Deep in western Russia, if you know where to look, you’ll find a small collection of ragged scrap metal and crumbled concrete. Which isn’t that exciting. But if you rifle through the rubble, you will find a large, metal disc bolted to the ground. This isn’t just any old disc – it’s the welded-shut cap of

Send those history books for a reprint, sharpen your Wikipedia editing skills, and adjust your answer for the next pub trivia night. It turns out that the destruction of Pompeii probably happened sometime after 17 October 79 CE and not, as has been previously thought, on August 24.   That’s based on a newly discovered

If you’ve managed to avoid Christmas music so far, that’s only going to get harder the closer to December we get. Prepare yourself for more stores blasting out All I Want for Christmas, and Frosty the Snowman.   Christmas music is something you either love or hate. If you find the tunes pretty annoying, then

Unassuming farmland in Østfold County, Norway, was hiding a secret for centuries – and now it’s been rumbled. Using high-resolution ground-penetrating radar, archaeologists have found an ancient Viking cemetery, complete with what appears to be a well-preserved ship burial.   A popular mode of interment among the Norse Vikings, ship burials consisting of a longboat

They were teenage computer geeks, bespectacled kids from Seattle who taught themselves programming from a Teletype terminal, learned the basics of business from Fortune magazine and dreamed of “a computer in every home and on every desk.”   Paul Allen was the self-described “idea man,” the shy son of librarians. Bill Gates was the business-oriented

Books are pretty amazing – gateways to other worlds, compact parcels bursting with knowledge. And if you grow up surrounded by books, you’re going to get a bit of a boost in life compared to non-readers.   At least, that’s the conclusion of a new study, which found that teens who leave school before graduating,

It’s been several months since the late Stephen Hawking passed away, but posthumous writings by the groundbreaking scientist show the great man still had much more to tell us. Just days after Hawking’s final academic paper was published online, the world-famous physicist is back in the spotlight for a different reason: a stark, controversial prediction

The remains of a child unearthed in a 5th century CE Italian cemetery are indicative of the unease that must have been felt in the region as a malaria outbreak ravaged the population.   The 10-year-old child was given what is known as a “vampire burial” – with a large rock placed in the body’s

A revolution in genomics is creeping into economics. It allows us to say something we might have suspected, but could never confirm: money trumps genes. Using one new, genome-based measure, economists found genetic endowments are distributed almost equally among children in low-income and high-income families. Success is not.   The least-gifted children of high-income parents

In a time of crazy political and world news, it’s often easy to overlook some of the ridiculously cool things happening in science. To make sure you don’t miss out, we’ve put together this shareable image highlighting the best science news of the past week.   From ‘moonmoons’ (yes, that’s a real thing) and Stephen

Biologists have grown human retina tissue from scratch to learn how the cells that let us see in color are made. The work may lay the groundwork for therapies for eye diseases such as color blindness and macular degeneration. It also establishes lab-created “organoids”—artificially grown organ tissue—as a model to study human development on a cellular

It’s a question that’s been repeated in high schools and colleges throughout time, published throughout the media, and even has studies to back it up – do you look the same when you orgasm as you do when you, say, stub your toe?   According to urban myth, the answer would be yes. But new research shows

The genetic sleuthing approach that broke open the Golden State Killer case could potentially be used to identify more than half of Americans of European descent from anonymous DNA samples, according to a provocative new study that highlights the unintended privacy consequences of consumer genetic testing for ancestry and health.   The idea that people

How does the brain make sense of all the information we’re bombarded with every second of every day? It’s a complicated question, but researchers have invented two new illusions that give us some clues – one optical and one auditory. And they both trick the brain into travelling back in time to fill in gaps

Carving giant, monolithic statues under the hot Polynesian Sun is thirsty work. So without freshwater rivers and springs to sustain them, how did thousands of the traditional Rapa Nui people of Easter Island survive?   We might finally have an answer to this historic mystery, and it’s one that reconciles early European accounts of the

It might sound a little offensive, but your body is a museum, full of ancient relics no one really needs anymore. From your wisdom teeth to that weird way some of us can wiggle our ears, so much of how we ended up as humans reflects what our animal ancestors needed for survival.   As

