It was said that all he touched turned to gold. But destiny eventually caught up with the legendary King Midas, and a long-lost chronicle of his ancient downfall appears to have literally surfaced in Turkey. In 2019, archaeologists were investigating an ancient mound site in central Turkey called Türkmen-Karahöyük. The greater region, the Konya Plain,
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How far back can the story of humans and dogs be told? When and where did this ancient relationship begin? New DNA evidence suggests our connection with canines can be traced much further into prehistory than has ever been conclusively shown. According to scientists, analyses of ancient dog DNA suggests dogs were domesticated from Eurasian
Back at the dawn of the Universe, astronomers have found a stacks on of cosmic proportions. At least 21 galaxies, forming stars at a tremendous rate, are merging together in the early stages of the formation of a galaxy cluster. And it’s all happening 13 billion light-years away – just 770 million years after the
There are supermassive black holes. There are ultramassive black holes. How large can these strange objects grow? Well, there could be something even bigger than ultramassive: stupendously large black holes, according to the latest research. Such hypothetical black holes – larger than 100 billion times the mass of the Sun – have been explored in a
The carcass of an enormous finback whale (Balaenoptera physalus) was discovered near the Italian port of Sorrento earlier this week, the Italian Coast Guard said in a Facebook post. Officials discovered the carcass on Sunday (Jan. 17), before towing it to the nearby port at Naples. The whale measured about 65 feet (20 meters) long and
SpaceX on Sunday launched its Falcon 9 rocket carrying a record number of satellites on board, the private space company said. The rocket successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 10:00 am (1500 GMT), 24 hours after its initial take-off had been scrubbed due to bad weather. Andy Tran, a SpaceX production supervisor, said in
If you saw the first episode of David Attenborough‘s new BBC series Perfect Planet, you will have seen the astounding bloodsucking behaviour of the vampire finches. These small birds exist only on two remote islands in the Galapagos and have evolved to drink the blood of much larger seabirds. You will also have seen the
While most of us are now more fastidious about keeping our homes and workplaces clean, on board the International Space Station, cleanliness is imperative. Of high importance is anti-bacterial measures, since bacteria tend to build up in the constantly-recycled air inside the ISS. Every Saturday in space is “cleaning day” where surfaces are wiped down,
While surveying the Hawaiian island of Kauai in search of invasive plants in 2017, botanist Kelsey Brock spotted something unusual: a few nonnative species of figs seemed to be settling in. As people traverse the planet for trade or travel, they bring a slew of species with them, many of which establish a foothold in
Who has an even bigger grin than ten years ago? This goofy-looking crater on Mars. These two images were taken by the HiRISE camera (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and show how Mars’ surface is changing over time – in this case, due to thermal erosion. The first of
One was kickstarted by a school kid and her placard; another took flight after a hashtag went viral. Years later, these powerful social movements – demanding action on climate and racial justice – are in full swing, with millions of people raising their voices, fists, and hand-painted posters in support. While subsets of communities have
Deep within, on a cellular scale, your body is in a constant state of activity to keep you alive. Among those processes is the turnover of cells, replacing the cells that die with fresh new ones so that you don’t crumble to bits like a zombie. A new calculation reveals just how intensive that process
A robot inspired by the shape and delicate underwater movements of a jellyfish, allowing it to safely explore endangered coral reefs, was unveiled by British scientists on Wednesday. According to research by teams at the universities of Southampton and Edinburgh and published in the journal Science Robotics, the small robot mimics “nature’s most efficient swimmer
A white dwarf isn’t your typical kind of star. While main sequence stars such as our Sun fuse nuclear material in their cores to keep themselves from collapsing under their own weight, white dwarfs use an effect known as quantum degeneracy. The quantum nature of electrons means that no two electrons can have the same quantum state.
