Archaeology Discovery

Archaeologists discovered a walled city in the northern Saudi Arabian desert that was likely home to 500 people as far back as 2,400 B.C.

The experts believe the city’s roughly 1,000 years of use showed a growing urban complexity in the region.

The town was functionally subdivided into different areas, but also included towers and ramparts for defense.

A newly discovered ancient oasis in the Saudi Arabian desert shows that, centuries ago, the area had a completely unexpected level of urban sophistication. The remains of the walled and fortified city include towers, ramparts, organized zones of residential areas connected by small roads, a centralized area, a cemetery, and a place to cultivate food.

In a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE, a team of archaeologists (led by France’s National Center for Scientific Research) unveiled the discovery of an “exceptional Bronze Age fortified site called al-Natah,” located in the Khaybar oasis and uncovered by the Khaybar Longue Duree Archaeological Project.       READ MORE...

2700 Years Old Bronze Shields

A team of archaeologists uncovered three bronze shields and a bronze helmet that were buried under more than 20 feet of castle rubble at the site of Ayanis Castle in eastern Turkey. 

The artifacts are roughly 2,700 years old, and decorations on the helmet point towards the discoveries likely being ceremonial gifts offered to a god or royalty.

According to social media posts from Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, minister of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey, archaeologists found the artifacts during excavations of the city of Ayanis, the last and largest city of the Urartu Kingdom, an ancient civilization of Anatolian history.     READ MORE...

A Mysterious CREATURE

There’s something intriguing, even frightening, about the image of an ancient horned serpent roaming across the land. Thanks to some suggestive fossils and legends of old, talk of such a creature isn’t a new concept. But the recent discovery of 200-year-old rock paintings found in South Africa now has scientists hypothesizing that this ancient creature may have been far more than just a legend.

The first formal scientific descriptions of this horned serpent—a supposed member of the dicynodont group—appeared in 1845. Considering the abundance of dicynodont fossils found in the Karoo Basin in South Africa, some have pondered whether this long-thought mythical horned serpent is rooted in reality. 

The discovery of rock art dated to between 1821 and 1835 adds even more credence to the legend, as the painting is older than the first formal reference to the dicynodont. If we’re lucky, it could provide further clues as to just how intertwined this horned serpent was with South Africa’s indigenous San culture.          READ MORE...

Van Gogh's Starry Night

Scientists recently analyzed Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night to see how well its famous swirls matched up with known atmospheric physics.

After analysis, they found that not only did the shapes match up with our current ideas of atmospheric turbulence, but the colors used throughout the piece communicated fairly accurate physics at a remarkably small scale.

Researchers think that Van Gogh could have come to understand these movements by “studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere, or that he could have just had “an innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky.”

The swirling colors and flowing brushstrokes of Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night have secured the painting (and its artist) a place among the all-time greats. As a piece of art, Starry Night is undeniably beautiful, but beauty alone is often not enough to keep a painting so cemented in the minds and hearts of the public.

Beyond just being beautiful, Starry Night somehow manages to capture the feeling of a clear night sky. Capturing feeling may be the whole point of impressionism—Van Gogh is himself most often labeled a post-impressionist, a style separate from true impressionism that nonetheless uses many impressionist techniques—but Starry Night does a singular job at managing it. Something about those particular swirls of paint just… feels like the night.     READ MORE...

Quantum Time Flip

It’s been 35 years since Cher first wanted to turn back time, but it turns out that quantum mechanics might have allowed for this wild reversal all along. In new research, scientists from China and Hong Kong show that—in certain quantum systems—the time variable can be reversed by creating a double superposition (one each in opposite directions) and still bear out valid results. 

What results from this little bit of quantum trickery is both an input and output that are considered indefinite, meaning that either one can be the input or the output. Basically, the after can go before the before. The peer-reviewed research appears in the journal Physical Review Letters.

In our day-to-day lives, we perceive time as marching inexorably forward, and that means many processes aren’t easily reversible. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, so to speak—it’s a lot more difficult to reset an object back to its original state than it is to change it in the first place. This is called time’s arrow, and we believe it’s partly caused by the fact that our universe has been ever-expanding since the Big Bang.     READ MORE...

NASA: Past Life on Mars

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  In its ancient past, Mars likely contained many of the necessarily ingredients for microbial life to flourish on its surface.
• Now, a new discovery by NASA’s Perseverance rover shows a trifecta of compelling evidence—including the presence of water, organic compounds, and a chemical energy source—all on one rock located in the Jezero Crater.
• Although this is the best clue yet that microbial life existed on Mars, there are still other explanations that could explain this geologic display without the existence of microbes.

