Newsdesk Archive
Archaeologists may have yet to find conclusive proof of Alexander the Great's body, but they have turned up the remains of five people in the ancient Amphipolis tomb.Bones of an unidentified woman, a newborn baby and two men, as well as fragments of a cremated person, were unearthed in an underground vault on the site.Alt: Greece Amphipolis: 'Five bodies' at Alexander-era tomb
A bronze figure representing the Greek figure Silenus, from the time of Rome's first emperor, Augustus, has been found on the south-eastern Danish island of Falster.This find suggests that there was close contact between the Roman empire and Scandinavia, before and after the emperor's reign.
Researchers say they have identified the first example of a bone, not stone, hand ax crafted by ancient humans in East Asia. Makers of the curved, pear-shaped implement probably used it to dig up edible roots in a densely vegetated part of South China around 170,000 years ago, say paleontologist Guangbiao Wei of China Three Gorges Museum in Chongqing and his colleagues.
New research details how a preserved fossil found in China could be the oldest record of post-natal parental care from the Middle Jurassic.The specimen, found by a farmer in China, is of an apparent family group with an adult, surrounded by six juveniles of the same species. Given that the smaller individuals are of similar sizes, the group interpreted this as indicating an adult with its offspring, apparently from the same clutch.
Earth's earliest primates have taken a step up in the world, now that researchers have gotten a good look at their ankles. A new study has found that Purgatorius, a small mammal that lived on a diet of fruit and insects, was a tree dweller. Paleontologists made the discovery by analyzing 65-million-year-old ankle bones collected from sites in northeastern Montana.
Researchers eavesdropping on wild chimpanzees determined that the primates communicate about at least two things: their favorite yummy fruits, and the trees where these fruits can be found.Of particular interest to the chimps is the size of trees bearing the fruits that they relish most, such that the chimps yell out that information, according to a new study published in the journal Animal Behaviour.
A spice commonly used in curry could help erase bad memories, according to a study.Curcumin, a bright-yellow compound found in the root of the Indian spice turmeric, prevented new fear memories being stored in the brain, and also removed pre-existing fear memories, researchers found.Research paper here
GOLD Coast researchers have cured a type of cancer in mice and hope to start human trials within a year. The Griffith University scientists found the experimental drug alisertib rid mice of cancers of the cervix, skin, head and neck caused by the human papillomavirus.The researchers hope the drug may one day become a viable alternative to chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
A strange phenomenon has been observed by astronomers right as it was happening - a 'fast radio burst'. The eruption is described as an extremely short, sharp flash of radio waves from an unknown source in the universe. The results have been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.Over the past few years, astronomers have observed a new phenomenon, a brief burst of radio waves, lasting only a few milliseconds.
The man running the Global Learning X Prize contest explains why it is offering $15 million to develop tablet software that teaches kids basic literacyThere are around 300 million kids around the world who can't read or write a word after going to school. The enormity of the problem is such that you cannot possibly build enough schools and train enough teachers to teach these kids. Software is the future of learning.
Every odor has its own specific pattern which our noses are able to identify. Using a combination of proteins coupled to transistors, for the first time machines are able to differentiate smells that are mirror images of each other, so called chiral molecules, something that has not been possible before. The human nose can distinguish between some of these molecules and the different forms of the same molecule of carvone, for example, can smell either like spearmint or caraway. Previous machines would not have been able to distinguish between the two.
Cochlear implants are expensive, invasive and not suitable for elderly patients - so scientists are working on a device which sends small electric shocks to the wearer's tongue and allows them to 'hear' soundsRelated: The woman who sees like a bat - "Fiona Gameson had both eyes removed because of a rare childhood cancer. She uses echolocation to navigate and see with sound."
They were once reported to fly over Mount Everest itself, almost 9 kilometres up.Now it turns out that bar-headed geese are a bit more level-headed about how they make their gruelling trip each year from Mongolia to spend winters in warmer India. Instead of climbing to dizzying altitudes and flying in a straight line over the mountain tops, they follow a "roller-coaster" route, closely tracking the contours of the mountains and valleys below.
