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Science (General/Chat)

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  • Iron Age hoard to go on public display this summer

    02/15/2026 10:10:15 PM PST · by SunkenCiv · 1 replies
    BBC ^ | Fiona Callow
    A collection of more than 800 Iron Age artefacts found in a North Yorkshire field will go on public display for the first time.The Melsonby Hoard is believed to be one of the UK's largest finds from the period, and, following a fundraising campaign, was acquired by the Yorkshire Museum.The collection, which features chariot wheels, cauldrons and spears, will displayed in an exhibition at the museum in York from May onwards.The items were first uncovered in Melsonby, North Yorkshire, by metal detectorist Peter Heads and excavated with the help of Durham University.The discovery was reported to the authorities in December...
  • The Volcano That Could Wipe Out the Greek Islands | Volcano Documentary [44:43]

    02/15/2026 9:52:57 PM PST · by SunkenCiv · 5 replies
    YouTube ^ | December 9, 2025 | Autentic Documentary (inauthentic spelling?)
    This active volcano still spews gas -- and a major eruption could trigger a deadly tsunami. Locals live in its shadow, knowing history could repeat itself. Nisyros is a small, volcanic island and municipality in the Dodecanese group of islands in the Aegean Sea, located between Kos and Tilos. The Volcano That Could Wipe Out the Greek Islands Volcano Documentary | 44:43 Autentic Documentary | 95.8K subscribers | 58,260 views | December 9, 2025
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - To Fly Free in Space

    02/15/2026 6:40:37 PM PST · by MtnClimber · 14 replies
    NASA ^ | 15 Feb, 2026 | Image Credit: NASA, STS-41B
    Explanation: What would it be like to fly free in space? About 100 meters from the cargo bay of a space shuttle, Bruce McCandless II was living the dream -- floating farther out than anyone had ever been before. Guided by a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), astronaut McCandless, pictured, was floating free in space. During Space Shuttle mission 41-B in 1984, McCandless and fellow NASA astronaut Robert Stewart were the first to experience such an "untethered space walk". The MMU worked by shooting jets of nitrogen and was used to help deploy and retrieve satellites. With a mass over 140...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Roses are Red

    02/15/2026 5:57:56 PM PST · by MtnClimber · 6 replies
    NASA ^ | 14 Feb, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Raffaele Calcagno Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST
    Explanation: Roses are red, nebulas are too, and this Valentine's gift is a stunning view! Pictured is a loving look at the Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237): a cosmic bloom of bright young stars sitting atop a stem of glowing hot gas. The rose’s blue-white speckles are among the most luminous stars in the galaxy, with some burning millions of times brighter than the Sun. Their stellar winds sculpt the famed rose shape by pushing gas and dust away from the center. Though only a few million years old, these massive stars are already nearing the end of their lives, while...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - NGC 147 and NGC 185

    02/15/2026 4:52:13 PM PST · by MtnClimber · 6 replies
    NASA ^ | 13 Feb, 2026 | Image Credit & Copyright: Chuck Ayoub
    Explanation: Dwarf galaxies NGC 147 (left) and NGC 185 stand side by side in this deep telescopic portrait. The two are not-often-imaged satellite galaxies of M31, the great spiral Andromeda Galaxy, some 2.5 million light-years away. Their separation on the sky, less than one degree across a pretty field of view toward the constellation Cassiopeia, translates to only about 35 thousand light-years at Andromeda's distance, but Andromeda itself is found well outside this frame. Brighter and more famous satellite galaxies of Andromeda, M32 and M110, are seen much closer to the great spiral. NGC 147 and NGC 185 have been...
  • Traces of Roman Cologne Uncovered

    02/15/2026 11:01:11 AM PST · by SunkenCiv · 23 replies
    Archaeology Magazine ^ | February 12, 2026 | editors / unattributed
    Finestre Sull'Arte reports that during new construction work for MiQua, the future LVR-Jewish Museum currently being built near the city's historic center, excavations revealed several important and well-preserved structures associated with the site's early Roman settlement. These include an exceptional second-century a.d. lararium, a type of domestic shrine dedicated to protective household deities known as Lares. This altar was located in the area of the former Praetorium, which served as the palace for the Roman governor, and is the first of its kind ever found north of the Alps. The archaeological team also uncovered the remains of a fourth-century a.d....
  • Canada could remove 5 times its annual carbon emissions by planting trees on edge of boreal forest, study finds

    02/15/2026 9:25:46 AM PST · by Eleutheria5 · 38 replies
    Live Science ^ | 13/2/26 | Brian Owen
    Planting trees on 6.4 million hectares of northern taiga forest could remove 3.9 gigatons of CO2 by 2100 — five times Canada's annual emissions. Canada could remove more than five times its annual carbon emissions from the atmosphere by the end of the century by planting trees along the northern edge of its boreal forest, a new study suggests. In recent decades forests have slowly moved north in response to climate change — in particular the taiga area on the edge of the boreal forest, the massive belt of forest stretching across northern Canada, Europe, and Russia, where it transitions...
  • Why is liquid hydrogen so challenging ... ?

    02/15/2026 5:12:06 AM PST · by TomEd · 36 replies
    Quora ^ | 2/13/2026 | James Cobban
    James Cobban Space Nerd since 19569h Why is liquid hydrogen so challenging to handle when fueling rockets, and what special techniques are used to prevent leaks? The most effective way to avoid the challenges of using liquid hydrogen is to not use liquid hydrogen. There is no galactic police officer holding a phaser forcing NASA to use liquid hydrogen. There is no law of physics which says rockets must use liquid hydrogen. What.there are is a bunch of collosally ignorant politicians being bribed to insist that NASA piss away billions of tax dollars on technology which killed fourteen American heroes....
  • White House unleashes at Gavin Newsom’s European ‘vanity project’ – as Gov makes shocking claim about auto industry

    02/15/2026 4:49:27 AM PST · by Libloather · 33 replies
    NY Post ^ | 2/13/26 | Annie Gaus, Josh Koehn
    For the second time in three weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom has abandoned California to fly to Europe and schmooze with world leaders at the Munich Security Conference. The White House and the governor’s political adversaries have brutally dismissed Newsom’s three-day trip as wasteful showboating. Newsom has been accused of ignoring California’s growing list of problems to peacock around at the talkfest being held in two five-star hotels in Munich – while bashing America and President Trump. “Gavin Newscum’s travels to Davos and Munich would be considered a vanity project if anyone there actually knew or cared who he was,” White...
  • The Discovery of Seneca the Elder's Lost Roman History [3:08]

    02/14/2026 9:33:11 AM PST · by SunkenCiv · 25 replies
    YouTube ^ | February 13, 2026 | Secrets of the Dead PBS
    Researcher Valeria Piano employs two different technological methods to decipher a carbonized scroll from Herculaneum. First, she uses a microscope to examine the texts, and then she studies images of the scrolls produced with infrared light. Her work has brought to light a history of Rome written by Seneca the Elder, long thought to have been lost forever. The Discovery of Seneca the Elder's Lost Roman History | 3:08 Secrets of the Dead PBS | 12.7K subscribers | 3,726 views | February 13, 2026 YouTube transcript reformatted at textformatter.ai follows.
  • Roman military helped bring cats to Europe

    02/13/2026 3:32:26 PM PST · by SunkenCiv · 43 replies
    Popular Science ^ | December 1, 2025 | Laura Baisas
    Initially, archaeologists believed that humans began to live with cats about 9,500 years ago in... parts of the present-day eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. This timeline coincides with the beginning of the Neolithic era, when agriculture started to spread. The grains used in farming attracted rodents, which then enticed the wildcats to come and eat the rodents. Neolithic humans then likely kept the wildcats around to keep the rodents away, paving the way for domestication. Cat remains dating [circa 9500 years ago] have been discovered in present-day Cyprus, indicating that the animals were a part of daily life by then.Cats...
  • The Rise and Fall of Laudanum: The Drug That Built The Gilded Age (late 1870s - late 1890s)

    02/13/2026 2:16:16 PM PST · by Texan4Life · 17 replies
    You Tube ^ | 17 DEC 2025 | After Hours History Channel
    This is the untold story of America's first opioid crisis—and how Purdue Pharma copied the exact same playbook 120 years later. The corporate tactics, the targeting of women, the media manipulation, the blocked regulations. Every strategy that created the modern opioid epidemic was perfected in the Gilded Age, which was the period from about the late 1870s to the late 1890s, which occurred between the Reconstruction era and the Progressive Era. CHAPTERS: 0:00 - The Drug You Could Buy Next to Flour 4:08 - Part One: God's Own Medicine 9:44 - Part Two: The Soldier's Disease 15:12 - Part Three:...
  • Pompeii's ruins challenge Rome's famous concrete recipe

    02/13/2026 6:28:16 AM PST · by SunkenCiv · 45 replies
    Popular Science ^ | December 9, 2025 | Andrew Paul
    For once, new research on the ruins of the Roman city of Pompeii is not focusing on the destructive aftermath of the infamous Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 CE. Instead, it centers on the creative acts preceding it. After taking a closer look at the city's construction projects, a team from MIT believes that ancient Rome's legendary concrete recipe might need a major historical revision.When ancient Roman architecture comes to mind, the columns and coliseums are generally the first things that pop into your head. These structures were often built using Roman concrete -- and that material traces back to...
  • AI Could Replace 50% Of Entry-Level White-Collar Jobs Within 5 Years, Warns Tech CEO

    02/12/2026 4:17:06 PM PST · by MinorityRepublican · 36 replies
    NDTV ^ | Feb 11, 2026 | Nikhil Pandey
    Matt Shumer warns that AI is reshaping industries like law, finance, and customer service, urging professionals to adapt quickly to stay relevant. Artificial intelligence could eliminate up to half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years, according to tech entrepreneur Matt Shumer, who says the shift is unfolding faster than most people realise. Shumer, founder and CEO of AI firm OthersideAI (HyperWrite), made the remarks in a widely shared essay titled Something Big Is Happening. In it, he compared the current AI moment to early 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted economies and daily life across...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - The Bay of Rainbows

    02/12/2026 12:03:16 PM PST · by MtnClimber · 8 replies
    NASA ^ | 12 Feb, 2026 | Image Credit & Copyright: Olaf Filzinger
    Explanation: Dark, smooth regions that cover the Moon's familiar face are called by Latin names for oceans and seas. That naming convention is historical, though it may seem a little ironic to denizens of the space age who recognize the Moon as a mostly dry and airless world, and the smooth, dark areas as lava-flooded impact basins. For example, this telescopic lunar vista, looks over the expanse of the northwestern Mare Imbrium, or Sea of Rains and into the Sinus Iridum, the Bay of Rainbows. Ringed by the Jura Mountains (montes), the bay is about 250 kilometers across. Seen after...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - A Year of Sunspots

    02/11/2026 1:15:19 PM PST · by MtnClimber · 13 replies
    NASA ^ | 11 Feb, 2026 | Image Credit: NASA, SDO; Processing & Copyright: Şenol Şanli & Uğur İkizler; Text: Cecilia Chirenti
    Explanation: How many sunspots can you see? The central image shows the many sunspots that occurred in 2025, month by month around the circle, and all together in the grand central image. Each sunspot is magnetically cooled and so appears dark -- and can last from days to months. Although the featured images originated from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, sunspots can be easily seen with a small telescope or binoculars equipped with a solar filter. Very large sunspot groups like recent AR 4366 can even be seen with eclipse glasses. Sunspots are still counted by eye, but the total number...
  • Inside the extraordinary rewrite of the Palisades Fire report — read the draft the public never saw

    02/11/2026 2:07:29 AM PST · by Libloather · 15 replies
    California Post ^ | 2/10/26 | Jamie Paige
    The full extent of the Palisades Fire report cover-up has been revealed. The California Post has obtained the first draft of the Palisades After-Action Fire Report — before it was quietly altered and released to the public. Newly uncovered edits show sweeping changes to the 92-page document that was meant to deliver a warts-and-all account of the disaster, putting more pressure on Mayor Karen Bass to explain whether her office played a role in softening the language to blunt criticism of the city’s response to a fire that killed at least 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures. Mayor...
  • Linguistic evidence supports date for Homeric epics

    02/10/2026 6:18:07 PM PST · by SunkenCiv · 21 replies
    Bioessays ^ | May 2013 | Eric Lewin Altschuler, Andreea S Calude, Andrew Meade, Mark Pagel
    AbstractThe Homeric epics are among the greatest masterpieces of literature, but when they were produced is not known with certainty. Here we apply evolutionary-linguistic phylogenetic statistical methods to differences in Homeric, Modern Greek and ancient Hittite vocabulary items to estimate a date of approximately 710-760 BCE for these great works. Our analysis compared a common set of vocabulary items among the three pairs of languages, recording for each item whether the words in the two languages were cognate - derived from a shared ancestral word - or not. We then used a likelihood-based Markov chain Monte Carlo procedure to estimate...
  • Ancient Greek Genius Archytas Built a Flying Machine 2,400 Years Before Drones

    02/10/2026 4:38:50 PM PST · by SunkenCiv · 14 replies
    GreekReporter ^ | February 5, 2026 | Nick Kampouris
    So what does a 2,400-year-old wooden bird that once flew have to do with us today? The answer is more than one might expect.The vision of Archytas fundamentally shaped our world by proving that mechanics is a creative force that could drive humanity forward. He founded the field of mathematical mechanics, bridging the gap between abstract theory and real-world applications through tangible inventions. That ancient pigeon, described by the Roman writer Aulus Gellius as being propelled by a jet of steam, was the ancestor of every modern engine, drone, and robot.Although this may sound like an exaggeration, it truly is...
  • George Cayley: The Man Who Invented Flight

    02/10/2026 4:34:49 PM PST · by SunkenCiv · 16 replies
    Amusing Planet ^ | November 19, 2020 | Kaushik Patowary
    In 1849, Cayley built his first full-sized glider based on the same designs he created back in 1799, and successfully flew a 10 year old boy on one short flight. In 1853, he built a larger glider and sent his coachman flying 900 feet across a Brompton dale. Some say it was his grandson and not the coachman who took flight. Still others insist it was neither, but the butler instead.