Some 13,000 years ago, just as the last Ice Age was receding, ancient humans were returning to a camp in the Great Lakes region to process hunted animals and sharpen up their hunting weapons.In present day, a local amateur archaeologist named Thomas Talbot discovered the ancient campsites when he kept finding Clovis tools and rock scrapings in a field near Mendon in southwestern Michigan. Brendan Nash, an archaeologist at the University of Michigan, and a team then started an excavation at what ...read more
One of the sadly neglected problems in modern science is the question of how best to keep beer cool once it has been poured into a glass. Now one scientist has come up with a novel solution by developing a mathematical model that determines the optimal shape of a beer glass that keeps beer cool.The problem is well known to generations of beer drinkers the world over. As soon as beer is poured into a glass, it starts to warm up. So an important goal is to minimize the heat entering the beer so th ...read more
Learning that a shiny rock is fool’s gold rather than the valuable mineral is generally cause for disappointment. But for scientists who discovered a new 450-million-year-old arthropod preserved in iron pyrite, the substance could be considered priceless.Fossils of ancient arthropods — a group of animals including spiders, centipedes, and insects — are especially rare, because they are made up primarily of soft tissue, which usually starts decaying days after death. Due to some rare geoche ...read more
Imagine holding a piece of the early solar system in your hands — a 4.5-billion-year-old artifact that predates our planet. Thanks to the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 70s, and China’s 2024 Chang’e-6 mission, researchers now have the opportunity to hold, and study, lunar samples that provide a unique glimpse into the distant past.Moon rocks, brought back to Earth by NASA's Apollo missions and China's Chang’e probes, are far more than ordinary space debris. These samples hold invaluabl ...read more
In 1997, a team of scientists reared several chicken eggs in two different incubators: one was a normal, sterile incubator, while the other one was infused with the sweet, fruity aroma of strawberries. Sometimes, they even rubbed the experimental group with strawberry aromas straight on the shell.Once the chicks hatched, much to the scientist’s amusement, the few baby chickens that had been exposed to strawberries while still embryos loved the scent and the taste of it: they liked strawberry-f ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine