The Dark Side of Biology

Life on the primordial Earth got started early. The oldest microfossils—found by a British team in Canada—may date back as far as 3.8 billion years and were probably living on the ocean floor at a volcanic vent. Other organics rained from the sky, brewed by lightning or solar radiation. © Michael Carroll

Gene Roddenberry populated his Star Trek universe with a wide variety of aliens. Budget constraints dictated that most were variations of humans, with skin tinted odd colors or antennae sticking out from their heads. Even the silicon-based Horta appeared to be a stagehand lurking under a decorated carpet. George Lucas treated us to a similar menagerie of off-world inhabitants in Star Wars, especially in his Mos Eisley Cantina. Aliens—and our concept of them—became more sophisticated as budgets soared and science grappled with the great question posed by Enrico Fermi: “Where is everybody?” Some were terrifying, like the creatures in the Alien movie series or H. G. Wells’s conspiring Martians in War of the Worlds. Perhaps our propensity for seeing extrasolar life as terrifying is our natural fear of the unknown. But others were far more benign and advanced, as witnessed by Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Steven Spielberg’s cuddly E.T., Edmund H. North’s guardians of the worlds in The Day the Earth Stood Still, or the time-jumping beings of Eric Heisserer’s Arrival. But at the heart of a good story is a good conflict, and aliens provide natural fodder for such a plot device.     READ MORE...

Ancient Writing Finally Deciphered

Artists and archeology

(photo credit: ITSIK MAROM)

The ancient language of Linear Elamite may have finally been deciphered, according to a peer-reviewed paper recently published in the journal Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie (Journal of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology).


The findings, based on a set of ancient silver vessels, propose a new method for decoding Linear Elamite's symbols, according to the Smithsonian magazine.


“This is one of the major archaeological discoveries of the last decades,” said Massimo Vidale, an archaeologist at the University of Padua who was not involved in the research. “It was based on the same approach of Champollion’s breakthrough – identifying and reading phonetically the names of kings.”


The language originates in the 5000-year-old city of Susa, in what today is southwestern Iran. An ancient urban oasis and the capital of Elam, Susa was one of the first places to use written symbols in its bustling society.


French archeologists in the early 20th century uncovered the first evidence of a writing system nearly as old, or older, than Sumerian cuneiform that used a different set of symbols. 

The system appeared to have fallen out of use, but after a few hundred years a new written language popped up which scholars have named Linear Elamite. The previous Elamite writing system was called Proto-Elamite.  READ MORE...

The Science of Aliens

All cellular life on Earth is based on DNA, which transfers information—about everything from hair color to personality traits—from one generation to the next. The four chemical bases that convey this information are adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T).

The other essential “information molecule” on Earth is RNA, in which thymine (T) is replaced by uracil (U). RNA has a one-string structure rather than a double-string structure like DNA. 

The first cellular life on our planet is thought to have relied exclusively on this means of transferring genetic information—in the so-called “RNA world”—and even today there are viruses (like the one that causes COVID) that only use RNA.

In a paper recently published in Science, a research group led by Dona Sleiman from the Institute Pasteur in Paris has discovered that some viruses show more variation in their genetic coding than was previously known. In the RNA of these viruses, adenine (A) is replaced with Z, where Z stands for diaminopurine.

This follows an earlier study by Zunyi Yang and colleagues at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Florida, showing that an artificial genetic system could be created by adding two additional non-standard bases to ordinary DNA. 

Amazingly, the artificial six-base system continued to evolve rather than reverting back to the natural four-base system. This implies that the DNA we take as standard—made of A, C, G, and T—is just one of many viable solutions to the challenge of biological information transfer.

The variability does not stop here. Strings of DNA are organized in base triplets that determine which of the standard 20 amino acids are assigned to synthesize proteins. However, these triplet assignments are not universal. 

For example, CUG, which usually codes for the amino acid serine, instead codes for the amino acid leucine in some types of fungi. Also, some organisms naturally encode for two additional amino acids instead of the standard 20 amino acids.  READ MORE...

King Arthur's Tomb

According to popular lore, Arthur’s Stone, a roughly 5,000-year-old tomb in the West Midlands of England, boasts ties to King Arthur, the mythical leader of Camelot. One legend holds that Arthur found a pebble in his shoe while marching to battle and threw it aside, at which point it grew in size out of “pride [at] having been touched by [him],” per Atlas Obscura. Another story suggests that Arthur clashed with a giant whose elbows left massive impressions in the earth when he fell in battle.

Myths aside, the Neolithic tomb has long mystified experts and the public alike. Now, reports James Thomas for the Hereford Times, the first-ever excavation of the site is poised to shed light on its enigmatic history.

Researchers from the University of Manchester and English Heritage, the charity that cares for the monument, are unlikely to unearth the remains of the legendary king. But they do hope to find traces of the actual Neolithic Britons who built and used the chambered tomb. Though archaeologists initially suspected that Arthur’s Stone formed part of a wedge-shaped stone cairn like those found in South Wales and the Cotswolds, recent excavations indicate otherwise.

“I think it has considerable potential,” Julian Thomas, an archaeologist at the University of Manchester, tells the London Times’ Jack Blackburn. “It’s a monument of an entirely different kind to the one that we’d imagined.”

Per a statement, only the inner chamber of the tomb—made up of nine upright stones topped by a massive capstone weighing more than 25 tons—survives today. A previous dig conducted outside of the monument showed that Arthur’s Stone extended into a field to the south and underwent two distinct phases of construction.  READ MORE...

Erotic Art

                    In the ancient Roman world, sexual pleasure was a cause for celebration rather than a source of shame. Archaeological Park of Pompeii

In the 19th century, the archaeologists tasked with excavating Pompeii and Herculaneum ran into a problem: Everywhere they turned, they found erotic art, from frescoes of copulating couples to sculptures of nude, well-endowed gods.

At a time when sex was widely considered shameful or even obscene, officials deemed the images too explicit for the general public. Instead of placing the artifacts on view, staff at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli stashed them in a secret room closed to all but scholars and, according to Atlas Obscura, male visitors willing to bribe their way in. Between 1849 and 2000, the works remained largely hidden from the public.

Fresco of Leda and the swan Archaeological Park of Pompeii

Not anymore. A new exhibition at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii titled “Art and Sensuality in the Houses of Pompeii” draws on selections from the secret room and other sensual images unearthed in the ancient city to demonstrate the ubiquity of erotic imagery in the Roman world.

The show’s marquee attraction is a fresco of the myth of Leda and the swan. Discovered in 2018, the scene depicts the moment when the god Zeus, disguised as a swan, either rapes or seduces Leda, queen of Sparta. Later, legend holds, Leda laid two eggs that hatched into children: Pollux and Helen, whose “face … launched a thousand ships” by sparking the Trojan War.

Painted on the wall of a Pompeiian bedroom, the artwork shows a nude Leda smiling invitingly as a swan nuzzles against her chest.

“[The scene] sends a message of sensuality,” Massimo Osanna, then-director of the archaeological park, told CNN’s Barbie Latza Nadeau and Hada Messia in 2019. “It means, ‘I am looking at you and you are looking at me while I am doing something very, very special.’ It is very explicit. Look at her naked leg, the luxurious sandal.”  READ MORE...

History of Popcorn

Wednesday was National Popcorn Day, and what better way to celebrate than by learning about the history of the delicious snack?

According to The Popcorn Board, the oldest-known ears of corn that were popped are from about 4,000 years ago and were discovered in current-day New Mexico in 1948 and 1950.

Meanwhile, History.com reported in 2018 that there were traces of popcorn in 1,000-year-old Peruvian tombs.

Popcorn was also significant to the Aztec people for eating, ceremonies and decorations, according to The Popcorn Board.

Wednesday is National Popcorn Day. (iStock)

The snack became a common food in American households by the mid-1800s, according to History.com. Popcorn was popular for late-night snacks by the fire and at picnics, the website reported.

In the 1890s, Charles Cretors created the first popcorn-popping machine, and by 1900, he created a horse-drawn popcorn wagon, which led to mass consumption of the snack, History.com reported.

Popcorn didn’t hit movie theaters until the Great Depression, according to Smithsonian Magazine. In fact, the movie theaters that started selling popcorn were able to survive the Great Depression, while other movie theaters had to close because of poor sales.  READ MORE...

The Ten Most Significant Science Stories of 2021

From amazing firsts on Mars to the impacts of climate change on Earth, these science stories stood out as the most important of 2021 Photo illustration by Meilan Solly / Photos via Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons

Covid-19 dominated science coverage again in 2021, and deservedly so. The disease garnered two entries on this list of our picks for the most important science stories of the year. But other key discoveries and achievements marked the year in science too, and they deserve more attention. NASA and private companies notched firsts in space. 

Scientists discovered more about the existence of early humans. And researchers documented how climate change has impacted everything from coral reefs to birds. Covid-19 will continue to garner even more attention next year as scientists work to deal with new variants and develop medical advances to battle the virus. But before you let stories about those topics dominate your reading in 2022, it’s worth it to take a look back at the biggest discoveries and accomplishments of this past year. To that end, here are our picks for the most important science stories of 2021.

The Covid Vaccine Rollout Encounters Hurdles

A healthcare worker receives a vaccine in Miami, Florida. Almost 40 percent of the United States population hasn’t been fully vaccinated. Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Last year the biggest science story of the year was that scientists developed two mRNA Covid vaccines in record time. This year the biggest Covid story is that the rollout of those vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna, and one other by Johnson and Johnson, haven’t made their way into a large proportion of the United States population and a significant portion of the world. 

As of this writing on December 21, roughly 73 percent of the U.S. population has received one dose, and roughly 61 percent of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated. An incomplete rollout allowed for a deadly summer surge, driven by the highly contagious Delta variant. Experts pointed out that vaccination rates lagged due to widespread disinformation and misinformation campaigns. It didn’t help that some popular public figures—like Packers’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers, musician Nick Minaj, podcast host Joe Rogan and rapper Ice Cube—chose not to get vaccinated. 

Luckily, by November, U.S. health officials had approved the Pfizer vaccine for children as young as five, providing another barrier against the deadly disease’s spread, and Covid rates declined. But while the wall against the disease in the U.S. is growing, it is not finished. As cases surge as the Omicron variant spreads around the country, building that wall and reinforcing it with booster shots is critically important. In much of the rest of the world, the wall is severely lacking where populations haven’t been given decent access to the vaccine. 

Only 8 percent of individuals in low-income countries have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and a WHO Africa report from this fall said that on that continent, less than 10 percent of countries would hit the goal of vaccinating at least 40 percent of their citizens by the end of the year. Globally, less than 60 percent of the population has been vaccinated. The holes in vaccination coverage will allow the virus to continue to kill a large number of individuals, and allow an environment where possibly other dangerous variants can emerge.

Perseverance Notches Firsts on MarsNASA's Perseverance rover will store rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on the surface of Mars to be retrieved on a future mission. NASA / JPL-Caltech

TO READ MORE ABOUT THESE SIGNIFICANT SCIENCE STORIIES, CLICK HERE...