Newsdesk Archive

During World War II, the US Navy trained the birds to peck at screens in the nose of gliders so the military could drop bombs without sending humans into dangerous territory. As revealed in a new video, the conductive touchscreen display technology used by the pigeons is now commonplace in phones, tablets, wearables, laptops, and other devices.

The village of Ayios Epiktitos (Catalkoy) in Cyprus is set to host a different kind of conference with the First International Vounous Terracotta Symposium. During the gathering, participants will try to bring to life a 5,000 year old settlement by recreating ceramic implements from the era.

New evidence suggests that a complex burial rite was undertaken at a 5,000 year old passage tomb complex, at Carrowkeel, involving a funerary rite that placed a particular focus on the deconstruction of the body, likely intended to help souls of the dead reach the next stage of their existence.  This study has been able to show that the Carrowkeel complex was most likely a highly significant place in Neolithic society in Ireland, and one which allowed for interaction and a spiritual connection with ancestors.

The 16th century Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple shot to fame six years ago when one of its six vaults was found to contain ancient valuables. The second chamber is believed to contain more wealth than the first.

New evidence for dinosaur roosting stems from a confiscated fossil block that was illegally exported from Mongolia which preserved the amazing remains of three juvenile dinosaurs known as oviraptorids. These three dinosaurs represent the same species that were roughly the same age, preserved in a sleeping posture, so close to each other that they would have been touching in life, about 70 million years ago. Known as "communal roosting", this behavior is seen in many birds today including chickens and pigeons.

Since Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, Ford Park has become a makeshift animal triage hospital, staffed with veterinarians, volunteers and donations,  where an estimated 160 horses have been treated ? many ravaged by hypothermia, fever, respiratory infections and stress-induced colic.  Many were emaciated, severely dehydrated and had skin conditions after being stranded in dirty toxic water, or paddling through floodwaters for days.

A 7 year old schoolgirl from Yorkshire, England, could become the stuff of legend after pulling a 4 foot long Medieval-looking sword from the same Cornish lake where King Arthur's Excalibur was famously thrown.

Three dating methods, applied to charcoal particles, sediment and sloth bones found in a rock shelter, indicate that people first reached Santa Elina, Brazil, more than 20,000 years ago -  findings that add to evidence that humans reached South America well before Clovis hunters roamed North America roughly 13,000 years ago.

Many of the most vivid portraits from the ancient world are not of emperors, but rather of local elites that lived in Roman Egypt. The dry climate of the province helped to preserve stunning portraits of men, women and children that now occupy museums across the world. But how did they get there?  Article contains a link to an open-access digital book of portrait images.

In Colorado, archaeologists have begun excavating two “great houses” in what once was a northern settlement outpost of the ancient Chaco Canyon civilization, 100 miles away in New Mexico.

Neanderthal remains from Vindija Cave in Croatia have been previously dated at 32,000 years old, but analysis using a new radiocarbon dating technique that eliminates contaminants suggests that they are in fact at least 40,000 years old. These finding suggests that Neanderthals in Croatia likely did not overlap with modern humans as previously thought, but researchers still want more remains to undergo testing using the new method.

New findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences document a 192-year series of volcanic eruptions in Antarctica that coincided with accelerated deglaciation about 17,700 years ago.

Metallurgy does not have a single origin but probably arose at various locations at about the same time. Experts from Germany and the UK reached this conclusion after re-examining the 8,500 year old copper slag and analysing the chemical composition of other copper artefacts from the Stone Age settlement of Çatalhöyük in the Near East.

In the coming weeks of post-hurricane aftermath in Texas, drones will help local citizens and companies assess damage and safety issues for homes, roads, bridges, power lines, oil and gas facilities, and office buildings.

Tampa's MacDill Air Force Base in conjunction with the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes, as well as an archaeological team from Stone Mountain, GA, are in the midst of a 10-week archaeological project to help determine how much is left of the civilizations that once called this area home thousands of years ago.  The base already has 9 known archaeological sites, one of which is a toolmaking site from the Archaic period dating as far back as 10,000 years ago.

