Newsdesk Archive

Archaeologists under the auspices of the Oleg Deripaska Volnoe Delo Foundation and the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Archaeology have discovered fragments of a marble stele carrying an inscription of the ancient Persian King Darius I.

The location, and even the existence, of the city that inspired Homer’s greatest works has been a source of dispute throughout the ages. Hisarlik in Turkey is the strongest candidate – and its discovery was an epic tale too

Almost 50 years ago, archaeologists excavating an ancient city just outside of St. Louis discovered a mass burial site with an unusual central feature – two bodies arranged atop a bed of beads, with several other bodies encircling them.

Archaeologists are investigating a mysterious coastal settlement that they think may have been home to post-Roman British royalty, at Tintagel in Cornwall, England, the reputed birthplace of the legendary King Arthur. Hundreds of pieces of "high-status" pottery and glass were found at the site, located on England's southwest coast.

Archaeologists from the Tübingen collaborative research center Resource Cultures have discovered an earthwork enclosure in southern Spain dating from the Bell Beaker period of 2,600 to 2,200 BCE.

Shifting sands on a Hawaiian beach have revealed — and then concealed again — carvings that Hawaii's indigenous people made on the shoreline at least 400 years ago. Alt: Shifting sands in Hawaii reveal petroglyphs that may have been carved by early aboriginal settlers

If you got a sunburn at the beach this summer, you can put 0.000000001 percent of the blame on radiation from beyond the galaxy. Every second, every square meter of Earth is bombarded by about 10 billion photons that originated beyond the Milky Way, according to a new study that measured this "extragalactic background light" (EBL) with unprecedented accuracy. Alt: Ten trillionths of your suntan comes from beyond our galaxy

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found deep, steep-sided canyons on Saturn's moon Titan that are flooded with liquid hydrocarbons. The finding represents the first direct evidence of the presence of liquid-filled channels on Titan, as well as the first observation of canyons hundreds of meters deep.

Venus is—without a doubt—Earth’s toxic sibling. Although both worlds are similar in size and density, our planetary neighbor has temperatures so high they can melt lead, winds that whip around it some 60 times faster than the planet itself rotates and an atmosphere that slams down with more than 90 times the pressure found on Earth’s atmosphere. But there have been a few tantalizing hints that billions of years ago Venus might have been more akin to Earth’s twin.

Scientists suggest signs of life from under Mars' surface may not survive in rocks excavated by some meteorite impacts. Scientists analysing samples from Mars’ surface have so far not conclusively detected organic compounds that are indigenous to Mars, which would be indicators of past or present life.

As NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) celebrates four years on the Red Planet Leicester planetary scientist Professor John Bridges recounts the mission's success and explains what is next for the one-ton nuclear-powered science robot.

Could there be a way to find bacterial structures on another planet? And if so, how important might these bacteria be in making a planet life-friendly? These are some of the questions that could be answered through studies on stromatolites, which are mounds of calcium-carbonate rock that are built up through lime-secreting cyanobacteria (bacteria that use photosynthesis for energy).

Cold seeps are places where hydrocarbons, mostly methane, emanate from the sea floor. Unlike the hydrothermal vents, the fluids and bubbles are no hotter than the surrounding seawater, thus the name.

Scientists have confirmed that a species of wild crow from New Caledonia in the South Pacific can craft tools. The birds were observed bending twigs into hooks to extract food hidden in wooden logs.

Fish that were alive during the Age of Enlightenment are still swimming strong. A Greenland shark has lived at least 272 years, making the species the longest-lived vertebrate in the world – smashing the previous record held by a 211-year-old bowhead whale. But it may have been as old as 500 years.

A new study that for the first time examined the internal anatomy of a fossil human relative’s heel bone, or calcaneus, shows greater similarities with gorillas than chimpanzees. Related: How did primate brains get so big?

When Piltdown Man was unveiled before a meeting of London geologists in 1912, he was heralded as paleoanthropology's "missing link," the long-sought transitional form between modern humans and our great ape ancestor. He had a smallish skull, a chimp-like jaw, and a mixture of primitive and modern teeth to boot.

