discoveries

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5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week

For starters, earth gets an evacuation date

(Newser) - This week's discoveries include an evacuation date of sorts for planet Earth and a guy whose gut brews its own beer:
  • Scientists Find Deadline for Evacuating Earth : In a new study, scientists forecast that rising temperatures will someday make our dear planet completely uninhabitable. But we've got a
...

Scientists Discover New Legless Lizards

And nope, they are not snakes

(Newser) - You may think the pictures look like snakes or worms, but they're not: Those are legless lizards, four new species of which were discovered in California recently. Unlike snakes, the lizards spend most of their lives underground, in an area about the size of a small table, LiveScience reports—...

Female Slave Who Penned 1850s Novel Identified

Professor says Hannah Bond wrote 'The Bondwoman's Narrative'

(Newser) - A long-running literary mystery may have been solved: The Bondwoman's Narrative was published to much acclaim in 2002, but it was no modern work—the novel was believed to have been written in the 1850s by a female slave using the pseudonym Hannah Crafts. But who that author truly...

Archaeologists May Have Found Town Named in Bible

Jesus was said to have sailed to Dalmanutha

(Newser) - Sometimes, archaeologists discover a sweater ; other times, they uncover entire towns. The latter turns out to be the case in Israel, where a town has been found—and it could be one mentioned in a well-known Bible story. LiveScience reports that it was found along the northwest side of the...

Scientists Create World's Thinnest Glass—by Mistake

Find sheds light on its makeup, and qualifies for Guinness book

(Newser) - It's another one of those chance scientific breakthroughs: Scientists from Cornell and Germany have created the thinnest glass known to man entirely by accident, reports LiveScience . Just how thin? A hard-to-fathom 2 atoms thick, which means you'll need an electron microscope to check it out, notes RedOrbit . The...

Archaeologists Make Grisly Find in Ancient Maya City

Mass grave bolsters belief that the Maya dismembered

(Newser) - The discovery of a mass grave is by its nature a gruesome find, but what researchers uncovered in the ancient Maya city of Uxul in present-day Mexico is that to the extreme. University of Bonn archaeologists on Tuesday announced that they have found a 1,400-year-old grave containing the dismembered...

Divers Finally Get to Explore 'Blue Hole' Mystery Cave

New Mexico site has been sealed for nearly 40 years

(Newser) - The last divers to venture into an underwater cave known as the "Blue Hole" in New Mexico were from the state police in 1976, and they were there to retrieve the bodies of two young divers who died while exploring. Upon exiting, the police divers sealed the opening with...

5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week

Newly surfaced Nazi files and a 'shrinking' mountain make the cut

(Newser) - This week, we got some Nazi mysteries resolved and learned that it will take a few less steps to climb the continent's highest peak:
  • Missing Nazi File Surfaces, Answers Question s: A dossier containing documents believed to have been drawn up by Nazi Germany's Deputy Fuehrer Rudolf Hess
...

Biologists Discover Gears in Insect's Legs

It's the only animal known to have them

(Newser) - We're pretty sure the ancient Greek mechanics who invented the gear weren't copying the Issus coleoptratus, but if they'd had an electron microscope, they could have. In a paper published this week in Science, a pair of biologists reveal that young specimens of these relatively common bugs...

Nation's Highest Peak Gets a Little Shorter

New mapping downgrades McKinley by 83 feet

(Newser) - The tallest peak in North America is a smidge shorter than thought: Mount McKinley is actually 20,237 feet high, down 83 feet from the previous measurement of 20,320, reports the News-Miner of Fairbanks. The new figure has nothing to do with shifting plates or melting glaciers, it's...

Aging Men Can Curse Estrogen, Too

 Aging Men 
 Can Curse 
 Estrogen, Too 
new study
Sep 12, 2013 7:32 AM CDT

Aging Men Can Curse Estrogen, Too

Researchers find that sinking estrogen levels to blame for expanding waists

(Newser) - It turns out both sexes have a reason to curse estrogen. A new study has found that what the New York Times dubs one of men's "familiar physical complaints of midlife"—that ballooning waistline—is not, as long believed, due to dipping testosterone levels. While those levels...

Missing Nazi File Surfaces, Answers Questions

Sheds new light on Rudolf Hess' ill-fated UK peace mission

(Newser) - A dossier containing documents believed to have been drawn up by Nazi Germany's Deputy Fuehrer Rudolf Hess while in captivity in the UK has resurfaced at a Maryland auction house . The 300-page file, marked "Most Secret," helps settle some long-held mysteries about "the Third Reich's...

Scientists Record 800-Foot Undersea Wave

Skyscraper-size waves can take an hour to break: study

(Newser) - Amazing, terrifying, or some combination of both? Scientists have recorded an 800-foot wave breaking at the bottom of the ocean for the first time, Nature World News reports. That's the size of a skyscraper, and these waves can take as long as an hour to break. University of Washington...

Archaeologists Uncover Jerusalem Treasure Trove

Says one archaeologist: I have never found so much gold in my life!'

(Newser) - A dig near Jerusalem's Temple Mount has paid off big time for a team of archaeologists from Hebrew University: They announced yesterday that they've uncovered a 1,400-year-old Byzantine-era treasure trove. Chief among the various gold and silver items recovered is a 4-inch solid gold medallion depicting a...

'Missing Piece' Emerges in Stonehenge Mystery

Landmark's location tied to solstices, not sun-worship

(Newser) - New digging at Stonehenge sheds some light on the ancient site's mysterious ties with the summer and winter solstices. Contrary to what some have speculated, the landmark wasn't built for some sort of sun-worshipping ritual, says a researcher, nor was it "some kind of calendar or astronomical...

Scientists Finally Know What's In Your Pee

Some 3K compounds from 230 chemical classes

(Newser) - Ever wondered what makes up your pee? OK, well, 20 researchers at the University of Alberta did, and they've spent the last seven years developing a urinalysis or—put simply—an encyclopedia of pee. They've made an interesting discovery, too; Medical textbooks may now need to add an...

Volcano the Size of Arizona Discovered
 Volcano the Size of 
 Arizona Discovered 
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Sep 8, 2013 9:56 AM CDT

Volcano the Size of Arizona Discovered

Tamu Massif is Earth's biggest such structure

(Newser) - Scientists have made a surprising discovery in the Pacific Ocean about 1,000 miles east of Japan: Earth's largest volcano. Tamu Massif is a monster at 280 miles by 400 miles, or roughly the size of Arizona, and ranks among the largest such structures in our solar system, Nature ...

Syria's History of Chemical Warfare Is 1.7K Years Old

Archaeological evidence indicates invading Persians used it in AD 256

(Newser) - Amid all the uproar over chemical weapons in Syria comes this surprising revelation: What could be the earliest archaeological evidence of chemical weapons was uncovered in the country—and it is some 1,700 years old. A mixture of sulfur and pitch combined with fire was the first way humans...

5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week

Including one worth $300K

(Newser) - From fascinating discoveries related to the brain (both ours and that of a mouse) to watery reports that are alternately a little scary and very rewarding, it was a week filled with big finds:
  • Down Syndrome 'Reversed' in Mice : Scientists say they've identified a molecule that "reverses"
...

Industrial Revolution Soot Melted Alps' Glaciers

Scientists say it covered the mountains and heated them up

(Newser) - This much isn't in dispute: The glaciers of the European Alps retreated by an average of 0.6 miles between 1860 and 1930. But why, especially when the temperature of the continent itself actually cooled in the same period? Now a team of scientists thinks it has the answer,...

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