Newsdesk Archive
Having risen to fame on its superhuman performance at playing games, the artificial intelligence group DeepMind has cracked a serious scientific problem that has stumped researchers for half a century.
One of the world's earliest examples of art, the enigmatic 'Venus' figurines carved some 30,000 years ago, have intrigued and puzzled scientists for nearly two centuries.
At least eight asteroid missions are underway or coming soon, a recognition of these objects' scientific fascination—and their potential danger.
On Wednesday (Nov. 25), Vancouver's City Council unanimously voted to decriminalize all drugs, from LSD to heroin.
The new study provides more evidence that psilocybin, a compound found in so-called magic mushrooms, can be a helpful tool in the treatment of psychiatric conditions.
Image from Jty33 (Wiki Commons)
The degassing of early Earth’s magma ocean may have produced an atmosphere similar to that found on Venus today – rich in carbon dioxide and relatively poor in nitrogen – new research suggests.
Skywatchers admiring November's full moon will also get to see another treat: a penumbral eclipse, when the moon passes through Earth's outer shadow, on Monday, Nov. 30.
Like many mushrooms, Psilocybe semilanceata is generally known not by its scientific designation, but by its common or folk name, the “liberty cap” mushroom.
The idea that modern humans displaced Neanderthals because they were better protected against toxins from smoke is now under fire.
VICE World News host Zing Tsjeng travels to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford to explore the ongoing controversy surrounding dubiously sourced colonial artefacts that we see in museum collections across Europe.
Image from Description de l'Afrique . . . Traduite du Flamand (Wiki Commons)
Neanderthal thumbs were better adapted to holding tools in the same way that we hold a hammer, according to a paper published in Scientific Reports.
María Sabina Magdalena García was a Mazatec curandera (healer), who lived in Huautla de Jiménez, a town in the Sierra Mazateca area of the Mexican state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico.
Hungry for artifacts from an elusive Iberian civilisation, archaeologists were thrilled to find an elaborate funerary statue dubbed the 'Lady of Baza.'
A growing number of companies and researchers are attempting to make psychedelics that don’t cause hallucinations or visions. But will they work as well?
Mars may be incredibly dry and dusty today, but evidence continues to pile up that it was once a very watery world. Now the Curiosity rover has found signs of an ancient flood of biblical proportions, most likely kicked off by a climate-changing asteroid impact.
Image from Esa.int (Wiki Commons)
Once deemed dangerous and illegal, psychedelic compounds have been rediscovered by the scientific, medical and psychiatric communities as research reveals their capacity to help patients with a range of maladies.
Image from che (Wiki Commons)
Scientists from Australia, Germany, France and the US have shifted the timeline of the origin of complex life, overturning a discovery made a decade ago.
Just before going into a hallucinogenic trance, Indigenous Californians who had gathered in a cave likely looked up toward the rocky ceiling, where a pinwheel and big-eyed moth were painted in red.
Researchers think magic mushrooms will be the future of health care. But how easily and fast regular people will be able to use them is another question -- one a Montreal organization wants to see solved quickly.
Although coastlines have widely been proposed as potential corridors of past migration, the occupation of Africa's tropical coasts during the Stone Age is poorly known, particularly in contrast to the temperate coasts of northern and southern Africa.
The restoration of a soot-filled ancient Egyptian temple has revealed the previously unknown names of ancient Egyptian constellations, according to experts in Germany and Egypt.
Scientists working with data from the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys' Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) have discovered a "fossil galaxy" hidden in the depths of our own Milky Way.
The movement to reform drug policy celebrated a number of victories in the recent election, with voters across America opting to legalize marijuana and decriminalize narcotics in an unprecedented overhaul.
The mysterious, aurora-like phenomenon called STEVE just got a little weirder.
Rochester Institute of Technology students discovered a lost text on 15th-century manuscript leaves using an imaging system they developed as freshmen.
The evolution of improved teaching skills would in turn allow the production of even more complex and effective tools.
Image from Kali'na (Wiki Commons)
Evolutionary biology says it is our ‘responsibility’ to ward off such a threat.
As ancient remains are uncovered and dated, archeologists expand their search for the evolutionary birthplace of Homo sapiens, and debate whether such a place exists.
Once upon a time in the Lower Paleolithic, an early human in Konso, Ethiopia fashioned a piece of hippopotamus bone into a hand axe, using a quite sophisticated technique.
The number of mummy-filled coffins found in a series of burial shafts at Saqqara in Egypt keeps growing, archaeologists with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities reported.
New research suggests that the dinosaurs were doing well, and in some cases even flourishing, before they were wiped out by an asteroid.
The Canadian government is allowing patients who are not terminally ill to legally consume psychedelic mushrooms, on the heels of Oregon’s decision to give people access to shrooms for therapeutic reasons.
