Newsdesk Archive

Musicians get more out of music because their brain waves are better able to synchronise with musical rhythms, researchers have found. Cortical oscillations — the rhythmic firing of neurons in the brain — are fundamental to our ability to hear and process sounds.

This unique video, features my first of 2 arrangements for solo lyre, of the 3400 year old “Hurrian Hymn no.6”, which was discovered in Ugarit in Syria in the early 1950s, and was preserved for 3400 years on a clay tablet, written in the Cuniform text of the ancient Hurrian language – The Hurrian Hymn (catalogued as Text H6) was discovered in Ugarit, Syria, in the early 1950s, and was preserved for 3400 years on a clay tablet, written in the Cuniform text of the ancient Hurrian language – except from a few earlier Sumarian fragmentary instructional musical texts from c.1950 BCE (Musical Instructions for Lipit-Ishtar, King of Justice) the Hurrian Hymn it is the oldest written song yet known, in History!

"Just because a mystery is 4500 years old, doesn't mean it can't be solved". So proclaims the PR video above for the 'Scan Pyramids Mission', a new project announced yesterday that will employ various high-tech methods to study four of Egypt's largest pyramids, searching for hidden chambers and clues to the methods of construction used to build them. Alt: Experts in new bid to unravel 'secrets' of pyramids

Cut in the rock and consisting of two rooms, the walls of which are covered with poorly preserved decoration and hieroglyphic inscriptions: a team of archaeologists working under the auspices of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of the University of Warsaw started research in the ancient temple at Gebelein in Upper Egypt.

In a warehouse in Utah, federal agents are storing tens of thousands of looted objects recovered in a massive sting At dawn on June 10, 2009, almost 100 federal agents pulled up to eight homes in Blanding, Utah, wearing bulletproof vests and carrying side arms. An enormous cloud hung over the region, one of them recalled, blocking out the rising sun and casting an ominous glow over the Four Corners region, where the borders of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet.

US archaeologists in Greece have uncovered the skeleton of an ancient warrior that has lain undisturbed for more than 3,500 years along with a huge hoard of treasure, according to the Greek culture ministry. The treasure is “the most important to have been discovered in 65 years” in continental Greece, the ministry said.

Ruins of a sanctuary used by the Inca civilisation to sacrifice children to their gods is believed to have been discovered in a remote mountain range in Peru. A team of Spanish explorers stumbled upon the religious complex in the Vilcabamba mountains, 93 miles (150km) north of the Peruvian city of Cusco.

Researchers have long wondered how people settled the Americas, particularly the path they took to the new territory and the timing of their expansion. Until recently, archaeologists studying these questions were limited mostly to digging up skeletons and artifacts.

Bacteria can change history. In the 14th century, a microbe called Yersinia pestis caused an epidemic of plague known as the Black Death that killed off a third or more of the population of Europe. The long-term shortage of workers that followed helped bring about the end of feudalism.

An Egyptian panel of experts has approved using radar to search for a hidden chamber in King Tutankhamun's tomb, which may be the burial place of Queen Nefertiti, an official said Thursday. Archaeologists have never discovered the mummy of the legendary beauty, but renowned British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves said in a recent study that her tomb could be in a secret chamber adjoining Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of Kings at Luxor, southern Egypt.

One of the oddest predictions of quantum theory – that a system can't change while you're watching it – has been confirmed in an experiment by Cornell physicists. Their work opens the door to a fundamentally new method to control and manipulate the quantum states of atoms and could lead to new kinds of sensors.

It’s one thing to send a rover to Mars. It’s another to send a biologically fragile human body. We don’t know much about how space will affect us–and recent findings involving mice suggest it could change our brains in unexpected ways.

For years you've been telling your friends, family, co-workers and anyone who will listen that you're addicted to cheese. It's a part of every meal or snack, and you think about it constantly. According to a new study from the University of Michigan, cheese crack is a real thing. And so is your addiction.

