Science

By the very early CE in the U.S. Upland Southwest, turkey feather blankets or robes began to replace those made with strips of rabbit fur. Feather blankets would have been important possessions of most members of Ancestral Pueblo communities. In a new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: …

  SpaceX is preparing for the next major milestone in the development of its next-gen Starship spacecraft. Following a successful static fire test this week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has announced on Twitter that the company wants to perform a high-altitude test flight as early as next week. The Starship …

A team of archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has uncovered the remnants of an ancient fortified complex believed to have been founded by the Geshurites, the ally of King David, in the 11th or 10th century BCE. Dr. Tzin with a figurine and an engraved stone at the …

A genetic analysis of transparent nematodes Caenorhabditis elegans  on the International Space Station showed ‘subtle changes’ in about 1,000 genes; stronger effects were found in some genes, especially those responsible for neuronal function and cellular metabolism. Willis et al. performed comparative transcriptomic analysis of Caenorhabditis elegans responses to varying degrees …

Hyperbaric oxygen treatments may induce significant senolytic effects in healthy aging adults, according to new research from Tel Aviv University and the Shamir Medical Center. Hachmo et al. prove that the aging process can be reversed at the basic cellular-molecular level. Aging can be characterized by the progressive loss of …

  Mars is a mostly dry, dusty planet these days, but the more we study it, the more we learn about its watery past. Very watery, it would seem. New findings from the Curiosity rover point to megafloods in the planet’s past. NASA couldn’t see the evidence of this event …

  Diamonds might not be as rare or eternal as diamond miners would like everyone to believe, but they’re still rare enough that creating synthetic diamond is a worthwhile scientific endeavor. Natural diamonds only form deep in the Earth under intense heat and pressure, but researchers from the Australian National …

A new genus and species of medium-sized abelisaurid dinosaur has been unearthed in northern Patagonia, Argentina. An artist’s impression of Rajasaurus narmadensis, a cousin of the newly-discovered abelisaurid dinosaur Niebla antique. Image credit: Bogdanov / CC BY-SA 3.0. Scientifically named Niebla antique, the new dinosaur species lived approximately 69 million …

The Unruh effect was described by Stephen Fulling in 1973, Paul Davies in 1975, and William Unruh in 1976. Sometimes called the Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect, it suggests that if you fly through a quantum vacuum with extreme acceleration, the vacuum no longer looks like a vacuum: rather, it looks like a …

NASA’s Curiosity rover has found a series of symmetrical, 10-m- (33-foot-) high gravel ridges — sedimentologic evidence of ancient giant floods — in Gale Crater on Mars. This artist’s impression shows how Mars may have looked about 4 billion years ago. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO. “We identified megafloods …