Australian tech company Zero One Studio created an animation that depicts the destruction of the once glorious city of Pompeii. The video was formed from the bits and pieces of historical evidence obtained by experts through the years. Initially premiered in A Day in Pompeii, an exhibition held at the Melbourne Museum in 2009, the video can also be seen on the studio’s YouTube account. The animated short gives the viewers the perspective of someone atop a villa, watching Mount Vesuvius erupt and destroy the city over the course of 48 hours.  

(via My Modern Met) 

Scientists usually get prehistoric insects preserved in amber, perfectly holding their insides for analysis. In a new discovery, it seems that amber can also hold lizards well! A new extinct species of lizard was trapped in Burmese amber, perfectly preserved. The lizard, a member of the Retinosaurus hkamentiensis species, was discovered to still have its scaly skin and skeleton intact. The good quality of the lizard’s remains shocked paleontologist Andrej Čerňanský of Comenius University and his team. “We were able to study not only a skeleton, but even the external appearance (scalation) of the lizard,” Čerňanský told SYFY WIRE. "In fact, we can study the animal in the same way that herpetologists study modern species.”

Read more about the discovery here! 

Image credit: Joseph Bevitt/Edward Stanley/Andrej Čerňanský et al 

A nine-panel glass mosaic was discovered during renovations for a new restaurant at the Beverly Hilton hotel. Now, the artwork is being displayed behind the bar at the rooftop restaurant, called Sant’olina. Seven of the nine panels display different figures from classical mythology. While the mosaic is stunning and pleasing to look at, part of its appeal comes from the mystery that accompanied it.

The creator of the artwork was initially unknown. Hints of letters that were enigmatically placed on the panel were the only clues the Hilton had. After hard digging, the company found out that it was created by  Dale Owen and Robert Mallory, and was installed when the hotel opened in 1955. The artwork was hidden behind a wall in 1944, for it to only resurface now. 

Image via The Art Newspaper 

A 17-year-old discovered a calculus technique that solved integral equations. The high schooler, named Glenn Bruda, stumbled upon it when he woke up in the middle of the night to fetch a glass of water. He was ready to go back to sleep when the solution to a formula he had been trying to solve for months hit him. 

After revisiting the notes he wrote that night, he cross-checked the newly formed calculus technique with professors at Santa Fe College and the University of Florida. With their encouragement, Bruda published his discovery to Cornell University’s “arXiv”, an open-access archive for scholarly scientific articles. Bruda named his technique the “Maclaurin Integration” after Colin Maclaurin, a famous 18th-century Scottish mathematician, where his solution was derived from. 

Image credit:  Jennifer Bruda

MIT graduate Jiaming Luo developed an AI that successfully deciphered ancient scripts. Along with his colleagues, Luo developed a model that was taught by patterns in how languages change over time. This was done by feeding the machine words in a lost language and in a known related language, where the AI would then try to align the words in the lost language with its known language counterpart. 

With that being said, the model was tested on two ancient scripts: Ugaritic, and Linear B, a language that was on the ruins found in Crete. These two languages were already deciphered. The algorithm was able to correctly translate with remarkable accuracy. The model’s 67.3% accuracy gave researchers an interesting idea to work on: can artificial intelligence be capable of translating undeciphered texts? Alizeh Kohari discusses current research on the matter here! 

Image credit: The Trustees of the British Museum

The secret of the Bermuda Triangle is that the accidents that happened in the said body of water between Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda are caused by bad weather or other explainable accidents. The popular mythology behind these accidents which involve supernatural elements or some weird extraterrestrial matter has been debunked. So if you’re still wondering about disappearing seacrafts or aircraft, don’t, because there is absolutely nothing to worry about! 

Surprisingly enough, I must admit that Patrick J. Kiger’s piece on ten popular “mysteries” that are solved surprised me a lot, as I did not know that they had been settled. From the Bermuda Triangle to the fate of Anastasia Romanov, Kiger lists more explanations on these popular myths. Check the full piece here! 

Image credit: wikimedia commons 

Police found a child missing for two years hidden under a staircase. Paislee Joaan Shultis was four years old when she was reported missing on July 13, 2019, from Cayuga Heights. Authorities initially speculated that she was abducted by her noncustodial parents, Kimberly Cooper and Kirk Shultis Jr. 

Shultis was discovered when investigators spotted "a pair of tiny feet" in a secret space under wooden steps leading to a basement of the noncustodial parents’ home. Officers have been in the home a dozen times before they found the child, but they were not allowed in the basement or bedroom areas. "We're bothered by the fact that this went on for two years," the chief said. "They lied to us for two years -- including the father stating that he had no idea where his daughter was."

Image credit: Saugerties Police Department via CNN

Aww! Six-year-old football fan Joe sent a heartfelt letter to one of Swindon Town’s top players. "Mummy doesn't have any money to come to Swindon games because she has no money for food and has to pay for my dinner at school. I like Swindon Town Harry McKirdy. I will come one day. Joe aged 6 ½,"  the letter read. Attached to the note was 26 pence as well! 

The team reached out on social media in the hopes of finding Joe. According to Forest Green Rovers chairman, Dale Vince, they are willing to pay the child to be a mascot for Swindon if he can be found. I hope the kid gets to watch the games to cheer for his favorite team! 

Image credit: Swindon Town FC

A permanent immersive exhibition space will be launched in New York in the summer. French production company Culturespaces will be setting up shows every ten to 12 months in the landmark Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank in downtown Manhattan. The first show will be dedicated to Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klim in “Gustav Klimt: Gold in Motion.” The company’s first venture in North America will also be New York’s first-ever permanent immersive experience venue. 

Image credit: Culturespaces Eric Spiller

This is amazing! A giant mural that covers an entire neighborhood was inaugurated in Peru. Located in a residential area in San Cristobal hill, the artwork was inspired by “Chakanas,” a Peruvian mythological symbol that represents a connection between different worlds and pre-Inca motifs. 

The artists involved in the massive project, called “Project Rainbow”, spent nine months painting more than 1,000 houses to complete the artwork. 

Image screenshots via Euronews

A team of researchers used supercomputers to simulate a black hole to find more details about this cosmic phenomenon. The experts found out the cause behind the flares these holes emit. The flares, which are intense bursts of light have plagued scientists for a long time. Dr. Bart Ripperda from the Flatiron Institute and Princeton University and his colleagues learned that the flares formed when magnetic fields broke apart then rejoined back together. Learn more about the discovery here.

Image credit: B. Ripperda et al., AJL, 2022

We can easily purchase a chess set for around $20 or less. However, did you know that a handcrafted wooden chess set that is certified for the World Chess Championship can cost you as much as $500? All certified chess sets need to have knights that look the same, and there are only ten people or fewer that are trained to carve knights for these special sets. Business Insider visits a factory in Omrisar, India, to learn about the process of making these chess sets to provide a context as to why they’re so expensive.

Yikes! Anna Leporskaya’s Three Figures, a valuable avant-garde painting, was vandalized by a ‘bored’ security guard when he drew on the faceless figures in the artwork. The artwork was painted between 1932 and 1934, and was insured for 75m roubles (~$1.3m). It was displayed in an exhibition at the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center in Ekaterinburg, where the guard was working on his first day. The guard was not identified but he was fired. “His motives are still unknown but the administration believes it was some kind of a lapse in sanity,” Anna Reshetkina, the exhibition’s curator said. Restoration work was estimated to cost around 250,000 roubles (~$4,600).

.Image credit: The Art Newspaper Russia/Newslfash/Australscope

It’s an actual snow sculpture. The T-Rex is in full color and looks like an inflatable standing in the snow, but Minnesota resident Paul Larcom poured his time and effort into creating the dinosaur artwork for three weeks. According to Larcom, he was inspired by a previous snow sculpture he did of a Tauntaun from Star Wars. “Everyone got real excited because they thought it was a dinosaur. I think they were a little disappointed when they saw it wasn't," he said.

His work was posted on Reddit, gaining the attention of the Internet, and landed the post on the front page of the website. Larcom was surprised to see his work on Reddit. "I didn't know it was going to take off like it did. I found out it made it to Reddit when my aunt and a friend of mine contacted me on Tuesday and told me about it," he shared.

Image credit: u/moist_ginger_toes1 via Digg

Cloisonnism is one of the significant styles that emerged during the Post-Impressionism period. Following the main themes in this art period, Cloisonnism is characterized by flat areas of color and dark linework. Created by Emile Bernard, Louis Anquetin, and Paul Gauguin, the art movement was inspired by Japanese woodblock prints and stained glass windows. Cloisonnism was coined by art critic Édouard Dujardin after the decorative technique cloisonné, which describes metalwork objects that contain colorful glass within wireframes. Learn more about this post-impressionism art movement here!

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons