Newsdesk Archive
In 2008, neuroscientist Giulio Tononi at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Sleep and Consciousness put forward his “integrated information theory,” which is currently accepted as one of the most compelling explanations about what consciousness is.
The grave of a woman with a bizarre, long-headed skull has been unearthed in Korea.
The woman was part of the ancient Silla culture, which ruled much of the Korean peninsula for nearly a millennium.
People with higher levels of education may be more likely to develop certain types of brain tumors, a new study from Sweden suggests.
Researchers found that women who completed at least three years of university courses were 23 percent more likely to develop a type of cancerous brain tumor called glioma
Relaxing to a soothing Mozart symphony can lower the blood pressure as much as cutting salt from the diet or exercising, a new study has shown.
But for people concerned about their heart, it might be wise to stay clear of ABBA, which has no impact at all.
The discovery that many genes are still working up to 48 hours after death has implications for organ transplants, forensics and our very definition of death
When a doctor declares a person dead, some of their body may still be alive and kicking – at least for a day or two. New evidence in animals suggests that many genes go on working for up to 48 hours after the lights have gone out.
Bringing people back from the “dead” is not science fiction anymore. Typically, after just minutes without a heartbeat, brain cells start dying, and an irreversible and lethal process is set in motion. But when a person becomes severely cold before his heart quits, his metabolism slows.
Elon Musk has built cars and rockets. Next up: domestic robots.
OpenAI - the artificial-intelligence research nonprofit cochaired by Tesla Motors CEO Musk and Y Combinator President Sam Altman - wants to build a robot for your home.
Europe's growing army of robot workers could be classed as "electronic persons" and their owners liable to paying social security for them if the European Union adopts a draft plan to address the realities of a new industrial revolution.
Robots are being deployed in ever-greater numbers in factories and also taking on tasks such as personal care or surgery, raising fears over unemployment, wealth inequality and alienation.
Soon you could be chatting with your computer about the morning news. An AI has learned to read and answer questions about a news article with unprecedented accuracy.
Creating AI systems that can learn in the background from humanity’s existing stores of information is one of the big goals of computer science.
Northwestern University's Ken Forbus is closing the gap between humans and machines.
Using cognitive science theories, Forbus and his collaborators have developed a model that could give computers the ability to reason more like humans and even make moral decisions. Called the structure-mapping engine (SME), the new model is capable of analogical problem solving, including capturing the way humans spontaneously use analogies between situations to solve moral dilemmas.
A compound called nicotinamide mono nucleotide (NMN) has been shown to slow down the aging process and extend the lifespans of mice. We’re about to find out if it does the same thing to humans.
Diagnosing cancer is about to get more accurate, with the help of artificial intelligence.
Pathologists have diagnosed diseases in more or less the same way for the past 100 years, by laboring over a microscope reviewing biopsy samples on little glass slides.
Drugs prescribed to treat diabetes could cure Alzheimer's disease, a pioneering new study has found.
Scientists believe that the two conditions are so similar that medications already used to control levels of glucose and regulate diabetes could also halt the onset of dementia.
Up to ten percent of major drugs contain plant-derived ingredients, but a warming world could put those—and other medicines—at risk
You’ll find them all over New York and other American cities: Botánicas, retail stores that are common in Latino communities with Caribbean ties. These are no mere bodegas. They’re packed with ritual-ready statues, candles, incense and amulets.
Chinese authorities have announced the destruction of thousands of monastic dwellings and expulsion of monks, nuns and lay practitioners at Serthar Larung Gar Buddhist Institute, the famed Tibetan Buddhist religious encampment located in Serthar (Ch: Seda) County in Kardze (Ch: Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, in eastern Tibet.
It’s called the “Gateway to the Underworld” by local Yakutians. It’s a giant Siberian crater in the coldest area of the world that doesn’t get as much publicity as its more recent counterparts but, because of its size and rapid growth, may be the most dangerous of all.
Related: Is another ash cloud about to cause travel chaos? Iceland's Gateway to Hell volcano could explode 'at any moment'
A study of the Caribbean Sea by University of Liverpool ocean scientists has revealed that, in the midst of all the noise of the ocean, this region behaves like a whistle, which blows so loudly that it can be 'heard' from space in the form of oscillations of the Earth's gravity field.