Global health experts are to give guidance later on the possible health risks of red and processed meats. The World Health Organization will reveal whether some meats should be classed as carcinogens. Alt: Bacon, burgers and sausages are a cancer risk, say world health chiefs: Processed meats added to list of substances most likely to cause disease alongside cigarettes and asbestos

It is widely recognised that our physical fitness is reflected in our mental fitness, especially as we get older. How does being physically fit affect our aging brains? Neuroimaging studies, in which the activity of different parts of the brain can be visualised, have provided some clues. Until now, however, no study has directly linked brain activation with both mental and physical performance.

A key ingredient to improving couples' marriages might just be gratitude, according to new University of Georgia research. "We found that feeling appreciated and believing that your spouse values you directly influences how you feel about your marriage, how committed you are to it, and your belief that it will last," said study co-author Ted Futris, an associate professor in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

Psychologists have long known that some people are unusually curious and adventurous, and more willing than others to try new things. Now there's new research suggesting that these individuals -- people with "open" personalities -- are also more likely to be gifted musically.

The widow of a man who suffered with Parkinson’s has triggered new research this week into the condition after she discovered she could “smell” the disease. Joy Milne, 65, told researchers that she had noticed a change in the odor of her late husband, Les, years before he developed symptoms of Parkinson’s.

An "extremely rare" half male, half female butterfly, known as a gynandromorph, has been found in Hertfordshire. The Great Mormon was discovered at Butterfly World in St Albans.

The next time you hear a howler monkey making a loud, deep-throated call in the jungle, you might be right to wonder, "Is he compensating for something?" A study out on Thursday in the journal Current Biology found that male howler monkeys with the most powerful voices - a trait that is useful for attracting females - also had the smallest testicles.

Crocodiles can sleep with one eye open, according to a study from Australia. In doing so they join a list of animals with this ability, which includes some birds, dolphins and other reptiles.

In modern society dogs are often referred to as "man's best friend" but according to an archaeological review early Aboriginal society sported a similar relationship between women and dingoes (Canis lupus dingo). The study by UWA and ANU suggests people formed close bonds with dingoes soon after the dogs' arrival on the mainland roughly 4000 years ago, with the dogs enabling women to contribute more hunted food.

One of the big questions in anthropology is why humans, unlike most animals, cooperate with those we are not closely related to. Exactly what has driven this behaviour is not well understood. Anthropologists suspect it could be down to the fact that women have usually left their homes after marriage to go and live with their husband's family. This creates links between distant families, which may explain our tendency to cooperate beyond our own households.

A hiker travelling the ancient route between western and eastern Norway found a 1,200-year-old Viking sword after sitting down to rest after a short fishing trip. The sword, found at Haukeli in central southern Norway will be sent for conservation at the The University Museum of Bergen.

Human hands may have developed the ideal shape over time for punching, according to a new study using male cadaver arms. By using the arms to punch a dumbbell while in different positions -- a clenched fist, a relaxed fist and an open-palmed slap -- scientists were able to determine that the clenched fist made it much safer to serve someone a knuckle sandwich without getting hurt.

In four years of college, the average student nationally is asked to spend $4800 on textbooks. What if those costs were eliminated? Research from a trio of BYU professors, which is referred to as the most rigorous study of its kind, has examined the effectiveness of open textbooks, which are free, vs. traditional textbooks, which are not. Over the span of multiple studies, the researchers found that 85 percent of both students and instructors believed open textbooks were as good or better than traditional textbooks.

In 1898, Italian biologist Camillo Golgi found something odd as he examined slices of brain tissue under his microscope. Weblike lattices, now known as "perineuronal nets," surrounded many neurons, but he could not discern their purpose. Many dismissed the nets as an artifact of Golgi's staining technique; for the next century, they remained largely obscure.

Men and women will always have their differences, but a new analysis finds that these differences extend to heart anatomy. The "hearty" differences became apparent only after researchers studied nearly 3,000 adults for about 10 years. By the end of the study, published online today (Oct. 20) in the journal Radiology, the researchers found that male and female hearts grow differently over time.

Researchers have found a cancer-causing parasitic worm responsible for the deaths of about 26,000 people a year could prove useful in healing chronic wounds such as diabetic ulcers. Research by a team at James Cook University in Queensland has found the 1cm-long oriental liver fluke secretes a growth factor that accelerates wound healing and blood vessel growth in tests on mice and cell cultures.

