Researchers have found an ancient henge in the Preseli Hills of west Wales which is missing some stones that line up with the dimensions of the bluestones of Stonehenge. The newly-discovered henge, called Waun Mawn, is rather close to the quarry from which the bluestones were unearthed. It appears that the residents built a henge from local rock, then for some reason up and moved to what is now Salisbury, and took their massive stones with them.   

At 360 feet (110 meters) wide, both Waun Mawn and the ditch surrounding Stonehenge have similar diameters, and both monuments were oriented to align with the midsummer solstice sunrise, according to the research. What’s more, a bluestone from Stonehenge features a distinctive cross-section that nicely matches an empty stonehole found at Waun Mawn. Rock chips found in the same hole were also found to match those found at Stonehenge.

The discovery also helps to explain some unanswered questions about the people who lived in west Wales at the time. Preseli Hills was an important and densely populated region in Neolithic Britain, but evidence of these people from 2000 to 3000 BCE is practically non-existent. It’s “as if they just vanished,” said Pearson in the statement, adding that these people possibly migrated, “taking their stones—their ancestral identities—with them.”

The next question is why they moved. Taking the stones meant it was clearly a permanent migration. Read about the research and how the connection between Waun Mawn and Stonehenge was made at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: Flickr user thegarethwiscombe)

Science has codified what many cat owners already knew. You can't force a cat to love you, but if you're a nice person in their eyes, they will come around. But first, you have to know what "nice" is to a cat. If you already know this stuff, then it's a video full of nice cats.

The year is 1968. The world was already switching to color television. Israel, however, had just had its first broadcast in black and white, even though they could afford color broadcast, because their authorities believed that “color broadcast was a frivolous expense that should best be avoided.”

Television came to Israel under a shroud of doubts and apprehension. The state founding fathers perceived television as a threat; they feared it would change the political, social and cultural characteristics of the young state. They felt that television broadcasts would put unnecessary economic pressure upon the state, and the mass buying of television sets would be an economic burden upon the population as well. Television, they argued, was a luxury that suited only wealthy and economically settled states.

The government also feared that television and western shows would dilute Hebrew culture and change people’s political views. Furthermore, television would reduce the amount of time people spent reading, going to the theater, and participating in social activities, thereby threatening traditional norms and family life.

It was only in 1967, during its the Arab-Israeli war, that the need for the television was recognized, and a year later, on May 2, 1968, the first public broadcast was launched by the Israeli Broadcasting Authority. However,...

Although the Israeli Broadcasting Authority (IBA) did invest in color equipment, political pressure forced them to broadcast in back and white. When Israeli television started buying the rights to many American and British TV series and movies that were filmed in color, the government ordered the broadcasting authority to erase the color information from the signal so that receivers displayed back and white images.

It would take over a decade before color broadcast became regular in Israel.

Learn more about this period in Israel over at Amusing Planet.

(Image Credit: Jazella/ Pixabay)

For the last few weeks, everyone and their brother has suggested I post about the charming snowplows of Scotland. I resisted doing so, because we featured them here three years ago. However, some may have missed it. The snow trucks are called gritters because they spread sand behind them for traction. Each Scottish gritter has an imaginative name, and you can find them on the Gritter Tracker. Their punny names include:

Snowbegone Kenobi
Spready Mercury
Megameltasaurus
Sled Zeppelin
The Great Grittish Flake-Off
You're a Blizzard Harry
Gritly Come Dancing

London also got into the game by naming one gritter Blizzard of Oz, which is a poor attempt at Scottish-level punry. Read more about Scotland's gritter armada at The Herald.

After receiving the majority of the over 35,000 votes cast between it and the Anchisaurus polyzelus, the Podokesaurus holyokensis dinosaur is now recognized as the official state dinosaur of Massachusetts. The said dinosaur, which comes from the mid-Jurassic era, is a lightweight dinosaur, only weighing about 90 pounds, and only measured about three to six feet. 

The poll was held in hopes to revitalize interest in paleontology.

The idea of picking a state dinosaur came to Massachusetts state representative Jack Lewis while brainstorming Covid-safe projects for his child’s cub scouts chapter that would engage the scouts in both science and the legislative process.

In January, Lewis used Twitter to announce his plan on introducing a bill to declare a state dinosaur. He asked Massachusetts residents to vote between two dinosaurs: Podokesaurus holyokensis and Anchisaurus polyzelus, reports Morrison for Mass Live on January 4. The online poll received an overwhelmingly positive response, and on the first day of putting out the initial tweet, the poll already had 7,500 votes reports, Christopher Gavin for Boston.com. The bill was originally going to be filed on January 15, but after continued immense support, the voting period was extended by two weeks until January 29, reports Charlie McKenna for the Boston Globe.

More about this over at Smithsonian Magazine.

(Image Credit: FunkMonk (Michael B. H.)/ Wikimedia Commons)

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When does the next flight to the park bench leave? When does my friend's flight from the skyscraper arrive? Check out the pigeon schedule from Michael Pederson, the artist who goes by the moniker "Miquel Marquez Outside." Click through all of the photos to know your options.

I'd like to take a flight to "nowhere specific." It might be fun for an airline to offer tickets for a flight in which the destination is never announced even after landing. Your first opportunity to learn where you are is when you enter the terminal after getting off the plane.

MetaHumans are detailed digital humans, created with Epic Games’ latest tool, the MetaHuman Creator. The new application aims to provide photorealistic digital humans, fully-rigged and complete with hair and clothing, without the time, hassle, and cost of creating one from scratch. Any sample characters made from the creator will be compatible with Unreal Engine projects! Check the company’s website on the tool for the full details, and  to start playing around to create your character. 

(via Twitter) 

Image via Twitter 

In order to preserve and store quarter of a million artworks against flooding, the Louvre museum has moved some of its treasures to a storage site in northern France. Trucks have quietly moved the precious artworks and artifacts from the museum’s basements and other sites to the Louvre Conservation Center, located in Lievin, France. The center already houses 100,000 works: 

With museums in France closed because of the pandemic, Jean-Luc Martinez, the director of the Louvre, has time on his hands. On Tuesday, he took a small group of reporters on a tour of the newly operational site, which is intended to become one of Europe’s largest art research centers and to welcome museum experts, scholars and conservators from around the world.

The Louvre sits on low ground along the banks of the Seine. In 2016, flooding in Paris was so severe that the museum itself was threatened, prompting a round-the-clock, emergency operation to wrap, crate and haul thousands of art objects out of underground storage and onto higher ground.

The conservation project in Liévin, costing 60 million euros, or about $73 million, began in late 2017 as a necessary response to the river’s unpredictable, inevitable rise.

“The reality is that our museum is in a flood zone,” Mr. Martinez said on the tour on Tuesday. “You can’t just pick up and move marble sculptures around,” he noted. “There was a danger

 that the sewers would back up and that dirty, smelly wastewater would damage the art. We had to find a solution. Urgently.”

Image via The New York Times

Science finally weighs in (no pun intended). If you’re planning to go on a diet to shed the extra pounds you’ve gained these past few months, then maybe avoiding all the carbs or cutting your carbohydrate intake is one of the options you have for your diet plan. Besides losing weight, what other side effects does giving up carbohydrates (such as rice, bread, etc.) have? Eat This, Not That lists the other things one might expect when they’re lowering their carb intake, according to experts. Check the full list here. 

Image via Eat This, Not That!

The arrival of the new console generation means that some recently-released games on the predecessor of these new consoles should be playable on the newly-released consoles. When it comes to backwards compatibility, some games will simply load fast with no change to its graphics (to fully make use of the new console’s better processing power), while other games will actually take advantage of the new hardware and optimize the entire game, bringing a better experience to the players.The 2018 edition of God Of War, initially released for the PS4, is a good example of a game that took advantage of the prowess of the PS5, as Roland Moore-Coyler details: 

the new PS5 update for God of War changes that. While you can’t get a native 4K resolution image, you do get checkerboard 4K running at what felt like a locked 60 fps.

It’s properly glorious; a serious game-changer. All of the stunning details that Santa Monica Studio put into the environments, characters and textures of God of War were sharp and clear.

Navigating the world, as well as burying the Leviathan axe deep into the torso of a draugr, feels wonderful at 60 fps. Sure, it’s not quite the 120 fps gaming that the PS5 can provide in some games. But it’s a huge step up from the base PS4 experience.

In fact, I’d argue that if I hadn't played God of War before, I’d actually wait to play it on Sony’s new hardware, even though finding where to buy the PS5 is a deeply frustrating pursuit. And yes, I’m fully aware that I've previously declared you don’t need a PS5 or Xbox Series X yet.

image via Tom's Guide

Possibly the oldest known beer factory has been discovered at an archaeological site in Egypt by American and Egyptian archaeologists. The factory, found in an ancient burial ground, dates back to the reign of King Narmer, who ruled during the First Dynastic Period (3150 B.C - 2613 B.C.) of ancient Egypt. Eight units, each about 65-feet long and 8-feet wide were found, as NBC News detailed: 

Archaeologists found eight huge units — each is about 65-feet long and 8-feet wide. Each unit includes some 40 pottery basins in two rows, which had been used to heat up a mixture of grains and water to produce beer, Waziri said.

The joint mission is co-chaired by Dr. Matthew Adams of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and Deborah Vischak, assistant professor of ancient Egyptian art history and archaeology at Princeton University.

Adams said the factory was apparently built in this area to provide royal rituals with beer, given that archaeologists found evidences showing the use of beer in sacrificial rites of ancient Egyptians.

British archaeologists were the first to mention the existence of the factory in the early 1900s, but they couldn’t determine its location, the antiquities ministry said.

Image via NBC News

When Alina Pleskova rescued a book that someone left behind on the curb, she did not expect that it would be a gem. The book, titled “Jane Asher’s Fancy Dress”, contained over 100 costume ideas for both children and adults, as well as how to make such costumes. After reading the book, Pleskova stated that she “never [wants] to look at another book again in [her] life.”

See the costumes over at Bored Panda.

(Image Credit: Bored Panda)

Foxy the corgi nudges the hands of her owners with her nose when she wants them to pet her. Usually, it is just a little nudge, but Foxy on this particular night was rather forceful, and she really seemed to need a lot of petting.

Does your dog do this, too?

(Image Credit: ViralHog/ YouTube)

The greatest issue when it comes to solar cells is flexibility. While they are great power sources, they are not flexible enough to be integrated into vehicles, phones, indoor devices, and clothing.

For years, scientists have been trying to address this issue and were able to create solar cells that can bend but only at a limited degree. 

It seems that their efforts have finally paid off. Recently, engineers at Pusan National University in Korea were able to create prototype solar cells that are fully foldable. Their research is published in the journal Advanced Science.

“Unlike merely flexible electronics, foldable devices are subject to much harsher deformations, with folding radii as small as 0.5 mm,” says Professor Il Jeon, corresponding author of the study. “This is not possible with conventional ultra-thin glass substrates and metal oxide transparent conductors, which can be made flexible but never fully foldable.”

To address that concern, the researchers turned to conductive films made of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). They embedded this film onto a polyimide substrate, then doped it with molybdenum oxide to improve its conductivity.

In the end, the researchers were able to make a solar cell just seven micrometers thick that could fold to a radius of just 0.5 mm. They were able to withstand over 10,000 folding cycles without breaking. They of course also functioned decently well as solar cells too, exhibiting a power conversion efficiency of 15.2 percent and 80 percent transparency.

“The obtained results are some of the best among those reported thus far for flexible solar cells, both in terms efficiency and mechanical stability,” says Jeon.

This is a breakthrough!

(Image Credit: Pusan National University/ New Atlas)

In a valiant attempt to produce a Valentines Day feature on a subject they haven't already covered, Smithsonian introduces us to animals that are naturally pink. Silly Smithsonian, we don't need a holiday to enjoy these fascinating creatures! There are pink animals among insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. No flamingos this time, nor humans. Above is a Hopkins’ rose nudibranch.

Despite looking more like sea anemone or some kind of squishy, spiky stress ball, Hopkins’ rose nudibranch (Okenia rosacea) is actually a sea slug—and please don’t give it a squeeze. Aptly named, this North America-based, one-inch-long sea critter is as impossibly pink, save for its white-tipped papillae. Nudibranches use their colors to warn predators that making a meal out of them would lead to toxic consequences.

Unlike other sea slugs, nudibranchs feast on certain creatures, and the Hopkins’ rose variety gets its beautiful color from its choice prey: tiny pink bryozoans, or moss animals. Bryozoans are colonial animals, meaning they live in colonies where individual organisms connect in units called zooids. These Lego-like animals are no match for the Hopkins’ rose nudibranch, however, which has hook-like teeth made to pierce through bryozoans and gobble up the pink delicacies.

The other animals range from katydids to bats to naked mole rats. See them all at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Flickr user Robin Agarwal (ANudibranchMom on iNaturalist))