A professional lifestyle coach is hoping to bring a new religion to Nova Scotia that’s focused on a South American psychedelic spiritual ceremony that includes drinking Ayahuasca.

The Dendera Zodiac is the only circular depiction of astronomy to be found within Egyptian antiquity. All other references to the zodiac or astrology are either square or pyramidal in shape and design. Charles Dupuis, a pre-French Revolution scholar believed Egyptian astrology originated as far back as 14,000 years ago; 10,000 years earlier than the commonly accepted timeline of 4000 BC.

Astronomers working with NASA’s 230-foot (70-m) Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, CA, have released the first radar images of the near-Earth asteroid (3122) Florence. The images show the asteroid has two small moons.  The images also confirm that the asteroid rotates once every 2.4 hours.

An oceanography journal has retracted a March 2017 paper by a group of researchers in China after learning that one of its authors had been untruthful about their faculty affiliation at a college in the United States.

Eight artifacts, stolen by Islamic State from Mosul museum, have been recovered after a displaced family returned them to police, an official said.  EDITOR'S NOTE: Artifacts seen in the photo are not the ones in question, but merely from a stock photo provided by Iraqi News.

The repair department of a Tennessee-based camera store has shared a collection of photos of its rental lenses that were wrecked by the total solar eclipse of 21 August 2017.

Since classical antiquity, the West has had a fascination with ancient Egypt. Despite our fascination with these monuments, it is still rather mysterious as to how they were built and erected. Although some evidence has been found that illuminates the process most likely used in carving the obelisks, how they were erected remains just as elusive as it has ever been.

Calluna, a female harrier hawk, was fitted with a satellite tag earlier this year, but transmissions from her tag ended in Aberdeenshire on 12 August.  Head of investigations at RSPB Scotland said, "This bird joins the lengthening list of satellite-tagged birds of prey that have disappeared in highly suspicious circumstances, almost exclusively in areas intensively managed for grouse shooting."  There are only an estimated 600 breeding pairs of harrier hawks in the UK.

Conservationists say the snowy owl Hedwig, who remains the young wizard’s loyal companion for most of the Harry Potter series, is fuelling global demand for wild-caught birds for use as pets. From Indonesia to India, wild owls are being sold as pets to families who want their own Hedwig. Ecologists call for protection to help species survive.

Windchimes hanging in the kitchen could be the secret to encouraging fussy children to eat their greens, according to an Oxford University professor. Charles Spence, professor of experimental psychology, who helped create chef Heston Blumenthal’s multi-sensory recipes, claims that parents can help enhance taste and suppress the bitterness of vegetables through ‘sonic seasoning.’

Scientists used ice core measurements to quantify the absolute amount of radiocarbon-containing methane (14CH4) in the past atmosphere and show that geological methane emissions were no higher than 15.4 teragrams per year (95% confidence), averaged over the abrupt warming event that occurred between the Younger Dryas and Preboreal intervals, approximately 11,600 years ago.

In lab tests involving simulated tabletop earthquakes, researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico demonstrated that machine-learning technology can play a role in predicting major tremors by analyzing acoustic signals to find failing fault lines.

A French company unveiled a powerful new evolution in personal telescopes that make the act of stargazing brighter, clearer, and more engaging. Dubbed Unistellar, the new telescope enhances the image of objects in the sky by accumulating and amplifying the light that they are emitting, according to its creators.

In August, a group of protesters took umbrage in over what they thought was a Nazi symbol of hatred on sale at a Salt Lake City, Utah, fleamarket.  Instead, what they learned was how ubiquitous the geometric design, symbolic of blessings and well-being, was prior to the Third Reich — that Natives used it, Buddhists used it, and Hindu art has riddled with it for thousands of years.

The human body is fascinating, and although we’ve come a long way with regard to understanding how our own biology works, there is still much to be discovered, and still much that has yet to be understood.  Read this article to learn about what's now been dubbed as “peripersonal” space, used to help us navigate through the physical world with safety.

Using a rod he designed himself, a fisherman spend two back-breaking hours reeling in a 225kg (500lb) Atlantic bluefin tuna about 20 miles (32km) off the Welsh coast.  It took 6 people to hoist it onboard, and he calls it the fish of a lifetime.  After snapping a few photos, the fish was released back into the sea.

There's a $100,000 prize waiting for you if you can read minds, heal people at a distance, see the future, or talk to the dead.  As long as you can prove it, that is.  According to this skeptic, most people claiming psychic powers baulk at proving themselves.

At the end of this month, the Prop Store in London is holding a truly incredible prop auction. Pop culture memorabilia enthusiasts will get their chance to dress like the Seventh Doctor, wield Conan’s sword, and a whole lot more when over 600 items from Hollywood history go on sale. Article contains a link to view the auction contents in advance.

Research by The University of California suggests that the advent of farming and cheesemaking had a small but significant effect on the shape of human skulls, giving modern humans small, slender heads and weaker jaws.

According to a study published in Organic Geochemistry, researchers in Japan and China believe they have found new molecular fossils of archaea using a method of analysis commonly used in forensic science.

Known for its majestic, free-standing sandstone buttes, this sprawling, 92,000-acre valley on the Arizona-Utah border, attracts more than 250,000 sightseers per year.  Contrary to popular belief, Monument Valley is not on public land. Unlike many nearby national parks, it is a tribal park owned and operated by the Navajo Nation.

On September 11, 2017, after a 5 month hibernation to conserve power, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will awaken for its 16 month journey to MU69, an ancient object which is thought to be one of the early building blocks of the Solar System, 4 billion miles from Earth.

A North Yorkshire local history and conservation group in England has been awarded almost £80,000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund to invest in a major new project.  If you would like to volunteer you can find more information at www.ndchs.org.uk

A clever and unconventional new atlas by guerrilla cartographers, called Water: An Atlas, explores the importance of water in everything from ancient mythology to rising seas to modern warfare.  One map of the Dakotas, created by a team of activists and scholars, ties the threat to drinking water posed by the Dakota Access Pipeline to historical land seizures and the US federal government's violence against Native Americans.

Film maker James Cameron and National Geographic have coordinated a high-tech multidisciplinary investigation team to discover and analyze manuscripts, satellite photographs, underwater archaeological objects, rock art symbols, and ancient once-buried temple ruins to try to get to the bottom of the mystery of Plato's city of Atlantis... with startling results.  The work is detailed in a groundbreaking 2-hour documentary film called Atlantis Rising.  Article contains a link to the film's video trailers.

North and South America had their own civilizations which flourished in pre-Columbian times. The western hemisphere’s population before the 15th century is estimated at about 100 million people. Unfortunately, most of these cultures have been lost or irreversibly altered by interaction with Western European culture. Taos Pueblo, however, comes close to the oldest continuously inhabited Puebloan settlement.

Digitizing the world's medical records was supposed to make doctors' lives easier and patients' lives longer. But unlike banking and shopping, medicine has had a rough time transitioning to the new digital order. Because health care providers use different systems for their electronic health care records, it’s still difficult for a patient’s data to follow them through the medical ecosystem. Most of the time, siloed medical information is more of a nuisance than anything else. But when Hurricane Harvey hit the Houston, Texas, area last week, evacuations and rescue efforts forced patients to seek treatment anywhere they could. Most of the time access to their health records didn’t go with them. That information void can be almost as catastrophic as the catastrophe itself.

Scientists analyzing 7.2 million-year-old fossils uncovered in modern-day Greece and Bulgaria suggest a new hypothesis about the origins of humankind, placing it in the Eastern Mediterranean and not, as customarily assumed, in Africa, and earlier than currently accepted. The researchers conclude that Graecopithecus freybergi, dubbed "El Graeco",  represents the first pre-humans to exist following the split from the last chimpanzee-human common ancestor.

The discovery comes just months after another study reported the discovery of 7 million year old Greek and Bulgarian fossil teeth from a hominin ape dubbed "El Graeco".  Although the results are controversial, suggesting that the rich East African evidence for early Miocene hominids may not be telling the whole story, it's important that we take the findings seriously. The new Trachilos, Crete, tracksite deserves to be protected and the evidence should be debated by scientists.