When it comes to determining the size of giant squid and other large sea animals, humans have a tendency to exaggerate, a new study suggests.A team of researchers compared scientific and popular media reports of body sizes for 25 species of marine creatures, including whales, sharks, squids, and other giant ocean dwellers, and found that most of the animals were smaller than what was reported.
Could studying ants reveal clues to reducing highway traffic jams? Physicist Apoorva Nagar at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology thinks the answer is yes.Nagar says he got interested in the topic when he came across a study by German and Indian researchers showing that ants running along a path were able to maintain a steady speed even when there were a large number of ants on the path.
A new scorpion species found fossilized in the rocks of a backyard could turn the scientific understanding of these stinging creatures on its head.The fossils suggest that ancient scorpions crawled out of the seas and onto land earlier than thought, according to the researchers who analyzed them. In fact, some of the oldest scorpions had the equipment needed to walk out of their watery habitats and onto land, the researchers said.
Nearly two decades after the ancient skeleton called Kennewick Man was discovered on the banks of the Columbia River, the mystery of his origins appears to be nearing resolution.Genetic analysis is still under way in Denmark, but documents obtained through the federal Freedom of Information Act say preliminary results point to a Native-American heritage.
Previously unthinkable longevity milestone looms with average child born within next generation expected to live more than a century.Alt: Now that's a gran old age! Average life expectancy for girls born in 2057 will be ONE HUNDRED
If you had but one New Year's resolution to keep, maybe it should be to get up and move a little more.New research shows that for men and women across the spectrum of body mass index and belt size, those who got even a little exercise - burning up about 100 calories a day in physical activity - were less likely to die of any cause over a 12-year period than those who were entirely sedentary.Related: A Bit of Walking Takes Strain Out of Running a Marathon
Physicists from the University of Copenhagen and doctors from Copenhagen University Hospital, Rigshospitalet, have joined forces to test whether malignant tumours can be removed by using nanoparticles and laser light instead of unpleasant chemotherapy treatment.
Bill Gates wants to turn your poop into clean drinking water, and he's got just the machine to do it.In a recent blog post and video, the billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist showed off what he called an "ingenious machine," a steam-powered sewage processor that burns up solid waste and creates both potable water and electricity.
Earlier this week, an organization called the Future of Life Institute issued an open letter on the subject of building safety measures into artificial intelligence systems (AI). The letter, and the research document that accompanies it, present a remarkably even-handed look at how AI researchers can maximize the potential of this technology.Related: Positive thinking about AIRelated: Elon Musk spends $10 million to stop robot uprising
The head of self-driving cars for Google expects real people to be using them on public roads in two to five years.Chris Urmson says the cars would still be test vehicles, and Google would collect data on how they interact with other vehicles and pedestrians.Related: Automakers Rethink Seats for Self-Driving Cars
A team of scientists has published the results of an investigative survey into the Sutter's Mill meteorite that landed in California in 2012.The results reveal that the meteorite contained a number of features associated with minerals such as olivines, phyllosilicates, carbonates, and possibly pyroxenes, as well as organics.
Beneath the cold waves of Lake Michigan rests an aging shipwreck, its wooden planks encrusted with brown-and-gray zebra mussels, that may be the remnants of a 17th-century ship called the Griffin, two Michigan-based treasure hunters say.French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle built the Griffin in 1679, but it was lost in Lake Michigan the same year.
Egyptian blue was one of the famous pigments of the ancient world. Not only was it a scientific achievement, it has become an important historical signifier because it only came from contact with Egypt. It's now being used in advanced technology that see right through your skin.Related: Archaeologists make unique discoveries in Egypt
The way galaxies evolve from variations in matter density in the early universe is mathematically equivalent to the way cities grow from changes in population density on Earth, say cosmologists.Urban sociologists have long known that a set of remarkable laws govern the large-scale interaction between individuals such as the probability that one person will befriend another and the size of the cities they live in.
A Bronze Age piece of leather adorned with drawings has been discovered. The artefact was found during recent excavations at the 5200-year-old Burnt City, known as Shahr-e Sukhteh in Persian, in south-eastern Iran.It is incredibly uncommon to find organic material from over 5,000 years ago; environmental factors decay delicate items, causing them to rapidly deteriorate over time. As such, the leather found in the Burnt City is an incredibly rare discovery.
A team of researchers affiliated with several academic/research facilities in Japan has found that dried salmon semen can be used to extract rare earth elements (REEs) from liquid ore waste. In their paper published in the journal PLOS ONE, the team describes how they came up with the idea, the process they used, and the prospects of using their technique in commercial applications.
Nuclear power has long been a contentious topic. It generates huge amounts of electricity with zero carbon emissions, and thus is held up as a solution to global energy woes. But it also entails several risks, including weapons development, meltdown, and the hazards of disposing of its waste products.But those risks and benefits all pertain to a very specific kind of nuclear energy: nuclear fission of uranium or plutonium isotopes.
The missing Mars robot Beagle2 has been found on the surface of the Red Planet, apparently intact.High-resolution images taken from orbit have identified its landing location, and it looks to be in one piece.
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has discovered a star with three planets only slightly larger than Earth. The outermost planet orbits in the 'Goldilocks' zone -- where surface temperatures could be moderate enough for liquid water and perhaps life to exist.Related: Planets outside our solar system more hospitable to life than thought
A team of researchers at the University of Bern has managed to considerably prolong the lifespan of flies by activating a gene which destroys unhealthy cells. The results could also open new possibilities in human anti aging research.Immortality has long been a dream for humans. For example, in many ancient mythologies, immortality is one of the traits that distinguishes humans from the gods.
Neurodegenerative diseases have been halted by harnessing the regenerative power of hibernation, scientists say.Related: Remarkable Stories of Humans Who HibernatedRelated: Chinese man in a coma was woken up by the smell of money Related: Siberian woman becomes latest victim of unexplained mass sleep epidemic
Readers have been dreading the rise of e-books since before the technology even existed. A 1991 New York Times piece predicting the imminent invention of the personal e-reader spurred angry and impassioned letters to the editor. One reader wrote in to express his worry that the new electronic books wouldn't work in the bath.Twenty-three years later, half of American adults own an e-reading device.
Depicting justice blindfold may not merely be a figurative assertion of courtroom impartiality: witnesses have been shown to improve their memory of a crime when they close their eyes.Research by psychologists at Surrey University has found fresh evidence suggesting that encouraging people to block off their vision boosts their ability to remember events accurately.Alt: Close your eyes if you want to find your car keys
This special eyewear is giving many a new outlook.EnChroma, a company in Berkeley, California, has created colorblindness correcting glasses, which allow those who are colorblind to see hues they may have never experienced before.It's an improvement that could help a significant number of people.
Face it, ladies: your DIY projects rarely turn out like the ones you see on Pinterest, and your Facebook posts aren't universally "liked." But a new survey suggests that despite such woes, social networking is still good for you.The survey found that women who frequently use social media, along with other technologies, to connect with friends and family report feeling less stressed than women who connect less often.
Innocent adult participants can be convinced, over the course of a few hours, that they had perpetrated crimes as serious as assault with a weapon in their teenage years. This research indicates that the participants came to internalize the stories they were told, providing rich and detailed descriptions of events that never actually took place. fictitious.
German researchers have built shoe-sized devices that harvest power from the act of walking.The technology could be used to power wearable electronic sensors without the need for batteries.
Female sea turtles, known to swim thousands of miles before returning to their birthplace to lay eggs, find their way home by relying on unique magnetic signatures along the coast, a new study finds.For more than 50 years, scientists have been mystified by how sea turtles do this, said the study's lead researcher, J. Roger Brothers, a graduate student of biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Why have a snack when you could have a feast? The pitcher plant has developed a clever way to help it dine on batches of ants at a time rather than individual ants.The carnivorous plant adjusts the slipperiness of its pitfall traps according to changes in the weather to entice more visitors to their stickly downfall, a new study has found.