In ancient Greece, successful athletes were rich and celebrated like they are today. Evidence for this comes in the form of the oldest known skeleton of a young athlete, buried with rich honors at Taranto in Greco-Italy 2,500 years ago. His bones and grave goods show all the signs he was an athlete.

Archaeologists from the Universities of York, Cambridge and UCL have identified rare human bones from the UK dating to the Late Mesolithic era (around 4000 BC, just prior to the arrival of farming in Britain) using an innovative new bone collagen analysis technique.

The established theory about the route by which Ice Age peoples first reached the present-day United States has been challenged by an unprecedented study which concludes that their supposed entry route was "biologically unviable". Related: We Were Wrong About How Ancient Humans Colonized North America

A solar storm that jammed radar and radio communications at the height of the Cold War could have led to a disastrous military conflict if not for the U.S. Air Force's budding efforts to monitor the sun's activity, a new study finds.

“I hope everyone has buckled their seatbelts because the outer solar system just got a lot weirder.” That’s what Michele Bannister, an astronomer at Queens University, Belfast tweeted on Monday. She was referring to the discovery of a TNO or trans-Neptunian object, something which sits beyond Neptune in the outer solar system

The spectacular Perseid meteor shower, peaking Thursday night (Aug. 11–12), lights up Earth's sky every summer as Earth passes through the trail left by Comet Swift-Tuttle, a miles-wide behemoth that swings by Earth every 133 years.

The Perseids, the most widely observed and dependable of the annual meteor displays, will peak during the overnight hours of Thursday, Aug. 11 into the morning of Friday, Aug. 12, and this year has all the earmarks of being a spectacular show.

A mysterious kind of supernova that appears to explode twice may be giving birth to some of the most powerful magnets in the universe, a new study finds. Related: Ocean sediment sample holds iron believed to be from a supernova

This week a science news story appeared that must have seemed to many like ‘non-news’: Two large experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider reported that they didn’t discover a new particle. If scientific experiments were reported in the press every time they didn’t make a new discovery, then newspapers would be far thicker than they are. So what gives? Related: Why the Universe Exists --"Evidence Mounts That Neutrinos are the Key"

Humans aren't the only species whose members speak to their babies in the womb. Dolphin mamas appear to sing their own name to their unborn calves. New research suggests that dolphin mothers teach their babies a "signature whistle" right before birth and in the two weeks after.

Britain’s dogs are becoming less fertile. Researchers who have systematically examined canine sperm over a span of 26 years say that overall sperm quality has been in decline. Environmental chemicals are implicated. And the study may throw light on the fertility changes in male humans.

The menopause is a puzzle for biologists. Why would the female of a species cease to reproduce half way through her life, when natural selection favours characteristics that help an individual's genes survive? A study of killer whales - one of only two mammals apart from humans to undergo the menopause - is providing clues.

Noise from ships impedes humpback whales from foraging for food, and could have long-term impacts on the health of these majestic creatures, according to a study released Wednesday. Shipping lanes overlapping with the coastal migratory paths of whales create a steady source of underwater noise pollution.

Ah, snails. They’re small. They’re slimy. They lack the charisma of a polar bear or a gorilla. And yet just like flora and fauna all over the world, they’re disappearing.

Blink and you’ll miss it. The sand cat is a shy and secretive animal only seen in the desert at night. It’s a nocturnal hunter perfectly adapted to its desert home. It doesn’t need to drink water as it can get all it needs from the small birds, reptiles and mammals that are its prey. Special hairs in its ears and on its paws keep the sand out.

Blood chemistry unknown in mammals or other reptiles still needs a good explanation “Dark lime green” is how biologist Zachary Rodriguez describes the blood of the Prasinohaema lizards of New Guinea and surrounding islands. “Vivid,” he adds.

Mass shootings have spiked in the US in recent times. A study of FBI reports on 160 gun sprees shows they went from an average of 6.4 a year in 2000-2006 to 16.4 in 2007-2013. What’s more, two recent large-scale investigations looking at hundreds of shootings between 1997 and 2013 have documented a “clustering” of such slayings timewise.

