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The year was 1490. The location, Qingyang, China. It was a spring evening in this central Chinese city when something strange began to occur in the sky above. For one, there was a recently discovered comet that was coming into view: Comet C-1490 Y1. But this comet pales in comparison to the really strange event that was about to occur. The Meteor Shower That Killed 10,000 People | 19:18 Swegle Studios | 459K subscribers | 709,238 views | July 8, 2025

This weekend provides a rare treat for stargazers. Well, planets, to be more specific. Mercury, Venus, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and Jupiter will will appear to line up on the horizon shortly after sunset on Saturday, Feb. 28. Four of the six planets will be visible to the unaided eye, while the other two will require a telescope. The rare celestial occasion, a planetary alignment or planet parade consists of three to five planets and can occur every few months to every few years. However a six or seven planet parade is more rare. Here’s what to know about Saturday’s “planet...

Explanation: Fans of the western sky after sunset have lately enjoyed this month's remarkable array of bright planets. Witnessed from some locations, on February 18 planet Mercury even appeared to slide behind the Moon, an event known as a lunar occultation. These two snapshots, taken in early evening skies show before and after telescopic views of the rare disappearance of innermost planet behind young Moon. The top panel finds bright Mercury just visible at the northern (right) edge of the earthshine-illuminated lunar disk. In the bottom panel the bright planet has emerged in darker skies beyond the Moon's sunlit crescent....

[Hosted by Stephen Fry] Far from being a time of chaos and collapse after the fall of Rome, this video dives deep into the real story of post-Roman Britain. Uncover fascinating archaeological findings that challenge the myth of a desolate wasteland, revealing thriving cities like York, innovative leaders, and a society that continued to trade and exchange ideas with the Mediterranean world. You'll see how evidence from cities, forts like Birdoswald, and stunning coastal sites at Tintagel and Devon prove that the so-called Dark Ages were instead a time of resilience, adaptation, and cultural brilliance. Britain AD: The Shocking Truth...

The Roman ideology of slavery is not racialized. It's not like the Romans think that the Greeks or the Germans are like some fundamentally separate kind of human that justifies their exploitation. The Roman ideology of slavery is really rooted in the law of property and status. So they think that slaves are people who've been conquered and rather than killed, they've been spared and they've been sold into the condition of being somebody else's property. And this seems to mentally explain to them where their slave system comes from and why it's justifiable. It's sort of like disturbing in...

British art historian Waldemar Januszczak shows that Hans Holbein witnessed and recorded the most notorious era in British history. He painted most of the major characters of the 16th century Tudor Era, including the famous image of King Henry VIII. What unsettling secrets lay hidden in his famous paintings? What do his images reveal about Henry's relentless drive to control the English church? The Unsettling Secrets Hidden In Holbein's Tudor Portraits (Waldemar Januszczak) | 59:50 Perspective | 503K subscribers | 2,592,280 views | May 22, 2020

Explanation: Normally faint and elusive, the Jellyfish Nebula is caught in this alluring telescopic field of view. Floating in the interstellar sea, the nebula is anchored right and left by two bright stars, Mu and Eta Geminorum, at the foot of the celestial twins. The Jellyfish Nebula itself is right of center, seen as a brighter arcing ridge of emission with dangling tentacles. In fact, this cosmic jellyfish is part of bubble-shaped supernova remnant IC 443, the expanding debris cloud from a massive star that exploded. Light from the explosion first reached planet Earth over 30,000 years ago. Like its...

Explanation: What does the universe look like through infrared goggles? Our eyes can only see visible light, but astronomers want to see more. Today’s APOD shows spiral galaxy IC 5332 as seen by two NASA telescopes: Webb in mid-infrared and Hubble in ultraviolet and visible light. To toggle between the two space-based views just slide your cursor over the image (or follow this link). The Hubble image highlights the spiral arms of the galaxy separated by dark regions, whereas the Webb image reveals a finer, more tangled structure. Interstellar dust scatters and absorbs light from the stars in the galaxy,...

Explanation: Ever wonder what it would look like to crack open the Sun? The Egg Nebula, a dying Sun-like star, can unscramble this question. Pictured is a combination of several visible and infrared images of the nebula (also known as RAFGL 2688 or CRL 2688) taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The star has shed its outer layers, and a bright, hot core (or "yolk") now illuminates the milky "egg white" shells of gas and dust surrounding the center. The central lobes and rings are structures of gas and dust recently ejected into space, with the dust being dense enough...

Aliens exist — they just haven’t visited Earth, a NASA veteran has claimed. Dr. Gentry Lee has worked at the US space agency since 1968, when he first got involved with the Viking mission to Mars. He has since spent more than half a century designing probes to land on distant planets — but argues Earth has not yet been visited by otherworldly beings. “There exists nothing today that says any alien or any alien machine has ever landed on the planet Earth,” he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference in Phoenix. “If you believe...

As nearly half of U.S. adults say they’re actively trying to drink less, the non-alcoholic aisle has become crowded with options that promise ritual without consequence. The problem is that many of them taste like cough syrup or some other kind of compromise. Wine, in particular, has historically struggled in this category. As a professional product tester, I can attest to my own disenchantment with non-alcoholic wine, to the point that I’ve covered it maybe once before. You can remove the alcohol, but can you preserve structure, aroma and the layered character that makes wine worth pouring in the first...

A software engineer in Spain, used an AI assistant to reverse engineer how a robot vacuum cleaner communicated with DJI cloud servers so he could control his vacuum using the joystick on his game controller and inadvertently took control of over 7000 remote vacuum cleaners which allowed him full control over devices in 24 countries, he had full access to the audio and video coming from the devices, he could control the movement of the devices and was able to produce a detailed map of where the devices were located. Fortunately, the individual reported the security flaw to the company...

Explanation: Look up this week and see a whole bunch of planets. Just after sunset, looking west (mostly), planets Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter will all be visible to the unaided eye simultaneously. If you have a telescope, planets Uranus and Neptune can also be seen. In order up from the horizon, the lineup this week will be Venus (the brightest), Mercury, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, and Jupiter (second brightest). It doesn't matter where on Earth you live because this early evening planet parade will be visible through clear skies all around the globe. The planets will appear to be nearly...

Around 2,500 years ago in Siberia, a young woman experienced a serious head injury, underwent surgery to reconstruct her jaw, and received a primitive prosthetic during the procedure, CT scans of the woman's mummified remains reveal...In 1994, archaeologists with the Russian Academy of Sciences excavated a small cemetery consisting of five low mounds on the Ukok Plateau. One mound held the undisturbed burial of a woman who was around 25 to 30 years old when she died. She was lying on a wooden cot and was wearing a wig. But because her burial lacked significant artifacts and only a part...

...Chlorophyll, the main photosynthetic pigment of plants, absorbs mainly blue and red wavelengths from the Sun and reflects green ones, and it is this reflected light that gives plants their leafy color. This fact puzzles some biologists because the sun transmits most of its energy in the green part of the visible spectrum...DasSarma thinks it is because chlorophyll appeared after another light-sensitive molecule called retinal was already present on early Earth. Retinal, today found in the plum-colored membrane of a photosynthetic microbe called halobacteria, absorbs green light and reflects back red and violet light, the combination of which appears purple.Primitive...

This revelation has made the Yunxian skulls from Hubei province the oldest evidence of our early human relatives, known as hominins, in East Asia, according to research published Wednesday (Feb. 18) in the journal Science Advances...H. erectus has long been considered the first human relative to leave Africa, with 1.78 million to 1.85 million-year-old fossils found at the Dmanisi site in Georgia being the earliest evidence of humans in Asia. But stone tools discovered at two sites in China dated to 2.1 million and 2.43 million years ago have complicated that picture, since they predate experts' theory of when H....

Explanation: Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen with the unaided eye even from the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident. The featured 18-hour exposure, taken from Bory Tucholskie, Poland covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon. Also known as the...

Millions of acres of farmland across the country are privately owned, but a small share of it is foreign-owned land sitting idle in many areas. That’s according to new U.S. Department of Agriculture data which shows just how much of the nation’s agricultural land is owned by other countries. The USDA‘s online portal reveals that more than 45 million acres of land are owned by foreign countries, with an original purchase value of over $38 billion. Our neighbor to the north, Canada, has the most agricultural acreage in the United States, at 15.35 million acres. John Hewlett, a farm and...

A British expat has solved the mystery of a pirate ship that appeared off the Tokushima coast in forbidden Edo-era Japan (1603–1868) -- and reconnected the past to the present. Expat Brit solves pirate ship mystery -- NHK WORLD-JAPAN NEWS | 4:33 NHK WORLD-JAPAN | 3.46M subscribers | 43,793 views | February 13, 2026

An exploration of Rome's travels in the far east. Get "The Book: The Ultimate Guide to Rebuilding Civilization" https://mdsh.io/invictahistory and use code "Invicta" for 10% off.In this history documentary we seek to answer how far to the east did the Romans go? In previous episodes we covered the preceding links between the east and west which had been formed. Now we follow Roman traders into India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, China, and beyond! How Far East Did the Romans Go? (India, Vietnam, China?) DOCUMENTARY | 29:11 Invicta | 1.66M subscribers | 131,135 views | February 1, 2026