Newsdesk Archive
This year, voters in five states will decide whether to adopt either new medical or recreational cannabis laws -- or, perhaps, both in the case of one state.
The sprawling town may have been home to thousands before Spanish explorers arrived.
Darwin would be delighted by the story his successors have revealed.
For tens of thousands of years, a Neanderthal molar rested in a shallow grave on the floor of the Stajnia Cave in what is now Poland. For all that time, viable mitochondrial DNA remained locked inside - and now, finally, scientists are discovering its secrets.
When did something like us first appear on the planet? It turns out there's remarkably little agreement on this question
Two studies found reduced rates in depression severity, suicidal ideation, and experiential avoidance four weeks after taking psychedelics.
Image from Psilocybe cubensis-- The Magic Mushroom(Wiki Commons)
The mysterious dark vacuum of interstellar space is finally being revealed by two intrepid spacecraft that have become the first human-made objects to leave our Solar System.
Asteroids that formed far out in the Solar System appear to contain dust grains that themselves condensed from the infant Solar System’s protoplanetary disc much closer to the Sun, scientists say.
Evidence from Arctic fox bones show communities living around 27,500 years ago were killing small prey in the inhospitable North European Plains during the winter months of the last Ice Age.
A series of 2,200-year-old Chinese texts, written on silk and found buried in ancient tombs, contain the oldest surviving anatomical atlas, scientists say.
Scientists who attached a strain of bacteria to the outside of the International Space Station have been stunned to find it survived for three years, in open space.
Image from NASA (Wiki Commons)
Scientists in Finland are taking a closer look at the relationship between psychedelic substances and mystical experiences.
Image from Nhatty 87 (Wiki Commons)
Several missions this year are seeking out life on the red planet. But would we recognise extraterrestrials if we found them?
Many people report seeing "machine elves" or "clockwork elves" while on DMT, but why do so many people see entities and why do different people have such similar experiences?
Archaeologists in Norway have unearthed the 1,100-year-old grave of a Viking warrior, whose steel sword was placed in an unusual spot: on his left side.
A third of Brits believe countries were better off for being colonised by the British empire – but many don't know of the horrors inflicted on Britain's former colonies.
Image from https://pin.it/2jj6luk7v25lks (Wikki Commons)
The temperature of the planet during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), has been ‘nailed down’ thanks to ancient plankton fossils.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Perhaps not, some say.
A Rochester Institute of Technology researcher developed a mathematical method that shows climate change likely caused the rise and fall of an ancient civilization.
Evolutionary anthropologist Prof Brian Hare and science writer Vanessa Woods explain why 'survival of the fittest' is a misleading idea.
Image from IMG_2812 (Wikki Commons)
This research, funded by Australian Government and soon to be published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, looked into the benefit of microdosing psychedelics....
The Neanderthal Flute, found in the cave of Divje Babe in Slovenia, is thought to date back at least 50,000 years, making it the oldest known musical instrument in the world.
A trio of researchers, two with the University of Salford, the third with English Heritage, has built a small-scale model of Stonehenge to test the acoustical properties of the ancient monument.
Imagine the energy of eight Suns released in an instant. This is the gravitational "shockwave" that spread out from the biggest merger yet observed between two black holes.
Archaeologists in Israel have discovered a 3,200-year-old fortress built by the Egyptians and Canaanites, the ancient foes of the Israelites in the bible. The fortress was built to keep the newly arrived Philistines out of the region.
Support for the Yes and No campaigns in New Zealand’s referendum on legalising and taxing cannabis is split at 49.5% each, six weeks out from voting day.
Geologists say they have discovered a large meteorite crater in outback Western Australia, which could be up to five times bigger than the famous Wolfe Creek Crater in the state's remote north.
Neanderthals had sophisticated tools, a playful childhood and a place they could call home.
Image from Tom Björklund (Wikki Commons)
Africa’s sparse fossil record alone cannot reveal our species’ evolutionary history.
Bronze age Britons remembered the dead by keeping and curating bits of their bodies, and even turning them into instruments and ornaments, according to new research on the remains.
September's full moon sets the stage for a Halloween blue moon.
Philosophers and mathematicians have been arguing over this for centuries. Some believe mathematics is universal; others consider it only as real as anything else humans have invented.
In 2012, two years after her first cancer treatment and tormented with anxiety over her cancer resurfacing, Bazer participated in a clinical trial at NYU Langone.
Londoners were among the highest percentage of people taking very small amounts of psychedelics over lockdown, to help mentally cope with the pandemic and financial worries, as well as to feel more creative.
Climate change occurring shortly before their disappearance triggered a complex change in the behavior of late Neanderthals in Europe: they developed more complex tools.
The painters who decorated Egyptian tombs and temples followed rigid guidelines for centuries—until a style revolution changed the rules.