While we think we know what a near death experience is, in reality it is somewhat of a slippery concept. At its very loosest, we might say that it is when someone near death - sometimes physically, but also sometimes when they are simply under the impression they are about to die - experiences at least one of a number of identified 'NDE' elements.  Where do we draw the line on which are the important elements, and how many of them are really needed to make it a genuine NDE?

The Seven Sisters, as they were known to the ancient Greeks, are now known to modern astronomers as the Pleiades – are a cluster of stars which are visible to the naked eye and have been studied for thousands of years by cultures all over the world.  International astronomers have now demonstrated a powerful new technique for observing stars such as these, which are ordinarily far too bright to look at with high performance telescopes.

New research published in Scientific Reports reveals the startling ingenuity and intellectual capacities of Neanderthals, and the likely method used to cook up this ancient adhesive as far back as 200,000 years ago.  Similar tar lumps and adhesive residues have also been found in Germany, the oldest of which dates back some 120,000 years ago.

Skycharting applications such as SkySafari 5, Starwalk 2, and Stellarium can turn your mobile device into a pocket-sized time machine.  By manually setting the apps' location, date and time, you can view the sky from anywhere on the planet at virtually any point in human history; past, present, or future.

A nine-month-old baby in Connecticut had dangerously high levels of lead in her blood after chewing on a homeopathic “healing bracelet” used to ease teething pain, according to a report published by the Centers for Disease Control.  The handmade bracelet, which contained hematite, magnets, and other beads, was sold by an artisan market vendor who has yet to be located.

Dot Incorp has created a tactile Braille smart watch for the blind which tells time with a simple touch.  Article is in video format.

Scientists are beginning to unravel the mechanisms behind the therapeutic effects of psychedelic drugs.  The answers to these mysteries may help scientists gain insight into what happens to the brain in disease, and perhaps learn more about the nature of consciousness itself.

A lobsterman caught the unusual leucistic specimen last week. He returned it to the Gulf of Maine after showing it to family and friends, and seeing it was female and marked for carrying eggs.

Far from what is popularly believed, the human senses are more than just five. In addition to sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing, our body has many other senses that have been cast in the shadows as mainstream society evolved. This article details ten extra senses that you probably did not know about.

Scientists have recovered with certainty a nova observed by Korean astronomers in 1437. This recovery seems to confirm that novae cycle through several states after eruption, eventually becoming novae once again and restarting the process.

Archaeologists in El Salvador have unearthed the remains of skeletons dating back 2,500 years. The well-preserved human remains, along with shards of pottery, were found in Quelepa in eastern El Salvador.

The Kings of the Sealand sound like they come straight out of a fantasy novel but it’s the name given to a royal dynasty who ruled Bronze Age Iraq for almost three centuries (ca. 1730-1460 BCE).  Sealand period remains had never been firmly identified at any archaeological site, but new excavations by a British-Iraqi team have finally found a settlement of the elusive Sealand state.

Researchers in Italy may have found the answer to the mystery of how early hominids processed tar as an adhesive. They found stone flakes covered in a black sticky substance, a form of tar glue made from birch bark. The artifacts' age - to not before 200,000 years ago – is the earliest recorded tar findings date.  Remains of a small elephant nearby was dated at Middle Pleistocene.

BBC developed a headset that allows users to control their TVs with only their mind.  News article is in video format.

Take a walk to the end of Room 73 at the British Museum, and you will meet some of the Art World's favourite ladies. Made of terracotta and dressed in vivid shades of pink and blue, these ancient Hellenistic figurines were once made all across the Mediterranean as offerings to be placed in tombs.  Over the more than 2,000 years since these figurines were made, many of these colours have faded or peeled away but their flowery coloured garments have hidden properties – ­under certain lighting conditions they ‘glow.’

Vast underwater Roman ruins have been discovered off northeast Tunisia, apparently confirming a theory that the city of Neapolis was partly submerged by a tsunami in the 4th century AD.

