Newsdesk Archive
A new study has linked life satisfaction to the chemistry in our brains. People that release more of the neurochemical oxytocin are kinder to others and tend to be more satisfied with their lives.
Archaeologists in Alabama have discovered the longest known painting created by early Indigenous Americans, a new study finds.
A team of researchers affiliated with the University of Huddersfield in England reports evidence suggesting that large numbers of women from the European continent migrated to the Orkney Islands during the Bronze Age.
There's something wonderful about sitting under the night sky, watching a meteor shower play out overhead.
As a legal psychedelic industry nears, facilitators fight for their right to remain underground.
Within the Milky Way, astronomers have just identified eight new examples of these echoing black holes. Previously, only two had been identified within our galaxy.
From academic works giving women a supporting role to hunter-gather men, to Raquel Welch’s portrayal of a bikini-clad cavewoman in the 1966 film One Million Years BC, the gender division of the stone age is firmly entrenched in public consciousness.
Dark matter is one slippery substance. As far as we can tell, it has to exist for our current models of the Universe to work. But not only can we not see it, feel it, or interact with it in any way – we're not even sure what dark matter really is.
A toxicological study shows that the victims of human sacrifice consumed coca leaves and ayahuasca before they were killed, but not for reasons we originally thought.
A local farmer has unearthed a 4,500-year-old limestone statue in Gaza, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities run by the Islamist group Hamas announced on Tuesday (April 26).
In two weeks' time, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is going to present the world with new information about our Milky Way.
Ichthyosaurs were large marine reptiles with an elongated, snakey shape. They first emerged after the end of the Permian extinction, an event also known as the “great dying”, which occurred about 250m years ago and which wiped out more than two-thirds of species on land and 96% of marine species.
People with depressive symptoms appear to think it is relatively important that guides for psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy have personally used the psychedelic substance themselves, according to a new study published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.
Hunter-gatherers made use of open woodland conditions in the millennia before Stonehenge monuments were built, according to a study published April 27, 2022 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.
In the early hours of 30 April 2022, we'll have the chance to see Venus and Jupiter 'nearly collide' as they appear to move incredibly close together from our vantage point.
A multidisciplinary research team investigated whether Neanderthals were well adapted to life in the cold or preferred more temperate environmental conditions
Workers upgrading water supplies in southern Spain have come across an “unprecedented” and well-preserved necropolis of subterranean limestone vaults where the Phoenicians who lived on the Iberian peninsula 2,500 years ago laid their dead.
We still don't know just how the first life emerged on Earth. One suggestion is that the building blocks arrived here from space; now, a new study of several carbon-rich meteorites has added weight to this idea
There is strong evidence that invertebrates are sentient beings.
Between about 700,000 years ago and 60,000 years ago, a diminutive early human walked the island of Flores, in what is now Indonesia.
According to Postdoctoral Researcher Marja Ahola from the University of Helsinki, not all objects have necessarily been broken by accident. Instead, it is possible some were fragmented on purpose as part of maintaining social relations, bartering or ritual activities.
The two brightest planets will be a beauty to spot if you can find somewhere with a low enough eastern horizon.
Image from: User:1j1z2 (Wiki Commons)
Named Tomlinsonus dimitrii, the species represented by the specimen is part of an extinct group of arthropods known as marrellomorphs that lived approximately 450 million years ago, during the Ordovician period, the research team reported in a new study.
The drug MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) might not produce depressive “comedowns” when used in a controlled clinical setting, according to new research published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Psychedelic use has been proposed as a treatment for various substance use disorders, leading people to question if it would be an effective treatment for opioid abuse. A study published in Nature: Scientific Reports suggests that psilocybin use, but no other psychedelics, was linked to lower odds of opioid abuse.
Current global climatic warming is having, and will continue to have, widespread consequences for human history, in the same way that environmental fluctuations had significant consequences for human populations in the past.
An epic migration story is revealed through a piece of pottery.
