A major breakthrough in Maya archaeology had been made down in Belize, as the royal tomb of a major city’s first-known ruler is discovered by a husband-wife archaeology team. Buried with elaborate jade, ceramics, and symbolic artifacts, the tomb offers unprecedented insight into … | Continue reading
Scientists in Scotland recently engineered bacteria to be able to turn plastic into a precursor to the painkiller acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol. Though far from scalable at the moment, the reaction nevertheless underpins a potential starting point for greener productio … | Continue reading
An ancient Moon rock that fell to Earth in Africa is rewriting what we know about lunar volcanoes. The rare meteorite with its unique chemical makeup bridges a billion-year gap in lunar rock samples, and suggests the Moon had internal heat sources that persisted for ages. The 2.3 … | Continue reading
A team of scientists who could only be described as ‘intrepid’ sailed several hundred miles across the East China Sea in an ancient replica canoe. The peopling of the Pacific islands has long been one of the great mysteries of anthropology, and the Japanese researchers wanted to … | Continue reading
A trial investigating the potential for a gene therapy to correct congenital deafness in children and young adults saw all 10 participants gain auditory ability, and allowed them to hear the sound of falling rain or their mother’s voice for the first time ever. The younger patien … | Continue reading
Astronomers have confirmed for just the third time ever that the solar system has been visited by an interstellar comet. Dubbed 3I/ATLAS, it is blazing through our cosmic cul-de-sac at truly awe-inspiring speeds between the main asteroid belt and Jupiter, and will soon be gone fo … | Continue reading
Some species of fig trees store calcium carbonate in their trunks—essentially turning themselves (partially) into stone. This ‘auto-petrification’ may offer a strange new way to reduce human carbon emissions, as the mineral created by the trees has a much longer lifespan than org … | Continue reading
Groundbreaking research by the University of Sydney has identified a new brain protein involved in the development of Parkinson’s disease and a way to modify it, paving the way for future treatments for the disease. With the aim of finding new treatments to slow or stop its progr … | Continue reading
Of course nothing and no one can actually see dark matter, but the accurate mapping of its warping influence on this new image from the James Webb Space Telescope is as good as it gets. Containing two very large galaxy clusters, together known as the Bullet Cluster, the blue hues … | Continue reading
If they don’t grow in right, most people will treat their wisdom teeth as bio-baggage, useful only for preventing money from burning a hole in one’s pocket due to the surgical costs of removing them. But an astounding new discovery has found that this third set of molars contain … | Continue reading
Paleontology may be entering another great era of discovery: characterized by serial misidentification in decades past. For an example one need look no further than the newly-dubbed “Dragon Prince of Mongolia,” a small tyrannosaurid from the earlier days of the lineage’s evolutio … | Continue reading
Since its debut in 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope has dazzled viewers with its infrared images of galaxies, nebulae, stars, and even our own solar system’s planets. Now, the most expensive telescope ever made has unveiled a new trick—a coronagraph, which allows it to block … | Continue reading
A coalition of Japanese researchers and institutes have established that a pathway exists through which humble vitamin C can actually regenerate skin cells. As we age, our skin naturally becomes thinner and more fragile due to a decline in cell production. The researchers found t … | Continue reading
To use what will become a timeless adage, one of the most amazing things about life is how it, uh, finds a way—as seen lately in England where ash trees are spontaneously developing resistance to a deadly disease. Natural selection in woodlands is acting to combat the disease ash … | Continue reading
Swedish engineers have improved the process through which hydrogen fuel is produced from solar electricity by 800%. Hydrogen fuel is considered one of the best renewable alternatives to fossil fuels in heavy machinery like planes and ships, but its creation requires electricity. … | Continue reading
Your iPhone 16 camera has 48 megapixels. Astronomy’s latest toy has 3,200. That’s because the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has to be able to image a framing of the night sky as large as seven full moons side to side. It has to be able to do this because of its unique missio … | Continue reading
