Science

While evidence for the important role of purple dyes in the ancient Mediterranean goes back to the early 2nd millennium BCE, finds of dyed textiles are extremely rare, and the 3,000-year-old pieces of purple-dyed wool textile from the Timna Valley in Israel are the oldest currently known in the Southern …

The Chumash Indians, hunter-gatherers centered on the south-central coast of Santa Barbara, were using highly worked shells as currency as early as 2,000 years ago, about 1,000 years earlier than archaeologists thought. Chumash cupped beads from purple dwarf olive sea snails (Olivella biplicata). Image credit: Lynn Gamble / SBMNH Collection. …

  NASA is going back to the moon; at least that’s the plan. To get there, the agency has to develop a new generation of crewed spacecraft, including the Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket and the Orion crew module. While the SLS is still in development, Orion has already passed …

The 635-million-year-old pyritized fungus-like microfossils found in the Ediacaran-period Doushantuo Formation in China provide direct fossil evidence for the colonization of land by fungi. The 635-million-year-old fungus-like filamentous microfossils from the Doushantuo Formation in China. Image credit: Andrew Czaja, University of Cincinnati. The Ediacaran-period fungus-like fossils were found in small …

Solar Orbiter, a collaborative mission between ESA and NASA to study the Sun, has captured a series of images showing three solar system planets: Venus, Earth, and Mars. This image was captured on November 18, 2020, by the SoloHI camera on board Solar Orbiter. Venus (left), Earth (middle), and Mars …

  SpaceX made history recently when it launched a record 143 satellites on a single rocket. Among the plethora of spacecraft were ten new Starlink internet satellites. According to CEO Elon Musk, these are the first nodes in SpaceX’s network that have fully operational laser communication systems, allowing the satellites …

The giant dinosaur Spinosaurus acted like modern herons or storks, taking fish and other aquatic prey from the edges of water or in shallow water, but also foraging for terrestrial prey and scavenging on occasion, according to new research by paleontologists from Queen Mary University of London, the University of …

Gravitational-wave detectors can be used to measure gravitational-field hair of extreme black holes, according to a paper published in the journal Physical Review D. Extreme Kerr black holes have gravitational hair that can be measured at finite distances and violates the uniqueness theorems. Image credit: Sci-News.com / Zdeněk Bardon / …

  Astronomers are getting very good at hunting for exoplanets with a little help from powerful ground and space-based telescopes. We’re no longer finding one planet here and there — we’re discovering entire solar systems. TRAPPIST-1 has been of particular interest with its system of seven planets, discovered in 2016 …

An international team of paleontologists has examined the fossilized remains of baby tyrannosaurid dinosaurs found in Alberta, Canada, and Montana, the United States. An artist’s impression of a juvenile tyrannosaur. Image credit: Julius Csotonyi. Tyrannosaurids were the apex predators of the supercontinent Laurasia in the Late Cretaceous epoch, and were …