Civilization has crossed four of nine so-called planetary boundaries as the result of human activity, according to a report published today in Science by the 18-member research team. Among them is Steve Carpenter, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Limnology and the only U.S.-based researcher on the study.For the last 11,700 years until roughly 100 years ago, Earth had been in a "remarkably stable state," says Carpenter.
Geologists, climate scientists and ecologists have been busy trying to decide whether we are moving from the Holocene to a new epoch recently, but one team of scientists believes it finished long ago.Proponents of the term 'Anthropocene' believe that humans have had such a profound effect on the Earth's crust that a new epoch is fitting, and some believe the detonation of the first atomic bomb during a test seems as good a mark of it as any.
For the first time, researcher have grown human skeletal muscle in the lab that contracts and responds to electrical pulses and medicine just like living tissue.The tissue, created by Duke University biomedical engineering Nenad Bursac and postdoctoral researcher Lauran Madden, represents a entirely new, more humanlike medium in which to study disease and use for drug testing.
Scientists at Stanford University in the US have developed a super-sensitive device that can measure the weight of a bird in flight.It has also answered a physics riddle.
A leopard may not be able to change its spots, but some zebras change their stripes. Zebras in warmer places have more stripes, a new study shows, which might help answer an age-old question: Why stripes?The answer probably comes down to keeping zebras cool and fending off disease-causing insects that are more common in hotter climates, researchers reported Tuesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
Seattle's public transit system has had a ruff go of things lately, and that has riders smiling.You see, of the 120 million riders who used the system last year, one of them is actually a dog.Related: A Dog Rolling Over During Play Is a Combat Tactic, Not Submission
Just looking at somebody shivering is enough to make us feel cold, new research has found. Volunteers who watched videos of people putting their hands in cold water found their own body temperature drop significantly, investigators report.
The drugs that people take at music festivals may leave a mark on the environment: A new study finds that levels of drugs such as ecstasy and ketamine may spike in a region's rivers after music events.The new findings add to the wider issue of what scientists call "emerging contaminants," which are the chemicals in medications and personal-care products that end up in the natural environment.Related: Scientists raise concerns about tiny plastic fibers discovered in Great Lakes waters and fish
Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have gained new insight into the mechanism behind a protein dopamine transporter that could help in the development of future medical treatment against cocaine addiction."If we have a better understanding of the dopamine transporter function we will become more proficient in developing an antidote against cocaine addiction," says Associate Professor Claus Juul Loland from the department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology. Currently there is no available medical treatment for cocaine addiction.
For thousands of years, phallic objects have been used symbolically as a means to boost fertility and ward off evil spirits - but their use as sexual aids has a long history, too.A 28,000-year-old phallus found in Germany recently, for example, is quoted as being the oldest known 'sex toy' ever found.While phalluses made from stone, wood, leather and even camel dung have all be found during excavations, or referenced throughout historical text and images.
A multi-purpose bone tool dating from the Neanderthal era has been discovered by University of Montreal researchers, throwing into question our current understanding of the evolution of human behaviour. It was found at an archaeological site in France. "This is the first time a multi-purpose bone tool from this period has been discovered. It proves that Neanderthals were able to understand the mechanical properties of bone and knew how to use it to make tools, abilities usually attributed to our species, Homo sapiens.
SETI has pointed a powerful radio telescope array at the Kepler Space Telescope's most recent exoplanetary discovery in the hope of detecting an artificially-generated radio signal. Alas, the world is not transmitting, and probably isn't home to an extraterrestrial intelligence.SETI, which stands for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, utilized the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), located in at Hat Creek Radio Observatory, 290 miles northeast of San Francisco, Calif., to study HIP 116454b, an exoplanet 180 light-years away in the constellation Pisces.
