Newsdesk Archive
Humpback whales usually arrive in the waters off Hawaii in December. But not this year. Why?
Honolulu — December usually marks the start of humpback whale season in Hawaii, but experts say the animals have been slow to return this year.
The specialized human ability to perceive the sound quality known as 'pitch' can no longer be listed as unique to humans. Researchers report new behavioral evidence that marmosets, ancient monkeys, appear to use auditory cues similar to humans to distinguish between low and high notes. The discovery infers that aspects of pitch perception may have evolved more than 40 million years ago to enable vocal communication and songlike vocalizations.
Scientists from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment in Tübingen and from the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt examined the demise of the giant ape Gigantopithecus. In their study, published recently in the scientific journal “Quaternary International,” they reach the conclusion that the presumably largest apes in geological history died due to their insufficient adaptability. Analyses of fossil tooth enamel show that the primates were restricted to forested habitats.
Dark matter. Dinosaurs. Few topics are as effective at grabbing the attention of science enthusiasts. But Lisa Randall doesn’t just muse about these topics for their popular appeal. The accomplished particle physicist’s latest book, Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, draws on her 2014 study positing that mysterious invisible matter permeating the cosmos can dislodge comets from their orbits and trigger the kind of impact that wiped out T. rex and friends.
At Texas State University, I teach an honors course called “Demonology, Possession, and Exorcism.” It’s not a gut course. My students produce research papers on topics that range from the role of sleep paralysis in reports of demonic attacks to contemporary murder cases in which defendants have claimed supernatural forces compelled them to commit crimes.
In fact, talk of demons isn’t unusual in Texas.
Related: Young woman 'possessed by demon' dies after 'exorcism' performed by family at local church
The following is an excerpt from the new book Wired to Create by Scott Barry Kaufman & Carolyn Gregoire (Perigee, 2015):
Being mindful alters the very structure and function of the brain, supporting executive functions like attention and self-regulation, both of which are valuable assets to creativity–especially when it comes to motivating ourselves to sit down and focus on a challenging creative task for extended periods of time.
The workings of neural circuits associated with creativity are significantly altered when artists are actively attempting to express emotions, according to a new brain-scanning study of jazz pianists.
Over the past decade, a collection of neuroimaging studies has begun to identify components of a neural circuit that operates across various domains of creativity.
Having a distrustful attitude might limit your earning power
Most of the world's population now lives in cities, which means fewer of us know our neighbors. Should we adapt to modern society by raising our guards and looking over our shoulder? Research says no—we are actually not trusting enough, and it could be costing us money.
There's growing evidence that a lack of sleep can leave the brain vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease.
"Changes in sleep habits may actually be setting the stage" for dementia, says Jeffrey Iliff, a brain scientist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.
Gonorrhoea is at risk of becoming an untreatable disease, England’s chief medical officer has said.
Dame Sally Davies has written to all GPs and pharmacies to ensure they are prescribing the correct drugs after the rise of a highly drug-resistant strain of the infection.
When it comes to evolution, people tend to focus on the big driving force of natural selection, which latches on to helpful mutations while purging the harmful ones. But there are other processes that change the frequencies of mutations—everything from random drift to the founding of small isolated populations.
Carpenter ants live in a caste system, where some members of the colony grow into large, strong worker guards known as majors and others grow into small, inquisitive food scouts known as minors. Scientists have long been fascinated by how majors and minors come to be.
Alt: Ants’ size and profession controlled by chemical tags on DNA
A gorilla who can speak sign language has appeared in a new video to raise awareness for climate change.
Arguably the best known member of her species in the world, Koko is a female western lowland gorilla who over the last 44 years has shown just how similar humans are to our primate cousins
Planets that orbit close to their stars might lose their atmospheres along with any chance of life, but new models show a way in which these planets may retain their atmospheres and habitability.
Tucked away in the basement of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, boxes held hundreds of glass plates imprinted with images of telescope observations, some of which are 120 years old
The University of West Florida archaeology program recently identified the archaeological site of the Luna settlement – the first multi-year European settlement in the United States – in a developed neighborhood in Pensacola.
The artifacts discovered are evidence of the Spanish settlement by Tristán de Luna y Arellano from 1559 to 1561, the earliest multi-year European colonial settlement ever archaeologically identified in the United States.