Magicians use sleight of hand to confuse you about where an object is. But could they make you believe that you saw a non-existent object disappear? A team of experimental psychologists at Oxford University developed their own magic trick to find out. Their results are published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Acupuncture may help to improve the memory loss that precedes the development of dementia, a new review suggests. Researchers in China drew together data from five studies involving more than 500 people and found that the ancient complementary medicine raised mental test scores by 10 per cent. Alt: Pre-dementia memory loss improved with acupuncture

Research suggests we may be predisposed to speak more than one language and that doing so brings health benefits, such as delaying the onset of dementia

Survey of more than 3,500 people finds that reading books – markedly more than periodicals – appears to deliver a noticeable ‘survival advantage’

Students who played online games scored above average in maths, science and reading tests, although study does not prove games were the cause

Some babies are born totally useless (I’m looking at you, Homo sapiens). Others can wobble upright shortly after birth and start teetering around. And still other animals are almost frighteningly precocious.

It’s possible humpbacks are rescuing seals, sunfish, and other species by mistake, but there’s a chance they have altruistic motivations. Related: 105-year-old whale still swimming in the Pacific

The best way to clean up an oceanic oil spill might be to light a fire tornado on top of it. That’s the conclusion drawn by researchers from the University of Maryland, who found that, under controlled conditions, a fire whirl was the most efficient way to burn hydrocarbon fuel.

DEEP-SEA mining is one of those ideas that keeps on slipping over the horizon. Since 2012, a company called Nautilus Minerals has held a licence to mine the sea floor near Papua New Guinea. All along the firm has claimed that it would start within a year or two; its present target is 2018.

Nestled in a deep pocket of forest that lies off Thailand's electrical grid, villagers in Pa Deng have become early adopters and evangelists for an unusual alternative energy source: poop. After successfully lighting up their homes with solar panels and stoves fueled by cow dung, the villagers are now clean energy crusaders in a gas-guzzling country that overwhelmingly relies on fossil fuels.

As of Monday August 8, humans will have officially used up all the resources Earth can regenerate in a year. The day is known as 'overshoot day', and this year it's happening five days earlier than in 2015 - which means we just burnt through a sustainable amount of resources in less time than ever before.

Researchers have discovered strange minerals inside a Siberian mine that are unlike anything previously found in nature. What's fascinating is that, since the 1980s, scientists have been growing very similar materials in the lab, but until now, they never thought they could actually exist in nature.

In the early 1990s, a European genetic engineering company was preparing to field test its genetically modified version of Klebsiella planticola, which it had tested in the lab and presumed to be safe. But if it weren't for the work of a team of independent scientists led by Elaine Ingham, that company could have literally killed every terrestrial plant on the planet.

Of all the world’s lost cities, none surely can compete for evocative splendour, age or mystery with Babylon. Here on the desert plains 60 miles south of Baghdad, where the sun turns horizons into flashing pools of mercury, is where so much of human history began.

Ancient Romans used magical inscriptions to bring vengeance on enemies, unrequited lovers, bad neighbours and relatives. Archaeologists have unearthed the rare finds of these curses at the Viminacium site in the eastern region of Serbia, in the former Roman province of Moesia Superior.

Scientists have long speculated that the ancient Egyptians used metal from meteorites to make iron objects. An analysis of a dagger found in Tutankhamun’s tomb has given us strong evidence that this was the case – and that the Egyptians knew the iron had come from the sky. But why did they use such an unusual source for the metal when there’s plenty of iron here on Earth?

How smart were human-like species of the Stone Age? New research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science by a team led by paleoanthropologist April Nowell of the University of Victoria reveals surprisingly sophisticated adaptations by early humans living 250,000 years ago in a former oasis near Azraq, Jordan. Alt: Stone Age tools reveal how our ancestors prepared duck, rhino and horse meat up to 250,000 years ago

Researchers from China and Spain find a surprising combination of features in an ancient discovery in Guangdong In the throes of the Great Leap Forward, farmers in a remote Guangdong township discovered local links with a long-buried European past.

Even amateur sportspeople can learn to stave off exhaustion with a few mental tricks Where does fatigue come from? It doesn’t come from the body. Even when people exercise to exhaustion, studies have shown that there is fuel left in the tank – one found there was enough energy left in muscle tissue for participants to have kept going for another seven or eight minutes.

Scientists have determined the likely origin for the "gaitkeeper" gene, which controls gaitedness in horses It's an iconic scene in Western cinema: King Arthur and his band of knights prancing along to the clip-clop of coconuts.

Archaeologists have uncovered what may be the largest royal tomb found in more than a century of work on Maya ruins in Belize, along with a puzzling set of hieroglyphic panels that provide clues to a “snake dynasty” that conquered many of its neighbors some 1,300 years ago.

Clusters of hunter-gatherers spent much of the late Stone Age working out the basics of farming on the fertile lands of what is now Turkey before taking this knowledge to Europe.

In Greek mythology, the Chimera is a monster that is part lion, part goat and part snake. Far from reality, sure, but the idea of mixing and matching creatures is real — and has ethicists concerned.

The terminally ill man who is set to become the world's first head transplant recipient says more details about his extraordinary surgery will be revealed next month. Valery Spiridonov, a computer scientist from Russia, is set to undergo the risky procedure next year.

The idea of taking apart a rat's heart and transforming it into a tissue-engineered stingray first came to Kevin Kit Parker during a trip to the New England Aquarium with his daughter.

Many lower organisms retain the ability to regenerate tissue after injury. Humans share many genes with these organisms, but our capacity for regeneration is limited. Scientists are studying the genetics of these organisms to find out how regenerative mechanisms might be activated in humans. Researchers have identified common genetic regulators in three regenerative species, suggesting that they have been conserved by nature through evolution.

Black holes are doors to other parts of the universe, according to a new study. But you wouldn’t ever get to come back. Anyone who managed to get through one of the mysterious doors would end up “spaghettified”, and stretched out like a long strand of pasta, according to the research.

The black holes that produced the first detected gravitational waves may have exotic origins in the early universe. When the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, LIGO, glimpsed gravitational waves from two merging black holes, scientists were surprised at how large the black holes were — about 30 times the mass of the sun

You're probably all too familiar with the story of KIC 8462852, a star that's been the focus of much speculation and excitement over the past few months. KIC 8462852 was observed by NASA's Kepler mission and has become infamous for its bizarre and unprecedented transit signal that was flagged by citizen scientists. Now new research of precision Kepler observations has shown that the overall brightness of the star -- unofficially named "Tabby's Star" after astronomer Tabetha S. Boyajian who discovered the peculiar signal -- has been decreasing, which poses a new and confusing problem for astronomers trying to understand what the heck is going on. Alt: Triple signal of ‘alien megastructure’ star baffles astronomers

Astrobiologists will probably have their hands full in a few trillion years. The odds of life evolving throughout the universe are 1,000 times greater in the far future than they are now, according to a new modeling study. The finding suggests that life on Earth may be "premature" in the cosmic scheme of things, researchers said.

Nearly 50 years after landing on the moon, mankind has now set its sights on sending the first humans to Mars. The moon trip took three days; a Mars trip will likely take most of a year. The difference is in more than just time.

Scientists have developed a way to bind photons to individual electrons, allowing for a new type of light that has properties of both elementary particles.

Scientists have created the first programmable and reprogrammable quantum computer, according to a new study. The technology could usher in a much-anticipated era of quantum computing, which researchers say could help scientists run complex simulations and produce rapid solutions to tricky calculations. Related: Some types of quantum entanglement cannot be both monogamous and faithful

Humans may be prejudiced by nature, but a new study has found that who we choose to hate may depend on our overall intelligence. The finding reconfirms the idea that it may be human nature to dislike those who are different from us — including those who look and think differently.

Men's historical dominance of the workplace may, in part, be because of their ability to reconcile with enemies after conflict, a new study suggests. Researchers examined the aftermath of same-sex sporting events and found that men spent longer talking, touching or embracing their opponents than women.

From anger management courses to art therapy, prisons use a number of programmes to keep inmates calm and compliant. But research suggests the simple act of watching nature on the television could hold the key to peace in prison.

Looking for a healthy variety of bugs? You might want to try searching in your wealthiest friend's house. Neighborhood income is a good predictor of the number of kinds of insects found indoors, according to a recently-published study in Biology Letters.

Pour out that almond milk — the new hip thing is cockroach milk. Well, kind of. The female Pacific beetle cockroach is one of a kind. Unlike other insect species, this Hawaiian native gives birth to live young. And she feeds them a pale, yellow liquid "milk" from her brood sack.

A phasmid nymph, the juvenile of a creature related to a walking stick, prospects a mushroom. It notices, perhaps because it is already caught up in the horrible, sticky – yet delightfully pine fresh! -- flow, that it is about to be entombed in amber.

What killed the dinosaurs? That was a mystery for decades; when I was a kid, there were tons of ideas but precious little evidence for any of them, making them little more than speculation. In the late 1970s and early '80s, though, the hypothesis was put forward that a giant asteroid or comet impact did the deed, and over the years evidence mounted.

When Jordan Mallon looks around his campsite near the South Saskatchewan River, he sees old farm buildings and country roads. Nearby, the grass-covered prairie gives way to the wind-blasted landscape of the Alberta badlands.

A new study challenges earlier interpretations of an important burial mound at Cahokia, a pre-Columbian city in Illinois near present-day St. Louis. The study reveals that a central feature of the mound, a plot known as the "beaded burial," is not a monument to male power, as was previously thought, but includes both males and females of high status. Alt: Unraveling the Mystery of the Beaded Burial: Skeletons Identified as Female Nobles

More than 600 years ago the ancient Incas built a village in the Andes on the rocky outcrop that links the mountains Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu, at an altitude of 2,490 meters (8169.29 ft.) It is a town whose original name would have been Llaqtapata, which is known today as Machu Picchu.

A large tomb full of treasures from the Late Bronze Age has been discovered in Cyprus, archaeologists have revealed. The grave, and an associated offering pit situated a few metres away contain artefacts from places as diverse as Ancient Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and Greece. Related: World’s oldest village settlement discovered in Cyprus

A Missouri man says his Tesla helped saved his life by driving him to the hospital during a life-threatening emergency. Joshua Neally is a lawyer and Tesla owner from Springfield, Missouri, who often uses the semi-autonomous driving system called Autopilot on his Tesla Model X.

Science fiction is inching closer to reality with the development of revolutionary self-propelling liquid metals—a critical step towards future elastic electronics. Related: Functioning Artificial ‘Brain’ Created From Circuitry

Ocean lovers are familiar with the image of a vast marine "garbage patch," where garbage swirls in a never-ending gyre. But the same ocean currents that help concentrate plastic and other debris also ultimately help disperse them toward shore, a new study finds.

Raising concerns about possible damage to the tiger landscape by mining giant Rio Tinto’s Rs 2200 crore diamond mining project in Madhya Pradesh, an environment ministry panel has deferred forest clearance for the project, saying it would lead to permanent loss of high-quality forest area. Related: Proposed sanctuary off New England would protect coral and marine species — and anger fishermen

News headlines this summer paint a gloomy picture of conflict across the globe. These stories suggest that group differences—whether religious, ethnic, or political—seem to divide rather than unite us. Taking a broader perspective, however, humans exhibit little inter-group conflict compared to other primates.

A deluge that washed down the Yellow River nearly 4,000 years ago could be linked to the founding of China’s semi-mythical first dynasty. Alt: Rocks tell story of China's great flood

Just over three years ago, TED took the extraordinary step of removing videos of TEDx presentations by 'alternative history researcher' Graham Hancock and 'maverick biologist' Rupert Sheldrake. This move met with a mountain of opposition, as TED seemed to be censoring certain ideas that challenged the orthodox worldview - and they only inflamed the situation further when they offered bogus reasoning for doing so. Alt: More evidence that TED believes it knows what we should think…

British archaeologists have reported the discovery of massive walls that appear to be part of a Dark Ages palace complex that existed around the same time and place as King Arthur’s birthplace in the famous legend of Camelot. Alt: Has the real birthplace of King Arthur been found? Archaeologists unearth Dark Age royal palace - just where legends said he was born - but which had already vanished by the time they were written down

A structure that represents the biggest known genetic difference between humans and Neanderthals also predisposes humans to autism. An international team of researchers led by UW Medicine genome scientist Evan Eichler published the findings today in Nature.

Since September 2015, researchers have been banned from receiving funding from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) for adding human stem cells to animal embryos, creating blends called chimaeras. But a proposal by the NIH released on 4 August would lift the funding moratorium, except for certain situations.

Not all paintings start with a blank canvas. Many artists paint over previous works, obliterating them from public view. Edgar Degas, a French painter and sculptor was no exception. He was just a little more careless about it than most.

What began as a bump has turned out to be nothing more than a statistical ghost. Physicists at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Chicago announced today that the much-discussed 750 GeV aberration in their data discovered by the Large Hadron Collider at the end of last year disappeared upon further testing.

New research suggests that it is possible to create a new form of light by binding light to a single electron, combining the properties of both. According to the scientists behind the study, from Imperial College London, the coupled light and electron would have properties that could lead to circuits that work with packages of light - photons - instead of electrons.

Ghostly particles could be haunting our universe. A new theory claims that the cosmos is full of unseen particle families that don’t interact with each other. If true, the model could explain why gravity is so puzzlingly weak. Related: Physicists prepare to detect gravitational waves from neutron star collisions

One of the biggest problems when studying black holes is that the laws of physics as we know them cease to apply in their deepest regions. Large quantities of matter and energy concentrate in an infinitely small space, the gravitational singularity, where space-time curves towards infinity and all matter is destroyed. Or is it? A recent study suggests that matter might in fact survive its foray into these space objects and come out the other side.

If you want to see a planet align with another in our solar system, you usually have to wait a while. Even the speediest planet, Mercury, takes 88 days to make a circuit around the sun. But in many alien systems discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope, planets are huddled close to their host stars and zoom around it in just a few days.

Mineral veins found in Mars's Gale Crater were formed by the evaporation of ancient Martian lakes, a new study has shown. The research, by Mars Science Laboratory Participating Scientists at The Open University and the University of Leicester, used the Mars Curiosity rover to explore Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater on Mars, examining the mineralogy of veins that were paths for groundwater in mudstones.

If you could hop in a time-traveling spacecraft, go back three billion years and land any place in our solar system, where would you want to end up? Earth, with its barren continents and unbreathable atmosphere? Or Mars, a chillier version its big brother? Wait, what about Venus?

Under the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres are strange jumbled zones that are mixes of ice and rock, a new study finds. This research suggests that Ceres might still be warmed by radioactive material in its interior, scientists say.

A comet with a death wish met a truly fiery end today (Aug. 4) when it was destroyed by the sun after diving toward the star at a truly jaw-dropping speed. It is one of the brightest sungrazing comet events in over two decades, one scientist says.

Shooting-star seekers heading out to watch the Perseid meteor shower Aug. 11 and 12 may see a much better show than in past years. That's because the Earth will collide with more material than usual from Comet Swift-Tuttle, which is the source of the Perseids. Jupiter's gravity has tugged the debris stream in such a way that Earth will move closer to the middle of the stream, rather than the edge, NASA officials said in a statement.

The Outer Space Treaty requires countries to “authorize and continuously supervise" the activities of space missions under their jurisdiction, including those of commercial companies. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration carries out those duties with regard to private spaceflight, and things have worked well enough. Related: Mic'd Up on Mars! 2020 Rover Will Capture Sounds of Red Planet Related: North Korea plans moon landing