On October 17 and 18, 2017, an unusual object sped across the field of view of a large telescope perched near the summit of a volcano on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The Pan-STARRS1 telescope was designed to survey the sky for transient events, like asteroid or comet flybys. But this was different: The object was not gravitationally bound to the Sun, or to any other celestial body. It had arrived from somewhere else.The mysterious object was the first visitor from interstellar space observed pas ...read more
Field director Emanuele Mariotti unambiguously calls it “the find of the century” — the most significant discovery in Mediterranean archaeology thus far in the 21st century, and maybe in the last century, too.In the autumn of 2022, his team excavating at the ancient thermal baths at San Casciano dei Bagni, Italy, revealed to the public the spectacular relics they’d pulled from the mud. Scholars and armchair archaeologists alike were gobsmacked, both by the abundance of artifacts — more ...read more
Almost half of all people in the world today speak an Indo-European language, one whose origins go back thousands of years to a single mother tongue. Languages as different as English, Russian, Hindustani, Latin and Sanskrit can all be traced back to this ancestral language.Over the last couple of hundred years, linguists have figured out a lot about that first Indo-European language, including many of the words it used and some of the grammatical rules that governed it. Along the way, they’ve ...read more
For centuries, life on Hestur, a small Faroese island located halfway between Scotland and Iceland in the northeast Atlantic, was isolated: Streymoy, the biggest of the 18 islands that comprise the Faroe Islands, is almost ironically close, within eyeshot, but powerful currents in the fjord dividing the two islands long made travel between them difficult.Today, a modern ferry connects Hestur and Streymoy, but across most of its history, Hestur’s inhabitants were left to care for themselves. Th ...read more
An ancient lizard fossil, renowned for its remarkable preservation and older than the dinosaurs, might be a partial forgery. The fossil, known as, Tridentinosaurus antiquus, was found in Italy in 1931, and was used to pinpoint evolution in early reptiles. However, an analysis published in Palaeontology found that the fossil’s preserved black outline is not skin, but paint.“The peculiar preservation of Tridentinosaurus had puzzled experts for decades. Now, it all makes sense. What it was ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine