Photo of the cranium of Burial 32 at the archaeological site of Lapa do Santo. DNA for the study was extracted from this individual. (Credit: Maurício de Paiva)
When the Americas were first settled, sometime in the past 25,000 years, it happened from the top down. Eurasians made their way across the Beringian land bridge (or followed the coastline, what’s known as the Kelp Highway hypothesis) from Siberia to Alaska and spread throughout their new territory.
Once they were her ...read more
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It turns out that the sun’s magnetic field can shape and push the dust of a comet’s tail, according to a revelation made possible by one young scientist’s innovative new image-processing technique.
Comet Dust
In 2007, scientists were elated when NASA’s STEREO spacecraft laid its “eyes” on Comet C/2006 P1, also known as Comet McNaught — named after astronomer Robert McNaught, who discovered the comet a year prior. Comet McNaught, which ...read more
The newfound star is not only one of the oldest stars in the universe, but also one of the most metal-poor stars known. An artist’s concept of a small red dwarf star is shown above. (Credit:NASA/Walt Feimer)
One of the oldest stars in the universe is quietly hiding out in the Milky Way some 2,000 light-years from Earth.
According to a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal, the tiny, 13.5-billion-year-old red dwarf contains barely any heavy elements at all, suggesting it formed ...read more
The worlds oldest figurative artwork from Borneo dated to a minimum of 40,000 years. (Credit: Luc-Henri Fage)
The oldest known figurative cave art painting in the world may be a 40,000-year-old rendering of a species of wild cattle found in a Borneo cave by a group of Griffith University researchers.
It is considerably older than a 35,400-year-old pig-deer painting discovered by the same team a few years ago in a cave located on Sulawesi, another island in Indonesia.
These recen ...read more
Air bubbles trapped in a thin ice core slice. (Credit: Tas van Ommen/Australian Antarctic Division)
“Don’t forget to write!”
Friends and loved ones bid adieu to members of the latest research team to begin the long trek to Antarctica this weekend.
The goal of this latest expedition, which is scheduled to return mid-February, is to see whether concentrations of an atmospheric molecule called hydroxyl, or OH, has changed over time since the industrial revolution. The answe ...read more
An artist’s impression of the hot white dwarf GALEXJ014636.8+323615 (white) and its ultra-hot magnetosphere (purple) trapped with the magnetic field (green). (Credit: Nicole Reindl)
Some 1,200 light-years from Earth, an international team of astronomers has discovered an ultra-hot magnetosphere, or magnetic field, surrounding a sun-like star.
The star, dubbed GALEXJ014636.8+323615, is a white dwarf, the dense core of a dead star.
“White dwarfs are the remnants of about 95 perc ...read more
Scientists used ultrasound to deliver a drug to a rat, like the one captured here. (Credit: Pan Xunbin/shutterstock)
At least 50 million people worldwide live with epilepsy. For nearly one-third of those people, anti-seizure medications don’t work. Surgery to remove the part of the brain that causes epileptic fits is an option for some, but the intrusive treatment might not work. It could also lead to memory and language problems, among other complications. Now researchers from Stanford ...read more
The second Nemi ship emerges from the lake. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
For centuries, the medieval fishermen who sailed in the placid waters of Lake Nemi, 19 miles south of Rome, knew a secret. It was said that the rotting timbers of a gigantic ancient shipwreck lurked below the water’s quiet surface. But the lake was tiny, with an area of only 0.6 square miles. And with no other body of water connected to it, what could a vessel of that size be doing there? Still, the stories about the ...read more