Repairing limbs after serious injuries can be a challenge for orthopedic surgeons.  A new technique being tested on large animals combines stem cell DNA therapy with ultrasound-stimulated microbubbles, called sonoporation-driven BMP gene therapy, to fix fractures.

The Mine Kafon is a ball made of bamboo, plastic, and iron. The balls detonate land mines, as the wind blows them through Afghani deserts.  Article is in video format.

"Once eyed with suspicion for not being scientific enough, traditional Chinese medicine might just be about to take over the world.” So opined China’s state-run news agency, Xinhua, in an article last year

A Kilwinning Heritage researcher was surprised when she stumbled across a 1950s map that showed two large concentric circles at a Scottish farm, and a previously undiscovered feature on aerial photographs. Now the feature, thought to be a manmade henge, could be as ancient as 6000 years old.

Cave divers first came across Hoyo Negro—Spanish for “black hole”—in 2007, and were stunned to find a massive water-filled chamber rife with articulated animal remains and the skeleton of Naia,  a girl who died around 13,000 years ago.  Expeditions through the years have mapped at least 28 animal skeletons within the pit, only a handful of which have been fully excavated.  The well-preserved remains offer a glimpse into the rapidly shifting world that surrounded Naia.

Archaeologists in Kiriath Jearim, tracing the origins of the Ark of the Covenant, a lost biblical chest that is said to contain ancient relics, believe it may have also carried pagan idols thousands of years old. While they do not expect to find the Ark, they are operating under the premise that early Israelites from the 8th and 7th century BC worshipped Canaanite gods like Baal, who was worshipped as a bull statue, and lends his name to Kiriath Jearim: Kiriath Ball.

Fascinating article retells the step-by-step story of how scientists, led by a geoarchaeologist, recreated the scene from a time thousands of years ago when a small band of Paleoindian hunter-gatherers on foot without bows pulled off a largely successful slaughter of skittish longhorn bison in a waterhole ambush at a place now called Bear Creek, Kansas.

The Paiutes, a Native American tribe indigenous to parts of Nevada, have an oral tradition about a violent race of red-haired, white giants or ‘barbarians’ that their ancestors referred to as the “Si-Te-Cah” or Saiduka.   The story was written down in a book in 1882 by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, daughter of a Paiute Indian chief.  There is some debate as to the veracity of the claims made regarding the Lovelock Giants.  During initial cave excavations, there were reports of mummified remains being found of two red-haired giants up to 8 feet tall.  But as the article explains, however, only a giant mystery remains.

An estimated 465,000 people in the US will be getting notices from doctors that they should update the firmware that runs their life-sustaining pacemakers or risk falling victim to potentially fatal hacks.  Like many wireless devices, pacemakers from Abbott Laboratories contain critical flaws that might allow hijackers within radio range to seize control while the pacemakers are running.

New archaeological research from Utah shows that prehistoric inhabitants of the Escalante Valley could have been nourishing themselves with wild potato tubers for thousands of years.  This is the earliest evidence of potato use in North America to date.  The wild Four Corners potato can yield up to 125 small tubers on one plant.

Analysis has been done on prehistoric human remains found in Chan Hol cave in Tulum, Mexico, which had a stalagmite growing through its pelvic bone. Findings suggest that the was accessed during the late Pleistocene, roughly 13,000 years ago, providing one of the oldest examples of a human settler in the Americas.

After 13 days of excavation that yielded artifacts beyond their dreams, archaeologists and researchers wrapped up work in Angkor Archaeological Park in Cambodia this week. Now they must get on with the job of assessing what they found.

The genders of these two 2,800 year old skeletons found in Iran have been the subject of much debate. Despite many researchers suggesting that the remains of both individuals belong to males, there are as many scientists who have concluded that the individual on the left was a female. The individual on the left – whose sex isn’t defined with certainty – was around 30–35 years old at the time of death, while the individual on the right is believed to have been a young male of around 20-22 years of age

An incredibly rare wooden container from the Bronze Age has been discovered on the Lötschberg mountain in Switzerland, still with detectable traces of the grains that the box carried in 1,500 BC.  Analysis of the grains revealed them to be spelt, emmer, and barley.