A deadly fungus has been turned into a potent cancer-fighting compound after researchers isolated a new class of molecules from it. Aspergillus flavus, a toxic crop fungus linked to deaths in the excavations of ancient tombs—such as that of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamon—was recentl … | Continue reading
Tiny robots could help fix leaky water pipes without having to dig up roads and sidewalks, thanks to a British team. The miniature machines called ‘Pipebots’ are the same size as a toy car and can track down leaks underground. They can also identify potential issues before they e … | Continue reading
This image of the Sculptor Galaxy was stitched together with 100 exposures over 50 hours of observations to make a never-before-seen visual, 65,000 light years from side to side. Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers observed this … | Continue reading
In a laboratory model of Down Syndrome, the CIRSPR gene editing technique successfully removed the duplicate chromosome that causes the condition while also augmenting cell function and fitness, and reduced biological aging. While the authors are far from even planning a clinical … | Continue reading
As is so often the case in Greek history, real events merge with myth—and there’s no more perfect example than the island of Ithaca, renowned as the homeland of ‘Odysseus’ the hero king in Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey. Now, at an archeological dig there, tiles bearing the name … | Continue reading
Needles 1,000 times thinner than a human hair could replace painful cancer biopsies and render obsolete the traditional methods of diagnosing diseases, according to new research. The patches containing tens of millions of ‘nanoneedles’ offer a “painless and less invasive” alterna … | Continue reading
An active compound in ginger root may inhibit the growth of cancer tumors via a sabotage of their metabolic pathways. Published in Nature Scientific Reports by a team at Osaka Metropolitan University (OMU), the study demonstrated that a ginger-derived molecule known as EMC shuts … | Continue reading
Researchers have recorded a video sighting of a three-foot-long deep-sea squid species that’s never been filmed nor seen alive. Gonatus antarcticus squid, an elusive squid found only in the frigid waters around Antarctica, was discovered on Christmas Day by the Schmidt Ocean Inst … | Continue reading
Japanese scientists were thrilled to receive significant interest from the packaging industry over their new seawater-degradable plastic. Breaking apart into nutritious compounds for ocean-borne bacteria in just 2 to 3 hours depending on the size and thickness, the invention coul … | Continue reading
An invention from the UK features diamonds in the first-ever application of the gemstone in battery technology. Promising to last thousands of years, the microwatt power sources are seen as the perfect solution to devices in environments where neither changing batteries nor carry … | Continue reading
Why can’t you tickle yourself? And how come some people aren’t ticklish at all—while some on the autism spectrum are laughing more often? Neuroscientist Konstantina Kilteni believes we should take tickling research more seriously—and she’s working with colleagues in a new tickle … | Continue reading
Japanese scientists have found a way to observe clotting activity in the blood as it happens, without needing invasive procedures. Using a new type of microscope and artificial intelligence, scientists have shown how platelet “clumping” can be tracked in patients with coronary ar … | Continue reading
Dropped off via helicopter on a cliff edge high on a rocky escarpment in South Africa, an observer might have mistaken a pair of herpetologists for Army Rangers. In reality, they were searching for a gecko species not seen in 30 years since the first instance it was recorded. So … | Continue reading
You’ve heard the famous “Blue Danube” waltz—even if the name doesn’t ring any bells. Trust us on this one. Composed by the Austrian “Waltz King” Johann Strauss II, it has been borrowed for every kind of media imaginable, from commercials to Looney Tunes shorts. Today in Europe, a … | Continue reading
An engineering team from MIT have designed a solar-powered groundwater desalination device that could supply over 1,000 gallons per day and doesn’t require batteries. Envisioned as a way to provide water to communities whose groundwater is too brackish to drink, the device’s real … | Continue reading
Self-described as merely “someone from a small village in a small European country” young Adam Kovalčík won the top prize in America’s most prestigious science fair with his invention of a quicker, cheaper method of making a popular antiviral drug out of corn husk. Reducing the c … | Continue reading