The sandal reveals that humans historically used the icy pass.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will restart on Friday after a three-year hiatus and is expected to resolve a scientific cliffhanger on whether a mysterious anomaly could point to the existence of a fifth fundamental force of nature.
It’s high time we had a sensible conversation about cannabis reform. From Canada to Georgia, Mexico to Malta, countries around the world are changing their laws. But in the UK the substance continues to be banned. We are failing to keep up with global trends and new thinking.
A research team from the Department of Prehistory, Archaeology and Ancient History of the University of Valencia (UV) has discovered and dated in Aspe (Alicante) an open-air neanderthal habitat over 120,000 years old in the Natural Park of Los Aljezares.
A tranche of documents released to Motherboard through FOIA show the research priorities of the secretive Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program.
Our early ancestors probably created intricate artwork by firelight, an examination of 50 engraved stones unearthed in France has revealed.
Surface features similar to ones seen on Greenland ice sheet suggest underground liquid water that could host organic matter.
Experts have developed new ways of visually representing ancient objects such as stone tools and fossils developing technologies currently only used in video games and computer graphics.
In a country with conflicting legal and social attitudes to marijuana, this idyllic cafe wants to break the stigma around the persecuted plant.
A unique rock formation in China holds clues that tectonic plates subducted, or went underneath other plates, during the Archean eon (4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago), just as they do nowadays, a new study finds.
After a shock injury on a reef in Indonesia in 2018, he pushed into frontiers that athletes, let alone modern science, are only just beginning to explore.
Image from: Shalom Jacobovitz (Wiki Commons)
Archaic humans ventured into Eurasia in waves, not always successfully. They may have started their journey in North Africa or West Asia.
The rock, a fist-sized piece of black glass, was discovered in 2011 and first reported in 2017, when scientists wrote in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters that it had been formed in temperatures reaching 4,298 degrees Fahrenheit (2,370 degrees Celsius)...
"I had the full-blown mystical revelatory experience - the big psychedelic multi-coloured light and sound show." This is how Steve recalls his first dose of a hallucinogenic drug, psilocybin...
Beacon of Galaxy message could be sent into heart of Milky Way, where life is deemed most likely to exist.
One of the ways we can fully realize the potential of quantum computers is by basing them on both light and matter – this way, information can be stored and processed, but also travel at the speed of light.
Nasa's Hubble telescope has determined the comet's icy nucleus has a mass of about 500 trillion tonnes and is 85 miles (137km) wide - larger than the US state of Rhode Island.
Scientists believe they have found evidence of microbes that were thriving near hydrothermal vents on Earth’s surface just 300m years after the planet formed – the strongest evidence yet that life began far earlier than is widely assumed.
Among the fragments of an ancient Mesoamerican mural, archaeologists in Guatemala have uncovered the earliest unequivocal evidence of a Maya sacred calendar.
Researchers long assumed ancient humans entered North America via an ice-free corridor about 13,000 years ago. However, a new study published in the journal PNAS used cosmogenic nuclide exposure dating to prove that the continent had already been populated when the corridor was still frozen over.
Circular mounds of rocks dot the desert landscape at the archaeological site of Tombos in northern Sudan. They reveal tumuli – the underground burial tombs used at least as far back as 2500 B.C. by ancient inhabitants who called this region Kush or Nubia.
A new model of the very early universe proposes that the graviton, the quantum mechanical force carrier of gravity, flooded the cosmos with dark matter before normal matter even had a chance to get started.
On a remote peninsula in Western Australia, a 16-hour drive from the nearest city, 30,000-year-old faces stare at the rare visitor to this wild location.
Image from: Marius Fenger (Wiki Commons)
Five planets, visible to the naked eye, are poised to line up and march across the sky this summer in an unusual alignment that will be graced by the light of the moon.
No matter where you're standing on Earth, you can only ever see one face of the Moon. Its other cheek is perennially turned away from our planet, and this far side is much more pockmarked with craters than the one facing us.
Psilocybin, a drug found in magic mushrooms, appears to free up the brains of people with severe depression in a way that other antidepressants do not, a study has found.
For the past several decades, psychedelics have been widely stigmatized as dangerous illegal drugs. But a recent surge of academic research into their use to treat psychiatric conditions is spurring a recent shift in public opinion.
Unicorn-like imagery dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization (about 3300 B.C. to 1300 B.C.) in South Asia, which included parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
A combined study of genetics and skeletal remains show that the switch from primarily hunting, gathering and foraging to farming about 12,000 years ago in Europe may have had negative health effects as indicated by shorter than expected heights in the earliest farmers, according to an international team of researchers.
A combined study of genetics and skeletal remains show that the switch from primarily hunting, gathering and foraging to farming about 12,000 years ago in Europe may have had negative health effects as indicated by shorter than expected heights in the earliest farmers, according to an international team of researchers.
Last year, a genetic analysis of bone fragments representing our earliest known presence in Europe raised a few questions over the steps modern humans took to conquer every corner of the modern world.
New measurement of fundamental particle of physics after decade-long study challenges theoretical rulebook in scientific ‘mystery’.
A tsunami 3800 years ago devastated the coastline of Chile and encouraged hunter-gatherers to move inland, where they stayed for the next 1000 years.
The psychedelic substance psilocybin causes transient changes to the sleep-wake architecture of laboratory mice, according to new preliminary research published in Translational Psychiatry. The findings provide new details about how the drug impacts sleep-related brain activity.
Scientists have presented a stunningly preserved leg of a dinosaur. The limb, complete with skin, is just one of a series of remarkable finds emerging from the Tanis fossil site in the US State of North Dakota.
The super-distant galaxy could have either a supermassive black hole or a nursery of incredibly quick-forming stars.
The discovery of octopus communities came as a surprise to biologists who have long described octopuses as solitary animals that interact with others in three specific contexts: hunting, avoiding being hunted, and mating.
Buried in forest litter or sprouting from trees, fungi might give the impression of being silent and relatively self-contained organisms, but a new study suggests they may be champignon communicators
A stunning array of new fungi has been described for the first time on the Polynesian Island.
Scientists have observed an enormous planet about nine times the mass of Jupiter at a remarkably early stage of formation – describing it as still in the womb – in a discovery that challenges the current understanding of planetary formation.
It turns out that Mars is rumblier than we knew. New techniques have revealed previously undetected quakes beneath the Martian surface – and, scientists say, the best explanation so far is ongoing volcanic activity.
The findings, published March 28 in Frontiers in Psychology, reveal that higher ratings of mystical-type experiences, which often include a sense that everything is alive, were associated with greater increases in the attribution of consciousness.
Image from: Air article (Wiki Commons)
Neandertal populations in the Iberian Peninsula were experiencing local extinction and replacement even before Homo sapiens arrived, according to a study published March 30, 2022 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Joseba Rios-Garaizar of the Archaeological Museum of Bilbao, Spain and colleagues.
The most distant star ever seen has been captured by the Hubble space telescope in images that appear to give a remarkable glimpse into the ancient universe.
Helium-3, a rare isotope of helium gas, is leaking out of Earth's core, a new study reports. Because almost all helium-3 is from the Big Bang, the gas leak adds evidence that Earth formed inside a solar nebula, which has long been debated.
Researchers have uncovered giant "mysterious" jars in India that may have been used for ancient human burial practices.
In a new study, researchers examined a relatively new way to alter minds, which makes use of digital sounds to feed conflicting frequencies into each ear. By tuning in to these 'binaural beats', some people report they can drop out, reduce pain, enhance memory, and ease anxiety and depression.
Existence of volcanoes makes idea that dwarf planet is inert ball of ice look increasingly improbable.
The Milky Way is older than astronomers thought, or part of it is. A newly-published study shows that part of the disk is two billion years older than we thought.
Scientists have detected a strange new type of high-frequency wave on the sun's surface, and the waves are moving three times faster than scientists thought was possible.
That’s according to researchers in Japan, who detailed their findings in two new papers presented at the 53rd annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas, March 7 to 11, 2022.
The ancient tomb holds the remains of five people, including those of a woman and toddler who were buried with an array of grave goods, such as a crescent moon-shaped pendant, bronze mirror and gold earrings.
Long before the Incas rose to power in Peru and began to celebrate their sun god, a little known civilization was building the earliest known astronomical observatory in the Americas.
One of the most interesting things going on in Australian archaeology is the idea that Aboriginal food production systems may have involved domestication of some plant species. Was there some level of food production going on in Aboriginal groups that goes well beyond hunter-gathering?
"They've lived for so long; just think what they've seen." Forester Nick Baimbridge is gazing fondly at a majestic oak that has stood for more than a thousand years. On this wintry afternoon, birds sing from lichen-covered branches and a deer runs through the undergrowth.
Overnight on March 24-25, 2022, another small asteroid raced toward Earth, unseen until hours before its closest approach.
According to calculations made a few years ago by University of Portsmouth physicist Melvin Vopson, this literal mass of visual imagery – along with half a billion tweets, countless texts, billions of WhatsApp messages, and every other bit and byte of information we've created – could be making our planet a touch heavier.
One of the great mysteries of late medieval history is why did the Norse, who had established successful settlements in southern Greenland in 985, abandon them in the early 15th century?
Peruvian historian and US archaeologist say the pre-Columbian town was called Huayna Picchu by the Inca people.
Archaeologists in Scotland shed "genuine tears" upon discovering a stone covered with geometric carvings that the Picts, the Indigenous people of the region, designed about 1,500 years ago.
The sprawling ruins of Çatalhöyük – a vast, ancient human settlement in what we now know as Turkey – are much like a precursor to the modern metropolis of today. Yet, over the course of 9,000 years, times have certainly changed.
Primates come up with new ‘kiss-squeak’ alarm calls that spread quickly through communities, research says.
When the dinosaur-destroying asteroid collided with Earth 66 million years ago, massive amounts of sulfur — volumes more than were previously thought — were thrown high above land into the stratosphere, a new study finds.
A genomic study of Native peoples in the San Francisco Bay Area finds that eight present-day members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe share ancestry with 12 individuals who lived in the region several hundred to 2,000 years ago...the study challenges the notion that the Ohlone migrated to the area between A.D. 500-1,000...
As the full Moon rises, so too does the Northern black swift (Cypseloides niger borealis). When this little bird migrates from the Rocky Mountains to the Amazon rainforest, researchers have found it uses moonlight to regain its energy.
While the Conservative party’s proposed dash for wind power is good news for the climate it could be bad news for archaeology, with rapid offshore windfarm development sealing off access to some of the best-preserved and most complete evidence of early human communities in the world.
Individual artifacts might be detectable with an advanced telescope that captures particles made in outer space.
Applying machine learning to a database of testimonials uncovers how drug-induced changes in subjective awareness are mechanistically rooted in the human brain.
A trio of researchers from Universidad de Cantabria and the University of Cambridge has found evidence suggesting that up to a quarter of all ancient handprints found on cave walls in Spain were made using children's hands.
A Stone Age woman who lived 4,000 years ago is leaning on her walking stick and looking ahead as a spirited young boy bursts into a run, in a stunning life-size reconstruction now on display in Sweden.
Scientists say they have solved one of the biggest paradoxes in science first identified by Prof Stephen Hawking.
A wild new theory suggests there may be another "anti-universe," running backward in time prior to the Big Bang.
Our ability to elaborately communicate is one of humanity's greatest superpowers. It allows us to retain and build knowledge across generations, cooperating at a global scale unlike anything else seen on Earth. But much about how this ability evolved is still a mystery, including its origins.