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Science

Closest Living Relative of Extinct ‘Bigfoot’ Found

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bigfoot - pixabay

The mythical and elusive “Bigfoot” is a creature of legend, but for millions of years, the original Bigfoot — a shaggy, bipedal ape twice the size of an adult human — roamed the forests of Southeast Asia, before going extinct hundreds of thousands of years ago. Scientists are now developing a clearer picture of the giant animal’s place on the primate family tree, after conducting groundbreaking analysis of proteins in tooth enamel dating to nearly 2 million years ago. Gigantopithecus blacki dwarfed the great apes that live today; it stood around 10 feet (3 meters) tall and weighed up to … Read more

“Witch Marks” in Hidden UK Cave Can Now Be Seen – in 3D

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Creswell Crags - Image: © Creswell Crags Museum and Heritage Centre

Mysterious “witch marks” that were carved into a cavern’s walls centuries ago to ward off evil are getting a public viewing, thanks to 3D modeling and animation. The marks were discovered earlier this year in Creswell Crags, an enclosed limestone gorge in the United Kingdom that houses a cave used by humans during the Ice Age, Creswell Crags Museum & Heritage Centre representatives said in a statement. But humans were also using the cave during the medieval period, covering its walls and ceilings with so-called witch marks as a form of protection against evil spirits and witches. During a tour … Read more

Are Conscious Computers Impossible?

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Artificial Intelligence AI - pixabay

Many advanced artificial intelligence projects say they are working toward building a conscious machine, based on the idea that brain functions merely encode and process multisensory information. The assumption goes, then, that once brain functions are properly understood, it should be possible to program them into a computer. Microsoft recently announced that it would spend US$1 billion on a project to do just that. So far, though, attempts to build supercomputer brains have not even come close. A multi-billion-dollar European project that began in 2013 is now largely understood to have failed. That effort has shifted to look more like … Read more

Do We Believe in Evil Because of Disease?

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disease

Where did the spiritual concept of evil originate? One possible explanation might be people’s attempts to understand and cope with infectious diseases. Linking diseases and their symptoms to mysterious evil forces is a practice that emerged in traditional belief systems prior to the mid-19th century, when germ theory was introduced, scientists wrote in a new study. Germ theory revealed that microscopic pathogens, rather than malevolent spirits, were the cause of illness. However, the connection between religious convictions about good and evil and the presence of infectious disease lingers today, the researchers discovered. They found that, in geographic regions with high … Read more

Sleeping Beauty Syndrome

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A 17-year-old girl in Colombia drops into bouts of sleep that can last for days, weeks, or even months. During her extensive slumbers, the girl often loses her memory; after one 48-day episode, she temporarily forgot her own mother’s face, according to news reports. The girl, Sharik Tovar, is one of the few people with a rare condition called Kleine-Levin syndrome, otherwise known as “Sleeping Beauty” syndrome. Unlike the fictional Sleeping Beauty, people with Kleine-Levin syndrome can be woken up during an episode and may wake up occasionally on their own to eat or use the bathroom, according to the … Read more

Did Rabies Inspire Tales of Vampires and Werewolves?

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In 1855, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported on the gruesome murder of a bride by her new husband. The story came from the French countryside, where the woman’s parents had initially prevented the couple’s engagement “on account of the strangeness of conduct sometimes observed in the young man,” although he “otherwise was a most eli[g]ible match.” The parents eventually consented, and the marriage took place. Shortly after the newlyweds withdrew to consummate their bond, “fearful shrieks” came from their quarters. People quickly arrived to find “the poor girl… in the agonies of death — her bosom torn open and lacerated … Read more

Why We Love Blood-Curdling Screams

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Of all the sounds humans produce, nothing captures our attention quite like a good scream. They’re a regular feature of horror films, whether it’s Marion Crane’s infamous shower scream in “Psycho” or Chrissie Watkins’ blood-curdling scream at the beginning of “Jaws.” Screams might seem simple, but they can actually convey a complex set of emotions. The arsenal of human screams has been honed over millions of years of evolution, with subtle nuances in volume, timing and inflection that can signal different things. Screaming can be traced to the prehistoric ancestors we share with other primates, who use screams as a … Read more

ANTHROPOLOGY: Why Were the Real “Hobbits” So Small?

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hobbit house - pixabay

It’s not every day that scientists discover a new human species. But that’s just what happened back in 2004, when archaeologists uncovered some very well-preserved fossil remains in the Liang Bua cave on Flores Island, Indonesia. The diminutive size of this new human species, Homo floresiensis, earned it the nickname “Hobbit.” Shockingly, researchers believed it had survived until the end of the last Ice Age, some 18,000 years ago. That was much later than Neanderthals lived, later than any human species other than our own. So why did tiny humans wind up living on these islands? For us biogeographers and … Read more

Meat… in… Space!

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Meat in Space

For the first time ever, meat was created in space — but no animals were harmed in the making of this 3D bioprinted “space beef.” Aleph Farms, an Israeli food company, announced today (Oct. 7) that its experiment aboard the International Space Station resulted in the first-ever lab-grown meat in space. The company focuses on growing cultivated beef steaks, or growing an entire piece of real, edible meat out of just a couple of cells, in this case, bovine cell spheroids, in a lab. On the space station, the experiment involved growing a piece of meat by mimicking a cow’s … Read more

SCIENCE: Earth’s Magnetic Poles Flip More Often Than We Thought

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Magnetic Poles - pixabay

Hot liquid that churns around Earth’s outer core powers a gigantic magnetic field that’s been hugging our planet since its infancy, protecting it from harmful solar radiation. But this magnetic field is known to get restless — and a couple of times every million years or so, the poles flip, and magnetic south becomes magnetic north and vice versa. Now, a new study suggests that the magnetic poles can flip much more frequently than scientists thought. That’s what seems to have happened around 500 million years ago during the Cambrian period, when Earth’s creatures were undergoing evolutionary growth spurts, transforming … Read more