Saying that the link between alcohol and cancer is dangerous is nothing new. Five Spanish universities and more than 300,000 female volunteers participated in a European investigation that is now confirming that alcohol intake increases the chances of developing breast cancer. This risk quadruples with the intake of each daily glass of wine or beer. Related: US Marijuana Use Has More Than Doubled in a Decade Related: In U.S., 58% Back Legal Marijuana Use

Kids who receive antibiotics throughout the course of their childhoods gain weight significantly faster than those who do not, according to new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research.

Feelings of hunger can easily shorten our temper’s fuse and so the term “hangry” was born. Many people experience hanger (the combination of hungry and angry) when they’re long overdue for a meal. “What’s interesting is hanger is actually a survival mechanism,” says Brenda Bustillos, a registered dietitian with the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Public Health. “The amount of glucose available for the brain declines as more time passes between meals.

From jeans to dating partners and TV subscriptions to schools, we think the more choices we have the better. But too many options create anxiety and leave us less satisfied. Could one answer lie in a return to the state monopolies of old? But the idea that choice is bad for us flies in the face of what we’ve been told for decades. The standard line is that choice is good for us, that it confers on us freedom, personal responsibility, self-determination, autonomy and lots of other things that don’t help when you’re standing before a towering aisle of water bottles, paralysed and increasingly dehydrated, unable to choose.

Researchers report that they have added to evidence that a shell-shaped region in the center of the mammalian brain, known as the thalamic reticular nucleus or TRN, is likely responsible for the ability to routinely and seamlessly multitask.

Armed with 850,000 diaries, an Oxford centre is trying to find out why modern life seems so hectic. In 1961, when more and more people were buying television sets to go with their radios, the BBC wanted to work out the best times to air its programmes. So its audience-research department decided to ask a sample of people across the United Kingdom to record what they were doing every half hour of the day, and to indicate whether the TV or radio was on.

In an era of thousand-dollar pills and DNA-altering technologies, doctors are increasingly turning to a seemingly crude technique to treat chronic intestinal problems: poop transplants.

Naked mole rats are among the ugliest creatures in the animal kingdom, and they engage in acts that seem repulsive — such as eating one another’s, and their own, faeces. Now researchers have found one biological motivation for this behaviour. When a queen mole rat’s subordinates feed on her hormone-filled faeces, the resulting oestrogen boost causes the beta rats to take care of the queen’s pups, according to results presented on 18 October at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago, Illinois.

PULLMAN, Wash.--Scientists at Washington State University and the University of Idaho are helping students figure out how to farm on Mars, much like astronaut Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, attempts in the critically acclaimed movie "The Martian."

There’s lots of news from Mars this week. A photograph taken by the Mars Curiosity Rover shows what looks like water running down from a pile of rocks. Full size image

Nasa has revealed a strange mystery on Pluto - a series of 'wormlike' pits and troughs. Each of the pits and troughs – typically hundreds of meters across and tens of meters deep – were spotted in the area informally known as Sputnik Planum.

The planet-destroying Death Star from "Star Wars" may be fictional, but a star at the end of its life and only a bit bigger than Earth could be its real-world twin: The star is currently destroying and disintegrating an orbiting planet bit by bit.

Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, an international team of astronomers have found the hottest and most massive double star with components so close that they touch each other. The two stars in the extreme system VFTS 352 could be heading for a dramatic end, during which the two stars either coalesce to create a single giant star, or form a binary black hole.

The largest astronomical image ever made is so big we can’t even show it here. To see this brilliant masterpiece in all its beauty, you’ll have to use this online tool, which not only shows the image but also has a search feature you can use to identify specific objects.

Last week the internet was abuzz with rumors of a strange star that some suggested might host an extraterrestrial construction. Astronomers say that scenario is a slim possibility. A more likely explanation is that the weird star, called KIC 8462852, is orbited by a swarm of comets, which is a pretty interesting idea on its own. But either way, this intriguing star might never have been found.

A group of scientists and academics from around the world has launched a new effort called UFODATA, which stands for UFO Detection and Tracking, to apply some rigorous scientific research to the study of UFOs. Related: Bakersfield May be a Base For Fleets of UFOs Related: Man captures 'UFO footage' flying over Melbourne

Video of a mysterious cityscape in the clouds hovering over a Chinese city has gone viral this week. And explanations for this startling video range from a secret NASA project to an elaborate hoax to an actual atmospheric phenomenon. Experts hesitate to say the video is real. "It looks almost too good," says Peggy LeMone, an atmospheric scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Oslo plans to ban all cars from its city center by 2019, Reuters reports. It will also build more than 35 miles of bike lanes by 2019 and invest heavily in public transport. Related: Europe Already Beat Its 2020 Greenhouse Gas Emissions Target Related: Permafrost warming in parts of Alaska is 'unbelievable'

A common ingredient found in sunscreen is toxic to coral and contributing to the decline of reefs around the world, according to new research. Oxybenzone, a UV-filtering chemical compound found in 3,500 brands of sunscreen worldwide, can be fatal to baby coral and damaging to adults in high concentrations, according to the study published on Tuesday in the Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology.

We’ve already seen how beavers can save California from its seemingly endless drought. Now it looks like they can save the world from industrial farming by changing the chemistry of the water, making them natural biochemists. For quite some time, the world starved for nitrogen. It’s a necessary component for life, and essential for growing crops.

Cats have at least seven functional bitter taste receptors, according to a new study. Further, a comparison of cat to related species reveals little relationship between the number of bitter receptors and the extent to which a species consumes plants. Together, the findings question the common hypothesis that bitter taste developed primarily to protect animals from ingesting poisonous plant compounds.

Vultures have a unique genetic make-up allowing them to digest carcasses and guard themselves against constant exposure to pathogens in their diet, according to the first Eurasian vulture genome. The study also finds that this species of Asian vulture is more closely related to the North American bald eagle than previously thought.

A trickle of water running over parched earth is all the encouragement the desert goby needs. The unassuming little fish, reckoned by researchers to be a poor to average swimmer, only needs a few centimetres of water to follow a rivulet from one isolated, muddy puddle to the next. Alt: Tough mudder! Desert goby fish travels hundreds of kilometres over LAND... and only needs a tiny trickle of water to survive

A genetic study of giant tortoises on the Galapagos island of Santa Cruz reveals two different species and causes some head scratching amongst taxonomists In 1902, American naturalist Rollo Beck stepped ashore on the Galapagos island of Santa Cruz. He’d been urged by his patron Walter Rothschild “to leave no stone unturned” in his efforts to collect giant tortoises from the island and “after a long and wearisome hunt,” he came up trumps.

A discovery of ancient turtle bones in southern Utah has led a University of Texas paleontologist to identify a new species of long-extinct, pig-snouted turtle, according to a paper published today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

When an Apatosaurus dinosaur slapped its impressively long tail onto the ground, other beasts likely listened. Turns out, the long-necked dino may have broken the sound barrier with its tail whips more than 150 million years ago.

Living large isn’t easy. The sauropod dinosaurs—the biggest creatures to ever walk the Earth—required rapid growth rates, skeletons that were both light and strong and copious amounts of food, just for starters. Now, paleontologists may have cracked one of the remaining mysteries about these giant dinosaurs: How did they pump enough blood up their long necks to feed their brains?

It’s long been thought that the ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra was killed by a snake bite. Ancient accounts tell of a snake that was hidden inside a basket of figs brought in from the countryside and was used by the queen to commit suicide on August 12, 30 BC, as well as killing two of her servants.

Genes associated with antibiotic resistance have been found in an 11th-century mummy’s colon and feces, long before antibiotics were introduced. The find suggests that gene mutations responsible for antibiotic resistance occurred naturally in 1,000-year-old bacteria and are not necessarily linked to the overuse of antibiotics.

Biologists have discovered that bacteria -- often viewed as lowly, solitary creatures -- are actually quite sophisticated in their social interactions and communicate with one another through similar electrical signaling mechanisms as neurons in the human brain.

Scientists have built a battery containing a magnetic fluid that can be moved in any direction by applying a magnetic field. The magnetically controlled battery concept could be especially useful for flow batteries, where it could eliminate the need for the pumps that are typically required for moving the electrolyte from an external storage tank to the inside of a power stack to provide electricity.

Working with hundreds of Lake Malawi cichlids, researchers are beginning to understanding how the animals maintain their hundreds of teeth throughout their adult lives. By studying how structures in embryonic fish differentiate into either teeth or taste buds, the researchers hope to one day be able to turn on the tooth regeneration mechanism in humans—which, like other mammals, get only two sets of teeth to last a lifetime.

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a way to change leukemia cells into leukemia-killing immune cells. The surprise finding could lead to a powerful new therapy for leukemia and possibly other cancers. "It's a totally new approach to cancer, and we're working to test it in human patients as soon as possible," said senior investigator Richard A. Lerner, Institute Professor and the Lita Annenberg Hazen Professor of Immunochemistry at TSRI.

People who suffer a stroke face many physical and emotional hurdles on their long road to recovery. But now, there may be a glimmer of hope for those with one common stroke symptom: partial arm paralysis that leaves the affected limb frozen to the person's side like a broken wing.

Australian researchers have accidentally discovered a way to remove mercury from water using a material made from industrial waste and orange peel. Developers Max Worthington and Justin Chalker, from South Australia’s Flinders University, said until now there had been no such method.

Instead of having spectacles perched awkwardly on your nose, or itchy contacts that you can't stop losing, what if the same optical technology could be implanted inside the eyeball - a permanent set of contact lenses to correct your sight? That's the aim of a new invention by UK student Devesh Mistry, which uses an auto-focusing liquid crystal material to correct defects in vision.

Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed an algorithm to help humanoid robots hit the ground without breaking themselves. At a major robotics competition held in June, several multi-million-dollar robots struggled to perform even simple tasks like climbing a flight of stairs; some even toppled over with what seemed like impeccable comic timing. But a few of these amusing pratfalls resulted in devastating damage to the robots’ instruments, motors, and other components.

Jazz-playing computers and robots could soon yield clues about how to help people collaborate with machines, researchers say. The new project, called MUSICA (short for Musical Improvising Collaborative Agent), aims to develop a musical device that can improvise a jazz solo in response to human partners, just as real jazz musicians improvise alongside one another.

Samsung and South Korea are taking aim at electronics manufacturing costs with a new investment in robots it's hoped will make mechanical men cheaper to operate even in jobs that currently need flexible human fingers.

Running shoes have come a long way since the first mass-produced shoe, New Balance’s Trackstar, appeared on the market in 1960. The latest from Adidas is a 3D-printed shoe designed to conform to your individual footprint. So long mass-production.

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Internet would like to let you know that today is Back to the Future Day (in the US at least, it’s been and gone in Australia because we really do live in the future). And what better way to celebrate 21 October 2015, the day that Marty McFly arrived when he travelled to the future in Back to the Future Part II, than with the announcement that Nike has actually made those sneakers.

Back to the Future Day wouldn't be complete without a hoverboard announcement, would it? Okay, it might a little late in the day, but Arx Pax finally revealed the new version of the Hendo hoverboard — and it is quite a sight to behold.

As the world celebrates Back to the Future Day, it has forgotten the unknown man whose 2001 internet postings might just have saved humanity If time travel is possible, why haven’t we met any time travellers? This was the question Stephen Hawking advanced on the topic of time warps. But it misses something: what if we have met time travellers without even knowing it? Or what if we’ve met them, but didn’t believe them?

In a landmark study, scientists at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands reported that they had conducted an experiment that they say proved one of the most fundamental claims of quantum theory — that objects separated by great distance can instantaneously affect each other’s behavior.

Heat engines are everywhere—in the power station steam turbines that light up your neighborhood, the internal combustion engine that runs your car, and the engines that push passenger jets through the sky. Typically they weigh a ton or more apiece, heating and cooling some trillion trillion (no, this is not a typo!) molecules to generate power. Now, physicists in Germany have made what could be the world’s smallest heat engine using just a single particle: an ion of calcium.

Scientists have theoretically designed a new material that could help supply the world with clean energy by turning water into fuel, using just the power of the sun. Chemists at the University of Reading say a new catalyst, which mimics the way plants absorb energy from the sun, could make the energy-sapping job of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen relatively easy.

You've heard of designer babies in science fiction, but it's getting closer to reality: scientists in China claim they are the first to use gene editing to create "designer dogs" with special characteristics. Two beagle puppies called Tiangou and Hercules, were created to be extra muscley - with double the amount of muscle mass than typical - by deleting a single gene called myostatin.

If only Vincent van Gogh could have lived to see this strikingly accurate reproduction of his iconic "Starry Night" -- especially since, instead of oil on canvas, the work is a bacteria on petri. Because even with these most minute of materials, the night sky still swirls with a palpable momentum of wind, fog and moonlight.

The colour of Vincent van Gogh's famous Sunflowers is changing over time, because of the mixture of pigments used by the Dutch master in his painting. Evidence for the process now comes from a detailed spectroscopic investigation of the Sunflowers version at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. A group of scientists headed by Letizia Monico from the Institute of Molecular Science and Technology (CNR-ISTM) of Perugia, the University of Perugia and the University of Antwerp, shone X-rays from DESY's lightsource PETRA III through tiny particles of paint taken from the painting.

In the ruins of a Roman city in southern Turkey, archaeologists have discovered a marble head of Medusa, somehow spared during an early Christian campaign against pagan art. The head was unearthed at Antiochia ad Cragum, a city founded during the first century, around the rule of Emperor Nero, that has all the marks of a Roman outpost —bathhouses, shops, colonnaded streets, mosaics and a local council house.

Restorers give progress report as they attempt to rectify damage done when beard was broken by worker, then bodged back together with everyday glue Alt: Egypt fixing Tutankhamun mask after botched epoxy repair

Crucial findings in ancient Heraion-Teikhos in Turkey’s Thracian province of Tekirda?, which illuminates the life of the ancient Thracian people, are being threatened by illegal treasure hunters, according to the head of the excavations in the field.

At least 98 old Islamic enameled glass lamps are suspected to have been stolen from Al-Rafa’i mosque in Cairo. One of the lamps turned up for sale at British auction house Christie’s and aroused the suspicion of Egyptian architect and conservation activist Omneya Abdel Barr. She noticed the lantern carried the seal of khedive Abbas Helmi Pasha, the last Ottoman viceroy of Egypt and Sudan, classifying the item as an antique and identifying it as belonging to the mosque.

The Indus civilization flourished for half a millennium from about 2600 bc to 1900 bc. Then it mysteriously declined and vanished from view. It remained invisible for almost 4,000 years until its ruins were discovered by accident in the 1920s by British and Indian archaeologists. Following almost a century of excavation, it is today regarded as a civilization worthy of comparison with those of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, as the beginning of Indian civilization and possibly as the origin of Hinduism.

Stanford scientists have discovered a surprising source for an organic molecule used as an indicator for life on early Earth. Tetrahymanol is a fatty molecule, or lipid, found in the membranes enclosing eukaryotic cells, the class of cells that carry their genetic material in compartments called nuclei. Eukaryotes can be single-celled or multicellular; humans and plants are eukaryotes, as are plants. Related: When did life first emerge on Earth? Maybe a lot earlier than we thought

It makes our most turbulent terrestrial storms look like mere pipsqueaks. But remarkable new Hubble footage shows that Jupiter's Great Red Spot – an anticyclonic storm system twice the size of Earth – is shrinking and turning orange. Is this evidence of Jovian climate change? And could the planet's violent storm finally be giving way to more clement conditions, at least by Jupiter's dramatic standards?

Comets or asteroids slamming into Jupiter's moon Europa might explain the chaotic jumble of icy blocks seen across the satellite's surface, researchers say. This theory suggests that cosmic impacts might have helped deliver the ingredients for life into the hidden oceans that scientists think lurk beneath the surfaces of Europa and several other frozen moons in the solar system, investigators added.

