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Science News reports that 430,000-year-old wooden tools likely crafted by Neanderthals or Homo heidelbergensis individuals have been discovered in Greece by a team of researchers led by Annemieke Milks of the University of Reading. The site, which is now a coal mine, is located in the central Peloponnese Peninsula. The rare wooden tools were recovered from waterlogged ground 100 feet beneath the surface, in an area that had been an ancient lakeshore, among thousands of pieces of wood, bone, and stone. One of the artifacts, identified through use-wear analysis as a 2.5-foot-long digging stick, was recovered in four pieces. Milks...

Science Magazine reports that five stone blades made from chert outcrops in central France have been found more than 400 miles away in central Spain by Manuel Alcaraz-Castaño of the University of Alcalá and his colleagues. The team members unearthed the yellowish tools at the Peña Capón rock shelter near the Sorbe River, where people fished for salmon and hunted deer, horses, and rabbits between 26,000 and 22,000 years ago. Dating of charcoal and animal bone in the several layers where the chert tools were recovered indicates that the materials were imported for a period of about 1,400 years. "Their...

The reevaluation of 16 flint and radiolarite tools found among bear remains in a cave in the Alps suggests that traveling Neanderthals carried the stone tools with them, according to a Phys.org report. Microscopic examination of the tools by Davide Delpiano of the University of Ferrara and his colleagues detected evidence of retouching, indicating that tools had been sharpened repeatedly, yet no stone flakes or chips were uncovered in Caverna Generosa. Analysis of the chemical makeup of the stone used to make the tools revealed that it had come from a few miles away, much further down the mountain. The...

Explanation: In the vast Orion Molecular Cloud complex, several bright blue nebulas are particularly apparent. Pictured here in the center are two of the most prominent reflection nebulas - dust clouds lit by the reflecting light of bright embedded stars. The more famous nebula is M78, in the image center, cataloged over 200 years ago. To its upper left is the lesser known NGC 2071. Astronomers continue to study these reflection nebulas to better understand how interior stars form. The overall red glow is from diffuse hydrogen gas that covers much of the Orion complex that spans much of the...

Way back in 2012, climate “scientist” Michael Mann, then at Penn State University, sued four defendants for defamation. The four were commentators Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg, who had written blog posts about Mann, and National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, entities which had respectively hosted the Steyn and Simberg posts. The occasion for the Steyn and Simberg posts was that independent investigator Louis Freeh had issued a Report that had castigated Penn State President Graham Spanier for having whitewashed the conduct of the university’s assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky, in a sex abuse scandal. Steyn and Simberg had...

Explanation: Rising over a frozen valley in the Tatra Mountains, the familiar stars and nebulas of Orion dominate this wide-field nightscape. The featured deep photo was taken in southern Poland's highest mountain range last month, where dark skies and alpine terrain combined to reveal both Earth's rugged beauty and the structure of our galaxy. Above the snowy mountains, Orion's bright belt stars anchor a region of glowing interstellar clouds. The Great Orion Nebula, a vast stellar nursery visible even to the unaided eye, shines near the center of the scene. Surrounding it is the enormous arc of Barnard's Loop, a...

Explanation: Can you see nebulas in other galaxies? Yes, some nebulas shine brightly enough -- if you know how to look. Clouds of hydrogen and oxygen emit light at very specific colors, and by isolating them, astronomers and astrophotographers can reveal structures that would otherwise be too faint to notice. This deep, 50-hour exposure highlights glowing hydrogen (red) and oxygen (blue) across galaxy NGC 55, viewed nearly edge-on. Also known as the String of Pearls Galaxy, NGC 55 is often compared to our Milky Way's satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), although NGC 55 lies much farther away at...

Arlington Man -- In 1959, while looking for pygmy mammoth bones on Santa Rosa Island, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History archeologist Phil Orr discovered a human femur sticking out of the canyon wall at Arlington Springs. He knew it was old, but scientific dating technology couldn’t tell him how old. Yet. So he put the bones away in the basement of the SBMNH where they were rediscovered by Don Morris and John Johnson in the 1990s. These two archeologists take us back to Arlington Springs while explaining how modern carbon dating confirmed the bones were over 13,000 years old......

Discover the truth behind the "Dark Ages" of Britain and see how this period was more vibrant and connected than you've ever imagined. Britain AD: The Shocking Truth Of The 5th Century | 49:11 Real History | 490K subscribers | 2,293 views | January 17, 2026

It pairs radar and electro-optical sensors with intense microwave pulses to deliver a “hard kill,” potentially engaging small, low-altitude UAVs beyond three kilometers. Designed to slot into a broader air-defense network—alongside lasers and traditional guns—the system is pitched as a low-logistics answer to cheap swarmsChina’s defense industry has disclosed new technical details and outlined some enhanced capabilities for its truck-mounted Hurricane 3000 high-power microwave (HPM) weapon, a directed-energy system designed to counter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and drone swarms. The details were published by the South China Morning Post.China Drone Aircraft Carrier. Image Credit: X Screenshot. The Hurricane 3000, developed...

While reports have identified the Jiutian as a “general-purpose drone,” concepts have shown it releasing drone swarms with a range of surface and maritime strike munitions....Notably, the drone has a 6 ton payload capacity for either munitions, drone swarms and humanitarian relief material. A concept video on CCTV 14 from May 2025 shows a group of Jiutians releasing swarms of hundreds of smart quadcopter-like systems and other winged attack drones. These were then shown coordinating and overwhelming the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carriers and supporting battleships, clearing the way for anti-ship ballistic, cruise and surface strike missiles. Footage in the same...

Nearly 16,000 drones formed the largest synchronized display ever recorded. The performance earned dual Guinness World Records for drone coordination achievements. China replaced fireworks’ chemical combustion with digitally programmed light choreography. Liuyang, often called the “fireworks capital of the world,” has added another milestone to its history. About two weeks ago, nearly 16,000 drones took to the sky in what is now the largest synchronized drone display ever recorded. The show involved 15,947 units, each following a programmed flight path to create towers, blossoms, and a glowing “Sky Tree.”.. Coordinating thousands of lithium-powered flying devices requires exact precision, and any...

Explanation: This moon is doomed. Mars, the red planet named for the Roman god of war, has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, whose names are derived from the Greek for Fear and Panic. These Martian moons may well be captured asteroids originating in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or perhaps from even more distant reaches of our Solar System. The larger moon, Phobos, is indeed seen to be a cratered, asteroid-like object in this stunning color image from the robotic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which can image objects as small as 10 meters. But Phobos orbits so...

The AD/CE system we use to date the year was introduced - more or less by accident - during the Middle Ages. Before its invention, the classical world used a wide range of dating systems. How did the Greeks and Romans count Years? | 7:52 toldinstone | 615K subscribers | 435,313 views | December 31, 2021

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Explanation: Eight billion people are about to disappear in this snapshot from space taken on 2022 November 21. On the sixth day of the Artemis I mission, their home world is setting behind the Moon's bright edge as viewed by an external camera on the outbound Orion spacecraft. Orion was headed for a powered flyby that took it to within 130 kilometers of the lunar surface. Velocity gained in the flyby maneuver was used to reach a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. That orbit is considered distant because it's another 92,000 kilometers beyond the Moon, and retrograde because the...

Who were the Celts really? Mythical druids of legend or feared warriors of antiquity? Deep inside the European Alps, sealed salt mines have preserved astonishing evidence of a powerful civilisation that flourished more than 3,000 years ago. These people were neither barbarians nor island dwellers -- they were the rulers of a vast Kingdom of Salt, enriched by one of the most valuable resources of the ancient world. Now, a remarkable discovery raises new questions. Inside a 2,400-year-old Celtic tomb, the remains of an aristocratic woman and two unusually large men are uncovered. Were they relatives, ritual sacrifices, or part...

Explanation: Very faint planetary nebula Abell 7 is about 1,800 light-years distant. It lies just south of Orion in planet Earth's skies toward the constellation Lepus, The Hare. Posing with scattered Milky Way stars, its generally simple spherical shape about 8 light-years in diameter is revealed in this deep telescopic image. The beautiful and complex shapes seen within the cosmic cloud are visually enhanced by the use of long exposures and narrowband filters that capture emission from hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Otherwise Abell 7 would be much too faint to be appreciated by eye. A planetary nebula represents a very...

According to a Science in Poland report, traces of four unusual huts dated to the eleventh or twelfth century have been uncovered on an island in the Baltic Sea near the coast of Poland. Researchers were excavating an area once known as Srebrne Wzgórze on the northern edge of the medieval town, where there had been a market and craft workshops, when they unearthed the huts. “They are platforms made of clay and sand, surrounded by a ditch,” said Wojciech Filipowiak of the Polish Academy of Sciences. “Some have a hearth, some have an oven,” he added. Pottery, animal bones,...