With the modern textile industry at our fingertips, it’s trivial to have socks with all kinds of patterns – including the ever-popular stripes. But even Ancient Egyptians had a love for the stripey sock, and now we finally know how they achieved their vivid dye colours.   Scientists from the British Museum have applied a

Anonymous British graffiti artist Banksy has pulled off another stunt that seized the attention of the art world — this time at the expense of his own work. On Friday, a Banksy painting titled “Girl with Red Balloon” was being auctioned at Sotheby’s in London. The spray-painted and acrylic piece depicted a little girl extending

I need a caffeine boost in the morning to properly function. And I’m not alone – according to a Reuters study, 65 percent of Americans have coffee every day, and more than 85% drink it regularly.   But, according to CNBC, there’s a specific time of day you should drink your coffee if you want to feel the

A psychologist In the hit BBC TV show, Killing Eve, Villanelle, a psychopathic assassin, tells Eve, a security service operative, “You should never call a psychopath a psychopath. It upsets them.” She then pouts her lip in an imitation of someone feeling upset.   Most people think they know what a psychopath is: someone who

We don’t need to tell you world news is pretty grim right now – if you use social media, it’s nigh on impossible to avoid articles about bubbling permafrost, drug-resistant gonorrhoea, and deadly obesity treatments. And that’s just the science headlines.   But despite all the doom and gloom, in reality there are a whole

Doctors in a Canadian intensive care unit stumbled on a very strange case last year – when life support was turned off for four terminal patients, one of them showed persistent brain activity even after they were declared clinically dead.   For more than 10 minutes after doctors confirmed death through a range of observations,

An eight-year-old Swedish-American girl named Saga Vanecek has sealed her fate as a future queen of legend – in July, she pulled a possibly 1,500 year-old pre-Viking era sword from a lake in Sweden.   Sweden has been hit by an intense drought this year, which lowered the water levels in the Vidöstern lake where the

It’s little secret that Neanderthals and our ancestors intimately enjoyed each other’s company. The legacy of this occasional genetic mixing persists in the form of Neanderthal DNA that many modern humans continue to carry.   Exactly how this exchange benefited us has been a bit of a mystery. A new study argues that we have

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a physicist, a philosopher, and a medievalist got together and decided to hoax cultural studies journals with a score of fake research papers.   The story is familiar, but this time the joke is far bigger. Their intention was to expose the shoddy standards that count for

The next time you’re standing at the edge of a scenic cliff or on top of a waterfall, take care before snapping a quick selfie. It could be the last thing you do. More than 250 people worldwide have died while taking selfies in the last six years, according to a new study from researchers

 The 2018 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded Wednesday to Frances H. Arnold, George P. Smith and Gregory P. Winter for their work that harnessed evolutionary principles to create new proteins.   Arnold, a professor of chemical engineering at California Institute of Technology, won one half of the prize “for the directed evolution of enzymes.”

Scientists have mapped out how choice overload works in the brain, showing how our minds can back off from making a decision if the number of options gets too big. This kind of indecision has been noted in previous studies, but this new research identifies the areas of the brain that help us make a

The human brain is a remarkable thing. It can do things our primate relatives are thousands – maybe even millions – of years of evolution away from, and our most complex machines are not even close to competing with our powers of higher consciousness and ingenuity.   And yet, those 100 billion or so neurons are also incredibly fragile.

We know, we know, there’s so much internet to read, and so little time. That’s why we’ve been rounding up the week’s most interesting science news for a quick catch-up, with a bonus quiz challenge to keep it entertaining. Answers are at the bottom of the page. Have fun!   1. A Renowned Mathematician Announced

In the autumn of 1929, Anne Morrow Lindbergh and her husband Charles flew across the Yucatán Peninsula. With Charles at the controls, Anne snapped photographs of the jungles just below.   She wrote in her journal of Maya structures obscured by large humps of vegetation. A bright stone wall peeked through the leaves, “unspeakably alone

Psychologists call it the dark triad: an intersection of three of the most malevolent tendencies of human nature – psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. But the truth goes deeper, and darker. There’s also egoism, sadism, spitefulness, and more. And behind this rogues gallery of all our worst inclinations on the surface, a central, common core of