Earth came early to the party in the evolving universe. According to a new theoretical study, when our solar system was born 4.6 billion years ago only eight percent of the potentially habitable planets that will ever form in the universe existed. And, the party won't be over when the sun burns out in another 6 billion years. The bulk of those planets - 92 percent - have yet to be born.

It’s time to get to know a new friend: asteroid 2015 TB145, a sizeable chunk of rock that’s hurtling through space at speeds of over 126,000 km/h (78,293 mph) right now. Discovered just 10 days ago, the asteroid has caught the attention of scientists at NASA because on October 31, it’s expected to draw closer to Earth than anything this size has since July 2006. Alt: Big, 'Spooky' Asteroid to Fly by Earth on Halloween See also Graham's blog post on this: http://grahamhancock.com/asteroid-2015-tb145/

Mass extinctions occurring over the past 260 million years were likely caused by comet and asteroid showers, scientists conclude in a new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. For more than 30 years, scientists have argued about a controversial hypothesis relating to periodic mass extinctions and impact craters—caused by comet and asteroid showers—on Earth.

Our place in the universe is a conundrum — life on Earth evolved to create a technologically-savvy race that is now looking for other technologically-savvy intelligences populating our galaxy. But there’s a problem; it looks like humanity is the only “intelligent” species in our little corner of the universe — what gives?

The search for signs of life in a mysterious star system hypothesized to potentially harbor an "alien megastructure" is now underway. Astronomers have begun using the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), a system of radio dishes about 300 miles (483 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco, to hunt for signals coming from the vicinity of KIC 8462852, a star that lies 1,500 light-years from Earth. Alt: Space Archaeologists Search For Dead Alien Civilizations

It has found the 'God particle', but the Large Hadron Collider could soon detect a 'parallel universe'. The 'atom smasher' at Cern in Geneva is now operating at its highest level in a bid to detect miniature black holes, which are considered a key sign of a 'multiverse'.

Picture this: A tiny, floating device delivers a package into your arms, and then, before you can say "thanks," it disappears into thin air. Such a magical device may sound like something out of a Harry Potter movie, but it's real technology that could benefit people in remote areas.

It might not be until something seems off that you realize you’re paying attention to the tiniest twitches and scrunches of another person’s face. Humans are hardwired to catalogue and interpret minuscule clues about emotion this way. We find meaning in broken eye contact, a passing brow crinkle, the pause that goes on a beat too long. But how good are people, generally, at discerning how others feel based on the faces they’re making?

When new drugs are put on the market, clinical trials determine whether they perform better than inactive pills known as "placebos". Research shows that over the last 25 years the difference in effectiveness between real drugs and these fake ones has narrowed - but more in the US than elsewhere. Are Americans really more susceptible to placebo effects, or is something else going on?

About 70 million people worldwide stutter when they speak, and it turns out humans aren’t the only ones susceptible to verbal hiccups. Scientists at this year’s Society for Neuroscience Conference in Chicago, Illinois, show that mice, too, can stumble in their vocalizations.

The next time you gaze deep into your pooch’s eyes, imagine the high plateaus of Mongolia or the mountains of Nepal. The latest analysis of canine DNA suggests that dogs first arose there, not in Europe, the Middle East, or southern China as others have suggested. Researchers don’t think this is the final word about where man’s oldest friend came from, but they are pleased with these additional data.

An adolescent Tyrannosaurus rex named Jane may settle a dispute more than 70 years in the making: Whether small carnivorous dinosaurs are younger versions of T. rex, or another species altogether, a new study finds. The authors of the new study contend that small and slender Jane is a young, 11-year-old T. rex.

A mega shark that lived 300 million years ago would have made today's great whites look like shrimps, according to fossils of the beast unearthed in Jacksboro, Texas. Scientists have dubbed the newfound fossils the "Texas supershark," and the name is fitting: These supersharks were enormous: more than 26 feet (8 meters) long, or more than half the length of a school bus.

In the Middle Ages only wealthy town people could afford to eat and drink from beautiful, colored glazed cups and plates. But the glazing was made of lead, which found its way into the body if you ate acidic foods. This has been revealed by chemical investigations of skeletons from cemeteries in Denmark and Germany.