The amount of carbon dioxide that we can still emit while limiting global warming to a given target is called the “remaining carbon budget,” and it has become a powerful tool to inform climate policy goals and track progress towards net-zero emissions targets. This carbon budget is like a fixed financial budget: There is a
Like pappy used to say: if you see it writhe and hiss, give it a miss. Humans have passed on similar nuggets of wisdom since time immemorial, giving us a healthy (and sometimes less than healthy) respect for backing away from snakes. Yet the fact snake bites hurt is usually an accident of nature – virtually
Conservationists have started using satellite imagery to count elephants from space, a technique that British experts hope will help protect threatened populations in Africa. Researchers at the University of Oxford and the University of Bath said the use of algorithms, machine learning, and satellite technology could replace current techniques used to count elephants – a
Graphene continues to dazzle us with its strength and its versatility – exciting new applications are being discovered for it all the time, and now scientists have found a way of manipulating the wonder material so that it can better filter impurities out of water. The two-dimensional material comprised of carbon atoms has been studied
The formation of crystals is one of the most commonplace processes you can probably think of. Every time you freeze water into ice cubes, for instance, you’re creating crystalline structures. There’s even a fun experiment you can do to grow salt crystals – with nothing more than table salt and water. But on the atomic
Our Sun isn’t exactly a serene ball of scorching hot plasma. In fact, it belches out colossal eruptions on a somewhat frequent basis; such coronal mass ejections, when directed at Earth, are the cause of geomagnetic storms. From near-Earth space, we can measure them pretty well with satellites and other spacecraft. But in 1998 something
Sharing a car with someone is one of the riskiest things you can do without cohabitating, as far as coronavirus transmission goes. While taking a car may feel like a slightly safer alternative compared to public transportation, it’s still a small, enclosed space. Even if all passengers are wearing masks, some small particles can escape from
To artists and romantics, the twinkling of stars is visual poetry; a dance of distant light as it twists and bends through a turbulent ocean of air above our heads. Not everybody is so enamoured with our atmosphere’s distortions. To many scientists and engineers, a great deal of research and ground-to-satellite communication would be a
Scientists have unearthed massive, 98-million-year-old fossils in southwest Argentina they say may have belonged to the largest dinosaur ever discovered. Human-sized pieces of fossilized bone belonging to the giant sauropod appear to be 10-20 percent larger than those attributed to Patagotitan mayorum, the biggest dinosaur ever identified, according to a statement Wednesday from the National
Through a careful analysis of fossilised seafloor layers dating back some 20 million years, scientists have reconstructed the lair of a giant underwater worm that would most probably have lain hidden in sediment before leaping up to ambush its prey. The newly identified creature is likely to be an ancestor of the Eunice aphroditois or
A new study suggests a potential change in tropical rain belt patterns could threaten the livelihoods and food security of billions of people. Today, the tropical rain belt brings with it heavy precipitation along the equator, but as different parts of Earth’s atmosphere heat up at different rates, this belt looks likely to become disrupted
In 2013, the lives of millions of sea stars were mysteriously extinguished. Limbs that were once strong, probing arms searching for sustenance, shrivelled and tore themselves away from the rest of their bodies and melted into a sickly goo. “There were arms everywhere,” ecologist Drew Harvell told The Atlantic‘s Ed Yong last year. “It looked
Given all the logistics involved, it’s unlikely that humanity will ever see our way outside the Solar System to colonise exoplanets. But the possibility of settling elsewhere inside the Solar System isn’t so far-fetched. NASA is planning an outpost on the Moon. Crewed missions to Mars aren’t far off. Heck, we even already have humans
Of all the weather phenomena our magnificent planet throws at us, lightning is one of the most spectacular – and the most mysterious. Even though storms are a regular occurrence, we’re still at pains to understand and describe their crackling electrical discharges generated in the sky. One kind of lightning is so strange and rare,
A male Springbok praying mantis looking for a hook-up doesn’t have to worry about a female stealing his heart away. There is, however, a very good change she’ll bite his head off, and he knows it. Indeed, 60 percent of sexual encounters between Springboks – one of nearly 2,000 mantis species across the globe – end in males being
From advertising to the workplace, it is often assumed that men and women are fundamentally different – from Mars and Venus, respectively. Of course, we all know people who are more androgynous, having a mix of personality traits that are stereotypically considered to be male or female. Importantly, such “psychological androgyny” has long been associated
New video shows the moment when Mount Etna, Europe’s largest active volcano, spewed bubbling lava and hot ash into the Sicilian sky earlier this week. On Sunday (Jan. 17), lava began “oozing” from the Etna’s southeast crater and toward the east, according to Boris Behncke, a volcanologist at the INGV-Osservatorio Etneo in Catania, Sicily, Express reported. By