In the spring of 2012, when I was living near the coastal village of Sechelt, on British Columbia’s picturesque Sunshine Coast, I began hearing a humming sound, which I thought were float planes.
The noise usually started later at night, between 10 and 11 p.m. My first clue that something unusual was happening came with the realization that the sound didn’t fade away, like plane noises typically do.
Venus has an "electric wind" strong enough to remove the components of water from its upper atmosphere, which may have played a significant role in stripping Earth's twin planet of its oceans, according to new results from ESA's (European Space Agency) Venus Express mission by NASA-funded researchers.
Earth's magnetosphere, the region of space dominated by Earth's magnetic field, protects our planet from the harsh battering of the solar wind. Like a protective shield, the magnetosphere absorbs and deflects plasma from the solar wind which originates from the Sun. When conditions are right, beautiful dancing auroral displays are generated. But when the solar wind is most violent, extreme space weather storms can create intense radiation in the Van Allen belts and drive electrical currents which can damage terrestrial electrical power grids.
When an astronomical observatory detected two black holes colliding in deep space, scientists celebrated confirmation of Einstein's prediction of gravitational waves. A team of astrophysicists wondered something else: Had the experiment found the "dark matter" that makes up most of the mass of the universe?
If you wanted to see something that looks like an evaporating exoplanet close to home, you might watch a sun-grazing comet. After drifting for aeons in the outer solar system, these comets fall inwards, skimming over the sun’s surface – where many of them blow apart like dandelions. For the comet, it’s a violent trauma; but to the sun, it barely takes a puff of air.
A simulation of the powerful jets generated by supermassive black holes at the centers of the largest galaxies explains why some burst forth as bright beacons visible across the universe, while others fall apart and never pierce the halo of the galaxy.
The Earth has an asteroid companion traveling in orbit with it around the sun, Nasa astronomers have discovered.
The small asteroid has a slightly tilted orbit, bouncing up and down through Earth’s orbital plane once a year. Over decades, as it scuttles along its path around the solar system, it twists back and forth.
Astronomers have found a plethora of planets around nearby stars. And it appears that Earth-sized planets in habitable zones are probably common.
So, with tens or even hundreds of billions of potentially habitable planets within our galaxy, the question becomes: are we alone?
When you think about fish, it's probably at dinnertime. Author Jonathan Balcombe, on the other hand, spends a lot of time pondering the emotional lives of fish. Balcombe, who serves as the director of animal sentience for the Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy, tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that humans are closer to understanding fish than ever before.
Toxic chemicals are accumulating in marine creatures in Earth’s deepest oceanic trenches, the first measurements of organic pollutants in these regions have revealed.
“It’s really surprising to find pollutants so deep in the ocean at such high concentrations,” says Jeffrey Drazen, a marine ecologist at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.
Two Middle Eastern populations independently developed farming and then spread the technology to Europe, Africa and Asia, according to the genomes of 44 people who lived thousands of years ago in present-day Armenia, Turkey, Israel, Jordan and Iran.
Night-time vision evolved millions of years ago in early mammals, a study suggests.
The photoreceptors that help us see in dim light developed from colour-detecting cone cells in Jurassic mammals, according to genetic evidence.
Over 90 per cent of mammal species were wiped out by the same asteroid that killed the dinosaurs in the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago, significantly more than previously thought.
Stalking across the sandy shoreline of a lake around 800,000 years ago, a small hunting party closed in on a herd of antelope that had come to drink from water's edge.
Now the footprints these early human hunters left in the soft sediment as they approached their prey have re-emerged for the first time since they were made.
Researchers studying bone artefacts discovered in the Kuumbi Cave, Zanzibar, have found evidence to suggest that bone tools were used for hunting, and even as poison arrow tips.
The findings, published in the journal Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, suggest that bone technology was a central element to the Kuumbi Cave’s inhabitants over 13,000 years ago.
The burials of the Attalid Dynasty, which ruled the city of Pergamon after the death of Lysimachus, General of Alexander the Great, have been known about for the last 200 years. However, archeologists believe they have now discovered that a great Attalid burial mound also housed remains of kingly importance.
It's one of the most fascinating and well-built structures in existence, but researchers have shown that the Great Pyramid of Giza is actually lopsided, thanks to an error builders made during construction some 4,500 years ago.
This error has led to the west side of the pyramid being slightly longer than the east side, creating a base that isn’t perfectly square – despite the fact that it looks that way from afar.