Scientists have paired NASA's Cassini spacecraft with the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio-telescope system to pinpoint the position of Saturn and its family of moons to within about 2 miles (4 kilometers). The measurement is some 50 times more precise than those provided by ground-based optical telescopes. The feat improves astronomers' knowledge of Saturn's orbit and benefits spacecraft navigation and basic physics research.
What should humanity do the next time a space rock threatens Earth? European officials recently spent two days figuring out possible ways to respond to such a scenario, with the aim of drawing up effective procedures before the danger actually materializes.
Zzzzzzap! Ahhh, the gratifying sound of another insect biting the dust on a humid summer night. The hauntingly seductive blue glow of the bug zapper attracts thousands of unsuspecting insects to their untimely demise. Phototactic creepy-crawlies simply cannot resist moving toward the light, and when they arrive, a 2,000-volt wire mesh awaits them.
I had my brain zapped to change my mood, and I lived to tell the tale. At a private demo with Thync at CES 2015, I experienced a futuristic electroshock therapy aimed at making me feel better.It involved sitting with a small module attached to my forehead for 15 minutes while electric currents passed through my nerves to my brain.Since the product is still being finalized, Thync declined to let us photograph the prototype module nor describe its shape, offering only screenshots of its app.
Robotic systems that are able to teach themselves have been developed by researchers. Specifically, these robots are able to learn the intricate grasping and manipulation movements required for cooking by watching online cooking videos. The key breakthrough is that the robots can 'think' for themselves, determining the best combination of observed motions that will allow them to efficiently accomplish a given task.
Babies are champion learners: Born with just a few basic reflexes, they quickly teach themselves to navigate their world by observing, remembering and making sense of their surroundings, the language spoken around them and the nature of such elusive notions as time, space and permanence.Babies are also champion nappers, snoozing away the majority of each day in brief interludes of peaceful slumber.
Americans who live in the mountains seem to have lower rates of lung cancer than those closer to the beach -- a pattern that suggests a role for oxygen intake, researchers speculate.Alt: Can inhaled oxygen cause cancer?
If you try to emulate the strange low songs of throat singers from Siberia, you will probably be disappointed.Scientists have discovered that the uniquely shaped vocal cords of people living in the Altai mountain region in southern Siberia means that only they can perform the eerie melodies composed centuries ago, which have been passed down generations.
In May 2008 a team of researchers forming part of the Templo Mayor project of the historic centre of Mexico City, discovered a large offering which had been placed underneath an enormous statue of the goddess Tlaltecuhtli.Underneath Mexico City lie the ruins of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, and at its centre was the Templo Mayor. The project researchers believe that this offering was made during the reign of Ahuizotl, who was ruler of the Aztec empire for sixteen years, from 1486 to 1502, and in that time conquered 45 Mesoamerican territories.
Could a lopsided gap help set us apart from our primate cousins? Our brains and chimps' are built differently in the areas that give us our social skills and language.The human brain has a 4.5-centimetre-long groove running deeper along the right side than the left. Chimp brains lack this asymmetry, as François Leroy of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Saclay, and colleagues, have discovered.
Our current cultural obsession with food is undeniable. But, while the advent of the foodie may be a 21st century phenomenon, from an evolutionary standpoint, flavor has long helped define who we are as a species, a new book argues.In Tasty: The Art and Science of What We Eat, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John McQuaid offers a broad and deep exploration of the human relationship to flavor.Well, billions of years ago, when primitive life forms were floating in ancient oceans, those creatures needed "to sense what was going on around them, and to chase it down and to devour it".
People who eat more whole grains live longer and are less likely to die of heart disease, according to an analysis of two large studies.Earlier studies had linked whole grains to a decreased risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, the researchers say.Related: Avocados may help lower 'bad' cholesterol, study finds
A new long-term study into violent media in the US could help settle the long-standing argument of whether or not violent films and video games are to blame for violence in society.The research, led by psychologist Christopher Ferguson and published in the Journal of Communication, not only found that there was no link between violent media and behaviour but also questioned the methodology of previous studies suggesting the two were related.
Artificial intelligence has the potential to make lives easier by understanding human desires or driving people's cars, but if it were uncontrolled, the technology could pose a serious threat to society. Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and dozens of other top scientists and technology leaders signed a letter warning of the potential dangers of developing artificial intelligence (AI).In addition to heavyweights like Hawking and Musk, the prominent physicist and billionaire founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, the letter was signed by top researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Google and other institutions.
The emerging problem of floating space junk becomes more and more evident and bothersome. Spacecraft and satellites are currently subject to high-speed impacts by more than 19,000 trackable objects, mainly old satellites, spent rocket stages, and fragments from disintegration, erosion, and collisions. There are also several hundred thousand objects the size of marbles, and several million the size of sand grains. Even a tiny piece of debris can inflict considerable damage, or even destroy an orbiting operational spacecraft.
China's bold plan to land an unmanned spaceship on the moon before returning to Earth has moved another step forward with a test craft shifting into lunar orbit to conduct further tests, state media reported Sunday.The service module of a lunar orbiter that flew back to Earth in November had been sitting in a position that brought in into sync with Earth's orbit, known as the second Lagrange point. It had separated from the orbiter in November.
Getting out of Earth's gravity well is hard. Conventional rockets are expensive, wasteful, and as we're frequently reminded, very dangerous. Thankfully, there are alternative ways of getting ourselves and all our stuff off this rock. Here's how we'll get from Earth to space in the future.Scientists and engineers have been proposing alternative launch systems for years, with some of them having the potential to become technologically feasible within a few decades.
What does it take to get the average Angeleno to shut off the lights, or unplug a few power-swilling appliances and e-gadgets?According to UCLA researchers, the least effective way to get a Los Angeles family to save electricity is by telling them how much they'll save in the process -- mostly because it's not a whole lot.Instead, researchers said it was far more persuasive to tell energy consumers just how many pounds of pollution their power usage generated, and how that pollution has been linked to diseases like cancer and childhood asthma.
The first known Chinese kingdom may have been destroyed when its lands rapidly transformed into deserts, possibly driving its people into the rest of China, a new study finds.This new finding suggests that the kingdom may have been more important to Chinese civilization than experts had thought, researchers say.
In 1795, then-Massachusetts Gov. Samuel Adams, famed patriot Paul Revere and Col. William Scollay buried a time capsule under the Massachusetts State House cornerstone in Boston, and now, after more than 200 years, its contents have been revealed.On Jan. 6, officials from the commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston carefully excavated and opened the capsule.
The "warming hiatus" that has occurred over the last 15 years has been partly caused by small volcanic eruptions.Scientists have long known that volcanoes cool the atmosphere because of the sulfur dioxide that is expelled during eruptions. Droplets of sulfuric acid that form when the gas combines with oxygen in the upper atmosphere can persist for many months, reflecting sunlight away from Earth and lowering temperatures at the surface and in the lower atmosphere.
Denmark has had a record year for wind power production. Denmark got 39.1 percent of its overall electricity from wind in 2014. That figure is according to the country's Climate and Energy Ministry.In fact, said EurActiv.com, that figure "makes the country the world's leading nation in wind-based power usage." In January 2014 alone, power from wind made up 61.4 percent of electricity consumption. By contrast, wind energy contributed to just 18.8 percent of the overall electricity production in Denmark in 2004.
For the last two years in a row, the Oculus Rift has been our choice for the Best in Show at CES. It has gone from a scrappy startup to a $2 billion acquisition by Facebook. At the same time Samsung and Google have made big announcements about a push into augmented and virtual reality.Related: Would you let this droid walk your dog? $999 human-sized Luna could usher in the age of the personal robot
On a trip to Congo, anthropologist Nathalie Fernando of the University of Montreal played 11 excerpts of Western songs to 40 Pygmies. Some songs, such as "Cantina," trigger positive feelings in Westerners. Others, like the Psycho theme or Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, trigger negative or sad feelings in Westerners.But the Pygmies didn't hear the music that way.
This season around 37,000 tourists are expected to visit Antarctica - home to about 20 million pairs of breeding penguins. But is it ethically acceptable to go on holiday to such a pristine environment?Enfolded in two glacial arms the bay before us sparkles ultramarine, the water flecked with ice-lilies and dotted with bits of floating icebergs.
An extinct flying fish may shed light on how gliding evolved in such animals, researchers say.Modern flying fish are famous for leaping from the water to glide in the air using long, winglike fins, presumably to escape aquatic predators. Much remains unknown about how modern flying fish developed their gliding abilities, since there is little in the way of missing-link fossils to illuminate how these fish evolved flight.
BHOPAL: Bhimbetka rock shelters with its paleolithic paintings are known the world over as a heritage site, but Kathotia village, 30km from Bhopal, housing one of the world's largest rock paintings wallows in anonymity. And despite being an archaeological minefield, tourists and even locals don't venture into the clusters as the area is spooked, say villagers.
In a galaxy far, far away, a pair of supermassive black holes appear to be spiraling together toward a cosmic collision of unimaginable scale, astronomers said on Wednesday.The final act of this mating dance, perhaps a mere million years from now, could release as much energy as 100 million of the violent supernova explosions in which stars end their lives, and wreck the galaxy it is in, said S. George Djorgovski of the California Institute of Technology.
Mapping a galaxy isn't easy when you live inside it. It took astronomers a century after the discovery of the first celestial spiral to prove that the Milky Way itself looks like a giant spiral. Its spiral arms squeeze interstellar gas and dust, causing gas clouds to grow dense, collapse and create new stars; the brightest newborn stars illuminate the arms so gloriously that spiral galaxies resemble glowing cosmic hurricanes. The Milky Way has several of these arms. Now astronomers in China have discovered that one of them may wrap around the entire galaxy, putting our galactic home in an elite group among its spiral neighbors.
The Wright brothers were a little late to the aviation game when you consider that pilots in ancient India were flying aircraft not only around the world, but from planet to planet as well. At least, that's one of the claims scheduled to be presented at the Indian Science Congress beginning Saturday at the University of Mumbai, in a session titled "Ancient Indian Aviation Technology."The presenters of the session are apparently serious in their belief that ancient Indian planes were not only able to travel across the solar system, but also "could move left, right, as well as backwards, unlike modern planes which only fly forward,".Alt: Pilot Claims India Invented Airplane 7,000 Years Ago
Two states led the nation in Sasquatch sightings, which have been on the decline since surging in the '00s.Related: Giant Beings Seen Rapidly Climbing Mexican Volcano.Related: Cows Can Relax as the Beast of Bodmin Moor is Identified
A spate of mysterious booms that has been shaking central Oklahoma returned for a second day Friday, again rattling houses and frightening livestock.Oklahoma Geological Survey research seismologist Austin Holland said a series of booms, much like a sonic boom, rattled the Norman area starting at 11:19 a.m. Friday. Numerous others had been reported Thursday in the same area at about the same time.
During a routine flight over the Antarctic ice shelf on 20 December last year, geophysicist Christian Müller spotted something strange: a huge, 2-kilometre-wide circle on the ice.Müller, a contractor with research consultants Fielax from Bremerhaven, Germany, was in Antarctica as part of a polar survey conducted by the German Alfred Wegener Institute. Six days after spotting the weird ice-ring, he and his colleagues returned and flew over the site at two different altitudes, to photograph and scan it. Their working theory is that the ring marks an ice crater left by a large meteorite that slammed into Antarctica in 2004.
Scientists may be coming a little closer to the truth about what happened to the prehistoric inhabitants of Easter Island, the island in the southeastern Pacific far off the coast of Chile where, some scholars have theorized, an entire civilization (the Rapa Nui) collapsed due to runaway population growth, land mismanagement, the Polynesian rat, or warfare, or some combination of the three. Alternatively, some scholars have pointed to the possibility of population decimation due to smallpox, syphilis, and tuberculosis introduced by new European arrivals in the 18th century.Alt: Easter Island's Demise May Have Surprising New Explanation
The discovery of probably one of the oldest burial sites in Japan could shed more light on the country's prehistory and the emergence of primitive culture.The Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum in Naha announced Dec. 11 that it found human remains dating back more than 9,000 years at the Sakitari-do cave site in Nanjo, Okinawa Prefecture.
Archaeologists from the Min Project have discovered an ancient reproduction of Osireion in Theban Necropolis, an area of the west bank of the Nile, opposite Thebes in Egypt.The find, dubbed Kampp 327, is a multi-level complex built sometime between 8th and 6th century BC.It is part of an older and bigger architectural structure known as the Tomb of Min.
An unusual butterfly that is half male and half female recently caught the eyes of a volunteer at a butterfly exhibit at Drexel University in Philadelphia.Chris Johnson, a retired chemical engineer from Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, was volunteering at the exhibit when he stumbled across the unusual sight.
Soon you'll be able to grow your own gut. Take a small sample of human intestine, grind it up and soak it in a digestive enzyme solution, pipette the mixture onto a polymer scaffold and implant it into the abdominal cavity of a mouse. A few weeks later, you'll have a tiny segment of fully functioning human gut.
Polar bears and other Arctic animals are shifting their distributions toward icier regions, according to new research suggesting that at least some species are attempting to adapt to climate-related changes in their habitat, such as dramatic losses of sea ice.The bears, as well as certain other animals, literally are trying to go with the flow.Related: Japanese whalers leave harpoons at home as they head for Antarctic
People who have upbeat outlooks on life have significantly better cardiovascular health, suggests a new study that examined associations between optimism and heart health in more than 5,100 adults."Individuals with the highest levels of optimism have twice the odds of being in ideal cardiovascular health compared to their more pessimistic counterparts," said lead author Rosalba Hernandez, a professor of social work at the University of Illinois.
A new economics paper has some old-fashioned advice for people navigating the stresses of life: Find a spouse who is also your best friend.Social scientists have long known that married people tend to be happier, but they debate whether that is because marriage causes happiness or simply because happier people are more likely to get married. The new paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, controlled for pre-marriage happiness levels.
June 30 will be a second longer than any other day this year.A "leap second" needs to be added in 2015 to make sure the time on atomic clocks stays in sync with Earth's rotational time, but some Internet companies are dreading the day.Earth's rotation has been slowing down by about two thousandths of a second every day.
Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, a physics professor with the Politecnico di Torino in Italy has found that the gates that once led in an out of an old Roman fortress in north-west England aligned with the summer and winter solstices. She has also noted that the towers built on each of the corners were aligned with the cardinal directions. She has published her analysis, results and ideas on reasons for the alignment in her paper published in Philica.
Chinese archaeologists working in Hubei province's Zaoyang City have unearthed an ancient stringed instrument dating back thousands of years. It's said to be the earliest ever found in China.It's called a "se" and it was found near a frame that holds chime bells. They were among a number of items pulled up by archaeologists working at the site, a complex of tombs which measures 4,920 feet (1,500 meters) by 2,620 feet (800 meters).
Life imitates art. And sometimes science does the same. Seven thousand year-old rock paintings in the Sahara desert have, somewhat serendipitously, helped uncover evidence of ancient lake beds.Researchers discovered the mineral remnants of the lake while studying a region well-known for its rock art. The most famous example is the Cave of the Swimmers, which provided a setting in the movie "The English Patient." The drawings in the cave depict humans that appear to be swimming, floating and diving. And yet this area in southwestern Egypt is one of the driest in the world.
The Reykjanes Peninsula, a finger of black rock jutting out over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge from Iceland's southwestern coast, has long leveraged its unique volcanic geology into economic opportunity. Its spectacularly carved edifices and vast lava fields draw naturalists from around the globe, while geothermal pools heated by deposits of steam and magma deep below ground provide the anchor for a thriving resort economy.