Bronze Age Europeans may have used rings and blades as an early form of currency, based on a study of objects from 113 different hoards of artefacts – and these objects might even have been standardised in terms of their weight and size to minimise the chances of getting ripped off. There’s no evidence early
It took evolution 3 or 4 billion years to produce Homo sapiens. If the climate had completely failed just once in that time then evolution would have come to a crashing halt and we would not be here now. So to understand how we came to exist on planet Earth, we’ll need to know how
If you are a lucky species, you will stumble into random gene mutations that just happen to help you survive better – allowing you and your descendants to keep and build on the helpful traits they encode. As with anything involving luck, the more chances you take, the more chances you have of hitting the
A new clue has just been found that could help solve the mystery of a weirdly dimming star. KIC 8462852, also known as Boyajian’s Star, seems to have a binary companion that could be contributing to its irregular dips in brightness. If confirmed with more detailed observations, the newly discovered companion star could help astronomers
Having survived for 5,000 years, the oldest archeological site in the Americas is under threat from squatters claiming the coronavirus pandemic has left them with no other option but to occupy the sacred city. The situation has become so bad that archeologist Ruth Shady, who discovered the Caral site in Peru, has been threatened with
A funerary temple belonging to Queen Nearit has been discovered in the ancient Egyptian burial ground Saqqara next to the pyramid of her husband, pharaoh Teti, who ruled Egypt from around 2323 BCE to 2291 BCE, the Egyptian antiquities ministry said in a statement. Made of stone, the temple has three mud-brick warehouses on its southeastern
Likely the most well-known result of the Earth’s magnetic field are the Aurora Borealis and Australis (Northern and Southern Lights). When charged particles from the solar wind run into the Earth’s magnetic field, they can occasionally elicit spectacular light displays. For years now, scientists have thought that the charged particles that cause those displays were sent in equal numbers toward
When a dog-sized Psittacosaurus was living out its days on Earth, it was probably concerned with mating, eating, and not being killed by other dinosaurs. It would never even have crossed its mind that, 120 million or so years later, scientists would be peering intensely up its clacker. However, that’s precisely what they have done,
Every day you walk around with your brain gently bobbing about inside your skull. Much like a soft egg yolk floating in a cloud of clear egg whites. All it takes is a sudden jolt or strike, and your brain is thrust aside with startling velocity. Whether it bumps against the skull or goes for
One of the fluffiest exoplanets we’ve ever found in the Milky Way galaxy is challenging our understanding of how giant planets form. It’s called WASP-107b, orbiting an orange dwarf star 211 light-years away, and it was already known as one of the lowest density exoplanets when its discovery was announced in 2017. A new analysis
Striking new videos show how RNA – the genetic molecule that tells cells how to build proteins – tangles up in insane knots as it forms, only to disentangle itself at the last second, and in a way that took scientists by surprise. The high-resolution videos depict a bouncing conga line of nucleotides, the building
A new technique using diamonds and titanium has the potential to help remove plastic microfibres before they enter the environment, by decomposing them into naturally occurring molecules. It’s a secret the fashion industry would prefer to keep under wraps – most of our synthetic clothes are made of plastic, and they’re contributing to a big problem, shedding microplastic
Polarons are important nanoscale phenomena: a transient configuration between electrons and atoms (known as quasiparticles) that exist for only trillionths of a second. These configurations have unique characteristics that can help us understand some of the mysterious behaviours of the materials they form within – and scientists have just observed them for the first time. Polarons
It’s no accident that cats are adorable: We’ve selectively bred them across generations for maximum cuteness. But that breeding has a downside: It’s left some of our feline friends with permanent frowny faces that cannot show emotions. In particular, new research published in December in the journal Frontiers of Veterinary Science suggests that selective breeding for the “brachycephalic,” or
Scientists have identified the traits that may make a person more likely to claim they hear the voices of the dead. According to new research, a predisposition to high levels of absorption in tasks, unusual auditory experiences in childhood, and a high susceptibility to auditory hallucinations all occur more strongly in self-described clairaudient mediums than
Evidence of a long-sought hypothetical particle could have been hiding in plain (X-ray) sight all this time. The X-ray emission coming off a collection of neutron stars known as the Magnificent Seven is so excessive that it could be coming from axions, a long-predicted kind of particle, forged in the dense cores of these dead
Even though we know the deep sea is weird, ‘carnivorous sea sponges’ still sound like something from a sci-fi movie. And yet, researchers just announced the discovery of three new such species off the coast of Australia. Go a few hundred metres deep into the ocean, and it starts to look like you’re in a whole new
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