Free Republic

A new study has provided the clearest picture yet of one of Europe’s most debated fossils — a nearly complete human skull discovered in Petralona Cave, northern Greece. The fossil, first unearthed in 1960, has long challenged scientists with questions about both its identity and its age. A skull unlike Neanderthals or modern humans The Petralona skull belongs to the Homo genus but stands apart from known groups. It shows marked differences from Neanderthals and modern humans, leaving researchers uncertain about where it fits in the evolutionary record. Its age has also been a source of dispute for decades, with...

These fins are said to be among the largest aerodynamic control surfaces ever built for a rocket. Grid fin for the next generation Super Heavy booster. SpaceX/X Elon Musk’s SpaceX has redesigned some parts of its colossal Mars-bound Starship to improve its stability and control. The most notable change is the removal of a landing fin from the Super Heavy booster, which will now use three redesigned grid fins that are 50% larger and stronger to improve vehicle control during descent. The announcement was made on Wednesday via a post on X, where SpaceX shared images revealing the complex, honeycomb-like...

Newly discovered Grand Canyon fossils capture a rare moment in Earth’s history when early animals flourished in a perfect evolutionary setting. Credit: Stock ============================================================================== Exceptionally preserved Cambrian fossils uncovered in the Grand Canyon show how evolution accelerated in resource-rich waters. An extraordinary cache of remarkably well-preserved ancient animals, dating back over 500 million years, has been unearthed in the Grand Canyon, one of the most renowned geological landmarks in the world. This groundbreaking discovery, the first of its kind in the Grand Canyon, features microscopic fossils of rock-grazing mollusks, filter-feeding crustaceans, worm-like creatures with spiked teeth, and even remnants of...

...archaeological evidence at one site called Madjedbebe in the far north of Australia's Northern Territory suggests the area may have been occupied much earlier -- at least 65,000 years ago.Archaeologists recovered human-made artifacts, including stone tools and ocher "crayons," from the Madjedbebe rock shelter and published their findings in a 2017 study. One difficulty in dating the artifacts, however, was the copious amount of sand on the floor of the rock shelter, which can move easily and cause artifacts to fall farther down, making them look older than they are.Although the research team took steps to counteract this issue and...

Harvard science professor Avi Loeb is among experts fascinated by an interstellar object known as 3I/ATLAS. Loeb suggests using the sunsetting NASA spacecraft Juno to intercept the object, which he says could be some sort of alien tech, for study. He tells "NewsNation Prime" that Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., thinks the suggestion is worth evaluating. Harvard professor suggests intercepting mysterious object 3I/ATLAS | NewsNation Prime | 6:47 NewsNation | 2.28M subscribers | 46,254 views | August 3, 2025

Earth's famous Hubble Telescope has just revealed the first images of a mysterious interstellar object racing through our solar system. Spotted on Monday, Hubble has helped astronomers confirm that the massive, high-speed visitor is a comet from a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy. First spotted in late June, the comet named 3I/ATLAS has been on an 800-million-year journey to reach this solar system. The new images from Hubble captured what appears to be an icy tail that's ejecting rocky material from its 12-mile-long core. Those observations were reinforced by a new study published Tuesday morning which revealed 3I/ATLAS...

...Dr. Naunton and his team found a passage leading down to a central chamber. But despite the anticipation of treasure or ancient artifacts, what they found inside took them completely by surprise. The tomb, sealed for nearly 4,000 years, was not as pristine as they had hoped. The chamber was in disarray, showing clear signs of having been disturbed -- but there was no sign of forced entry. That was the first twist in the tale.The seal on the tomb had clearly remained intact, so the question loomed: how had the contents been disrupted? Archaeologists soon concluded that this wasn't...

Welcome to the neighborhood, Ammonite. The object during observations. Image credit: NAOJ/ASIAA The Subaru telescope located at the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawai'i has found a new world within our Solar System, dubbed "Ammonite" by the team who found it. In 2003, NASA-funded researchers spotted what was then the most distant object discovered in our Solar System. The dwarf planet, named Sedna after the Inuit goddess of the sea, was found over 12.9 billion kilometers (8 billion miles) from Earth, potentially making it an inner object of the hypothetical "Oort cloud" surrounding our Solar System. "Sedna is distinguished among other...

The largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth was sold for just over $5 million at an auction of rare geological and archaeological objects in New York on Wednesday, while a juvenile dinosaur skeleton went for more than $30 million. Source NBCThe 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock named NWA 16788 was discovered in the Sahara Desert in Niger by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, after having been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike and traveling 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) to Earth, according to Sotheby’s. The estimated sale price before the auction was $2...

Scientists are confirming a recent and rare invasion from Mars: meteorite chunks from the red planet that fell in Morocco last July. This is only the fifth ...

