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Regarding incredible meteor showers, none can compete with the Lyrids! In 1803, a journalist in Richmond, Virginia, reported them coming down at a whopping 700 an hour. Two thousand years prior, the Zuo Zhuan, an ancient Chinese narrative history, described a Lyrids meteor shower where the “stars fell like rain” in 687 BCE. This meteor […]

Recent research has investigated the historical role religion has played in politics and how it can still be used to legitimize and justify political power in some societies.  It would not be surprising to know that religion has played a historical role in political economy across the world. The Code of Hammurabi, a Babylonian legal […]

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has said in an interview that the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) systems had begun “teaching themselves skills that they weren’t expected to have”. Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Senior Vice President of Technology and Society at the company James Manyika told CBS in an interview that their AI had shown “emergent […]

Giving cannabinoids to nematodes causes the tiny invertebrates to go on a wild feeding splurge, just like people do when they’ve had a few puffs of a joint. And like humans with the munchies, the miniature worms tend to binge only on the tastiest snacks when they’re stoned. “Cannabinoids make nematodes hungrier for their favored […]

Ancient Egyptian copper coffins that have been sealed for over 1,500 years have been “digitally cracked open” using fancy new imaging techniques to reveal their mummified contents. Although many of the innards have not fared well over the past centuries, it appears that mummified lizards wrapped in linen were placed in the coffins. Why, however, […]

A few years ago, a group of researchers made a strange discovery: No matter where they are on Earth, Cook pine trees lean toward the equator. Cook pines (Araucaria columnaris) have a distinct lean to them. In fact, according to the researchers that discovered the equatorial lean, “when grown outside of its native range, this […]

Archaeologists have uncovered part of an ancient necropolis in the heart of Paris, revealing 50 graves of men, women, and children dating back to the second century CE. While part of the necropolis was already known from investigations in the 1800s, the new dig has revealed an area previously untouched by excavation works, revealing relics […]

Astronomers from the National Astronomical Observatories of China have detected the heaviest single element in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. The planet, MASCARA-4, is what’s known as an ultra-hot Jupiter. It’s 3.1 times the mass of our gas giant, but with a temperature in the thousands of degrees – and its extremely hot atmosphere shows […]

The 1986 Chernobyl power plant accident was the world’s largest nuclear disaster. The subsequent fallout from the fires that burnt for ten days after the explosion released radioactive chemicals that spread through much of northeast Europe, across the continent, and even over into North America. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), a 2,600 square kilometer (1,615 […]

The inaugural flight of SpaceX’s Starship can be considered a partial success that ended in an unscheduled rapid disassembly. That means it went kaboom. Unfortunately, it exploded about three minutes into the flight after it failed to separate from its Super Heavy booster. The launch, the first orbital test for the system, was stopped for […]

Rejoice, all ye people who can’t hear any dialogue in modern movies – Amazon has a new tool to fix it. Amazon’s new tool, called “Dialogue Boost”, supposedly uses AI to boost the sound when people are talking, allowing you to finally understand all that whispering that comes right after 20 minutes of explosions.  For […]

The idea of a body-mind connection could have even more truth to it than you think. A new study has found evidence that the parts of the brain that control movement are entwined with neural networks responsible for planning and thought, and can directly affect involuntary processes like heartbeat. The findings go beyond models of […]

The wreck of a strange “experimental submarine” built over 100 years ago has been discovered on the murky seabed of Long Island Sound. While rumors of the location of the mysterious sub – said to be inspired by Jules Verne’s classic 1872 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – have been floating around for […]

Many of us know cranberries as a tasty condiment to have with our Christmas turkey, or the juice that accompanies vodka in a cosmopolitan cocktail. You might have also heard cranberries prevent urinary tract infections (UTIs). While this is often dismissed as a myth, our new review of the evidence shows consuming cranberry juice or […]

Researchers have confirmed the secret of lime plaster used by the Ancient Maya. The Mesoamerican people likely added a special ingredient to this construction material: tree bark extracts. And this made their lime plaster much more durable, something that might have important applications today. The team worked with local Maya-descended masons at Copán in Honduras […]

Last week, a SpaceX launch created a serendipitous and beautiful event over the Alaskan skies. In the midst of dancing green Northern Lights, a spiral cloud appeared in the sky. This is the result of the reentry stage of a Falcon 9 rocket taking satellites to orbit, including the first Earth observation satellite designed and […]

What do you get if you cross Mulan with Merida and plop the result into 13th-century Mongolia? The answer:  Khutulun, the warrior princess who reputedly turned down more than 1,000 suitors after beating them all in displays of strength and athletic ability. Born around the year 1260 to a cousin of Kublai Khan – the […]

The factors that make a star a suitable host for life on surrounding planets are complex, and new research indicates something we thought was an asset – high metal content – may instead be harmful. If so, it indicates we’ve been focusing our search for life-supporting planets in the wrong places. More worryingly, it means […]

Astronomy and timekeeping were two of the Ancient Maya’s biggest loves, and new research may have finally revealed the intricate system that once connected these two pillars of Mesoamerican life. According to the study authors, the enigmatic Maya calendar can be used to track the movement of the planets across the night sky over a […]

Microscopic analysis of wood suggests that Norse people in Greenland were using timber that came from North America over 700 years ago. The research is further evidence that Viking sailors were making contact with the east coast of North America long before Christopher Columbus “discovered the New World” in 1492 CE. Archaeologist Lísabet Guðmundsdóttir from […]