his brain with ultrasound.
The 25-year-old man, who had suffered a severe brain injury after a road traffic accident, progressed from having only a fleeting awareness of the outside world to being able to answer questions and attempt to walk.
Bacteria that respond to magnetic fields and low oxygen levels may soon join the fight against cancer. Researchers in Canada have done experiments that show how magneto-aerotactic bacteria can be used to deliver drugs to hard-to-reach parts of tumours.
A man has used thought alone to control nanorobots inside a living creature for the first time. The technology released a drug inside cockroaches in response to the man’s brain activity – a technique that may be useful for treating brain disorders such as schizophrenia and ADHD.
A rubbery little "octobot" is the first robot made completely from soft parts, according to a new study. The tiny, squishy guy also doesn't need batteries or wires of any kind, and runs on a liquid fuel.
Related: Natural scale caterpillar soft robot is powered and controlled with light
A robot tattooist might have steadier "hands" than its human counterpart, but how do you know it's not going to accidentally tattoo you all the way down to the bone? That's all I could think of watching this video of what's been billed as the "world's first tattoo by an industrial robot."
Mushrooms can be magical and functional. Now, the fungus is being grown and modified as a leather substitute. Instead of cowhide, lambskin or snakeskin, the latest addition to your wardrobe may be made of mushroom leather.
Can the woolly mammoth be brought back from the dead? Scientists say it's only a matter of time. A conservation ecologist and colleagues have examined ecologically responsible de-extinction, and what it means for science.
Is cheating at the Olympic Games a symptom of modernity? Do recent scandals involving athletes signal the decline of the Olympic idea?
Related: Ancient Greece's restored tower of winds keeps its secrets
Scientists once thought spherical stones found in South Africa were used as tools, but now there’s evidence they were actually weapons for defense and hunting.
Related: Is It Neander-TAL or Neander-THAL?
Sensational' discovery in Denisova Cave is at least 50,000 years old BUT it wasn't made by Homo sapiens.
The 7 centimetre (2 3/4 inch) needle was made and used by our long extinct Denisovan ancestors, a recently-discovered hominin species or subspecies.
Alt: 50,000-Year-Old Needle Found in Siberian Cave AND It Was Not Made by Homo Sapiens
Archaeological works in Alacahöyük, one of the most important centers of the Hittite Empire and considered Turkey’s first “national excavation field,” have unearthed a 2,300-year-old secret tunnel known as a potern.
A mysterious Stone Age building has been unearthed at the Ness of Brodgar in Orkney, Scotland. Researchers discovered it while excavating a Neolithic midden (rubbish dump.) It is located near one of Scotland's most famous rings of standing stones – the Ring of Brodgar.
The trial of a Malian jihadist, charged with war crimes for orchestrating the 2012 destruction of nine Timbuktu mausoleums and a section of a famous mosque, opened Monday at the International Criminal Court.
New discoveries reveal that the Philistine cities of ancient Israel were laid out like Bronze Age cities in Cyprus, unlike the haphazard structure of the surrounding Canaanite towns. Also, archaeological investigation in Philistine Gath itself found metal-smelting technologies alien to Canaanite traditions, but akin to techniques found in Cyprus of thousands of years ago.
Archaeologists translating a very rare inscription on an ancient Etruscan temple stone have discovered the name Uni — an important female goddess.
The discovery indicates that Uni — a divinity of fertility and possibly a mother goddess at this particular place — may have been the titular deity worshipped at the sanctuary of Poggio Colla, a key settlement in Italy for the ancient Etruscan civilization.
Tourism, a mainstay of the economy, has been hit hard since the 2011 revolution that overthrew veteran ruler Hosni Mubarak, with many of Egypt's renowned historical sites, from the pyramids at Giza to the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, suffering a decline in foreign visitors.
Egypt's antiquities minister Khaled al-Anani said: "We have over 20 museums that have been closed down since the January 25 Revolution and we do not have the resources to run them."
Clean water may soon be more accessible in developing countries, thanks to a new water purification device powered by sunlight.
The tiny device, developed by researchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, is able to disinfect water quicker and far more cheaply than existing methods, according to a report published Monday in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
The turbines at the first offshore wind farm in the US were installed last week, and their blades are set to start generating power by the end of the year.
Human-induced global warming began as early as the 1830s just as the Industrial Revolution was gaining steam, a new study shows.
A working group of planetary scientists is set to formally address the 35th International Geological Congress this month on the issue of whether to declare that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene.
A previously unknown tectonic plate — one that has been swallowed up by the Earth — has been discovered in the Philippine Sea, according to a recent study.
Related: Americas’ hookup not so ancient after all
Extreme global warming 252 million years ago caused a severe mass extinction of life on Earth. It took life up to 9 million years to recover. New study finds clues in the Arctic as to why this recovery took so long.
Extensive systems of fossilised riverbeds have been discovered on an ancient region of the Martian surface, supporting the idea that the now cold and dry Red Planet had a warm and wet climate about 4 billion years ago, according to UCL-led research.
Seasonal dark streaks on Mars that have become one of the hottest topics in interplanetary research don't hold much water, according to the latest findings from a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars.
In 2023, a bit of the primordial solar system will return to Earth. That's when NASA's OSIRIS-Rex mission will return a sample of the asteroid Bennu, a carbon-rich rock hosting traces of the early solar system.
A potentially habitable planet about the size of Earth is orbiting the star that is nearest our solar system, according to scientists who describe the find Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Alt: Proxima Centauri Just Became Our Gateway to the Cosmos
Alt: Discovery of potentially Earth-like planet Proxima b raises hopes for life
Breakthrough Starshot is one of the more exciting scientific ideas that has popped up in the past decade, with its promise to deliver hardware to the nearest star in time for many people currently alive to see it. While the idea would work on paper as an extrapolation of existing technology, there are a lot of details that need to be thoroughly checked out, because it's possible that one of them could present a show-stopper.
When you’re travelling at one-fifth the speed of light, even a small collision can hurt. Now we know exactly how much. A team working on a project to send tiny spacecraft to the stars have calculated the damage that hitting just a speck of dust could do.
Breakthrough Starshot is an ambitious plan to launch probes weighing little more than a few grams at interstellar speeds using lasers.
We have all likely used music to help us relax, to distract us, or even to help pump us up at the gym. But how far does our mind’s connection to music go? Can it make us smarter or even heal faster after surgery?
Music can have important effects on the cooperative spirits of those exposed to music, researchers report. A new article describes two studies they conducted to test the effect of different types of music on the cooperative behavior of individuals working as a team.
Compared to other apes and indeed all other mammals, humans are practically bald, and this may have allowed our species to thrive
Unlike hairy chimpanzees and bonobos – and all other primates – most of our skin is on display. We have evolved this way, even though fur is beneficial
Believe it or not, there are upsides to getting older.
Yes, your physical health is likely to decline as you age. And unfortunately, your cognitive abilities like learning new skills and remembering things is likely to suffer too.
It's not very often we get to talk about a revolution in understanding and treating depression and yet now doctors are talking about "one of the strongest discoveries in psychiatry for the last 20 years".
It is based around the idea that some people are being betrayed by their fiercest protector. That their immune system is altering their brain.
Drug addicts and non-addicts may have more in common than ever thought, according to a researcher at Texas A&M University who found that to some degree, everyone's brain is "wired" to become addicted.
A small study of the illegal drug has found eye- and mind-opening results
Lysergic acid dyethylamide, which you probably know as LSD, has been put to various uses since its discovery in the 1930s: scientists have tried to treat mental illness; the CIA attempted to control minds; and recreational users, well, trip out. But the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 officially prohibited LSD, and scientific inquiries into its capabilities all but disappeared. Until recently.
Literary fiction by the likes of Salman Rushdie, Harper Lee and Toni Morrison helps improve readers’ understanding of other people’s emotions, according to new research – but genre writing, from authors including Danielle Steel and Clive Cussler, does not.
A ceramic fragment dating back to 5,000 BC with what might be “the world’s oldest writing" has been discovered in a previously unknown Chalcolithic (Aeneolithic, Copper Age) settlement found underneath the Ancient Roman road station Ad Putea near the town of Riben, Dolma Mitropoliya Municipality, Pleven District, in Northern Bulgaria.
It was a powerful and sophisticated ancient Italian civilisation that had threatened to squash the fledgling Roman state just as it was starting to emerge.
But little now remains of the Etruscan civilisation that had flourished across much of Italy between 800BC and 500BC before it was defeated and absorbed by Rome.
To the modern stargazer, the planet Venus is just another point of light in the night sky. But for the ancient Maya, the brilliant light of Venus was an omen of war that guided ritual activity, prompted great battles, and was even used as shorthand for “total destruction.”
Archaeologists have long assumed that Maya tools like obsidian blades, bone needles and even stingray tails found in ritual contexts were used for bloodletting rituals. The problem is, it's hard to be sure. Researchers find obsidian blades all over the place, and many of them appear to have been used simply as kitchen knives.
A small building in Mexico tells the violent history of treachery and conquest at the great Aztec city of Cholulu – but for hundreds of years, a secret lay beneath its floors.
Hiding under the grass, trees and soil sits the Great Pyramid of Cholula, deemed the largest monument ever built on Earth, with a base four times the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Something really drastic must have happened to end the Classic Maya Period in the 9th Century. Within a short period of time, this advanced civilisation in Central America went from flourishing to collapsing – the population dwindling rapidly and monumental stone structures, like the ones built at Yucatán, were no longer being constructed.
The debate about ebooks v paper books is nothing new. Keith Houston explains how a very similar debate raged as the first books came to be in ancient Rome.
Inspired by shows like Battlefield Recovery, profiteers are digging up World War II gravesites in search of memorabilia. Preservationists want to stop them.
Ancient Egyptian texts written on rock faces and papyri are being brought together for the general reader for the first time after a Cambridge academic translated the hieroglyphic writings into modern English.
Edmund Halley – of Halley's Comet fame – noted the 'Chill and Damp which attended the Darkness' of an eclipse in 1715, causing 'some sense of Horror' among the spectators.
Now we know why. The eerie eclipse weather experienced by Halley – and during last year's partial solar eclipse across the UK – was more than just a trick of the mind, scientists have confirmed.