“Is there life on Mars” is a question that has vexed astrobiologists and David Bowie alike. While the latter imagined some macabre collection of arachnids on the Red Planet, NASA scientists are fixated on finding evidence that microbial life once flourished on the fourth rock from the Sun. So fixated, in fact, that the space agency has spent more than $5 billion getting two immensely complicated robotic rovers—Curiosity and Perseverance—onto the Martian surface with this specific microbial mission in mind.     READ MORE...

Evidence of Hydraulics in Ancient Pyramid

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  A new study suggests that the first of seven key pyramids in Egypt, the Step Pyramid of Djoser, was built using a hydraulic lift.
• Dated to about 4,500 years ago, this would move up the introduction of major hydraulic systems from previous beliefs.
• The landscape, waterways, and interior architecture of the pyramid all point to the hydraulic system.

Hydraulic mechanics may have indeed been the driving force behind the construction of ancient Egyptian pyramids.

In a recent preprint paper, scientists concluded that the Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, Egypt—believed to be the oldest of the seven monumental pyramids and potentially constructed about 4,500 years ago—offers a remarkable blueprint for hydraulic engineering.

The hydraulic-powered mechanism could have maneuvered the oversized stone blocks forming the pyramid, starting from the ground up. The research team says the Step Pyramid’s internal architecture is consistent with a hydraulic elevation mechanism, something that’s never been reported before at that place or in that time.     READ MORE...

Blonde Man Found in Ancient Cbinese Tomb

A tomb discovered in Taiyuan from the 8th century features murals in the “figures under the tree” style.  The multiple scenes depicted throughout the tomb show daily life during the Tang dynasty.  One image includes a man with blond hair and western dress, likely an influence from the Silk Road trading route.

A Tang dynasty tomb decorated with colorful murals is providing a new glimpse into daily life in China during the 8th century. Most interestingly, the murals show signs of Western influence, particularly the inclusion of a blond, bearded figure.

A 2018 reconstruction project of a hillside road in the capital of the Shanxi Province led to unearthing the tomb, but archaeologists hadn’t really reported on the discovery until now.     READ MORE...

All Life on EARTH has One Ancestor

Life on Earth had to begin somewhere, and scientists think that “somewhere” is LUCA—or the Last Universal Common Ancestor. True to its name, this prokaryote-like organism represents the ancestor of every living thing, from the tiniest of bacteria to the grandest of blue whales.

While the Cambrian Explosion kickstarted complex life in a major way some 530 million years, the true timeline of life on Earth is much longer. For years, scientists have estimated that LUCA likely arrived on the scene some 4 billion years, which is only 600 million years after the planet’s formation. 

But a new study from an international team of scientists pushes that timeline back even further to some 4.2 billion years ago, while also discovering some fascinating details about what life for LUCA might’ve been like. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.       READ MORE...

A Paradox in Evolution

It may have fewer than many of the other sciences, but biology does have two dozen or so “rules”—broad generalizations about the behavior or nature and evolution.

Now, USC researchers want to add a new rule called “selectively advantageous instability (SAI),” which explores how instability can actually benefit a cell and a cellular organism.

The flipside of this “rule” is that SAI can also be a key factor to things like disease and aging, so understanding this process could aid in exploration of those biological processes.

Across the sciences, rules and laws help us make sense of the world around us, whether applied to cosmic scales or subatomic ones. However, in the biological world, things are a bit more complicated. That’s because nature is often full of biological exceptions, and so “rules of biology” are also considered broad generalizations rather than absolute facts that explain and govern all known life.      READ MORE...

A Remarkable New Thruster

The history of space travel is filled with impressive sizzle reels of fire-breathing chemical engines launching monumental rockets skyward toward the Moon, Mars, and beyond. 

While these massive devices are marvels of human engineering, the real workhorses of the space industry are the immensely less-gargantuan ion thrusters.

These engines are as old as rocketry itself—Soviet and German rocket leaders first dreamed up their future uses more than a century ago. And today, these electric propulsion systems power the swarms of satellites around Earth that make modern life possible. 

Unlike chemical rockets that throw out gasses for propulsion, ion engines are powered by individual atoms, which makes them much more fuel efficient and allows satellites to operate for longer.     READ MORE...

Evidence We Live in a Simulation

In the 1999 film The Matrix, Thomas Anderson (a.k.a. Neo) discovers a truth to end all truths—the universe is a simulation. While this premise provides fantastic sci-fi fodder (and explains how Neo can learn kung-fu in about five seconds), the idea isn’t quite as carefully relegated to the fiction section as one might expect.

University of Portsmouth scientist Melvin Vopson, who studies the possibility that the universe might indeed be a digital facsimile, leans into the cinematic comparison. In an article published on website The Conversation this past October, Vopson invoked the Wachowskis’ sci-fi masterpiece, and around the same time, he published a book on the subject—Reality Reloaded, a subtle hat tip to the title of the less successful Matrix sequel. While he is just one among many who’ve contemplated the idea, Vopson claims to have one thing that those before him lacked: evidence.                READ MORE...

A Paradigm Shift in RAM

Your computer wouldn’t be very useful without RAM, which is short for random access memory. These chips function as the temporary storage for an operating system, and speed is of great importance, as they’re constantly needing to access bits of memory to keep everything running smoothly. 

For more than two decades, the most advanced version of this technology—magnetoresistive RAM, or MRAM—has been the go-to tech for the kind of intense computing necessary in industrial, military, and space applications.

Now, a new breakthrough discovered by scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has illustrated how a mechanism in a laser beam can control the magnetic state in solids, which the scientists describe as a “paradigm shift” in our understanding of the behavior between light and magnetic materials. 

The results of the study were published earlier this year in the journal Physical Review Research.           READ MORE...

A Chinese Humanoid Robots Sets Record

The human body isn’t really an ideal template for a robot. Out of the entire family of primates, Homo sapiens are the only ones who spend a majority of their time on two feet—a biological outlier that isn’t exactly easy to replicate in artificial form. In the past decade, many companies have created impressive facsimiles: robots that can run, jump, and stumble just like a real boy. But none of them have been able to generate very much speed while doing so. That’s beginning to change.

Earlier this month, the Chinese robotic company Unitree uploaded a sizzle video to Youtube that highlighted the impressive attributes of its H1 humanoid robot. Chief among those impressive attributed is the robot’s startling speed, clocking in at an impressive 3.3 m/s, or roughly 7.4 mph. That beats the previous record holder, Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, which can book it at a steady 5.59 mph. Unitree claims that its artificial creation can even reach speeds of up to 11 mph.     READ MORE...

A Medieval Village Uncovered

During the intense and bloody French Revolution (1789-1799), Catholic churches and abbeys didn’t fare very well. In 1789, the National Constituent Assembly decided to seize all Catholic property and sell it off in an effort to fund the fledgling Revolutionary currency. 

The Beaumont Abbey, which had existed outside the city of Tours, France for nearly 800 years, was swept up in this nationwide land grab, its 46 nuns were expelled, and the abbey itself was eventually demolished.

But unknown at the time of its demolition, a treasure trove of medieval history rested underneath the abbey. The area contained some 1,000 burial sites—the graveyard of the centuries-old abbey—and remnants of the medieval town of Belmons, which the Beaumont Abbey effectively replaced.  READ MORE...

Alice Rings

Topological monopoles are a quantum physics phenomenon that can decay into what’s known as “Alice rings.”

Named after Lewis Carroll’s famous heroine, this vortex ring flips the magnetic charge of any monopole that passes through it, creating an anti-monopole.

Although these rings last only 80 or so milliseconds, they could have big implications in the study of cosmology and high-energy physics.

The literary works of Lewis Carroll and the complex machinations of quantum physics rarely cross paths—but when they do, it’s about as mind-bending as it sounds.

Last month, scientists from Aalto University in Finland and Amherst College in Massachusetts created a bizarre quantum object known as an ‘Alice ring.’ An homage to Carroll’s titular character in Alice in Wonderland, the name is an apt one. 

This decayed monopole—a particle with only one magnetic pole—opens a “vortex ring” that flips the magnetic charge of any other monopole passing through its center, creating an “anti-monopole.” The results of the study were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.     READ MORE...

Turning Cells into Stem Cells

For decades, scientists have been able to create stems cells—known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells—from somatic cells, such as those found in our skin.

However, these iPS cells still retain ghosts of their cellular pasts, which makes them less effective as a therapeutic tool.

A new study, using a method called transient-naïve-treatment (TNT) mimics the normal reprogramming process in early embryonic development to essentially wipe a cell’s memory, making these cells more similar to embryonic stem (ES) cells both molecularly and functionally.

Stem cells are the raw materials of the human body—they’re the original cells from which almost all other cells with specialized functions originate. So, the ability to use these cells in therapeutic treatments is immensely important. So important, in fact, that over the past couple of decades, scientists have devised ways to reprogram non-reproductive cells, also known as somatic cells, into embryonic stem (ES) cells known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.

This process is central to the field of regenerative medicine, which replaces diseased cells with healthy ones derived from these iPS cells. But there was just one problem—these reprogrammed cells retained ghosts of their past lives, making these treatments less effective than they otherwise could be.

“A persistent problem with the conventional reprograming process is that iPS cells can retain an epigenetic memory of their original somatic state, as well as other epigenetic abnormalities,” Ryan Lister, from the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research and The University of Western Australia, said in a press statement. “This can create functional differences between the iPS cells and the ES cells they’re supposed to imitate, and specialized cells subsequently derived from them, which limits their use.”      READ MORE...

Theory of Gravity Contradicted

Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, an immensely important update to Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, is currently our best approximation of how the universe ticks.

But there are some holes in Einstein's theory, including some gravitational weirdness around low acceleration “wide binary” stars.

A new study claims that the behavior of these slow-moving celestial objects can’t be explained by a Newton-Einstein theory, which relies on dark matter, but could be explained with an idea known as Modified Newtonian Dynamics, or MOND.

In 1687, English physicist Isaac Newton published his famous Law of Universal Gravitation. The idea that all objects attract in proportion to their mass was a revolutionary idea that became a huge boon for understanding the ways of the universe. 

But even Newton’s influential work had its limitations—specifically, it couldn’t explain gravitational phenomena such as black holes and gravitational waves. Thankfully, Albert Einstein came around in the early 20th century to help patch things up a bit with his Theory of General Relativity.

But space is a big place, and even Einsteins sometimes meet their limit. One of the most well-known of these limits is a black hole’s center, or singularity, where Einstein’s famous theory appears to break down completely. 

Now, a new study from scientists at South Korea’s Sejong University suggests that another limit to Newton and Einstein’s conception of gravity can be found in the orbital motions of long-period, widely separated, binary stars—also known simply as “wide binaries.” The results of this study were published this month in The Astrophysical Journal.     READ MORE...

First Branch on the Tree of Life

Scientists have discovered which animal was the first to branch off from our collective common ancestor.

For years, debate had raged over whether the first to diverge was the sea sponge or the comb jelly.

Thanks to new chromosomal analysis techniques, we finally have an answer.

All animals on Earth share a common ancestor. Trace back the history of any creature from humans to slugs, and you’ll eventually be able to follow all of the branches on the animal tree of life back to its trunk.

But that trunk had to branch off at some point, or we wouldn’t have all of today’s animals. And that first split has been a bit elusive to scientists, due to it taking place around 600 million years ago.

We know a few things, though. Namely, we know that the first split resulted in the birth of two creatures—the ancestor of almost all animals, and the “sister” to that ancestor. That sister is the ancestor of just one group of modern-day animals.

For decades, scientists have debated which group of animals traces its lineage back to the “sister” of literally all other animals. They had two contenders for a long time—sea sponges and comb jellies.   READ MORE...

THe Reality of Wireless Energy

DARPA plans to create wireless energy transfer infrastructure to supply near-uninterruptable power to U.S. military bases worldwide. The plan, as reported by Popular Mechanics, is to use laser technology to beam electricity around the planet. Famously a dream of Nikola Tesla over 100 years ago, if successful, this technology, called fittingly enough POWER ("Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay"), would make the U.S. military less reliant on liquid fuel like diesel and vulnerable power lines, which can be intercepted or sabotaged by enemy forces.

“First of all, the environment has changed, and the need for more resilient energy transport methods for military operations is at a premium,” explained Col. Paul “Promo” Calhoun to Popular Mechanics in an exclusive interview. American forces operate globally like the special operations units he resupplied as a C-17 cargo pilot, from outposts in the South China Sea to the Iraqi desert. Since there is no simple way to power them, many forces use their radars, anti-drone microwave weapons, lasers, or other energy-intensive equipment. And with each passing year, the severity of the issue increases.

“On the technology side, significant advancements have been made in high-energy lasers, wavefront sensing, adaptive optics, high-altitude electric air platforms, safety interlocks, and narrow-bandgap-tuned high-efficiency photovoltaics,” Col. Calhoun explains.

“POWER is an optical power beaming program,” Calhoun says. “There are other potential power-beaming modalities, such as microwaves, that we intend to explore in future programs. For POWER, the propagating wave is a laser [that] provides long-range high-throughput capability when transmitted at high altitudes. The relays redirect the laser energy without conversion, and then the end-user converts that laser energy back into electricity using narrow-bandgap-tuned monochromatic photovoltaics,” he added.  READ MORE...