Free Republic

A woman long believed to be the 'first Black Briton' was in fact white and had local ancestry from southern England, according to a new genetic study that overturns more than a decade of public perception.For years, scientists believed the woman, known as the Beachy Head Woman, came from sub-Saharan Africa. Her remains were discovered near the cliffs of Beachy Head in East Sussex and were widely presented as early evidence of African presence in Roman Britain...Her remains were first rediscovered in 2012 in Eastbourne Town Hall, stored in a box suggesting they were originally excavated in the 1950s. At...

The body of a man missing for 28 years has been found in a melting glacier in Pakistan's remote and mountainous Kohistan region.A shepherd stumbled upon the body, which was remarkably well-preserved, with its clothing intact, in the so-called Lady Valley in the country's east..."What I saw was unbelievable," the shepherd who found the body, Omar Khan, told BBC Urdu. "The body was intact. The clothes were not even torn."As soon as police confirmed that it was Naseeruddin, locals began offering more information, Mr Khan added.Naseeruddin had a wife and two children. He was travelling with his brother, Kathiruddin, on...

An artist's illustration of what exoplanet PSR J2322-2650b might look like. Because of its extremely tight orbit, the planet’s entire year—the time it takes to go around the pulsar—is just 7.8 hours. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)) ================================================================ Nothing about this planet makes sense. And that’s both confounding and exciting for astronomers. In A Nutshell * Astronomers discovered a Jupiter-sized planet with an atmosphere unlike anything seen before, dominated by carbon molecules in ratios that defy current planetary formation theories. * The planet orbits a pulsar (a dead star’s ultra-dense core) every 7.8 hours and is blasted with...

Stanford Medicine investigators have unearthed the biological process by which mRNA-based vaccines for COVID-19 can cause heart damage in some young men and adolescents — and they’ve shown a possible route to reducing its likelihood. Using advanced but now common lab technologies, along with published data from vaccinated individuals, the researchers identified a two-step sequence in which these vaccines activate a certain type of immune cell, in turn riling up another type of immune cell. The resulting inflammatory activity directly injures heart muscle cells, while triggering further inflammatory damage. The mRNA vaccines for COVID-19, which have now been administered several...

Explanation: The word solstice is from the Latin for Sun and to pause or stand still. And in the days surrounding a solstice the Sun's annual north-south drift in planet Earth's sky does slow down, pause, and then reverse direction. So near the solstice the daily path of the Sun through the sky really doesn't change much. In fact, near the December solstice, the Sun's consistent, low arc through northern hemisphere skies, along with low surface temperatures, has left a noticeable imprint on this path to the mountain town of Peaio in northern Italy. The morning frost on the road...

In this feature-length Special, Derek and Lawrence return to Thessaly in Central Greece for a summer of excavation. They join an international team – headed by archaeologists from Greece and Sweden – to investigate the remains of the ancient city of Vlochos. This season, the team are digging what is thought to be a temple from the Hellenistic era – a golden age of antiquity. But is all as it seems? The team have just three weeks to find out! The Big Ancient Greek Dig Time Team X Crew (Vlochos) | LIVE (currently 2:54 pm) Time Team Official | 350K...

Explanation: Comet Lemmon has been putting on a show for cameras around the globe. Passing nearest to Earth in late October, the photogenic comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) sprouted two long and picturesque tails: a blue ion tail and a white dust tail. The ion tail is pushed away from the coma by the ever-present but ever-changing solar wind, at one point extending over 20 times the diameter of the full Moon -- as captured in this long-duration exposure. The shorter and wider dust tail is pushed away from the coma and shines by reflecting sunlight. The featured picture, captured two...

Behind the Pantheon lies a hidden world long closed to the public. In this episode, I explore the newly opened grottoni—the vaulted service spaces that were part of a structural solution to a fault in the southern end of the rotunda construction. We trace how these hidden rooms functioned in antiquity, how they evolved alongside the Pantheon’s transformation into a Christian church, and how they were directly adjacent to the Basilica of Neptune. Today, these forgotten spaces have been reimagined as a museum, revealing the Pantheon not as a frozen monument, but as a living building shaped by two thousand...

Explanation: When the Moon is at its first quarter phase, the Sun rises along the Montes Caucasus as seen from the lunar surface. The lunar mountain range casts the magnificent, spire-like shadows in this telescopic view from planet Earth, looking along the lunar terminator or the boundary between lunar night and day. Named for Earth's own Caucasus Mountains, the rugged lunar Montes Caucasus peaks, up to 6 kilometers high, are located between the smooth Mare Imbrium to the west and Mare Serenitatis to the east. Still mostly in shadow in this first quarter lunarscape, at the left (west) impact craters...

Explanation: The image was timed to capture a total lunar eclipse -- but it came with quite a twist. First, the eclipse: the fully Earth-shadowed Moon is visible as the orange orb near the top. The eclipsed Moon's orange color is caused by a slight amount of red light scattered first by Earth's atmosphere, adding a color like a setting Sun. Now, the twist: one of the apparent double helix bands is the Milky Way, the central disk of our home galaxy. The second band is zodiacal light, sunlight scattered by dust in our Solar System. The reason they cross...

