Nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and early 1960s left the first obvious and indelible marks of “overwhelming” human activity on Earth, and these events may signal the beginning of a new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene, geologists say. Fallout from these tests snowed down from the atmosphere and became trapped in the earth … Read more
A 64-year-old man got a medical checkup after his tongue began sprouting green “hairs.” The bizarre-looking fuzz turned out to be caused by a fairly common and harmless condition known as hairy tongue. The patient’s tongue had turned green about two weeks before he visited the clinic, shortly after he had completed a course of … Read more
A hidden “entrance to the underworld” built by the ancient Zapotec culture has been discovered beneath a Catholic church in southern Mexico, according to a team of researchers using cutting-edge ground-scanning technology. The complex system of underground chambers and tunnels was built more than a millennium ago by the Zapotec, whose state arose near modern-day … Read more
Astronomers have peered back to the dawn of the cosmos to observe time ticking five times more slowly in the early universe than it does now — finally proving a prediction that Albert Einstein made more than a century ago. Researchers spotted the extreme slow-motion effect in data taken from bright cosmic beacons known as … Read more
A malevolent, screaming skull face. A witch cackling in profile. An all-seeing eye, gazing red and furious from the void of space. Like cosmic Halloween decorations, nebulas are some of the most gorgeous objects in the universe, and some of the spookiest. These vast regions of gas and dust, illuminated by starlight and sculpted by … Read more
In science fiction films, nothing raises tension quite like the good guys’ spaceship getting caught in an invisible tractor beam that allows the baddies to slowly reel them in. But what was once only a sci-fi staple could soon become a reality. Scientists are developing a real-life tractor beam, dubbed an electrostatic tractor. This tractor … Read more
Archaeologists in England have discovered more than two dozen monumental pits dotting the countryside in Bedfordshire, north of London. Radiocarbon dating of materials retrieved from the prehistoric site revealed that the round, steep-sided holes were created around 7,700 to 8,500 years ago during the Mesolithic, also known as the Middle Stone Age, according to a … Read more
It’s long been assumed that men were hunters and women were gatherers, but a new study reveals that both sexes have been equally adept at hunting in hunter-gatherer cultures. An international team of scientists made the finding after examining data culled from dozens of academic papers, published over the past 100 years, that focused on … Read more
In 1906, astronomer and businessman Percival Lowell launched a search for “Planet X,” a hypothetical giant planet orbiting the sun beyond Neptune. Lowell was convinced that Planet X existed based on some supposed irregularities he had observed in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus. His belief eventually led to the discovery of Pluto in 1930, … Read more
Earth is being choked by a thick, curling fog of carbon dioxide that coats the planet as the months go by, a series of NASA videos shows. The newly released animations visualize the astonishing scale of human carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over a year by coloring the invisible greenhouse gas. The animations were produced by … Read more