Image from Camshea (Wikki Commons)
Psychedelic pharmaceutical company MindMed is set to conduct a novel Phase 1 clinical trial exploring the subjective effects of combining LSD with MDMA.
Image from William Rafti of the William Rafti Institute (Wikki Commons)
Researchers discover Fossil evidence of 'hibernation-like' state in tusks of 250-million-year-old Antarctic animal.
For decades, researchers have been uncovering archaeological treasures that disprove any suggestion that complex civilizations did not exist in the Brazilian Amazon before colonialism.
Just a tiny dose of LSD significantly improved tolerance to painful stimuli and reduced subjective experience of pain.
Information might seem immaterial. But within a few short centuries, the total amount of digital bits produced annually by humanity could exceed the number of atoms on our planet and, even more unexpectedly, account for half of its mass.
This toad venom is considered to be a less visual, yet more intense cousin of DMT.
The trippy anaesthetic has thrived despite global attempts to ban it...Since it was first used by US field surgeons in the Vietnam War, the drug has quietly been winning battles in the War On Drugs across the planet.
Image from Sekio at English Wikipedia (Wikki Commons)
A University of Arizona-led team has nailed down the temperature of the last ice age—the Last Glacial Maximum of 20,000 years ago—to about 46 degrees Fahrenheit (7.8 C).
Britain's oldest artwork has been unearthed on the Channel Island of Jersey, showing what appear to be Ice Age scenes of mammoths in ancient lands now drowned by the sea.
At some point in Earth's 4.5-billion-year history, its entirely liquid iron core cooled enough to form a solid ball in the centre.
A team of archaeologists from Siberian Federal University and Novosibirsk State University provided a detailed reconstruction of a technology that was used to carve ornaments and sculptures from mammoth ivory.
Just before a tiny pup died during the last ice age, it ate a piece of meat from one of Earth's last woolly rhinos.
A small, soft space rock smacked into Costa Rica on April 23, 2019. And it may have carried building blocks for life.
Mining giant Rio Tinto has cut the bonuses of three executives over the destruction of two ancient caves in Australia.
They number in the hundreds, can be larger than an NFL football field and are found across Saudi Arabia, including on the slope of a volcano.
Paleontological research has confirmed a series of recently discovered fossils tracks are the oldest recorded tracks of their kind to date within Grand Canyon National Park.
There are a lot of negative stigma surrounding psychedelic drugs. A large portion of the population and the government condemn these substances to be dangerous, addictive, and illegal.
Oakland police marched into the Zide Door Church of Entheogenic Plants, seized its stash, and called in firefighters to bust open the safes, according to photos and videos posted to Instagram.
Fossil leaves from the remains of a 23 million-year-old forest suggest some plants may adapt to grow more quickly as CO2 levels rise, a study says.
Asteroids are ancient celestial objects that date from the formation of the solar system. They can therefore reveal the conditions in which our planet formed.
'Oumuamua — a mysterious, interstellar object that crashed through our solar system two years ago — might in fact be alien technology. That’s because an alternative, non-alien explanation might be fatally flawed, as a new study argues.
A pair of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has found evidence that suggests some human facial expressions are universal across cultures.
Early Sunday morning (Aug. 16), the car-sized 2020 QG zoomed just 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) above the Indian Ocean, making the closest known flyby by an asteroid that didn't end up slamming into our planet.
They are small, flat and covered in what appear to be chaotic scratches, but 10 engraved stone fragments unearthed on Jersey, researchers say, could be the earliest evidence of human art in the British Isles.
About 130,000 years ago, an early wave of anatomically modern humans — Homo sapiens — left the Horn of Africa and spread north along the center of the Arabian Peninsula, which was wetter and greener than it is now.
A new study analyzed over 2,500 reported encounters with autonomous entities after taking “breakthrough” doses of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT). The findings were published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Image from Martin420 (Wikki Commons)
"I think we all lose our patience with how hot it is," says Brandi Stewart, who works at Death Valley National Park in California. "When you walk outside it's like being hit in the face with a bunch of hairdryers."
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, who have been at the forefront of psychedelics studies in a lab setting, are partnering with a Denver-based nonprofit to gather thousands of real-world experiences with psilocybin.
Image from Steve Jurvetson (Wikki Commons)
Rebecca Wragg Sykes’s book paints a vivid portrait of our adaptable ancient relatives.
Charlie Hughes went from having up to 120 seizures a day to fewer than 20, after receiving cannabis oil privately. Although medical cannabis was legalised in November 2018, almost no NHS prescriptions have been handed out.
Deep within Guatemala's rainforest sits one of the most famous remnants of the Maya civilization: a roughly 2,000-year-old citadel turned to ruins called Tikal.
The Pentagon said Friday it was setting up a new task force under the US Navy to investigate UFO sightings.
If you tend to notice faces in inanimate objects around you like the scowling face of a house, a surprised bowling ball, or a grimacing apple, you're not alone.