In this article, researchers from Helsinki examine precolonial geometric earthworks, dated to 5,000 years ago, in the southwestern Amazonia from the point of view of indigenous peoples and archaeology. The study shows that the earthworks, labeled the Geoglyphs of Acre, were once important ritual communication spaces.  Contemporary indigenous peoples of the area still protect earthwork sites as sacred places and avoid using them for mundane activities.

This picturesque word-painting from Guardian's Country Diary tells of Cornwall's St. Dennis landscape then and now – the legendary hunting grounds of King Arthur form the waterlogged bog and headstreams of the river Fal, overlooked by a moss-covered fort. Tin working was recorded here in the 11th and 12th centuries; and from 1930 to 1950 sand and gravel were extracted.  The area is now designated a nature preserve.

There is an online Tweet-storm happening to mirror the real life storm, and the science community from across the US is offering to help Texas researchers whose labs and life's work are in jeopardy in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey's epic flooding.  Article contains numerous images of conversation threads on Twitter screenshots.

A colony of 250,000 Mexican free-tailed bats live underneath the Waugh Bridge in Texas.  Post-hurricane floodwater levels are causing them to drown. Trained volunteers from the Bat World Sanctuary are headed to save them.  Each bat can eat 2 million mosquitoes per night.  Dead bats can't eat mosquitoes, and burgeoning numbers of mosquitoes may lead to proliferation of disease.

At least three American Indian tribes in Oklahoma have sent representatives to the Houston area to help with Hurricane Harvey relief efforts.  The tribes represented are Cherokee, Muscogee Creek and Quapaw, at the time of this article's publication.  They are well-trained, bringing boats and other equipment, and plan to stay as long as they are needed.

Gallery Furniture owner, Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale, is known not only for his zany commercials but also his generosity. The store's delivery trucks were taken out to make rescues in high floodwater and bring Texas folks back to the furniture showroom now doubling as an emergency storm shelter.  Sleeping soundly in the mattress room next to displaced evacuees are about 60 US Army National Guard troops, resting in between shifts. "The troops are sleeping on the best orthopedic mattresses on the market," said one store employee, "and I'll tell you what - those are some happy soldiers."

NOAA-trained Marine Mammal Responders were called to a location near Juneau, Alaska, on 27 August, where the the anchor line of a small cruise ship became wrapped around the lower jaw of a humpback whale, getting stuck for roughly 12 hours while federal authorities and the boat's crew worked to free it.

Archaeologists have refuted a petition by six Indian lawyers claiming that the iconic Taj Mahal, built by a Mughal emperor in the 17th century as a mausoleum to his dead wife, was in reality a Hindu temple whose original name was Tejo Mahalaya.

This groundbreaking article complete with case studies and a video, written by the neuroscientist himself, contains the story of a completely new technique for communicating with patients trapped in vegetative states between life and death.  Since 1997, he has used hospital brain scanners to test patients in vegetative states to see if they were in fact still conscious, though trapped in their bodies. To say his results are mindblowing would be an understatement.  Dr. Adrian Owen's new book, Into The Grey Zone: A Neuroscientist Explores The Border Between Life And Death, is slated for release 7 September.

The Tigris River gave rise to some of the world's first settlements, and soon its waters will submerge some of their remnants as crews have begun dynamiting Neolithic-era caves near Hasankeyf, Turkey. The early Mesopotamian settlement will soon be submerged by a hydroelectric dam project.  According to the article, protestors believe the short-term gains in energy production do not justify the destruction of a 12,000-year-old settlement, especially when the dam is only expected to be operational for 50-70 years before being decommissioned.

A group of researchers has just detected 15 new fast radio bursts, all originating from only one repeating source, FRB 121102, on a higher frequency than previously heard.

A study published in Nature confirms that volcanism set off one of Earth's fastest global-warming events called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.  This upheaval 56 million years ago was the result of Greenland separating from Europe during the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean.