Egyptian pharaohs, who are remembered for their pyramids and temples, were also the world’s first urban planners.
New research offers additional insights into how the pharaohs invested in town planning. Their innovations included the development of the first grid system as part of communities they established around their kingdom
On June 4, the satirical news site the Science Post published a block of "lorem ipsum" text under a frightening headline: "Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting."
Nearly 46,000 people shared the post, some of them quite earnestly — an inadvertent example, perhaps, of life imitating comedy.
Think about the first time you ever heard Asia's Heat of the Moment, one of my favorite songs of all time. The synths, the poignant lyrics and the novel harmonies combined might have sent shivers running up your spine, all the way to the base of your very cool mullet.
In the past, researchers had been divided on whether it was working in an unclean workplace — facing exposure to agents such as mold, lead or loud noises — or working in an unstimulating environment that took the biggest toll on brain health as people aged.
Plastics are great. They can take any shape and serve an endless variety of roles. But... the beginning and end of a plastic’s life are problematic. While some plastics are made from renewable agricultural products, most are derived from petroleum. Plastics are not as easy to recycle as we'd like, and a huge percentage ends up in landfills (or the ocean), where they can be virtually immortal.
Alt: A new way to degrade plastics that turns them into fuel
Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have created a computer algorithm that can predict and create sound effects from simply being shown videos of different surfaces being struck with a drumstick. The sounds are so realistic that human test subjects cannot accurately distinguish between the synthesized sound effects and real recorded ones.
Artificial intelligence can now cook you a meal, chat to you on your phone, and beat you in a game of rock, paper, scissors.
But Andy Rubin, who co-founded Android, believes that AI in the future will go one step further - being so powerful that it underpins every connected device.
The FBI’s use of facial recognition technology is exploding, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office — and its growth is largely unchecked, unaudited, and possibly flawed.
“FBI should better ensure privacy and accuracy” of its facial recognition technology and the databases that photographs are stored in, urged the GAO.
A new supercomputer from China has topped the latest list of the world's most powerful machines.
The 93 petaflop Sunway TaihuLight is installed at the National Supercomputing Centre in Wuxi.
Large-scale brain-like machines with human-like abilities to solve problems could become a reality, now that researchers have invented microscopic gadgets that mimic the connections between neurons in the human brain better than any previous devices.
Gardeners have long claimed that talking to plants helps them grow—an idea backed up by science. But more recently, we’re discovering that plants talk, too, reacting to their environment in a language of electrical impulses and chemicals.
The question is whether there's a way that we—humans and plants—could talk to one another? Thanks to Project Florence, a project created by post-doc researcher Helene Steiner during her time as an artist-in-residence with Microsoft Research’s Studio 99 program, we're getting closer.
On Monday night, you can witness an astronomical event that hasn't occurred in decades: the coinciding of the June solstice with a full moon.
This full moon is also rare for another reason: It marks the fourth of four full moons between the March 2016 equinox and the June 2016 solstice
A long lost Neolithic human figurine, found at Skara Brae in the 1860s, has been rediscovered in the collections of Stromness Museum
Related: World Famous Ancient Siberian Venus Figurines are NOT Venuses After All
Ruins of large palace buildings dating back to the early Ming Dynasty have been uncovered at the Cining Palace square’s Changxin gate.
It is the first time that a wall base and building foundations from that period have been found in the Forbidden City.
The Tunnel of Eupalinos (or Eupalinos Tunnel) is an ancient tunnel that functioned as an aqueduct. This tunnel is located on the Greek island of Samos, and has been considered as one of the most important engineering achievements of the Classical world. It has been claimed that the construction of the Eupalinos Tunnel represents the first time in the history of mankind that a project on such a scale had been undertaken. Moreover, the planning and mathematical calculations that went into this project may be said to be on par with those employed by modern day engineers.
The massive megaliths at Stonehenge have fascinated scholars and tourists for centuries, but one of the most enduring mysteries about the site is how the ancient builders of the monument moved the giant stones into place — some more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from where they were quarried.
Summer solstice is fast approaching, and on the 20th June over 20,000 people are expected to gather at the world-famous Stonehenge to celebrate and watch the sun rise above the Heel Stone and shine on the central altar. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, this is a time when the sun's path stops moving northward in the sky, the days stop growing longer and will soon begin to shorten again.