In 1954, archaeologist Samuel Lothrop described the horror show of an ancient burial site he’d excavated in Panama. Hacking, mutilation, sacrifice, people buried alive, cannibalism, flesh stripped from bones, decapitation for the purpose of trophy-taking – it was all there.   Since then, the paper has been cited over 35 times as evidence of the

An ancient Egyptian text more than 1,300 years old, which would originally have been used as a magic spell, has finally been deciphered – and it seems like love was the goal. Today of course, many of us might just use a dating app instead.   The spell or “magic recipe” includes an image showing

To startup founder and Stanford Medical graduate Jesse Karmazin, blood is the next big government-approved drug. Karmazin recently launched Ambrosia Medical – a startup that fills the veins of older people with fresh blood from young donors – in the hopes that the procedure will help conquer ageing by rejuvenating the body’s organs.   The

He had rations to last just one week. But somehow an Indonesian teenager who drifted out to sea in a floating wooden shack managed to survive 49 days before being rescued by a passing freighter.   Aldi Novel Adilang, from the Indonesian province of North Sulawesi, endured a terrifying ocean voyage when the remote fishing

One of the world’s most renowned mathematicians showed how he solved the 160-year-old Riemann hypothesis at a lecture on Monday – and he will be awarded US$1 million if his solution is confirmed.   Sir Michael Atiyah, who has won the two biggest prizes in mathematics – the Fields Medal and Abel Prize – took

Galileo Galilei had one of the brightest scientific minds we’ve ever seen. Amongst his many achievements was helping to finally cement the idea that Earth orbits the Sun, rather than the other way around – but a newly discovered letter reveals how he toned down his views to avoid angering the church.   The note

If you were trying to convince another human that you yourself are also human, what would you say? Probably something about emotions, right? That might work – but other humans are more likely to believe your humanity if you talk about bodily functions.   Specifically, the word ‘poop’. At least, that’s the finding from a

Another week, another round of terrific stories – there’s so much in the world to perpetually keep us amazed. But if you haven’t caught up with this weeks’ news, we have a simple solution.   Not only can you catch up with the most exciting ScienceAlert stories of the week, you can also have a

A once-in-a-lifetime discovery in Czechia was made by an unusual sort of archaeologist. A dog named Monty, on a walk with his human in March, stumbled across a cache of Bronze Age artefacts in the Orlické Mountains of northeastern Bohemia.   His human – one Mr Frankota – rushed over to see what Monty had

It’s never aliens. That’s the lesson we can all take from the recent mysterious shutdown of the Sunspot Solar Observatory in New Mexico – which is about to reopen. The site, which hosts one of the largest active solar telescopes in the world, was shut down on 6 September and evacuated without an official explanation

Celebrities often use their platforms to spread awareness on important issues. But while many of us have become numb to their warnings, there’s something about Harrison Ford that makes people sit up and listen.   Maybe it’s the cult following he’s acquired from playing heroic characters like Indiana Jones and Han Solo.  More likely, though,

Last year the world took a turn for the worst. A global survey of human emotions has ranked 2017 as the gloomiest and most miserable year in more than a decade. While positive experiences have remained steady, today’s world is more stressed, worried, sad and in pain than at any point since 2005, when the

Something is amiss in the state of New Mexico, and the chain of mysterious events has all the hallmarks of a sci-fi plot. The state’s Sunspot Solar Observatory, home to one of the largest active solar telescopes in the world, was shut down last Friday and all personnel evacuated. The FBI were on the scene

Breaking from a conversation in Spanish and turning it into a discussion in German is a two-step process that requires a degree of cognitive effort. Until now, researchers have never been sure which part required more work: ending the first language or starting with the second. A new study reveals just what’s going on upstairs

Several hundred kilometres to the east of what is today Cape Town, South Africa, stands one of the world’s oldest art galleries. The cave is already known for ancient inscriptions, but one art-piece discovered back in 2011 stands out from the rest.   It consists of a handful of intersecting red lines on the side

A literal pot of gold has been found not at the end of a rainbow, but in the basement of an old, abandoned Italian theatre. During an archaeological dig last week, historians discovered a broken soapstone amphora – a kind of stone urn – at the bottom of the Cressoni Theatre in Como, northern Italy.