After centuries of looking with awe and wonder at the beauty of Saturn and its rings, we can now listen to them, thanks to the efforts of astrophysicists at the University of Toronto.  Article contains an audiovisual link to listen to the recording of the composition.

In 1992, a few meters underneath Columbus’ tomb in Santo Domingo, an older crypt was found whose brick floor and size attested that someone of importance had been buried there. Esteban Prieto Vicioso, the cathedral’s head of conservation thinks he knows who that individual may have been: Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo.  Oviedo’s 1526 book was the first to introduce indigenous foods, plants, and techniques that are now commonplace including pineapple, tobacco, and the barbecue.

Corn, known also as maize, is a vital crop throughout the Americas. First domesticated in Mexico some 9,000 years ago, scientists are still working to determine when it became the staple crop we know today. In a recently published paper, a team of scientists suggests that maize was fully domesticated as a staple crop in Honduras around 4,300 years ago.

Like pairs of spinning dancers that suddenly form a quartet, the magnetic "spins" of electrons can become entangled in groups of four, new research reveals. The new quantum state called a plaquette singlet solves a longstanding question about quantum mechanics, the mysterious laws that govern the behavior of tiny subatomic particles.

These eerie photos from Google Earth imagery have sparked dozens of conspiracy theories, with some saying they show 'evidence' of UFO landing sites, ancient lost cities, and even giant spiders.

The biggest animals on the planet right now are baleen whales, which upped their size thanks to efficient filter-feeding. How they got that specialized system has long been a mystery, but a new study nixes some theories about it evolving out of ancient whales’ dentition. This article contains a link to the open-access study from whence its research comes.

Snow leopards could soon come off the endangered species list, but while that looks like a win, the move could make it harder to drum up support for protective measures.

Four mass graves have now been excavated near the central Spanish city of Valladolid containing 228 bodies thought to be among more than 2,000 mass burial sites that exist across Spain from the civil war in the 1930s.  Historians estimate as many as 500,000 people were killed on both sides combined.

Archaeologists and student volunteers have discovered the skeletal remains of a young Sarmatian child with an artificially deformed cranium in a necropolis on the Kerch peninsula in eastern Crimea. Experts have ascertained it to be a male child approximately 18 months of age at the time of its death, radiocarbon-dated to the 2nd century AD.

More than 700m email addresses, as well as a number of passwords, have leaked publicly thanks to a misconfigured spambot, in one of the largest data breaches ever. The number of real humans’ contact details contained in the dump is likely to be lower, however, due to the number of fake, malformed and repeated email addresses contained in the dataset.

Alien hunters are getting excited about a huge mysterious sphere which they believe is a UFO emerging from NASA satellite footage of Hurricane Harvey over Texas.   Article contains images as well as a link to video footage.

Disaster volunteers from Louisiana's Cajun Navy and Cajun Coast Search and Rescue Team don't wait to be called. They know all about floods, and they dove right in, bringing with them a veritable armada of fishing skiffs, airboats, jonboats, even kayaks, to help rescue stranded humans and animals from the watery wrath of Hurricane Harvey.  Formed in the aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, the Cajun Navy are literally life savers, and a reminder that our darkest tragedies often tend to reveal the best in humanity.  As their unofficial slogan says, "Not all superheroes wear capes.  Some wear hipwaders."

In the past, we’ve seen several artists merge pop music with high fashion, but it’s not so common for a singer-songwriter to bring science and technology into the mix.  Viktoria Modesta wants to do just that, after having her leg amputated below-the-knee for health and mobility reasons.  “People dismiss sci-fi and technology as something that’s not cool and not glamorous,” she says, “and I’ve made it my mission to change that.”

As flood waters in Texas rose to unprecedented heights in Hurricane Harvey's aftermath, so did fears that hundreds of captive alligators may get loose and swim into populated areas.  Gator Country, an animal sanctuary park located northeast of Houston was inundated with water levels close to topping its fences, which are the only things holding back 350 alligators.