The oldest verified human to walk the Earth was a French woman named Jeanne Louise Clement, who nearly spent time in three centuries over her 122 years from 1875 to 1997, according to the Guinness World Records.Most of us won’t be that lucky, but life expectancy has increased greatly in just a few decades due to modern health practices, sanitation and other factors. But what was the life expectancy of ancient humans?The answer is nearly impossible to answer in most cases due to the lack of det ...read more
This story was originally published in our May/June 2023 issue as "Far & Away." Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one.On July 19, 2021, 10 days after leaving Cape Town, South Africa, the MFV Edinburgh finally sighted land. The ship had sailed west toward Rio de Janeiro, though it was never headed there. Its destination was Tristan da Cunha, an island smaller than the city of Boston that lies roughly halfway between Africa and South America, in the middle of the South A ...read more
This story was originally published in our May/June 2023 issue as "Making Waves." Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one.On Feb. 11, 2016, scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) unveiled the first direct detection of gravitational waves — produced, in this case, by the merger of two black holes, 1.3 billion light-years away. The announcement (and accompanying scientific paper) came 100 years after Albert Einstein’s 1916 prediction t ...read more
Colorectal cancer among adults 50 and younger has increased in the last three decades. Although the disease is still rare among younger adults, researchers question whether the spike is related to the rising popularity of ultra-processed foods (UPFs).Scientists are paying more attention to UPFs, and their findings are becoming mainstream. One study in Cell Metabolism, for example, made headlines after researchers found that participants lost weight after two weeks of eating minimally pro ...read more
If you’re plagued by sneezing, wheezing, or red, watery eyes whenever you’re around a feline friend, you’re not alone. An estimated 10 to 20 percent of us have a cat allergy, and there’s evidence that the number is increasing.But if you also revel in the cuteness of cats, you may be wondering whether there’s an allergy loophole (or even cure-all) somewhere out there. The detailed answer isn’t a definitive “yes” or “no” — but rather somewhere in between.What Are Allergies?Al ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
