Once upon a time — at least according to the ancient Greek writer Plutarch — the hero Theseus sailed from Athens, Greece, to the island of Crete, where he slayed the half-man, half-bull Minotaur before sailing back to rule Athens. The wooden ship that Theseus sailed on, Plutarch imagined, must have become a national treasure, … Read more
Hollywood has come up with some great excuses to raise the dead, from mutant viruses to voodoo magic. Mercifully, the flesh-eating living dead are firmly a fictional concern, but there are some fascinating real-world inspirations behind some of the best zombie movies, so we thought we’d run down some of our favorites. While the zombie … Read more
Space is famously considered the “final frontier” — but what part of space are we even talking about? Space, outer space and deep space are used somewhat interchangeably in many contexts, but astronomers have come up with clear distinctions between them. So, what’s the difference between them? The term outer space refers to anything beyond … Read more
A man in his 80s gradually started feeling that he was witnessing the same events again and again. This disturbing symptom, somewhat reminiscent of the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day,” likely emerged as a rare complication of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new report of the case. According to the report, published May 16 in the … Read more
After decades of debate, scientists believe they have identified the most recent ancestor of the sister to all animals via the novel use of an analytical technique. The finding settles a central question about the evolution of the entire tree of animal life. All animal life is descended from a single common ancestor — a … Read more
Scientists caught Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus spraying a “huge plume” of watery vapor far into space — and that plume likely contains many of the chemical ingredients for life. Scientists detailed the eruption — glimpsed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in November 2022 — at a conference at the Space Telescope Science Institute … Read more
The combined weight of New York City’s buildings may be causing the metropolis to sink, researchers have said. However, there may be other reasons why the city is sinking — including the way the earth continues to shift after the end of the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago, scientists added. Understanding how … Read more
Rest easy: Earth probably won’t be creamed by a killer asteroid in the next 1,000 years. New research accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal and available on the preprint server arXiv.org finds that none of the kilometer-wide (0.6 mile) asteroids that travel near Earth are likely to hit the planet in the next millennium. … Read more
Global warming has trapped an explosive amount of energy in Earth’s atmosphere in the past half century — the equivalent of about 25 billion atomic bombs, a new study finds. In the paper, published April 17 in the journal Earth System Science Data, an international group of researchers estimated that, between 1971 and 2020, around … Read more
Astronomers have spotted a star devouring one of its planets for the first time. It is a stunning preview of our own planet’s fate, when, in roughly 5 billion years time, Earth too will likely be engulfed by our rapidly expanding sun. The distant planet met its gory demise 13,000 light-years from Earth around a … Read more