LIMA, Peru — In a dry canyon strewn with the ruins of a long-dead city, archaeologists have made a discovery they hope will help unravel one of the most tenacious mysteries of ancient Peru: how to read the knotted string records, known as khipus, kept by the Incas.
On a foggy day in August 1936, an anthropologist and his crew set sail for Kagamil Island, a small volcanic speck of hot springs and cliffs in the Bering Sea. A person identified as "Brown Bear" had told them of a cave full of mummies and other human remains. Shortly after landing, they found the opening in the rocks near a steam jet.
Although it was destroyed by ISIS earlier this year, Syria’s sacred Temple of Bel is getting a second lease on life thanks to an innovative 3-D imaging initiative.
Next year, 3D-printed reconstructions of the temple’s Arch of Triumph will be on display in New York City’s Times Square and London’s Trafalgar Square as part of UNESCO World Heritage Week.
Mosaic uncovered in Rosh Ha'Ayin excavation site. Greek inscription from Theodosius the priest: "Peace be with you when you come, peace be with you when you go."
Impressive archaeological finds have been uncovered in extensive excavations being carried out by in Rosh Ha’Ayin by the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Traditional Mosques are about to get a modern modification in Jordan.
A joint collaboration between Jordan’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources and its Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs will initially power 120 mosques with solar roof top panels. The long term plan is, of course, to apply this technology to every mosque.
As you may have noticed, the entire world has been experiencing some bizarre weather, ranging from soaring temperatures in the Arctic and intense El Niño-driven downpours that have one river in Argentina cresting at 46 feet above normal. But if that’s not quite weird enough for you, here’s something even more bizarre phenomenon: a lake in Maine with waves of what appear to be snowballs.
Temperatures at the North Pole rose above freezing point Wednesday, 20 degrees Celsius above the mid-winter norm and the latest abnormality in a season of extreme weather events.
Canadian weather authorities blamed the temperature spike on the freak depression which has already brought record Christmas temperatures to North America and lashed Britain with winds and floods.
If Toronto-based mining company Nautilus Minerals has it their way, there could soon be a swarm of deep-sea mining robots lurking around on the ocean floor of the Bismarck Sea, near Papua New Guinea, to snatch up deposits of copper, gold and silver.
These mining robots, which are tractor-trailer-size excavators, could help unlock a subsea gold rush.
The Great Barrier Reef will have a robotic protector beginning this winter. The underwater autonomous vehicle is programmed to patrol the massive living structure in search of destructive crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS), which it then kills by lethal injection. These starfish prey on coral polyps, and although they are native to the reef, their population has exploded in the past few years, possibly because of overfishing of their natural predators.
In a few months, a giant floating dam—in the form of a 328-feet (100 meters) long barrier segment—will be set up in the North Sea, some miles off the coast of The Netherlands. Its ambition: to cleanse the world’s oceans of plastic trash forever.
Fish could have emotions and conciousness, according to new research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Biological Sciences, which has for the first time observed in fish a phenomenon known as emotional fever – the increase in body temperature when subject to stress – which has been controversially linked to consciousness.
The combination of human and computer intelligence might be just what we need to solve the "wicked" problems of the world, such as climate change and geopolitical conflict, say researchers from the Human Computation Institute (HCI) and Cornell University.
There's a reason they're used in everything from jet engines to Formula 1 race car brakes: Ceramics are tough. They can withstand an absurd amount of heat and pressure without warping or breaking, all while brushing off many of the physical and chemical assaults that would rust metals and wear away plastics.
The seventh row of the periodic table is officially full.
On December 30, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry announced that a Russian-U.S. collaboration had attained sufficient evidence to claim the discovery of elements 115, 117 and 118.
Related: Japanese research team earns right to name Element 113
A woman captured bizarre footage of seven lights dancing in the sky - sparking a new debate regarding the existence of extra-terrestrial life.
The woman, who has not been identified, captured footage from her window of four beams of light in the sky, which appear to be individually made up of around four small lights.
Related: The only man to ever shoot at a UFO
On 15th December the two biggest experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) reported on what has been learned this year from particle collisions at a new, record-breaking energy. The reports received some attention internationally (and there was some reaction here of course), but in the UK they were largely lost in Tim Peake’s rocket smoke. He made it to the International Space Station by the evening of the same day.
The heat is on in the outskirts of the Milky Way. A white dwarf sizzling at around 250,000? Celsius is now the hottest known member of this class of dead stars, researchers report in the December Astronomy & Astrophysics. This scorcher, designated RX J0439.8-6809, sits about 30,000 light-years away in the constellation Dorado and is about 50,000 degrees hotter than the previous record holder.
The pull of gravity on a distant star can now be measured more accurately, shedding light on other worlds, say astronomers.
The method makes it possible to study even the faintest of stars.
Royce Burton was teaching history at a New Jersey university when he decided to tell his class about a frightening experience he had as a young man.
He was a Texas Ranger, patrolling the Rio Grande in 1940, when he got lost in a canyon after dark.
With his new book Magicians of the Gods, British writer Hancock returns to, and builds on, the bestselling “alternative history” of his previous bestsellers, including Fingerprints of the Gods. Through his methodical research, Hancock attempts to establish that there was a golden age of humans, technologically advanced and scientifically astute, who were destroyed in a global cataclysm between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago. That those dates conform precisely to the timeline established by Plato for the disappearance of Atlantis can’t possibly be a coincidence, can it?
The Ministry of Antiquities in Egypt has announced that a statue of the 18th Dynasty King, “Amenhotep III” has been discovered during a house raid in al Nakhl Edfu.
The statue was uncovered by the General Prosecutors Office whilst investigating the house of a local drugs and arms dealer. Upon its discovery, an archaeological committee was formed immediately to examine the statue and authenticate it.
Archaeologists have begun uncovering the remains of what they think could be one of the most important Roman settlements in Spain, under the present-day town of Jimena de la Frontera.
Three Spanish archaeologists stand at the top of what is known locally as the Moorish castle looking at detailed plans.
An archaeological expedition from the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, while conducting a rescue excavation dig near Zvenigorod (Moscow Region) involving the new Central Circular Highway, has unearthed the private arsenal of a military commander from the era of Ivan the Terrible.
Did Homo naledi behave more like H. homicidensis?
“Fossil First: Ancient Human Relative May Have Buried Its Dead” (Reuters). “Why Did Homo naledi Bury Its Dead?” (NOVA Next). These are just two of the many hyped headlines that appeared last September in response to a paper purporting the discovery, in a cave in South Africa, of a new species by paleoanthropologist Lee R. Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. There were reasons for skepticism from the get-go.
An ancient femur found in a Chinese cave is unlike any bone formerly discovered, suggesting it belonged to a previously unknown human species that lived alongside modern man just 14,000 years ago.
The distinctive shape of the bone indicates that the species would have walked differently from humans today, according to the New Scientist.
In 1989, an archaeological excavation was underway in China’s Yunnan Province, at an ancient cave site bordering a lush, sprawling evergreen forest. To anthropologists, the cave bore certain promise, with the numerous bones that were scattered along its floor. Evidence of fires could be seen also, having been built there over the thousands of years that it served as shelter to ancient humans that came and went through it. These people hunted deer in the nearby forests, piling their bones by the fire pits they built; thus, the remnants of such ancient practices were borrowed in the name given to the site, Maludong, which literally means the “Red Deer Cave”.
Environmentalists hoping to regrow forests created from the world's oldest trees have climbed a nine-storey tall, 2,000-year-old cypress in central Florida known as Lady Liberty.
The experiment involved plucking cuttings from the tree's crown, and then packing the specimens on ice before they were shipped to the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive nursery in northern Michigan.
Related: Amazon rainforests could transition to savannah-like states in response to climate change, new study predicts
A giant squid, rarely seen outside of deep waters, has been filmed swimming near a pier in central Japan.
The 3.7-metre-long squid was spotted swimming under fishing boats at Toyama Bay on Christmas Eve.
Humans are not the only ones who can hear perfect pitch, it has been found.
Researchers say that marmosets have the same ability - as could other ancient monkeys.
The discovery infers that aspects of pitch perception may have evolved more than 40 million years ago to enable vocal communication and songlike vocalizations.
