How Wasps Taught These Drones to Pull Harder

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

(Credit: ©EPFL/Laboratory of Intelligent Systems) Drones, in the sense of remote controlled flying vehicles, are pretty neat pieces of technology. Even just the various models available for consumers can covertly provide surveillance, offer novel rescue and transportation options and even create high-thrills entertainment. But as the technology advanced there was one balancing act engineers began to face: The smaller and more maneuverable a drone became, the less it could affect its surro ...read more

Why Are Some Religions More Popular Than Others?

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

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

First Americans: Pre-Clovis Projectiles Hint At Multiple Migrations

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

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

We're Losing Far Too Much Irreplaceable Archaeological Data

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

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