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Dig explores whether the legendary figure Achilles has roots in late Bronze Age history. The video analyzes linguistic clues, Mycenaean-era records, and parallels between the epic hero and a renegade figure known from historical Hittite diplomatic texts, examining how oral traditions may have synthesized real events into myth. The Real Man Behind Achilles? | 26:08 Dig. | 37.8K subscribers | 32,790 views | June 19, 2026 00:00 Achilles Impact 00:57 Academic consensus? 02:15 Proto-Indo European background 05:03 Linear B and Etymology 08:13 Konstantinos Kopanias 09:19 A Biography of Achilles 15:36 A Biography of Piyamaradu 23:17 To [sic] similar to be...

The discovery of an Anglo-Saxon tool in Kent could reveal more about where Britain's "iconic archaeological treasures" were made, according to experts. A small copper-alloy die stamp was found by metal detectorist Stephen Newbury near Lynsted, which has officially been declared as treasure by a coroner for being of significant historical interest, Kent County Council (KCC) said.The sixth or seventh century item is believed to have been used to create decorative metal foils for military equipment such as helmets. It is the only confirmed example of its kind found in Britain, according to analysis from KCC and the British Museum,...

Scientists from NTU Singapore and Waseda University have developed a flexible "diving suit" for cyborg cockroaches, enabling the insects to survive and move underwater and in low-oxygen environments for up to three hours. Published today in Nature Communications, the study could expand the use of cyborg insects in search-and-rescue missions, especially in disaster zones where flooded rubble, puddles or partially submerged spaces can block access for conventional robots. Cyborg insects are living insects fitted with electronic controllers that guide their movement. Because they use the insect's own muscles to move, they require far less power than small artificial robots, which...

Explanation: Why is the Cigar Galaxy billowing red smoke? M82, as this starburst galaxy is also known, was stirred up by a recent pass near large spiral galaxy M81. This doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas and dust, however. Evidence indicates that this gas and dust is being driven out by the combined emerging particle winds of many stars, together creating a galactic superwind. The dust particles are thought to originate in M82's interstellar medium and are actually similar in size to particles in cigar smoke. The featured photographic mosaic combines images taken in visible...

Archaeologists have uncovered six previously unknown Bronze Age mining sites in Extremadura in southwestern Spain. The discoveries were made during a February survey led by researchers from the Maritime Encounters program at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. These sites could help answer a long-standing question about where the metal used in Scandinavian Bronze Age artifacts originally came from.Fieldwork took place from February 9 to 16 in the region surrounding Cabeza del Buey in the province of Badajoz. The project was carried out in partnership with the Universidad de Sevilla and specialists from the Museo Arqueológico Provincial de Badajoz.Researchers documented...

In the first centuries of the Common Era, far from the Baltic coast where amber naturally occurs, communities in Masovia were producing large quantities of amber jewellery -- leaving behind traces of a craft that has only gradually come to light.Archaeologists have identified as many as 10 ancient amber workshops across five settlements. In some of them, they uncovered up to 20,000 amber fragments, along with decorative beads and pendants, pointing to production on a significant scale...At the time, much of present-day Poland was inhabited by communities of the Przeworsk Culture. Known for their advanced craftsmanship, they developed large-scale iron...

IntroductionThe Coercive Acts not only sparked outrage among the common people whom Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816) derided as members of the mob; they also inflamed the indignation of Americans who occupied positions of power and influence. One such person was Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), a member of Virginia's House of Burgesses who helped write a May 1774 resolution designating a day of fasting and prayer to show solidarity with the people of Massachusetts. Soon after, Lord Dunmore (1730–1809), the royal governor, showed his solidarity with Parliament by dissolving the House of Burgesses. As the elected members of that body prepared to regroup...

Explanation: Right now, one of the largest sunspot groups in recent history is crossing the Sun. Active Region 4478 is not only big -- it's violent, showing tangled magnetic fields capable of throwing off huge clouds of particles into the Solar System. Some of these CMEs might impact the Earth. At the extreme, these solar storms could cause some Earth-orbiting satellites to malfunction, the Earth's atmosphere to slightly distort, and electrical power grids to surge. When impacting Earth's upper atmosphere, these particles can produce beautiful auroras. Pictured here, AR 4478 and its dark sunspots were captured in visible light a...

The Shenlong, or "divine dragon," space plane is a reusable, robotic spacecraft that China has repeatedly launched into low Earth orbit (LEO) on board vertical rockets, before reentering the atmosphere for a horizontal runway landing — similar to the iconic spacecraft from NASA's now-defunct Space Shuttle program. The space plane has never been photographed by outside nations, so we have no clear idea what it looks like or how large it is. Shenlong first launched into space on a two-day mission in September 2020, before completing an eight-month stint in LEO between August 2022 and May 2023, and a nine-month...

NASA is racing to save an aging telescope from falling back to Earth with a daring rescue mission. The $30 million salvage operation gets underway as soon as this week with the planned launch of a robotic lifesaver. NASA hired startup Katalyst Space Technologies to boost the Swift Observatory to a higher orbit where it can continue hunting for some of the universe’s biggest explosions. A three-armed spacecraft built by Katalyst will chase after Swift once it takes off from an atoll in the Pacific’s Marshall Islands aboard an airplane-launched Pegasus rocket. Liftoff could occur as early as Tuesday. Scanning...

How Sparta, the most powerful Greek city-state, collapsed in only 20 years. The Decline and Fall of Sparta | 11:02 toldinstone | 627K subscribers | 82,207 views | Febuary 25, 2026Chapters 0:00 Introduction 0:38 Classical Sparta 1:29 Spartan politics 2:22 Helots 3:24 Population decline 4:37 Hubris 5:25 The Battle of Leuctra 6:42 Messenia liberated 7:35 Enter Macedon 8:08 Attempts at reform 9:08 Irrelevance 9:37 Roman Sparta

...through photosynthesis by phytoplankton, microscopic marine organisms so abundant that a single teaspoon of seawater can contain as many as a million of them. (continuation of overlong headline) The invisible forest Phytoplankton are tiny, individually invisible, and almost unimaginably numerous. A single teaspoon of seawater can hold more than a million microscopic organisms, of which phytoplankton are a large part, although the count rises and falls enormously with season, sunlight and the nutrients in the water. One group stands out. Prochlorococcus, the smallest known photosynthetic organism, is so abundant that, by NOAA’s account, it alone produces up to a fifth...

Iranian suicide/loitering drones (kamikaze UAVs) typically have modest payload capacities, in the range of 30–50 kg for the most common types, with some variants or larger models reaching higher. Key Examples Shahed-136 (most prominent, widely exported/used): ~200 kg total weight, payload ~30–50 kg (commonly cited as ~40 kg warhead). Russian variants (Geran-2) have reached ~90 kg in some modified configurations by reducing fuel/range. Shahed-131 (smaller variant): ~10–20 kg payload. Other types like Ababil series or Hadid-110: Often 30–40 kg. Larger systems (e.g., Arash series): Up to ~225–260 kg in some reports, but these are less common for pure "suicide drone"...

Explanation: In this recent HiRISE view from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the little green dot indicated on the surface of the big Red Planet is the Perseverance Mars rover. Recorded on June 13, the car-sized, six-wheeled robot was imaged a day before completing a Martian marathon, traveling a total distance of 26.218 miles (42.195 kilometers) since it began exploring the surface of Mars. That equivalent marathon distance was achieved by Perseverance on its mission sol (Martian day) 1,890, after about 5 Earth years and 4 Earth months of driving. Perseverance is continuing to hunt for biosignatures. In the HiRISE image,...

A United Airlines jet nearly smashed into a drone as it was landing on the Newark runway Friday, officials said. The crew narrowly avoided the unmanned aircraft during its descent around 4:20 p.m., according to the Federal Aviation Administration. “We almost hit a drone,” the pilot can be heard saying in air traffic control audio verified by CNN. The circular and three-foot-wide device was only “about 100 feet below us.” Another pilot flying into Newark on a separate plane also reported seeing the drone at roughly 2,000 feet, additional audio shows. The United Airlines Boeing 737 was carrying 106 passengers...

The National Weather Service in Salt Lake City issued a red flag warning Friday morning as emergency workers continued to battle one of the state’s largest wildfires in its history. The red flag warning, issued when critical fire warnings are occurring or imminent, was to be in place through midnight Saturday. “This is the FIRST Particularly Dangerous Situation Red Flag Warning issued in NWS Salt Lake City history. This is an exceptionally rare event,” the federal agency said in its warning. A map of the area under the warning covered much of central and southwest Utah, with an area of...

In 1995, remarkable contents of a 17th-century shipwreck began to be discovered by divers of the South West Maritime Archaeological Group off Salcombe Bay. The finds consist of over 400 gold coins of the Sa'dian Sharifs of Morocco in addition to ingots, jewellery as well as other items including Dutch pewter and pottery subsequently acquired by the British Museum. Although the ship has not survived, the divers discovered remnants of wood, rope and lead that were parts of its infrastructure. The finds from this shipwreck are significant for several reasons: the gold is clearly a bullion hoard and the number...

The orbits of long-period comets suggest a star passed by our Sun and caused some havoc we're still seeing. Hale-Bopp, the Great Comet of 1997, is a very famous long-period comet. Image Credit: ESO/E. Slawik ================================================================= The closest star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri, about 4.2 light-years away. This has not always been the case, as all stars in the galaxies move about. Observations suggest that just 2.5 million years ago, there was a star that passed very close to the Solar System, and this passage might still have consequences we can see today. Data from the ESA Gaia...

Samal escaped China to her native Kazakhstan in 2018. It was there that she, amid bouts of sobbing, described night-shifts at a Xinjiang province detention center, removing intestines from corpses. Many bodies were still warm. Many bore the marks of torture. ---SNIP--- The reports of Falun Gong and Uyghurs remarkably corroborate the other. Separated by religion, ethnicity, language, and geography, they attest to identical evidence of forced organ harvesting. Testimony from surgeons, prison guards, and international investigators provide further substantiation. Chinese medical journals revealed that many were executed on the operating table.

Ever since SpaceX announced that Starlink had partnered with T-Mobile to support direct cell phone to satellite communication, it seemed only a matter of time before SpaceX challenged existing carriers like AT&T and Verizon directly in the consumer cell phone service market. Directly from the President of SpaceX - President Gwynne Shotwell told investors during a recent IPO roadshow that SpaceX could build its own terrestrial mobile network Now an analysist is speculating that SpaceX could acquire T-Mobile instead of building it's on terrestrial network of cell towers. https://www.investors.com/news/technology/spacex-stock-spcx-elon-musk-acquire-tmobile-wireless-firm/ If this turns out to be true, it would be a...