In their paper published in Frontiers of Physics, Franco Vazza (astrophysicist at the University of Bologna) and Alberto Feletti (neurosurgeon at the University of Verona) investigated the similarities between two of the most challenging and complex systems in nature: the cosmic network of galaxies and the network of neuronal cells in the human brain.
Long ago, before the dawn of the age of dinosaurs, a heavy rain descended upon the supercontinent of Pangaea — and it kept raining for more than 1 million years.
The age-old question of whether we all see colour the same may now have an answer.
Psilocybin rapidly increases the expression of several genes related to neuroplasticity in the rat brain, according to new research published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Image from: Medicalxpress (Wiki Commons)
Theories on how the Milky Way formed are set to be rewritten following discoveries about the behavior of some of its oldest stars.
A six-year mission will soon bring back a few grains of soil that could explain how water arrived on our planet.
Egyptian antiquities officials have announced the discovery of at least 100 ancient coffins, some with mummies inside, and about 40 gilded statues in a vast Pharaonic necropolis south of Cairo.
Supporters say the highway tunnel will relieve traffic congestion and improve the visitor experience. Opponents fear the loss of ancient artifacts still hidden underground.
What baffles modern viewers about the Nazca Lines is their scale. These sprawling geoglyphs are so large that they are difficult to perceive from the ground.
David Tholen, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii, recently reported on the status of asteroid Apophis during a virtual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences.
We’re more than just opposable thumbs — our hands gave us tools, new skills and better communication.
Scientists may have caught the blinding flash of two dense neutron stars colliding to form a strange magnetic star.
Inch by inch, they gently pick through the soil in search of thousand-year-old relics.
The 31,000-year-old burial dates to the Upper Paleolithic (a period lasting from 40,000 to 10,000 years ago), also known as the Old Stone Age. One of the infants died shortly after childbirth, while his twin brother lived for about 50 days, or just over 7 weeks, according to analyses of both babies.
Petrus Kinggo walks through the thick lowland rainforest in the Boven Digoel Regency. "This is our mini market," he says, smiling. "But unlike in the city, here food and medicine are free."
If you’ve ever puffed smokable ayahuasca—otherwise known as “changa”—you have this guy to thank.
Scientists have discovered an ancient lakebed buried under more than a mile of ice that may hold secrets to Greenland's past climate.
The study, published Oct. 13 in the Astrophysical Journal, probed the thermal history of the universe over the last 10 billion years.
The icy Jupiter moon Europa is an astrobiological beacon, quite literally glowing in the deep darkness far from the sun, a new study suggests.
Australia’s dry, red centre used to be green, according to fossil evidence of plants that thrive in rainforests. An international research team says it’s the first time the plants have been noted in the Gondwanan southern hemisphere.
Australian researchers say the discovery of a two-million-year-old skull in South Africa throws more light on human evolution.
When and how did the first animals appear? Science has long sought an answer to this question. Uppsala University researchers and colleagues in Denmark have now jointly found, in Greenland, embryo-like microfossils up to 570 million years old, revealing that organisms of this type were dispersed throughout the world.
The final chapter of dinosaur history is a tale stretching across two very different worlds, each a vast supercontinent dominated by its own unique mix of predators and herbivores.
"A brain on 'shrooms can be forever changed if the right images conjure during the trip." Tyler Spangler
Robust new research, published in the journal Translational Psychiatry, is reporting on several years of animal studies showing how a psychedelic drug called dimethyltryptamine (DMT) can promote brain plasticity and induce the formation of new neurons.
Image from Human brain (Wiki Commons)
The asteroid in question, called (101429) 1998 VF31, is part of a group of trojan asteroids sharing the orbit of Mars.
A new study suggests at least two close relatives of Homo sapiens may have died out as their environments changed.
"People are realizing it's not just about getting high," said Avis Bulbulyan, CEO of SIVA Enterprises. "This is a tipping point for drug policy absent any federal reform."
Scientists have uncovered the oldest evidence of a “slingshot” tongue, in fossils of 99m-year-old amphibians.
German researchers are piecing together the life of a prehistoric woman who died more than 5,000 years ago in the Neolithic period, after her skeleton was found during excavation works for wind turbines.
Archaeologists have discovered the rare burial of a young child who was laid to rest 8,000 years ago without arm and leg bones, a new study finds.
Mysterious, intense blasts of radio energy have been detected from within our own galaxy, astronomers have said.
Image from Spacetelescope (Wiki Commons)
Remains of a teenage girl who lived around 9,000 years ago have been discovered at a burial site in Peru alongside “a well-stocked, big-game hunting toolkit”.
Image from Kali'na (Wiki Commons)
The Union of Traditional Yage Medics of the Colombian Amazon (UMIYAC) brings together five ethnic groups — the Cofán, Inga, Siona, Coreguaje, and Kamëntsá — who practice spiritual ceremonies for individual and community healing based on ayahuasca, or yagé. But that’s not all that these communities have in common.
