discoveries

Read the latest news stories about recent scientific discoveries on Newser.com

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Scientist: Gold Crystal &#39;Too Big to Be Real&#39; Is Real
Scientist: Gold Crystal
'Too Big to Be Real' Is Real
in case you missed it
Apr 12, 2014 7:00 PM CDT

Scientist: Gold Crystal 'Too Big to Be Real' Is Real

217.78-gram piece verified at Los Alamos lab

(Newser) - It's a single gold crystal that "seemed almost too perfect and too big to be real," per a press release about it. Roughly the size of a golf ball, it was found in a Venezuela river decades ago, reports KRQE , and worth an estimated $1.5 million—...

Message in Bottle Finds Way Home 101 Years Later
Message in Bottle Finds
Way Home 101 Years Later
in case you missed it
Apr 12, 2014 6:54 AM CDT

Message in Bottle Finds Way Home 101 Years Later

But not quite into the hands of Richard Platz

(Newser) - At age 20, Richard Platz tossed a brown bottle into the Baltic Sea. Some 101 years later, it has found its way home, or as close to home as it can get. A German fisherman whose previous wild finds include bombs, torpedoes, and a corpse hauled the bottle out of...

5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week

Including an explanation for why you're terrible at swatting fruit flies

(Newser) - An intriguing discovery about a reference to a wife of Jesus and a potentially huge breakthrough about ethanol are on the list:
  • Papyrus Mentioning Jesus' Wife Not a Fake, But ... : Two years ago, a Harvard professor debuted an ancient papyrus now known as the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" at
...

Scientists: Just 5 Mutations and Bird Flu Goes Airborne

But it's not known if those mutations could happen outside a lab

(Newser) - H5N1 has killed 60% of the 650 humans it's known to have infected in nearly two decades, making it an incredibly deadly but difficult to transmit virus. A new study tries to answer the question of how little it would take to make bird flu easily spreadable. The conclusion:...

Study Sinks One Titanic Iceberg Theory

1912 wasn't a year packed with huge crop of icebergs

(Newser) - The year the Titanic sank wasn't one with "an enormously large crop of icebergs" as has long been believed, according to new research. Researchers who analyzed Coast Guard data going back to 1900 found that 1912 had a relatively large but by no means exceptional number of icebergs...

Fruit Flies Move Like Fighter Jets
 Fruit Flies Move 
 Like Fighter Jets 
STUDY SAYS
Apr 11, 2014 1:00 AM CDT

Fruit Flies Move Like Fighter Jets

Speed of evasive turns amazes researchers

(Newser) - Swatting a fruit fly is as tricky as trying to catch a tiny fighter jet with an expert pilot at the controls, researchers say. High-speed cameras captured the insects avoiding threats by executing supercharged, banked turns much like fighter planes, reports the Los Angeles Times . The flies beat their wings...

Papyrus Mentioning Jesus' Wife Not a Fake, But...

...that doesn't mean Jesus had a wife

(Newser) - To call it controversial is putting it mildly: Harvard professor Karen L. King in September 2012 debuted an ancient papyrus now known as the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" at a conference in Rome. The papyrus makes an explicit reference to the woman's existence with the line, "Jesus...

Where Bee Stings Are the Most Painful
Where Bee Stings 
Are the Most Painful
study says
Apr 8, 2014 1:21 PM CDT

Where Bee Stings Are the Most Painful

Nostril, upper lip, and penis, study finds

(Newser) - Where would it hurt more to get stung by a bee: on a testicle or on a nostril? It was this burning question that led Michael Smith, a graduate student at Cornell University studying honeybees, to his latest research. After being stung on the testicle and realizing it didn't...

Coffee Not the Dehydrating Villain It's Made Out to Be

The BBC declares coffee's bad rap a myth

(Newser) - Humankind downs some 1.6 billion cups of coffee a day, making for some mean dehydration, right? That's the conventional wisdom, but it just might not be true, explains Claudia Hammond for the BBC . She digs into the existing research on caffeine—most dehydration-related studies zero in on that...

