The record of the Neanderthals is nothing short of spectacular. Countless sites contain the traces of the individuals who were once our closest relatives, allowing archaeologists and anthropologists to recreate and reconstruct their activities throughout the millennia. And if one thing’s for certain from these reconstructions, it’s that the Neanderthals were talented toolmakers. This intriguing species made and manipulated a sophisticated set of ancient tools, including spears, scrapers and ...read more

When love is in the air, what’s happening in the brain? For many years, biologists would answer, “Oxytocin!” This small protein — just nine amino acids long — has sometimes been called “the love hormone” because it has been implicated in pair-bonding, maternal care and other positive, love-like social behaviors. But lately, neuroscientists have been revising their thinking about oxytocin. Experiments with mice and other lab animals suggest that instead of acting as a trigger for ...read more

Most of us won't go through life without the occasional episode of heartburn or acid reflux. And when acid does sting your throat or burn in your chest, you might find yourself wondering just how strong the stuff is. Read More: Stomachache? Your Gut Bacteria Might Be to Blame To find out, let’s turn to the pH scale, which measures how acidic or alkaline (basic) a solution is. The scale ranges from 0 to 14, with anything hovering around a value of 7 — like most drinking water — considered n ...read more

This story was originally published in our Mar/Apr 2023 issue. Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one. In 1995, NASA was strapped for cash — and the search for life beyond Earth looked like it could be in trouble. Years of steep cuts had reduced the space agency’s five-year budget plan by just over 30 percent. Interest in exobiology — the study of the origins, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe — had been drying up for decades. After the 1976 Viking ...read more

It took almost 75 years for researchers to record the first footage of the remains of the Titanic, buried over 2 miles beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. It then took them nearly 40 years more to release the footage in its fuller form. This week, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) released 80 minutes of untrimmed footage from its first filmed voyage to the sunken ship. Captured only months after a team from the WHOI found the wreck in 1985, the footage features several shots ...read more

Unless you’re a fan of comic-book series (and Netflix film) The Old Guard, you may never have heard of the Scythians before now, but chances are you’ve seen some aspect of their influence, down through the long years of human history. They are believed to originate from ancient Iran around 900 B.C., spreading from Central Asia into what is now Ukraine and parts of Russia. They were a formidable force in this part of the world for nearly a thousand years. Although archaeologists and anthropol ...read more

In the medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, surgical resident Izzy agrees to donate bone marrow. In a scene that likely made donation professionals cringe, Izzy grimaced on the operating table as the physician inserted a needle into her hip and aggressively rotated it. In real life, doctors have designed bone marrow donations to be as painless as possible. Most donors give stem cells that are harvested from the bloodstream before the blood is returned to the body. And those who give directly fr ...read more

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Robert Wadlow of Alton, Illinois, is the tallest man who has ever lived. He was 8 foot 11 inches and weighed in at 439 lbs. But he had a sad life, plagued with injury due to his towering height and the weight that put pressure on his joints and feet. What Happened to Robert Wadlow? Wadlow died in 1940 at just 22 years old due to a blister on his ankle that became infected and triggered septic shock in his body. "He is a pre-acromegalic giant of ...read more

Back in the late 1970s, the American psychologists Guy Woodruff and David Premack devised a series of experiments to explore the cognitive capacity of chimpanzees. Their work focused on the theory of mind, the seemingly innate ability of humans to infer the thoughts of other humans. The question that Woodruff and Premack asked was whether a chimpanzee could do the same. This influential paper triggered an explosion of interest in the “theory of mind”, at what age it develops in humans and w ...read more

In 1929, Edwin Hubble calculated the velocity of distant galaxies barely visible through the telescopes at the Mount Wilson Observatory. His observations were the first evidence of a theory that has become a foundation of modern cosmology — the universe is continuously expanding. If you trace that expansion far enough back in time, you reach a distant point in the past. At this point, the entire universe was squeezed into an unfathomably dense spec filled with molten subatomic particles. This ...read more