Human beings inherit many genetic traits directly from their parents. However, cultural traits – tools, beliefs and behaviors that are transmitted by learning – can be passed on not only by parents but also teachers and peers. Many animals have learned behaviors, but people are uniquely good at building on existing knowledge to innovate further.
A community college reform group has selected a handful of schools in Virginia and Maryland to develop degree programs using open-source materials in place of textbooks, an initiative that could save students as much as $1,300 a year.
Such open educational resources — created using open licenses that let students download or print materials for free — have gained popularity as the price of print textbooks have skyrocketed, but courses that use the materials remain a novelty in higher education.
In 1836, Anthony Panizzi, who later became principal librarian of the British Museum, gave evidence before a parliamentary select committee. At that time, he was only first assistant librarian, but even then he had an ambitious vision for what would one day became the British Library
No need to check your browser, you aren't, in fact, reading Weekly World News. Earlier today, Washington City Paper got a hot tip about an apparent sasquatch sighting in the Patuxent Research Refuge in Laurel, Md.
Some of the building blocks of life are likely present on many planets from day one, a new study suggests.
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array(ALMA) in Chile spotted methanol in the dusty disk around a newborn star, marking the first time this carbon-containing organic molecule has been spotted in a planet-forming environment.
A new study is reviving a decades-old debate about how Earth’s rarest elements came to exist on our planet – theories that have implications for the origin of life.
Most scientists agree the precious metals – gold and the six platinum group elements – were added to Earth’s surface sometime after it formed 4.5 billion years ago.
In the race towards the discovery of a ninth planet in our solar system, scientists from around the world strive to calculate its orbit using the tracks left by the small bodies that move well beyond Neptune. Now, astronomers from Spain and Cambridge University have confirmed, with new calculations, that the orbits of the six extreme trans-Neptunian objects that served as a reference to announce the existence of Planet Nine are not as stable as it was thought.
An international team of astronomers have found that there are far more planets of the hot Jupiter type than expected in a cluster of stars called Messier 67. This surprising result was obtained using a number of telescopes and instruments, among them the HARPS spectrograph at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. The denser environment in a cluster will cause more frequent interactions between planets and nearby stars, which may explain the excess of hot Jupiters.
Jupiter’s turbulence is not just skin deep. The giant planet’s visible storms and blemishes have roots far below the clouds, researchers report in the June 3 Science. The new observations offer a preview of what NASA’s Juno spacecraft will see when it sidles up to Jupiter later this year.
A chain of rising plumes, each reaching nearly 100 kilometers into Jupiter, dredges up ammonia to form ice clouds.
It looks and feels like a cheap strip of silicone. Don't be fooled. This soft rubbery material makes electricity when it's bent, pressed, or stretched.
Make a wristband with it and it can power LED lights as you move your hands. Fold it into your shoe to create a self-powered sensor that can tell when you're walk. The best part? It costs less than a dollar to make.
The Gulf of Mexico teems with biodiversity and contains some of the globe's most productive fisheries. Yet starting in the early 1970s, large swaths of the Gulf began to experience annual dead zones in the late summer and early fall. This year's will likely be nearly a third larger than normal, about the size of Connecticut, according to a recent report from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University.
A team from the University of Bristol has shed new light on the creatures that inhabited the tropical seas surrounding Britain at the start of the age of the dinosaurs.
Heroes of Antarctic exploration-past famously include Shackleton, Scott, and Amundsen who raced to the South Pole in search of fame and discovery. They encountered harsh conditions and suffered extreme hardships, cut off from communication with the outside world. It took years of planning, then years of recovery, for these explorers to even begin to understand what they went through – let alone to describe what they discovered.
The number of species that can exist on Earth depends on how the environment changes, according to new research led by the University of Southampton.
Giant Ice Age species including elephant-sized sloths and powerful sabre-toothed cats that once roamed the windswept plains of Patagonia, southern South America, were finally felled by a perfect storm of a rapidly warming climate and humans, a new study has shown.
A papyrus holding text that suggests Jesus Christ was married and whose authenticity has been a matter of intense debate since it was unveiled in 2012 is almost certainly a fake.
Karen King, the Harvard professor who discovered the Gospel of Jesus's Wife and has defended its authenticity, has now conceded that the papyrus is likely a forgery and that its owner lied to her about the provenance and his own background.
An ancient Eygptian tomb excavated in 1907 still holds mysteries. Chief among them: Who exactly was buried there? Was it Akhenaten, a radical pharaoh who overturned all the Egyptians knew about their many deities and elevated one “true” god above all others—Aten? A new study will explore this question and try to answer once and for all who was the occupant of the mystery sarcophagus in tomb KV55 of the Valley of Kings.
The storms that battered Tasmania last week have revealed a hidden treasure buried in the sand along the coast of the Freycinet National Park.
The wreck of a ship appeared briefly at Friendly Beaches but has almost completely disappeared again.
The seabed holds some fascinating historical secrets, but unlike monuments on land, they’re largely hidden from view. Now, archaeologists in the United Kingdom are using 3D printing to bring two historical shipwrecks to life for history enthusiasts and experts alike.
A new maker of self-driving vehicles burst onto the scene Thursday in partnership with IBM's supercomputer platform Watson, and it's ready to roll right now.
The vehicle—a 3D-printed minibus called "Olli" capable of carrying 12 people—was unveiled by Arizona-based startup Local Motors outside the US capital city Washington.
Iconic American motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson is known for chrome, freedom, and big, beefy V-twin engines — but soon, it'll also be known for something very different.
In an interview with the Milwaukee Business Journal, Harley senior VP Sean Cummings says that it'll put an all-electric motorcycle on the road within five years.
Early Saturday morning, in the midst of a round-the-world flight, Solar Impulse 2 made the short hop from Pennsylvania to New York City. After gliding past the Statue of Liberty, it made its way to John F. Kennedy Airport, where it will remain until the weather permits it to start the next leg of its journey. After spending the morning soaking up the sunlight to charge its batteries, the plane was wheeled into one of Kennedy's massive hangars to give the press a chance to meet both it and the pilots who are taking it around the world.
Pass the sick bag. A device that allows people to empty a portion of their stomach contents into a toilet after a meal has just got the go-ahead from the US Food and Drug Administration. The device is approved for use by people who are severely obese, defined as having a body mass index of over 35 kg/m2.
After weeks of debate, Canadian lawmakers have passed legislation to legalize physician-assisted death.
That makes Canada "one of the few nations where doctors can legally help sick people die," as Reuters reports.
Related: Leading public health bodies call for decriminalisation of drugs
A pregnant woman's high-fat, high-sugar diet may have consequences for later generations, a mouse study indicates. The study suggests that a woman's obesity can cause genetic abnormalities that are passed through the female bloodline to at least three subsequent generations, increasing the risk of obesity-related conditions.
Related: How your parenting style affects your child's future
Modern intensive agriculture has generally led to a decline in farmland biodiversity, such as plants and animals. However, information on the impacts of human activities on soil microbial diversity is scarce and often inconclusive. This paucity is due partly to the difficulties in obtaining appropriate contrast samples for comparison.
Stanford law professor and bioethicist Hank Greely predicts that in the future most people in developed countries won't have sex to make babies. Instead they'll choose to control their child's genetics by making embryos in a lab.
Related: Lab-grown nerve cells make heart cells throb
You might think that cushioned running shoes were designed to give your feet a break. But scientists have discovered that lacing up causes us to use more muscles in our feet than we thought.
A new study in the journal Current Biology shows that physical exercise after learning improves memory and memory traces, but only if the exercise is done in a specific time window and not immediately after learning.
We’ve all been there: after a tough mental slog your brain feels as knackered as your body does after a hard workout.
Now we may have pinpointed one of the brain regions worn out by a mentally taxing day – and it seems to also affect our willpower, so perhaps we should avoid making important decisions when mentally fatigued.
The absence of a one specific species of gut bacteria causes social deficits in mice, researchers report. By adding this bacteria species back to the guts of affected mice, the researchers were able to reverse some of their behavioral deficits, which are reminiscent of symptoms of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in humans. The investigators are now looking to explore the effects of probiotics on neurodevelopmental disorders in future work.
It’s an attractive idea. Magnets could be used to pull oil from spills out of the water, with the help of iron oxide nanoparticles.
The stickiness of oil makes it difficult to remove from marine plants and animals once it is leaked by tankers and offshore rigs, so finding a way to quickly remove spills is essential for protecting ocean environments.
