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by Vitals

on Aug 21

Bumblebees Lick Their Lips When They Like Something. They Shake Their Heads When They Don't.

A bee brain is smaller than a grain of sand. Apparently that's enough to have opinions about what you're eating. What that means for "feelings" is where it gets complicated.

#Nature

by Dark Matter

on Aug 21

A LATAM Pilot Saw Something Dancing Over São Paulo. His Plane Shook Three Times.

There was no storm anywhere near the flight. Two official statements later, nobody can say why the aircraft trembled.

#Aliens

by Deep Time

on Aug 21

Britain's Famous Bronze Age Bearded Shaman Was a Woman Who Made Gold

She ran a metalworking operation near Stonehenge 4,000 years ago. For two centuries, every museum label had her sex wrong. The tools never lied. The assumption did.

#History

by Signal

on Aug 21

The First Moon Found Outside Our Solar System Is Technically Not a Moon

More than 6,000 planets beyond our solar system have been catalogued, and exactly zero confirmed satellites. The best candidate yet does not circle a planet at all.

#Astronomy

by Tectonics

on Aug 20

A Cooler Earth Core Could Answer 3.5-Billion-Year-Old Magnetic Question

For most of Earth's history, nothing explained how it powered its own compass before the solid core existed. A lab technique suggests the source was hiding in a bad temperature estimate.

#Earth Sciences

by Vitals

on Aug 20

Your Brain Has a Secret Drain. Aging Is Slowly Closing It.

Cerebrospinal fluid escapes through microscopic holes in a skull bone near your nose. The passage narrows over decades, but a nasal spray restored full flow in older mice.

#Medicine & Health

by Dispatch

on Aug 20

The "Hobbit" Wasn't Hunting Stegodons. It Was Eating Their Leftovers.

A small-brained hominin shared a cave with the largest lizard on Earth, and lost most of the fights over dinner. The bones show who really controlled the carcass.

#History

by Parallax

on Aug 20

The Supernovae Were Wrong. Whether the Universe Noticed Is Still Unclear.

The Nobel-winning proof that dark energy exists was built on exploding stars assumed to be identical. What if they weren't?

#Astronomy

by Parallax

on Aug 19

The Jellyfish Nebula Has Been Hiding a Body

One of astronomy's most studied objects was sitting on a secret for 30 years. The galaxy's ledger of supernova remnants may need a full audit.

#Astronomy

by Deep Time

on Aug 19

Princess Ita's Dagger Was Not Ceremonial

These women were buried with real weapons. The bones confirm it. The more uncomfortable question is what else we've been calling symbolic.

#History

by Dispatch

on Aug 19

Your Mother's Cells Are Living Inside Your Brain

Your brain contains cells that aren't yours, and may never have been. What exactly your mother's DNA is doing in there remains, somehow, an open question.

#Medicine & Health

by Canopy

on Aug 19

A Living Dress Heals Its Own Tears

It's made of fungal tissue, it repairs itself, and it might not outlast your other clothes. The question nobody's answered yet: how do you keep it alive?

#Nature

by Corpus

on Aug 18

A Vial of Scabs Crossed Three Oceans and Killed 220,000 People

The debate over what started Australia's 1789 epidemic may be settled, and the answer was riding in a British medical kit the whole time. What happened next reshaped a continent.

#History

by Field Notes

on Aug 18

The Naked Mole-Rat Queen Doesn't Rule With an Iron Fist. She Rules With a Smell.

One airborne compound keeps every other female in a colony infertile, and it doesn't require anyone to be in the room to work. What else are we missing?

#Nature

by Deep Time

on Aug 18

The Galaxy You Are Standing In Was Upside Down 10 Billion Years Ago

Something hit the Milky Way so hard it flipped. What that means for every star in it, including ours, is still being worked out.

#Astronomy

by Corpus

on Aug 18

Joy to the World, Then the ER: The Rare Syndrome Where Happiness Breaks Your Heart

Devastating news and the best day of your life can trigger the exact same cardiac emergency. Here's the biology behind celebrations that land people in the ICU.

#Medicine & Health

by Dispatch

on Aug 17

Assyria Erased Three Kings From History, Almost

The record of who sat on Assyria's throne stood unquestioned for a century of scholarship. Then two historians found what the empire tried to scrub out.

#History

by Signal

on Aug 17

The Asteroid That Vanished From Radar Came Back a Comet

For almost three decades, astronomers tracked what looked like an ordinary rock with total confidence. Then a routine observation came up empty, and what reappeared in its place wasn't ordinary at all.

#Astronomy