Even before Stonehenge became Stonehenge, the beloved and mysterious sarsen monument we know today, it was an important place to the people of the Mesolithic and Neolithic that inhabited the region. Bone remains suggest it was once an important burial place for at least hundreds of years – and now a new analysis has shown
Month: August 2018
Mounting science is painting a very bleak picture of a future of soaring temperatures, and the accompanying death toll those soaring temperatures will demand. New research has given us the first solid prediction of how more heatwaves like the one that’s struck Europe this year will affect future death rates, finding tropical heatwaves in some
Last July, California’s Death Valley endured the hottest month ever measured on the planet. This July ended up even hotter. Over both day and night, the temperature at Death Valley averaged 42.3 degrees Celsius (108.1 Fahrenheit), ahead of the mark set a year ago by about a half-degree. That previous mark had broken a record
We’ve only been to the Moon a handful of times. But we’ve already set our sights on a far more ambitious mission: colonize Mars. If you believe the hype, it may happen in just a few decades. Elon Musk anticipates that SpaceX’s BFR (big f–king rocket) will take its first handful of passengers to the
How should humans go about searching for alien life? After all, astronomers have already identified thousands of candidate planets – but in new research, scientists have come up with a way to refine what we’re actually looking for. Researchers say it could be the amount of ultraviolet (UV) light coming from a host star that
Scientists think that a series of famous mass burial sites in the Pacific and northern Scotland are the final resting places for the prehistoric victims of catastrophic tsunamis. While archaeologists have uncovered numerous mass burial sites all around the world, figuring out the story behind these mass graves can be quite difficult to determine, especially
It’s treated as a taboo subject, but miscarriages of pregnancy happen a lot. Well according to a new paper, they happen a lot more than any of us may realise – even the women having them. The research has found that more than half of successful fertilisations will end in miscarriage. The research, which has
Your social calendar might be sucking the joy out of activities that are supposed to be fun or relaxing, according to an upcoming paper co-written by a professor who studies time management. The paper argues that when a leisure activity is planned rather than spontaneous, we enjoy it less. That’s because we tend to mentally
Forget language, or smarts, or even our flair for art. Our species represents the last of its kind simply because we’ve pushed into environments others never dared to tread. Two archaeologists suggest the global domination of a single species of hominin isn’t incidental – Homo sapien’s ability to flourish in extreme conditions was a key
The human brain is a pretty damn amazing organ. Get rid of one bit, and sometimes the brain will just say “I’ve got this” and figure out how to repurpose something else. Take the man with damage to 90 percent of his brain who is out there living his best life. Or the woman who lived for
How do you identify an exoplanet? Often the way it behaves gravitationally is a big clue, but studying the way it reflects light – its spectrum – can also be invaluable. To that end, astronomers have created a catalogue of ‘light fingerprints’: spectral profiles for 19 Solar System bodies, so we can have a better
Hopes for fewer large wildfires in 2018, after last year’s disastrous fire season, are rapidly disappearing across the West. Six deaths have been reported in Northern California’s Carr Fire, including two firefighters. Fires have scorched Yosemite, Yellowstone, Crater Lake, Sequoia and Grand Canyon national parks. A blaze in June forced Colorado to shut down the
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