A Greek archaeologist says he has found part of the throne of the tragic kings of ancient Mycenae, one of whom was said to be among the Greek gods and heroes who attacked Troy and was later murdered by his wife and her lover upon his return.
Police in southern Zimbabwe say they have found a missing more-than-120 year old spear stuffed inside the thatched roof of a man who claimed to be a descendant of its owner, it was reported on Thursday.
Related: Lobengula’s spear stolen
Thousands of ancient treasures that have been unearthed by climate change could soon be lost to humankind forever, as they are eroded by weathering and eaten by pests. The crisis is so extreme that some archaeologists are urging colleagues to abandon their current field sites and focus instead on these newly exposed relics before they vanish.
After Orlando and San Bernardino and Paris, there is new urgency to understand the signs that can precede acts of terrorism. And with the Islamic State’s prolific use of social media, terrorism experts and government agencies continually search for clues in posts and Twitter messages that appear to promote the militants’ cause.
A physicist may not seem like an obvious person to study such activity. But for months, Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami, led a team that created a mathematical model to sift order from the chaotic pro-terrorism online universe.
Students choices when it comes to A-level subjects could largely be down to genetics, a new study suggests.
Scientists say that up to 80% of students’ choices of A-level subjects is down to genetic influence with environmental factors such as home life, accounting for 23% of the choice at most.
Whether you're Van Gogh or a stick-figure sketcher, a new Drexel University study found that making art can significantly reduce stress-related hormones in your body.
Sad music can provide enjoyment, comfort or pain to different people, according to new research looking at the effects of melancholy songs on the emotions.
Researchers at Durham University, UK and the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, said their findings could have implications for how music therapy and rehabilitation could help people's moods.
In a chorus of indris, young males vie for the spotlight, riffing in alternation rather than singing in unison. Not content to be the Joey Fatone of the group, these guys strive for Justin Timberlake status.
In the moment after their plane was hit, there was no time to think, let alone radio their position. The four Royal Air Force pilots ditched their broken bomber and dropped into the North Sea, near Britain. It was February 23, 1942 — and it should have been their last day on Earth.
Cats understand the principle of cause and effect as well as some elements of physics. Combining these abilities with their keen sense of hearing, they can predict where possible prey hides. These are the findings of researchers from Kyoto University in Japan, led by Saho Takagi and published in Springer's journal Animal Cognition.
On February 17th, a new X-ray satellite observatory launched from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Centre. Named "Hitomi" meaning "Eye pupil" in Japanese, the observatory was set to explore the nature of super-massive black holes and even the origin of the mysterious dark matter.
Astronomers have detected a small asteroid that doesn’t seem to want to go away. Called a quasi-satellite, this new companion circles around the Earth as it orbits the sun—and it’s going to stay that way for the next few hundred years.
Hazes and clouds high up in the atmospheres of exoplanets may make them appear bigger than they really are, according to new research by astronomers at the Space Research Institute (IWF) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The team, led by Helmut Lammer, publish their results in a letter to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Astronomers have discovered signs of oxygen in one of the universe's first galaxies, which was born shortly after the cosmic "Dark Ages" that existed before the universe had stars, a new study finds.
The discovery — which centers on the truly ancient galaxy SXDF-NB1006-2, located about 13.1 billion light-years from Earth — could help solve the mystery of how much the first stars helped to clear the murky fog that once filled the universe, the researchers said.
Physicists have detected ripples in the fabric of spacetime that were set in motion by the collision of two black holes far across the universe more than a billion years ago.
The event marks only the second time that scientists have spotted gravitational waves, the tenuous stretching and squeezing of spacetime predicted by Einstein more a century ago.
Archaeologists have discovered several medieval cities, buried beneath the forest floor in Cambodia: the largest is said to rival the modern Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, in size. It’s a monumental discovery, based on two major archaeological surveys of the area around Siem Reap, not far from the famous temple complex of Angkor Wat in the heartlands of the ancient Khmer culture.
Would you eat ancient butter? A 2,000-year-old 20-pound chunk of butter has been unearthed from a peat bog in Ireland, which is said to still be edible.
The large lump of butter was discovered by farmer Jack Conway while cutting turf for fuel in Emlagh Bog, County Meath on June 1. The strange rugby-ball shaped object was buried about 16 feet down in the bog.