In 1942, an Indian forest ranger discovered a remote lake, high in the Himalayas, full of human skeletons. Who were they?
Image from Schwiki (Wikki Commons)
Betelgeuse's odd recent dimming was caused by a huge cloud of material that the supergiant star blasted into space, a new study suggests.
New research provides preliminary evidence that psychedelic drugs can improve mental health by making individuals more accepting of distressing experiences.
Image from Flickr (Wikki Commons)
Archaeologists from South Africa have uncovered rudimentary beds that early humans made by placing bundles of grass onto a layer of ash. Sounds basic, but these Stone Age beds were more sophisticated than they appear at first glance.
As people settled down and stopped roaming, they might have burned the dead instead of burying them because of disease racking the area, an archaeologist suggests.
An overhaul of carbon dating has been announced. The update – the first in seven years – led by an international calibration team (IntCal), not only improves the accuracy of radiocarbon dating, but also lets researchers look 5000 years further back in time, to 55,000 years ago.
Though some news outlets have described the circles as a "woodhenge," akin to the famous Neolithic monument of Stonehenge, archaeologists prefer not to call it that - instead referring to them a "Timber Circles." While the archaeologists prefer a different name the design is similar with wooden posts encircling an area.
A new study by Palaeontologists at the University of Southampton suggests four bones recently found on the Isle of Wight belong to new species of theropod dinosaur, the group that includes Tyrannosaurus rex and modern-day birds.
The dwarf planet Ceres – long believed to be a barren space rock – is an ocean world with reservoirs of seawater beneath its surface, the results of a major exploration mission showed on Monday.
James Lovelock, one of Britain’s greatest scientists, is famous for developing the Gaia hypothesis, which sees the Earth as a self-regulating system.
Archaeologists say they've discovered the earliest known bone tools in the European archaeological record. The implements come from the renowned Boxgrove site in West Sussex, which was excavated in the 1980s and 90s.
An amateur treasure-hunter has uncovered one of the most significant Bronze Age hoards ever found in Scotland, including jewelry and a 3,000-year-old sword, authorities said Monday.
Researchers say the only way prey could be captured in this position is for the ant's mouthparts to move in a direction "unlike that of all living ants".
In an attempt to escape the ever-increasing stress of life in 2020, I laid down on the floor of my Northern Californian cabin on a recent Saturday afternoon and did something not uncommon in this corner of the world...
In the evolutionary tree of life, the lizard-like tuatara from New Zealand is on a branch all to itself.
As humans diminish biodiversity by cutting down forests and building more infrastructure, they’re increasing the risk of disease pandemics such as COVID-19. Many ecologists have long suspected this, but a new study helps to reveal why.
Thirty thousand years ago, a dead star on the other side of the Milky Way belched out a powerful mixture of radio and X-ray energy
Fires blazed the way for humans to evolve into the species we are today. Scientists suspect that without a control over fire, humans probably would never have developed large brains and the benefits that come along with it.
Scientists have discovered that humans use the visual part of their brain when processing sounds in the dark, even if they have never had sight in their lifetime.
A Welsh police boss wants magic mushrooms to be reclassified so research can be carried out on the psychedelic compound psilocybin, and its effectiveness in treating mental health problems.
A team of researchers from Sweden, the U.S., Poland and the U.K. has found evidence that suggests the wealth gap in human communities goes back at least 6,600 years.
One expert said people might be using psychedelics as a therapeutic mechanism amid abounding bleakness.
THE STONES DIDN’T give up their secrets easily. For decades, villagers in the dust-blown hills of China’s Loess Plateau believed that the crumbling rock walls near their homes were part of the Great Wall.
Image from InjuryMap - Free Human Anatomy Images and Pictures. (Wikki Commons)
Today's humans carry the genes of an ancient, unknown ancestor, left there by hominin species intermingling perhaps a million years ago.
Health Minister Patty Hajdu has granted four people with terminal cancer access to psilocybin mushrooms through an exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
Consuming a single dose of the psychedelic brew ayahuasca can result in lasting changes in higher-order cognitive brain networks, according to a new study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Image from Martin420 (Wikki Commons)
Thailand’s cabinet approved amendments on Tuesday to its narcotics act to allow private production and sale of marijuana for medical use, officials said.
Image from Zscout370 (Wikki Commons)
Home Office red tape is holding back scientists from investigating one of the most promising areas of inquiry: psilocybin.
This newfound species is one of the earliest known owls.
A large number of the valley networks scarring Mars's surface were carved by water melting beneath glacial ice, not by free-flowing rivers as previously thought, according to new UBC research published today in Nature Geoscience.
Forty thousand years ago, a stone-age toolmaker carved a curious instrument from mammoth tusk. Twenty centimetres long, the ivory strip has four holes drilled in it, each lined with precisely cut spiral incisions.