A bizarre planet may orbit two brown dwarfs in a steep, pole-skimming path—an unheard-of tilt that challenges our understanding of planetary motion. Detected via gravitational wobbles, it might be the first polar-orbiting circumbinary planet ever found. Credit: SciTechDaily.com =================================================================== Astronomers have discovered one of the weirdest planetary systems yet: a possible planet, 2M1510 b, appears to orbit over the poles of two brown dwarfs in a sharply tilted path—almost perpendicular to their own orbit. This freakish setup, unlike anything in our solar system, was detected not by a dip in starlight but through subtle gravitational wobbles captured using ESO’s Very...

There is something unique about the color purple: Our brain makes it up. So you might just call purple a pigment of our imagination. It’s also a fascinating example of how the brain creates something beautiful when faced with a systems error. To understand where purple comes from, we need to know how our eyes and brain work together to perceive color. And that all begins with light. Light is another term for electromagnetic radiation. Most comes from the sun and travels to Earth in waves. There are many different types of light, which scientists group based on the lengths...

A hillfort in Aberdeenshire is one of the largest ancient settlements ever discovered in Scotland, researchers have said. University of Aberdeen archaeologists say 4,000 people may have lived in more than 800 huts perched high on the Tap O' Noth near Rhynie. Many had thought it dated from the Bronze or Iron Age. The team said carbon dating suggested it was likely to be Pictish, dating back as far as the third century AD. They believe at its height it may have rivalled the largest known post-Roman settlements in Europe. Archaeologists from the university have conducted extensive fieldwork in the...

New findings made possible by the James Webb Space Telescope reveal that the Earth-like exoplanet Trappist-1 b may have an atmosphere after all, potentially overturning earlier findings. Approximately forty light years from Earth, seven planets orbit the star Trappist-1, three of which–Trappist-1e, f, and g–exist in the star’s habitable zone and could theoretically be warm enough to allow for liquid water on their surfaces. Since its launch, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has logged 290 hours observing the Trappist-1 system across ten research endeavors. Elsa Ducort of Paris’s Commissariat aux Énergies Atomiques (CEA) led the study team, which analyzed...

Harnessing these molecules can significantly impact agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and electronics. Chemists at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities College of Science and Engineering have successfully synthesized a highly reactive chemical compound that has eluded sicentists for over 120 years. This breakthrough may pave the way for the development of innovative drug treatments, safer agricultural products, and enhanced electronics. For decades, researchers have been investigating molecules called N-heteroarenes, which are ring-shaped chemical compounds that contain one or more nitrogen atoms. Bio-active molecules having a N-heteroarene core are widely used for numerous medicinal applications, lifesaving pharmaceuticals, pesticides and herbicides, and even electronics....

It’s the first time a breeding population of this critically endangered species has been reported. f you’re familiar with the Twitter game “flat f*** Friday”, then oh boy, do we have a treat for you. We present to you one of the flattest fellas around: the Asian giant softshell turtle (Pelochelys cantorii). And, with the help of local community knowledge, researchers have just discovered both its first-ever nesting female and breeding population. Unfortunately, the Asian (or Cantor’s) giant softshell turtle is also critically endangered; its population has been declining due to habitat destruction, getting caught up in fishing gear, and...

A deadly pandemic with mysterious origins: It might sound like a modern headline, but scientists have spent centuries debating the source of the Black Death that devastated the medieval world. Not anymore, according to researchers who say they have pinpointed the source of the plague to a region of Kyrgyzstan, after analyzing DNA from remains at an ancient burial site. "We managed to actually put to rest all those centuries-old controversies about the origins of the Black Death," said Philip Slavin, a historian and part of the team whose work was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The Black Death...

Sometime before 12,000 years ago, nomadic hunter-gatherers in the Middle East made one of the most important transitions in human history: they began staying put and took to farming. A pair of ancient-DNA studies1,2 — including one of the largest assemblages of ancient human genomes yet published — has homed in on the identity of the hunter-gatherers who settled down. Archaeological and genetic evidence suggests that humans first took to farming in the Middle East. This transition — which also later occurred independently in other parts of the world — is known as the Neolithic revolution, and is linked to...

A team of AI researchers at DeepMind, working with colleagues from the University of Venice, the University of Oxford and Athens University of Economics and Business, has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) application to help historians fill in the gaps of text missing from stone, metal or pottery artifacts...During certain points in history, humans began using written text for purposes such as keeping accounts. Such accounts can give modern scholars clues as to how people in ancient societies went about their days. But that is only if the artifacts can be deciphered. Many have been eroded by weather or have...

A long-necked dinosaur that roamed present-day Montana 150 million years ago likely suffered from a respiratory infection, according to a study published in Scientific Reports on Thursday, the first evidence of a respiratory infection in dinosaurs which experts believe could have caused flu-like symptoms including coughing and fever