Here’s a good sign for alien hunters: More than 300 million worlds with similar conditions to Earth are scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy.
Image from Eclipse.sx (Wiki Commons)
Exactly why the Neanderthals died out 40,000 years ago is still greatly debated, but evolutionary biologist Nicholas Longrich looks at the evidence for a war between them and modern humans.
If TV has taught us anything, it's that DNA can solve crimes. But can it shed a light on prehistory?
According to EarthSky, the South and North Taurid meteor showers are due to appear this month, followed by a Leonid meteor shower and a penumbral lunar eclipse.
If TV has taught us anything, it's that DNA can solve crimes. But can it shed a light on prehistory?
Oregon will become the first state in the country to legalize psilocybin Tuesday with the passage of Measure 109.
Neanderthals behaved similarly to modern humans in raising their children, whose pace of growth was similar to Homo sapiens.
An additional planet between Saturn and Uranus was kicked out of the Solar System in its infancy
Wherever naturalist Stephen Axford goes, he always asks if anyone has seen any glowing mushrooms in their local forests.
Centaurs are rare celestial objects that can combine some of the different features of asteroids and comets. They're basically rocky in nature, like asteroids, but can also throw out clouds of dust and gas as their exteriors vaporize, like comets.
"The Florisbad cranium might be key to investigating the origin of our species. It could be from a very early population of Homo sapiens or an extinct group belonging to another independent, parallel human lineage," says Bruner.
There are relics and fossil evidence from Neanderthals in several parts of the Iranian plateau, including Do-Ashkaft Cave, the subject of this note.
How witches from ancient Greece to Gaeilge used plant medicine for sorcery, prophecy, and divine connection.
An examination of two documented periods of climate change in the greater Middle East, between approximately 4,500 and 3,000 years ago, reveals local evidence of resilience and even of a flourishing ancient society despite the changes in climate seen in the larger region.
An underwater research vessel has stumbled upon a gargantuan coral reef, standing like a monolithic tower off the coast of northern Australia.
For today’s Buddhist monks, Baishiya Karst Cave, 3200 meters high on the Tibetan Plateau, is holy. For ancient Denisovans, extinct hominins known only from DNA, teeth, and bits of bone found in another cave 2800 kilometers away in Siberia, it was a home.
A study of dog DNA has shown that our "best friend" in the animal world may also be our oldest one.
A study published in Psychopharmacology suggests that people may turn to microdosing with psychedelics in an attempt to improve their mental health. According to most self-reports, these attempts may be effective.
Image from ThisIsACreeper0101 (Wiki Commons)
More than 250 million stars in the bulge at the heart of the Milky Way have been surveyed in near-ultraviolet, optical and near-infrared light for the first time, offering the chance to re-examine questions about the galaxy’s formation and history.
A University of Hawai?i Institute for Astronomy (IfA) astronomer has revealed critical new findings linked to a large asteroid expected to pass extremely close to Earth.
Recently discovered rock art from caves in Northern Spain represents an artistic cultural style common across ancient Europe....
What you know about history of aspirin is probably wrong.
Aldous Huxley popularized mescaline in "The Doors of Perception," but no conversation today about this entheogen is complete without attention paid to indigenous sovereignty and conservation strategies around the mescaline-containing peyote succulent.
Scientists led by the ESRF, the European Synchrotron, Grenoble, France and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, have discovered the composition of red and black inks in ancient Egyptian papyri from circa 100-200 AD, leading to a number of hypotheses about writing practices.
Scientists have gathered some of the most compelling evidence yet for the existence of water on the moon – and it may be relatively accessible.
There is much debate surrounding the age of the Clovis—a prehistoric culture named for stone tools found near Clovis, New Mexico in the early 1930s—who once occupied North America during the end of the last Ice Age.
Researchers say chimpanzees and humans share same pattern of social ageing.
Electromagnetic energy in the brain enables brain matter to create our consciousness and our ability to be aware and think, according to a new theory developed by Professor Johnjoe McFadden from the University of Surrey.
Image from InjuryMap - Free Human Anatomy Images and Pictures. (Wiki Commons)
That the Inca sacrificed people to appease their gods is well known, but a discovery in Peru sheds new light on a far more common sacrificial practice: the ritual offering of highly prized and ornately decorated llamas.
A unique satellite dataset on the world's tropical forests is now available for all to see and use. It's a high-resolution image map covering 64 countries that will be updated monthly.
Ancient Maya in the once-bustling city of Tikal built sophisticated water filters using natural materials they imported from miles away, according to the University of Cincinnati.
One of the major projects of astronomers in recent years is looking for exoplanets, or other worlds beyond our solar system.
People thrive all across the globe, at every temperature, altitude and landscape. How did human beings become so successful at adapting to whatever environment we wind up in?
Native American tribes opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline once again have asked a federal judge to stop the flow of oil while the legal battle over the line’s future plays out.