More evidence that trees display group cognition and communication has arrived from the Dolomites where a multidisciplinary team monitored a forest during a solar eclipse. Their research witnessed two things, that the trees of the forest synchronized bioelectrical activity during … | Continue reading
In a historic medical breakthrough, a child diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder has been successfully treated with a customized CRISPR gene editing therapy by a team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn Medicine. The infant, KJ, was born with a rare metabolic diseas … | Continue reading
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have photographed the auroras of Jupiter, revealing a host of details previously unknown to science. Naturally, the aurora on our solar system’s largest planet is hundreds of times brighter and more energetic than our own Northern … | Continue reading
In the usually sleepy Swiss town of Mulegns, pop. 11, a dramatic white tower rises four stories into the Alpine air—the tallest 3D-printed structure on earth. One might imagine such a technological marvel to be debuted in a square in the Silicon Valley cities of San Jose or San F … | Continue reading
For the 10% of the global population that live near an active and potentially dangerous volcano, help may be forthcoming from an unlikely source: trees. In advance of volcanic eruptions, carbon dioxide gases are released from the magma below the earth. The trees absorbing it beco … | Continue reading
The title of a 2,000-year-old Greek philosophical text has been read by computer scientists using AI to study scrolls buried by the eruption of Vesuvius. On Vices was written by Philodemus, a Greek philosopher who lived at Pompeii nearly 200 years before Vesuvius’ eruption, and s … | Continue reading
An absolutely staggering new perception of our Moon and Sun was captured by a little-known NASA mission called PUNCH. Showing a halo of light surrounding an eclipsed sun with the Moon passing through, it was taken during PUNCH’s commissioning stage—a step to ensure all the equipm … | Continue reading
The first human bladder transplant was successfully carried out at University of California LA, an attempt that has been four years in the making. There are naturally many unknowns associated with the procedure, which has previously only been done on cadavers, such as how well th … | Continue reading
Physicists experimenting with a giant particle accelerator accidently proved medieval alchemists right: that base metals could be turned into gold. While studying electromagnetic disassociation and beam losses, the physicists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) saw that the lea … | Continue reading
Geologists recently unearthed the vertebrae of a giant prehistoric marine lizard during fieldwork. Measuring a full 7 inches across, an extrapolation of that size would place the animal among the largest ever to swim in the prehistoric precursor to the Gulf of Mexico. “I … was co … | Continue reading
A Dutch robot with neither hardware nor software can nevertheless reach incredible speeds with its soft legs powered only by air and simple physics. Able to walk, hop, and swim without the aid of electronics or AI, its top speed will see it cross a distance equal to 30x the lengt … | Continue reading
There’s something make-believe, almost Pokémon-like in a new species of bacteria found living on a mud flat in Oregon—a species which is basically like electric wiring, and which could inspire a revolution in bioelectronic interfaces. A type of “cable” bacteria, the new lifeform … | Continue reading
There’s an old saying that if goods are crossing borders, generally soldiers don’t, a saying that new research has shown to be true even in the case of the warlike Aztecs in central Mexico. A new study sheds light on the economic networks, rituals and political influence the Mexi … | Continue reading
Under the streets of a Belgian city center, an Imperial Roman drainage pipe section made from several hollowed-out tree trunks was recently discovered during excavation work. That the settlement had some form of underground plumbing system suggests that modern-day Leuven was an i … | Continue reading
There’s an old saying, often ignored in modern Western medicine, that an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure. Establishing a new broad-spectrum, 20-year testing program for its younger generation, Poland has passed this Franklinian test of medical wisdom whose value has bee … | Continue reading
One of Australia’s most biodiverse offshore islands enjoys the company to two palm trees that despite appearing quite similar are actually different species. That this happened: that two species evolved from a common ancestor despite no geographical separation, means biologists h … | Continue reading