Grotta di Castelcivita. Above: The location of the cave (indicated by a white arrow) at the foot of the Alburni massif in the Campania region, southern Italy. Below: The excavation trench of the Upper Paleolithic layers. Credit: University of Tübingen An international team of researchers from the universities of Tübingen (Dr. Armando Falcucci), Siena and … Read more
Researchers investigated three mysterious objects in the early universe. Shown here are their color images, compiled from three NIRCam filter bands aboard the James Webb Space Telescope. They are remarkably compact at red wavelengths (earning them the name “little red dots”), with some evidence of spatial structure at blue wavelengths. Credit: Bingjie Wang/Penn State NASA‘S … Read more
The Antikythera Mechanism, an ingenious calculating machine created 2,200 years ago, has inspired awe and enchantment since it was discovered in 1901 in a shipwreck off a Greek island. For generations, researchers have unraveled many mysteries surrounding the device, often described as the world’s first analog computer, but much remains unknown. A study published this … Read more
A quarry with bands of layered limestone from the ancient seabed in what is now Mercato San Severino, Italy. Credit: Mariano Remírez, George Mason University Approximately 183 million years ago, during the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (T-OAE), volcanic eruptions in what is now South Africa released approximately 20,500 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the … Read more
Special techniques to study ripples in the universe may have helped researchers solve an age-old mystery. Statistical modeling methods developed to study gravitational waves have been used to predict the structure of a broken piece of a millennia-old artifact, according to a new paper in The Horological Journal. These techniques allowed researchers to determine how … Read more
Forget the “little green men” — it’s the “little red dots” in the early universe that caught the attention of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The strange red bodies, scientists say, hide stars that models suggest are “too old” to have existed in early cosmic times and black holes thousands of times more massive … Read more
Prehistoric humans hunt a woolly mammoth. A growing body of research shows that this species—and at least 46 other megaherbivores—were driven to extinction by humans. (Source: Engraving by Ernest Grise, photographed by William Henry Jackson. Courtesy Getty’s Open Content Program) AARHUS, Denmark — Imagine a world where elephants roamed Europe, giant ground sloths lumbered across … Read more
View of the ruins of the Barbegal mill complex in 2018. Photo: Robert Fabre Archaeologists face a major challenge when they seek to gather information about buildings or facilities that are left in ruins. This was a particular challenge for the remains of the Roman watermills at Barbegal in southern France, which date back to … Read more
New research into ripples in the fabric of spacetime suggests that a nearly 2,000-year-old cosmic calculator followed the lunar calendar instead of the solar calendar. The hand-cranked “Antikythera Mechanism” was recovered in pieces from a sunken shipwreck in the Aegean Sea in 1901, sparking more than a century of research into how it was made—and … Read more
Corner down icon An icon in the shape of a downward-pointing corner. Locals discovered this mummified wolf in the thawing permafrost in Siberia. Northeastern Federal University Researchers are studying a 44,000-year-old mummified wolf found in the permafrost in Russia. The wolf may be able to tell scientists about its lifestyle and diet during the Pleistocene. … Read more