The Kaaba, a shrine at the center of the Great Mosque in Mecca, considered the most sacred spot on Earth by Muslims. (Credit: By ESB Professional/Shutterstock)
Why isn’t Mickey Mouse a god?
This is a serious question for researchers studying the evolution of religion, and it offers some insight into the question of why some religions have persisted while others haven’t.
The so-called Mickey Mouse problem is an oft-cited, catchy critique of the idea that religion is merely a by ...read more
A 15,000-year-old projectile may provide indirect evidence for how and when people first arrived in the Americas. (Credit: Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University)
Thousands of artifacts from a site in Central Texas, including a dozen projectile points, have provided researchers with new clues about the arrival and spread of First Americans on the continent. The items, which are up to 15,500 years old, hint that the Americas may have been populated i ...read more
Some of the data painstakingly recovered from digs each year is irretrievably lost. (Credit: krugloff/Shutterstock)
Archaeology – the name conjures up images of someone carefully sifting the sands for traces of the past and then meticulously putting those relics in a museum. But today’s archaeology is not just about retrieving artifacts and drawing maps by hand. It also uses the tools of today: 3D imaging, LiDAR scans, GPS mapping and more.
Today, nearly all archaeological fieldwor ...read more
What happens next isn’t quite clear. We know the molecules bind to some of the 400 different receptors on the surface of the olfactory neurons; we don’t know exactly how that contact creates our sense of smell. Why is smell such a difficult sense to understand?
“In part, it’s the difficulty of setting up experiments to probe what’s going on inside the olfactory receptors of the nose,” says Andrew Horsfield, a materials scientist at Imperial College London.
The ...read more
Researchers examined collagen from the man’s right femur and a rib, according to a study published in 2015 in Radiocarbon. The femur, which stops replacing collagen usually in early adulthood, suggested a diet primarily of fish, typical of Iron Gates foragers. The rib, however, indicated a farmer’s grain and meat-heavy diet. Collagen in a rib is continually replaced, so it suggests a person’s diet in their final years, says Clive Bonsall, lead author and an archaeologist at the ...read more
An artistic illustration showing how the magnetic fields would corral the torus and “feed” the black hole. (Credit: NASA/SOFIA/Lynette Cook)
For the first time ever, astronomers have observed a magnetic field surrounding and feeding a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy.
The researchers’ observations might shed light on the relationship between black holes and magnetic fields and why some black holes are more active and “hungry” than others. Whereas ...read more
(Credit: Anton_Ivanov/shutterstock)
As the largest land mammal on the planet, elephants eat a lot of food. On average, the giants consume more than 440 pounds of vegetation per day, or the equivalent of about two corncobs per minute. And now, scientists have figured out how the beasts are able to eat so much so fast. Elephants make joints with their trunks to press down on and scoop up food. Researchers say the discovery could even help engineers build better robots.
Elephants are massive ...read more
Aboriginal paintings adorn the walls of a cave in Kimberley, Western Australia. (Credit: paulmichaelNZ/shutterstock)
Nothing stirred in the relentless midday heat. The gum trees appeared exhausted, nearly drained of life. The hunters crouched in the foliage, their long, sharp spears poised to unleash at a moment’s notice. The giant birds that were the objects of their attention strode slowly, elegantly, unsuspecting. Most of these creatures were about 7 feet tall. The meat from even one ...read more
Powerful superflares from young red dwarf stars, like the one shown in this artist’s concept, can strip the atmospheres from fledgling planets, spelling disaster for any potential life. (Credit: NASA/ESA/D. Player (STScI))
Red dwarfs are small, slowly burning stars that can live for trillions of years before they run out of fuel. And thanks to their generous lifespans, the planets around them (at least those close enough to stay warm) are often considered prime locations for the developm ...read more