Yes! Once again this channel asks the important questions. Today, it's the Berkshire Mystery: if York is in Yorkshire, and Oxford is in Oxfordshire, then where exactly is "Berk"? Well in this video, we're going to try and find it. (And along the way, we'll be asking similar questions about "Shrop" and "Wilt", among others...) Paul Whitewick | 85,478 views | December 17, 2025">The Berkshire Mystery: Where Exactly Is "Berk"? | 9:12 The Tim Traveller and Paul Whitewick | 85,478 views | December 17, 2025 ALSO STARRING Paul and Rebecca Whitewick

Explanation: Jupiter, the Solar System's ruling gas giant, is the brightest celestial beacon at the center of this composite night skyscape. The scene was constructed by selecting the 40 exposures containing meteors from about 500 exposures made on the nights of December 13 and 14, near peak activity for this year's annual Geminid meteor shower. With each selected exposure registered in the night sky above Alentejo, Portugal, planet Earth, it does look like the meteors are streaming away from Jupiter. But the apparent radiant of the Geminid meteors is actually closer to bright star Castor, in the shower's eponymous constellation...

Explanation: What's large and blue and can wrap itself around an entire galaxy? A gravitational lens mirage. Pictured here, the gravity of a massive elliptical galaxy (luminous red galaxy: LRG) has gravitationally distorted the light from a much more distant blue galaxy. More typically, such light bending results in two discernible images of the distant galaxy, but here the lens alignment is so precise that the background galaxy is distorted into a horseshoe -- a nearly complete ring: an Einstein ring. Although LRG 3-757 was discovered in 2007 in data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the image shown...

Close-up shot of a leafhopper. (© ddt - stock.adobe.com) =================================================================== Leafhopper-Inspired Nanoparticles Achieve 96% Glare Reduction in Lab Tests In A Nutshell * Nature’s inspiration: Leafhoppers coat themselves with microscopic soccer ball-shaped particles that cut reflective glare by 80-96%, making them harder for predators to spot * Manufacturing breakthrough: Penn State researchers created synthetic versions using microfluidics, producing 100,000+ particles per second, faster than traditional nanofabrication * Precise control: By tweaking polymer chemistry, scientists can dial in exact particle shapes and hole patterns to match five different natural designs * Future applications: Could lead to better anti-glare coatings, energy device...

Breaking NEWS: HHS has terminated multiple federal grants to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), totaling around $18-20 million and for good reason. Consider their recent track record. They have presided over the greatest decline to the health of our children that America has ever seen. The AAP has recommended that pediatricians provide gender-affirming care for children. Since summer 2021, the AAP has also recommended that all students and school staff aged 2 and older wear masks in schools, even though there is no evidence that mask use would stop transmission. These masks harm children's development because speech, language learning,...

When was the last time you cut yourself while cooking or got bruised during a hike? How long did it take for the wound to stop bothering you? Typically, when considering healing time, we think about the depth of the cut or which organs were affected. However, a study published in December 2023 conducted by professor Ellen Langer from Harvard University found another significant factor that seems to influence healing speed, altering the picture we once had. In a unique experiment, Ms. Langer and her colleagues used cupping therapy, a technique using glass cups that has been used for thousands...

Photo by Jordan Benton from Pexels ************************************************************************ How is it December already? What happened to 2025? And how did we suddenly jump from eating Easter eggs to putting up Christmas trees? To understand why our perception of time seems to bend and warp, we need to dig into how our brains tell time in the first place. The term “time perception” is actually a bit of a misnomer, because time itself isn’t “out there” to be perceived. When we perceive a color, a sound, a flavor or a touch, specialized sensory organs detect something in the environment: the wavelength of...

Explanation: Stars are forming in the Soul of the Queen of Aethopia. More specifically, a large star forming region called the Soul Nebula can be found in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia, whom Greek mythology credits as the vain wife of a King who long ago ruled lands surrounding the upper Nile river. Also known as Westerhout 5 (W5), the Soul Nebula houses several open clusters of stars, ridges and pillars darkened by cosmic dust, and huge evacuated bubbles formed by the winds of young massive stars. Located about 6,500 light years away, the Soul Nebula spans about 100...

Explanation: The lovely Pleiades star cluster shines in Earth's night sky, a compact group of stars some 400 light-years distant toward the constellation Taurus and the Orion Arm of our Milky Way galaxy. Recognized since ancient times, the remarkable celestial gathering is visible to the unaided eye. The Pleiades cluster is also well-placed for viewing from both northern and southern hemispheres, and over the centuries has become connected to many cultural traditions and celebrations, including the cross-quarter day celebration Halloween. In Greek myth, the Pleiades were seven daughters of the astronomical titan Atlas and sea-nymph Pleione. Galileo first sketched the...

In an extraordinary—and ominously underreported—announcement, the Department of Defense’s research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has openly revealed a biological research effort that could fundamentally redefine life itself. The program, called Generative Optogenetics (GO), is not science fiction. According to DARPA’s own descriptions, it aims to use light to directly write DNA and RNA sequences inside living cells, effectively turning biology into something programmable at the molecular level. This is concerning, and if it’s not obvious why then pay close attention. DARPA has publicly acknowledged the goal of directing the synthesis of DNA and RNA within living...