As the champagne corks pop at the end of the New Year's Eve countdown, it's the perfect time to think about what you'd like to accomplish in 2016.
Dr Ruth Arber and Dr Michiko Weinmann, Co-Directors of Deakin University's Centre for Teaching and Learning Languages (CTaLL), argue that learning a new language should be top of your list.
Small-scale Mexican marijuana farmers say the loosening of marijuana laws across the U.S. has increased competition from growers north of the border and could put them out of business. The Mexicans used to get $100 per kilogram for their illegal crops, but that price has crashed to $30 per kilogram in the last four years, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.
Why can some people more easily take life's challenges in stride while others feel stressed out? Do our genes predispose us to being anxious? Or do our environments and life experiences dictate how mellow we are? Everyday Einsten explores new research linking genetics to our stress levels
Anxiety acts like a 'sixth sense' which could save your life, scientists have shown after discovering that nervous people are more attuned to danger.
For decades research has suggested that being in a chronic state of alertness is bad for health because it causes cortisol - the stress hormone - to surge through the body, damaging cells.
Diners order significantly more food and drink when served by an overweight waiter or waitress, according to a recently published study.
“In a novel approach, we showed that diners can be influenced by their surroundings in general and furthermore by their social interactions in particular,” Tim Döring and Brian Wansink wrote in their study. “This study suggests that it does not take profound interactions between individuals to alter their eating behavior.”
Gimmicky diets, flavor fakery, and sham sweets all try to bamboozle the brain out of wanting sugary treats and calorie-packed happy hour drinks. But scientists may have found an all-natural way to simply switch off those corrupting cravings.
Brain scans from nearly 200 adolescent boys provide evidence that the brains of compulsive video game players are wired differently. Chronic video game play is associated with hyperconnectivity between several pairs of brain networks. Some of the changes are predicted to help game players respond to new information.
A group of researchers in Japan and China identified the requirements for the development of new types of extremely low power consumption electric devices by studying Cr-doped (Sb, Bi)2Te3 thin films. This study has been reported in Nature Communications.
Alt: Are phones you NEVER need to charge coming? Groundbreaking Japanese experiment ‘generates electric current without energy consumption '
A team of researchers working at Stanford University has extended the record for quantum superposition at the macroscopic level, from 1 to 54 centimeters. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the team describes the experiment they conducted, their results and also discuss what their findings might mean for researchers looking to find the cutoff point between superposition as it applies to macroscopic objects versus those that only exist at the quantum level. Nature has also published an editorial on the work done by the team, describing their experiment and summarizing their results.
A new way to test one of the basic principles underlying Einstein's theory of General Relativity using brief blasts of rare radio signals from space called Fast Radio Bursts is ten times, to one-hundred times better than previous testing methods that used gamma-ray bursts, according to a paper just published in the journal Physical Review Letters. The paper received additional highlighting as an "Editor's Suggestion" due to "its particular importance, innovation, and broad appeal," according to the journal's editors.
Ever wondered what happened to the UK's piece of the moon? Four fragments which were given to the UK as a present?
Newly-released National Archives' files reveal that three prime ministers were unsure what to do with the official gift - which was given to the country by US President Richard Nixon.
Establishing a permanent colony on Mars means living off the land.
Mars has usable resources such as water ice that could help sustain future expeditionary crews on short missions, or pioneers living permanently on the Red Planet, experts say.
A 2m-tall flower, known for its pungent odour which has been likened to rotting flesh, has bloomed in Australia.
South Australia's Mount Lofty Botanic Garden has been growing the Amorphophallus Titanium, more commonly called the Corpse Flower, for 10 years.
Scientists have discovered that the stripes exhibited on animals like zebras and tigers can be defined by mathematical predictability.
The study, published today in the journal Cell Systems, offers a possible explanation for why different species’ stripes move the direction they do. It has to do with how much of one substance or another is produced while the baby animal is still in its mother’s womb.
This is not a philosophical riddle. Despite their highly variable appearance, dogs can recognize each other by sight alone.
Does a dog know, merely by sight, that an approaching being is a fellow dog? Before you answer, remember this: Canis familiaris is the least uniform species on the planet. Members of this species come in a wide range of body shapes and sizes from itty bitty teeny weeny to absolutely ginormos. Adult members of this species appear as tight little packages, huge weightlifters, lean ballerinas, elongated hotdogs and everything in between.
A research team involving a WA scientist have determined that a citizen of a bustling bird metropolis in South Africa is actually a new type of miniscule arachnid.
The nests of sociable weaver birds (Philetairus socius) are the largest of any bird, and may contain up to 500 individuals, while also harbouring a wide variety of organisms acting as ectoparasites on the birds themselves—similar to fleas on a dog—or feeding on other invertebrates.
A large shell that once belonged to a giant prehistoric kind of armadillo was recently found along a riverbed in Argentina but locals who stumbled upon it at their farm in Carlos Spegazzini, south of Buenos Aires, Argentina, originally mistook it for a dinosaur egg.
An inherited disorder that stems from a problem in the way the body handles iron in the blood has been called a "Celtic Curse" because of the condition's high prevalence among people with ancestry in the British Isles.
But according to researchers writing Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, hemochromatosis has deeper roots on the Emerald Isle than anyone knew; even some prehistoric residents of the island carried genetic mutations that cause the condition.
An abrupt change about 6,000 years ago in how terrestrial plant and animal species coexisted occurred at right about the time human populations were ballooning and agriculture was spreading around the world.
These findings suggest that human activity had reached a tipping point where hunting and farming were affecting the natural world in irreversible ways—changes that have continued to increase to this day.
A small team of researchers from France and Australia has found evidence in a very old cemetery (first discovered back in 2004) on one of the islands of Vanuatu that suggests that early Asians and Polynesians were the first human settlers, not Melanesians as many have suggested. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes how the question of the origin of the people of the Pacific Islands has confounded visitors from the west since perhaps the 16th century and why they believe their study finally provides the answers.
"We bid a poignant goodbye to our close views of this amazing icy world," said Linda Spilker, the mission's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Cassini has made so many breathtaking discoveries about Enceladus, yet so much more remains to be done to answer that pivotal question, 'Does this tiny ocean world harbor life?'"
Patients needing surgery to reconstruct body parts such as noses and ears could soon have treatment using cartilage which has been grown in a lab.
The process involves growing someone's cells in an incubator and then mixing them with a liquid which is 3D printed into the jelly-like shape needed.
Scientists may have finally found the cause of a mysterious disappearance of electrons dozens of miles above Earth.
It turns out that a layer of invisible meteor dust falling to Earth every day may be sucking up electrons coming from higher in the atmosphere, creating the so-called "D-region ledge," where the concentration of electrons suddenly plunges, Earle Williams, an atmospheric electrician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said earlier this month at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Jupiter, that blustery ball of noxious gas, is probably the last place that comes to mind when you hear the words “life supporting.” But for twenty years, astronomers have suspected Jupiter of doing just that: supporting life on Earth, by shielding us from destructive comets. Now, one scientist is saying that’s dead wrong.
Vast lava flows may have provided humans with access to heat and fire for cooking their food millions of years ago, one researcher has proposed.
That, in turn, would have enabled the evolution of human intelligence, Michael Medler, a geographer at Western Washington University, said at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union earlier this month.
A strange light moving across the sky during the Christmas period has been the source of much debate since it was shared on social media.
Webcams in Mexico captured the eerie light moving erratically above the volcano of Popocatepetl, which lies in the eastern half of the Trans-Mexican volcanic belt in the centre of the country.
Related: UFO Hunters Claims '800-Year-Old Mobile Phone Dug Up In Austria' Proves Aliens Visited Earth
A new science project launched in 2015 with a lofty goal: to record data on reported sightings of "Unidentified Flying Objects" (or UFOs) in the hopes of identifying what they are.
The group is called "UFODATA" – short for UFO Detection And TrAcking – and is based on building a network of automated surveillance stations with high-tech sensors for gathering scientific data on sightings of alleged UFOs.
A massive solar eruption is about to hit Earth, and the resulting northern lights could be spectacular just before New Year's Eve for those in the right latitudes. NOAA forecasts the aurora borealis will dip clear down to Oregon, with a small chance of even the Bay Area seeing the northern lights.
"It's certainly possible," Terry Onsager, a physicist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told SFGATE. "It depends entirely on the strength of the storm. If it turns out to be stronger than that, it could be seen."
Clad in camouflage jackets and clutching the tools of their trade, the three men who descended after dark on a Gloucestershire village appeared to be conventional burglars. But rather than thieving from a building, their target was an open field.
Over 10,000 discovered artefacts heralding from the Ancient Egyptian city of Naukratis are revealing an abundance of information about a trading port which the Ancient Greeks established there. Led by the British museum, an excavation of the area, which sits on the Nile Delta, unearthed discoveries such as shrines to deities, jewellery, amulets and statues, among many other items, in Greece's earliest settlement in the north African country.
AL-DIWANIYAH, Iraq — The ancient city of Nuffar, just south of al-Diwaniyah City near Baghdad, dates back to 2500 BCE. Nuffar (or Nippur) was a holy city to the ancient Iraqis of the Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations.
It's a great myth that creative geniuses consistently produce great work. While consistency may be the key to expertise, the secret to creative greatness appears to be doing things differently—even when that means failing.
An experiment to give away money as "basic income" is underway in Germany. In 2014, Michael Bohmeyer, a 31-year-old German entrepreneur, launched "My Basic Income" ("Mein Grundeinkommen"), and this month, the project, made possible through crowdfunding, issued $1,100 checks to 26 people to use however they want.
Leftists in Germany tend to support the idea of basic income while others in the country say the idea might take away incentives for people to work.
Germany, the country that brought you the speedsters' paradise called the Autobahn, is looking to replicate the model for bicyclists. According to the AFP, the country just opened the first 5-kilometer (3-mile) stretch of what will eventually become a 100-km bicycle superhighway.
This is great news for Prius owners who don’t feel special anymore and want another opportunity to out-snob their neighbors and friends like they did when they were the first to own a hybrid. The U.S. Patent Office has published Toyota’s patent application for a flying car with a very unique design – stackable wings that rise from the roof to make it look like a hybrid double-biplane with cup holders. Will it work? Will it sell?
Related: Ford wants to turn your car's rear wheel into a detachable UNICYCLE to help you cut through traffic
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but that doesn’t mean it’s memorable.
So what exactly makes one image more memorable than another? Researchers at MIT drew on the collective knowledge of the masses to identify memorable photos, and they’ve incorporated their findings into an algorithm that predicts a photo’s memorability as accurately as humans.
The world's most human-like robot has begun work as a university receptionist as scientists predict the new technology will eventually provide childcare and offer friendship to lonely elderly people.
With her soft skin and flowing brunette hair, Nadine does not only meet and greet visitors, smile, make eye contact and shake hands, but she can even recognise past guests and spark up conversation based on previous chats.
Alt: Social, telepresence robots revealed by scientists
Better cameras, along with more powerful algorithms for computer vision and emotion-sensing facial analysis software, could transform the way we interact with our devices
As I write this, I realize you are at a disadvantage. You can’t see my facial expressions or gestures, or hear the inflections of my voice that convey so much meaning. You have only my words. Because so much communication is non-verbal, it’s easy to understand why interactions between people and computers are so truncated.
A few years from now millions of people around the world might be walking around with an unusual kind of glass in their mouth, and using it every time they eat. Engineers have made some promising findings about the ability of 'bioactive' glass to help reduce the ability of bacteria to attack composite tooth fillings -- and perhaps even provide some of the minerals needed to replace those lost to tooth decay.
History’s first confirmed ice cream graced the court of Charles II in 1671. It was made using a special flavor, orange blossom, and one very special chemical ingredient that made ice cream without refrigeration possible in the first place.
Ask who served the first ice cream and you’ll get a variety of answers. Sources name-drop everyone from the the Roman emperor Nero to Catherine de Medici.
Christians have reacted with fury after a religious academic suggested Eve was not made from Adam's rib, but was instead formed using his penis.
The theory, put forward by revered biblical professor Ziony Zevit, suggests God made Eve from Adam's baculum, or penis bone.
Professor Zevit said this explains why man has no baculum, unlike most mammals, and why men don't have an uneven number of ribs compared to women.
Scientists from Dublin and Belfast have looked deep into Ireland’s early history to discover a still-familiar pattern of migration: of stone age settlers with origins in the Fertile Crescent, and bronze age economic migrants who began a journey somewhere in eastern Europe.
Evidence from an ancient graveyard has begun to illuminate one of the great mysteries of the human journey: the peopling of the Pacific. A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that the shape and contours of the earliest skull in a 3,000-year-old burial ground in Vanuatu, a group of islands once known as the New Hebrides,suggests a starting point for the great Polynesian migration.
Tiny figurines that may have been used as rattling toys or charms to ward off evil spirits were discovered in the grave of an infant dating back 4,500 years, archaeologists say.
The burial was discovered on the northwest shore of Lake Itkul in the Minusinsk basinin Russia. The infant’s remains, which were found in what appears to be a birchbark cradle, suggest he or she was less than a year old at death.
Six rock cut statues have been discovered within 18th Dynasty shrines in Egypt, Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty announced.
The 3,400-year-old statues were found at Gebel el Sisila, a site north of Aswan known for its stone quarries on both sides of the Nile. Blocks used in building almost all of ancient Egypt's great temples were cut from there.
A hand-carved marble statue of a ram that was uncovered last week along Israel's Mediterranean coast has archaeologists guessing about who carved the creation.
Archaeologists found the statue on Thursday (Dec. 24), but they say its unclear whether it was carved by Byzantine artisans, or if it was made by Romans and then later repurposed by the Byzantine church, the Israel Antiquities Authority said.
An ancient marble altar showing a nude warrior battling a serpent monster has been discovered by villagers near the Akçay River in Turkey.
Archaeologists said the altar likely dates to the second century A.D., a time when the Roman Empire controlled the area.
Piercing blue eyes and pale skin are one of the most distinguishing features of the Irish.
But the Celtic complexion did not arrive in Ireland until the Bronze Age, around 4,000 years ago, scientists have discovered, when a rare genetic mutation spread quickly through the population.
Proteins and languages share many similarities – both, for instance, yield their meaning through a proper arrangement of basic building blocks. Andrei Lupas, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany, and his team apply computational methods to reconstruct primordial building blocks by comparative studies of modern proteins.
You can say what you like about our nearest star, but as this latest solar eruption proves, it certainly has impeccable timing.
On Monday (Dec. 28), a sunspot cluster erupted, blasting an M-class flare directly at Earth. The extreme-ultraviolet radiation immediately washed over our upper atmosphere, initiating an ionization event that caused a radio blackout over South America, Africa and the south Atlantic Ocean.
Giant comets that originate in the planetary fringes of the solar system pose a greater threat of colliding with Earth than do asteroids, which originate closer to the sun, a new review paper argues.
In the last two decades, scientists have discovered hundreds of giant comets (known as centaurs) in the region near Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, according to a statement from the Royal Astronomical Society.
Asteroid 2003 SD220 safely flew past Earth on Dec. 24 at a distance of 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers). Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have generated the highest-resolution images to date of this asteroid using the Deep Space Network's 230-foot (70-meter) antenna at Goldstone, California. The radar images were acquired between Dec. 17 and Dec. 22, when the distance to this near-Earth object (NEO) was narrowing from 7.3 million miles (12 million kilometers) to almost the flyby distance.
Giant squid fans got a nice Christmas present, when one of the titans of the deep appeared in a Japanese harbor on Christmas Eve. Better still for those on hand, it hung around to let itself be recorded in some amazing footage, CNN reports.
The rarely seen aquatic behemoth paid a visit to Japan’s Toyama Bay, swimming near the surface among the harbor’s boats, and giving onlookers a thrill.
An orangutan at a zoo in Thailand wasn't too impressed with her sleeping quarters - so she decided to do something about it.
Nemo, who is 14-years-old, was captured on video using a blanket to create a hammock in which she could sleep.
Alt: I wanna sleep like you-oo-oo! Amazingly clever orangutan Nemo makes her own HAMMOCK by tying a sheet to her cage
West Yorkshire couple Laura Jacques and Richard Remde enlisted South Korean firm offering dog-cloning service for £67,000
Related: British couple overjoyed at birth of second cloned puppy