Villain That Nearly Killed All Life on Earth Is ... Tiny
Villain That Nearly Killed
All Life on Earth Is ... Tiny
in case you missed it
Apr 6, 2014 7:56 AM CDT

Villain That Nearly Killed All Life on Earth Is ... Tiny

Methane-producing microbe gets the blame 250M years ago

(Newser) - Name your favorite culprit for the mass extinction that wiped out nearly every life form on Earth 250 million years ago. A spectacular asteroid, perhaps? Massive volcanic eruptions? Both are popular theories, but a new study encourages sleuths of the Permian era to think much, much smaller, reports the Guardian...

President Harrison Didn&#39;t Die How We Thought
 President 
 Harrison 
 Didn't Die How 
 We Thought 
in case you missed it
Apr 5, 2014 7:00 PM CDT

President Harrison Didn't Die How We Thought

New diagnosis: It wasn't pneumonia from inauguration; it was illness from sewage

(Newser) - The history books tell us that William Henry Harrison died just a month after taking office in 1841 because he caught pneumonia while delivering a too-long inaugural address in lousy weather. Now, modern epidemiology is revising the diagnosis. In the New York Times , Jane McHugh and Philip Mackowiak write that...

5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week

Scientists think they've found the actual Holy Grail

(Newser) - A microbe that nearly made the Earth a dead zone and an intriguing ocean discovery on a moon of Saturn highlight the list:
  • Villain That Nearly Killed All Life on Earth Is ... Tiny : Name your favorite culprit for the mass extinction that wiped out nearly every life form on Earth
...

700-Year-Old Poop Found, Still Reeks

But hey, it's in 'excellent condition'

(Newser) - One of the biggest urban archaeological digs Denmark has ever seen has uncovered a lowly part of history. "We are talking about 700-year-old latrines. And yes, they still smell bad," an archaeologist explains. The team stumbled on what appears to be a 14th-century communal toilet area in the...

Saturn Moon Now 'Best Bet' for Finding Life

Probe finds new signs of underground Enceladus ocean

(Newser) - Saturn's sixth-largest moon holds an underground ocean with at least as much water as Lake Superior, according to exciting new data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft that makes some scientists believe Enceladus is now the place in our solar system where we're most likely to find extraterrestrial life....

Study: Shroud of Turin Reveals Crucifixion's Shape

And it's not a 'T'

(Newser) - Picture Christ on the cross, as you've seen him on countless statues: The figure is, more than likely, a T-shape one. If the Shroud of Turin truly was Jesus' burial cloth, the reality is something more closely resembling a Y, according to Matteo Borrini . The forensic anthropologist was curious...

Morning Light Could Be Key to Weight Loss

Light exposure kick-starts metabolism

(Newser) - Getting a good dose of early morning light on a regular basis appears to be a simple but remarkably effective way of maintaining a healthy weight, according to a groundbreaking new study. Researchers found that regardless of caloric intake, people who had more early light exposure were the most likely...

Moon Gets a New Birthday
 Moon Gets a New Birthday 
Apr 3, 2014 1:36 AM CDT

Moon Gets a New Birthday

Formation happened later than thought, study says

(Newser) - The cataclysmic event that formed the moon happened much later than previously believed, according to researchers who have shifted the satellite's "birthday" forward around 60 million years. New computer simulations and analysis of elements in the Earth's crust suggest that the moon formed 95 million years after...

Zebra Stripe Mystery Solved, Researchers Say

Stripes help deter biting flies, not lions

(Newser) - The centuries-old puzzle of why zebras have stripes has been solved, and they're not there to confuse lions or for decoration, researchers say. A new study backs up the theory that stripes evolved as a way to deter biting flies , Real Clear Science reports. Researchers gathered stripe pattern data...

Historians: We've Found the Holy Grail

3-year quest started in Cairo

(Newser) - Historians claim that a goblet long identified as belonging to the daughter of an 11th-century Spanish king has actually housed the Holy Grail—and has been sitting in a basilica in the northwestern city of León for nearly a thousand years. A three-year quest that began at a Cairo...

Men&#39;s IQ Easier to See Than Women&#39;s
 Men's IQ Easier to Spot
 Than Women's 
study says
Mar 31, 2014 7:40 PM CDT

Men's IQ Easier to Spot Than Women's

Study asks people to guess IQ by looking at faces

(Newser) - It's easier to guess men's intelligence than women's just by looking at their faces—maybe because we're so distracted by female beauty, according to a new study . Czech researchers gave IQ tests to 80 male and female students, took photos of them, and asked 160 students...

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