Science (General/Chat)
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The Oman Observer reports that burial chambers containing human remains and pottery have been excavated in northwestern Oman by archaeologists from Oman's Department of Heritage and Tourism. The burials have been dated to the third millennium B.C. and attributed to Mesopotamia's Jemdet Nasr civilization. Walid bin Hamad al Ghafri of the Department of Heritage and Tourism said that the excavation uncovered many beads, in addition to bronze arrowheads, axes, and daggers. Archaeological sites in the region are in danger of destruction due to rapid urban development, he concluded. To read about how people lived in the Omani desert some 5,000...
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Reuters reports that archaeologists have uncovered a wooden cupboard discovered in a house on Via dell'Abbondanza in central Pompeii. Inscriptions in the house suggest that it belonged to Cornelius Maximus. "We cannot reconstruct with certainty the identity of whoever lived in the house, but these fragments bring us closer to their daily life," said Gabriel Zuchtriegel of Pompeii Archaeological Park. Researchers determined that before it was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, the cupboard held a necklace made up of at least 24 crepundia, or amulets crafted from bone, glass paste, earthenware, and rock crystal. Some...
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Explanation: Did this meteor come from that comet? Probably not. Although many meteors do originate from comets, there are thousands of comets that have visited the inner Solar System recently, and matching meteors to them can be tricky. And to be clear, the pictured comet is far behind the streaking meteor. Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) was captured from Hautacam, France in April when the giant space iceberg sported impressive ion (blue) and dust tails. Sand-sized rocky debris that enters Earth’s atmosphere typically appears as meteors, while the colorful foreground streak here may indicate a complicated composition. This month three notable...
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Did you know that one of the most important cities of the Roman Empire is in Germany? In Trier, ancient gates, imperial baths and a Roman bridge stand alongside cafés, students and modern city life. Join us as we explore Germany's oldest city! Trier: Where Roman Emperors Once Ruled | 6:15 DW Travel | 432K subscribers | 69,118 views | November 1, 2026
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Science Alert reports that Alexander Ioannidis of Stanford University and his colleagues analyzed the genomes of more than 1,000 people who live in French Polynesia; 12 genomes from individuals on the island of Rapa Nui; and the genomes of people native to Hawaii, Samoa, Tonga, and Tahiti. First, the researchers isolated segments of Polynesian ancestry with machine learning, and then they applied an identity by descent method, which can identify common ancestors of living people and people from the past. The study shows that people traveled across Polynesia in small populations, sometimes resulting in a genetic bottleneck of reduced genetic...
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La Brújula Verde reports that 4,000-year-old paw prints have been found in adobe brick at Tavşanlı Höyük, a settlement mound in western Anatolia that dates back some 8,000 years. The sun-baked bricks were part of a wall that collapsed during a fire in the Bronze Age. Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Turkey's Minister of Culture and Tourism, said that the prints had been made by a dog. Erkan Fidan of Bilecik Şeyh Edebali University and his excavation team have also uncovered ceramics, adobe, bone, burnt wood, and flint at the site. To read about other ancient canine prints preserved in brick, go...
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Explanation: What’s causing this unusually long cloud on Mars? Known as the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC) and first recorded by NASA’s Viking Orbiter 2 in 1977, the strange cloud has been imaged in greater detail more recently by ESA’s robotic Mars Express spacecraft. The featured image is from 2018. The cloud forms only during spring and summer seasons and then only during morning hours. Made of water-ice, the most familiar process that causes cloud crystals to form around bits of dust would fail due to the thinness and lack of dust high in the Martian atmosphere. Leading speculation holds...
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It looks like Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s getting a wish-granted monkey-paw style: MTA buses are now de-facto free — at the price of making them increasingly dangerous and blowing a disastrous hole in the agency’s finances. Not to mention the larger consequence of surrendering to farebeating. MTA chief Janno Leiber last week suspended the EAGLE fare-verification program after a couple of ugly incidents, presumably under political orders not to upset the anti-policing left. And NYPD flacks say the cops have “no plans” to step in; officers haven’t been issuing more than handful of farebeating summonses for some time, and the city’s...
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Hoping FR will take the hint... Latency, in the realm of technology and network communication, is a critical factor that influences the time delay between input and output. This article explores the concept of latency, its real-world implications, common reasons for latency, and methods to reduce it. Whether you're a gamer, a streamer, or simply looking to optimize your internet experience, understanding and managing latency is key to a smoother digital journey.
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With behind the scenes access at the British Museum, this series follows passionate metal detectorists as their incredible, and often valuable, discoveries make their way through the fascinating world of the museum's Portable Antiquities Scheme. 3,000-Year-Old Gold Pendant Unearthed in Extraordinary Find Great British History Hunters | 14:06 Journal - History Documentaries | 157K subscribers | 70,522 views | June 23, 2026
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Three minor earthquakes jolted across California overnight right along the San Andreas Fault. The quakes registered in the mid-magnitude 2 range across Northern and Southern California on Sunday. A small 2.7 magnitude earthquake was detected in Petrolia at around 4:31 a.m., followed by a 2.6 magnitude shake in Santa Barbara near 4:39 a.m, according to a USGS Latest Earthquakes Interactive Map. Westley was also rattled with a magnitude 2.5 quake on Saturday night. The red lines on the interactive map represent major tectonic plate boundaries across the world, with the line through California tracing the San Andreas Fault.
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Explanation: What color is the Moon? It depends on the night -- and the time. Outside of the Earth's atmosphere, the dark Moon, which shines by reflected sunlight, appears a magnificently brown-tinged gray. The featured image highlights a collection of apparent colors of the full moon on Earth, documented by one astrophotographer over 10 years from different locations across Italy. A red- or yellow-colored moon usually indicates a moon seen near the horizon. There, some of the blue light has been scattered away by a long path through the Earth's atmosphere, sometimes laden with fine dust. A blue-colored moon is...
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A historian makes a stunning discovery -- a 1,000-year-old sword buried for centuries. This rare find offers a glimpse into a forgotten past and could reshape what we know about the era it came from. The Remarkable Find Of A 1,000-Year-Old Sword Great British History Hunters | 12:37 Journal - History Documentaries | 157K subscribers | 351,181 views | August 9, 2026
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On the surface, Uranus looks calm. And yet, we've suspected for a long time that inside there must be something very weird going on. So, in 1986, when NASA was finally able to probe Uranus for the first time with its Voyager 2 mission, what they found was nothing short of incredible. While most people probably think that Uranus is filled with gas, we are now realizing that it's actually full of something massive - a strange combination of forces that appears to defy all logic. And it's taken NASA scientists more than 40 years just to get to the...
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On the surface, Uranus looks calm. And yet, we've suspected for a long time that inside there must be something very weird going on. So, in 1986, when NASA was finally able to probe Uranus for the first time with its Voyager 2 mission, what they found was nothing short of incredible. While most people probably think that Uranus is filled with gas, we are now realizing that it's actually full of something massive - a strange combination of forces that appears to defy all logic. And it's taken NASA scientists more than 40 years just to get to the...
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Peggy Mohan’s new book Father Tongue, Mother Land: The Birth of Languages in South Asia (published by Penguin Random House in 2025) can be seen as a sequel to her earlier work Wanderers, Kings and Merchants: The Story of India through Its Languages (2021), where she explored the development of languages in India while looking into the waves of migration of ‘men’ into the subcontinent from the ancient times. In her new work, Peggy is looking into a more remote past to get to the root of the modern Indian languages. Peggy Mohan sketches a historical picture of the emergence...
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Is the world in danger with Russians incapable of handling their own nuclear missiles?
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Explanation: What spooky planet is this? Planet Earth on a dark and stormy night, of course. The ghostly scene was photographed at Hverir, a geothermally active area found along northeastern Iceland's volcanic landscape. Triggered by solar activity, geomagnetic storms have unleashed energetic particles trapped in Earth's magnetic field. Penetrating the planet's upper atmosphere at high latitudes, the particles create auroral displays in the starry night sky. Ghostly towers of steam and gas are venting from local fumaroles to dance against the eerie, greenish northern lights. For now, auroral activity on planet Earth remains in a high state as the Sun...
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The system that has driven life-altering discoveries and helped make the United States a superpower is now under intense strain.The warning, buried in an obscure government report this summer, was unflinching.The Defense Department’s vaunted network of research laboratories — whose scientists helped develop satellite communication, radar technology, and even the computer mouse — was in trouble.The labs lost a significant share of their staff last year, largely in response to the Trump administration’s efforts to thin the federal work force, the report found. Refilling critical positions was proving difficult due in part to President Trump’s demand that new hires be...
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According to a Türkiye Today report, green malachite and copper has been uncovered in a 9,000-year-old workshop in a Neolithic settlement in southeastern Turkey. Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said that the pieces of raw and worked malachite, copper beads, and other copper objects were found in the workshop, which has a stone-paved work area. Six postholes were found around the edges of the area, suggesting that it may have been covered by a canopy. "The discovery shows that the mining tradition here continued for about 2,000 years and that specialized production activities took place in specific work...
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