When most folks imagine the asteroids, they likely picture chunk of rocky rubble, maybe mixed in with some metals based on distant observations and flybys. They shouldn't be very complicated because they're just leftovers from the formation of the solar system. Most of the meteorites that have been sampled on Earth have a lot of the same basic minerals and elements as well.As it turns out, going out to the asteroid belt and directly sampling one of these primordial objects has turned that notion ...read more
Dating can be tricky. If your timing is off, it can result in misunderstandings. This is especially true in fields like archeology and paleontology. If an item is identified as hailing from an incorrect year, entire lines of research can be put into question. So when Sturt Manning, an archeologist from Cornell University, and colleagues received a radiocarbon date that didn’t appear to line up with the archeological evidence, they tweaked the dating technique and came up with a more definitive ...read more
For decades, the University of Michigan Library held an esteemed article. The precious paper was a letter penned by Italian scientist Galileo Galilei, which included sketches of Jupiter’s moons.The library acquired the letter in 1938 and considered it a prized possession because it was evidence of Galileo’s thought process as he worked toward his understanding that the planets revolved around the sun.But a historical detective sensed it was a fake and one of many manuscripts or documents tha ...read more
When you think about the word “art,” what comes to mind? A child’s artwork pinned to the fridge? A favorite artist whose work always inspires? Abstract art that is hard to understand?Each of these assumes that making art is something that other people do, such as children or “those with talent.”However, as I explain in my book “The Expressive Instinct,” art is intrinsic to human evolution and history. Just as sports or workouts exercise the body, creating art exercises the imaginat ...read more
The woolly rhinoceros, which roamed northern Eurasia for millions of years, is one of the most iconic extinct megafauna. The formidable thick-skinned, long-furred beast occupied the mammoth steppe, a cold-dry grassland biome that existed during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). However, roughly 10,000 years ago the woolly rhinoceros vanished. Scientists have been able to identify mummified carcasses of these animals, along with bone fragments, and several human cave paintings in Europe and Asia fe ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine