When a body is buried in the ground, you expect it to decompose over time, right? In the case of the Lindow Man, however, even after 2,000 years, the body hasn’t deteriorated or decomposed that much. His bone was dissolved but complex tissues such as skin and organs were just turned pitch black, leaving the corpse well-preserved. Carolyn Marshall discusses the science behind the phenomenon in this Ted Talk. Check the full video here.
Image via wikimedia commons
Can this turn back time? What in the world is a time crystal anyway? A space-time crystal, also known as an STC or ‘time crystal’, is a phase of matter made of repeating patterns in time. These special crystals exhibit temporal periodicity, a state wherein the crystals oscillate between one configuration and another. Scientists in Berlin were able to capture the first ever footage of an STC:
The video above shows a time crystal created from magnon, which are quasiparticles associated with the spin-wave of electrons within a magnetic material. The time crystal was built from magnons in a magnetic strip with a microscopic antenna attached to it. The antenna was used to generate an oscillating magnetic field using radio frequency, and the lines fading in and out in the video show the absorption of the X-ray beams by that magnetic wavelength structure. The darker regions show where more X-rays were absorbed which allowed the visualization of periodic oscillation of both time and space.
“It is a little bit confusing, but we induce the magnons in the strip electrically with an antenna on top of the structure,” Nick Träger, a doctoral student who co-led the research, said to Vice. “Thus, everything you can see in this video is a periodic magnetization pattern (consisting of magnons), which follows a space-time periodic motion.”
Image via Vice
Two ex-Navy Seal officers, named Joe Wolfel and Judson Kauffman, have decided to find a way to map the entire ocean, using the powers of modern technology and submarines. With 80% of the ocean remaining unmapped, Kauffman and Wolfel established Terradepth, an Austin-based data service company that has developed a new type of robotic submarine to autonomously map the ocean and its varied environments:
“The Navy really doesn’t have charts or maps of very much of the seafloor at all,” Kauffman says. Even now, 80% of the ocean remains unmapped, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “That was the first time that either one of us understood the level of ignorance that exists around this subsea world, so that kind of planted a seed.”
Still, their scheme for hurdling that challenge wouldn’t germinate for another dozen years, after the pair parlayed their military experience into a business consultancy and began noting the burgeoning array of space exploration robotics.
“One day we looked at each other and said, ‘Why isn’t anybody taking this technology—autonomy, AI, and machine learning—and finding a way to map the ocean?’ ” Kauffman says. “There’s a whole lot of room for modern technology to come in and disrupt the world of ocean exploration and the industry of ocean surveys.”
Image via Fast Company
Ever Given is a massive container ship that is stuck in the Suez Canal, managing to halt traffic in the busy waterway. The ship became stuck in the waterway thanks to heavy winds, and while multiple tugboats were sent to try and dislodge the ship and make it refloat, the Ever Given remained stuck in its location. CNBC has more details:
Around 6:30 p.m. ET Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, which is the technical manager of the vessel, said the ship was still aground with re-float efforts ongoing.
“Dredgers are working to clear sand and mud from around the vessel to free her. Tugboats in conjunction with Ever Given’s winches are working to shift the vessel,” the firm said.
Bernhard Schulte added that there were no reports of injuries among the 25 crew members, and that no cargo has been damaged. Initial investigations have ruled out mechanical or engine failure as reason for the grounding.
The enormous cargo carrier is more than 1,300 feet long and about 193 feet wide. It weighs more than 200,000 tons. One end of the ship was wedged into one side of the canal, with the other stretching nearly to the other bank.
The 120-mile long man-made waterway is a key point of global trade, connecting a steady flow of goods from East to West.
Everything from consumer products to machinery parts to oil flows through its waters.
Image via CNBC
Well, at least you won’t get arrested if you try to hack into a government system in this instance. Texas-based tech company Fathom5 launched a hackathon called HACKtheMACHINE. The event, backed and funded by the US Navy, aims to give lone hackers and small startups a chance to get military contracts by hacking the Navy’s cybersystems. Digital Trends has more details:
“When you look at [the cybersecurity landscape today], you have Advanced Persistent Threats — APT — which is kind of like cyber community speak for Russian and Chinese hacking that’s state-funded,” Staples told Digital Trends. “These are potential competitors in the global landscape who are actively funding offensive cyber teams. We have to be proactively thinking about how we’re going to defend against that. We’ve seen Russia use cyber as a precursor to kinetic operations a couple of times, including the invasion of Ukraine [and] Crimea. I don’t think there’s been a future battle that doesn’t either begin with cyber or is enabled by cyber, even if it’s just as a way to conduct espionage.”
Image via Digital Trends
Don’t worry, it’s just an optical illusion, and a good one too! French artist JR created a new installation that pays homage to classic artworks that are unappreciated and unseen. The installation, called La Ferita, is a massive photo collage installed on the façade of the Palazzo Strozzi. The artwork references the adversities and challenges that cultural institutions have faced over the past year, as My Modern Met details:
Measuring 28 meters high and 33 meters wide, this optical illusion creates a “crack” in the exterior of the building so that viewers can see masterpieces like Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera. It was installed as Italy entered another lockdown that will last until April 6, closing the doors of all cultural institutions once again. At the same time, the installation of La Ferita also launches a new public art initiative for the city by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and philanthropist Andy Bianchedi.
“They say the museums are closed, but it's up to us to open them. Here is Florence, the city of Boticelli, Donatello, Machiavel, and Dante, we opened the Palazzo Strozzi,” JR says of the piece on his Instagram. “These last few months, we have been deprived of the possibility to be together… but we still have the freedom to dream, to create, to envision the future. Maybe it's not much, but we have that!”
Image via Instagram
What’s the color of your birthday? Does every birthdate have an associated color? Well, a Japanese chart managed to connect every birthday not just with a specific color, but also with a personality! The chart has all 366 birthdays and connects each with a HEX code, personality description, and color keywords:
For instance, if you were born on August 30, your color would be ultramarine and your keywords would be: motherhood, music, and elegance. Your personality is described as: "A person who plays a melody that touches the heartstrings."
According to DesignTAXI, the chart's color meanings appear to be in line with color theory. However, if you aren't able to read in Japanese, you'll have to translate the page into another language. The English translation can be found here, which will have some mistranslated words (the meanings should still be pretty clear, though).
Image via Hunker
Infinite libraries are pieces that are bigger on the inside. Images of these ‘infinite libraries’ are on Pinterest, and with the amount of details on these wonderful bookshelf decorative pieces, it seems difficult to make my own version of it. Well, Nerdforge shares how she makes one, and as difficult it is for me to grasp (as I lack the creative senses to make it look as good as she did), it’s fascinating to see her design and creation process. It’s also somewhat relaxing, too! If you’d like to see a step by step process to create an ‘infinite library’ for your bookshelf, this video is a good guide.
Wow, this boss understands the need to play a new game on its launch date. A Japanese company decided to give its employees the day off on March 26 after noticing that a lot of them were booking the day off when the new Monster Hunter game will be launched. The company, Mark-On Ltd, decided to make the day an official holiday:
The Huffington Post Japan spoke to Hiyama-san over the phone, where they said that several employees had already requested vacation on the 26th so they could play the new Monster Hunter game, which led them to make the day an official holiday. Naturally, Mark-On's employees have been grateful for the decision, and many Monster Hunter fans on Twitter have been wishing their own companies would implement a similar policy.
The Monster Hunter series is incredibly successful in Japan, with every new release seeing enormous attention. It's not a dissimilar situation to that of Dragon Quest, which traditionally sees so much interest on launch days that Square began releasing new entries on Saturdays to stop children skipping school – a fact which became its own urban myth.
Image via IGN
A structural battery is an energy storage device that can be part of a structure. Scientists have made a structural battery ten times better than the existing batteries in the market. Researchers from the Chalmers University of Technology and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden created a ‘massless’ structural battery for electric cars:
In fact, these cars must be specially designed to carry the mass of the batteries. But what if the frame of the car could hold energy? “Due to their multifunctionality, structural battery composites are often referred to as ‘massless energy storage’ and have the potential to revolutionize the future design of electric vehicles and devices,” the researchers explain.
The battery’s combined qualities (or “multifunctionality”) make it 10 times better than any previous massless battery—a project scientists have worked on since 2007.
Chalmers University of Technology writes in a press release:
“The battery has an energy density of 24 Wh/kg, meaning approximately 20 percent capacity compared to comparable lithium-ion batteries currently available. But since the weight of the vehicles can be greatly reduced, less energy will be required to drive an electric car, for example, and lower energy density also results in increased safety. And with a stiffness of 25 GPa, the structural battery can really compete with many other commonly used construction materials.”
Image via Popular Mechanics
Here’s another way to recycle your empty plastic bottles! Well, it also requires extra effort, but hey, it’s an alternative material for reducing noise. Researchers from the University of Washington, along with architecture firm NBBJ teamed up to create a new sound absorption technique that uses empty bottles embedded inside walls. Their prototype provided a 60 percent reduction, as Input magazine details:
The basic idea is that empty bottles neutralize noise by capturing some of the sound energy that passes by; once inside, the waves bounce around the cavity and clash with the narrow shape of the bottle’s neck, causing the energy to dissipate. So the group decided to see what would happen if a wall was made with bottles embedded inside, with the necks facing outwards and the cavities hidden inside.
According to the group, prototype slabs of the wall were introduced to NBBJ’s office and they measured noise reductions of around 13 decibels... or the equivalent of wearing noise-canceling headphones. That’s pretty incredible and could go a long way towards helping workers who are sensitive to noise being made by people around them (read: me).
“We can’t ignore the human voice. It ties back to a survival mechanism,” says Ryan Mullenix, a partner at NBBJ, in an interview with Fast Company. “That has a big impact on our executive function, our cognitive control, our emotional self-regulation. In the basic sense, it just stresses us out.”
Image via Input Magazine
The Shigir Idol, a nine-foot-tall totem pole decorated in geometric carvings and human faces, is the only surviving Stone Age wooden artifact . Experts now believe, thanks to new research, that the sculpture is older than Stonehenge. Understanding its origins would also change our understanding of our ancestors, as Artnet details:
Found in a peat bog by gold miners in 1890, the idol is the jewel of the collection at the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore, a remote institution in Russia’s Ural Mountains. Its age remained a mystery even to experts until 1997, when Russian scientists using radiocarbon dating found that it was 9,500 years old. The unexpected find initially prompted skepticism from some experts, given the sophisticated nature of the piece, now believed to be the earliest known ritual art.
In 2018, more advanced accelerator mass spectrometry technology testing the pristine core of the larch wood statue—rather than the surface, which had undergone numerous conservation treatments over the more than 100 years since its discovery—determined that it was actually even older: closer to 11,600 years old.
Now, a new study published in Quaternary International has pushed that date back by a further 900 years—making it more than twice as old as Stonehenge or the Egyptian pyramids.
“The idol was carved during an era of great climate change, when early forests were spreading across a warmer late glacial to postglacial Eurasia,” the paper’s lead author, archaeologist Thomas Terberger, the head of research at the Department of Cultural Heritage of Lower Saxony, in Germany, told the New York Times. “The landscape changed, and the art—figurative designs and naturalistic animals painted in caves and carved in rock—did, too, perhaps as a way to help people come to grips with the challenging environments they encountered.”
The statue’s complex iconography, with its abstract symbols, defies what archaeologists believed they knew about the hunter-gatherer societies in Europe and Asia, whose artistic output was thought to be limited to animal images and hunting scenes, not objects with ritual significance.
Image via Artnet
A new research has discovered the identity of the tiny humans that lived on the islands of Southeast Asia over 50,000 years ago. The origin of these ‘hobbits’ are unknown, but the study suggests that they are closely related to Denisovans and Neanderthals. Fossil evidence of the two ‘hobbit’ species, Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis, showed that their small stature is a result of an evolutionary process, as Gizmodo details:
At the same time, the new paper, led by João Teixeira from the University of Adelaide, provides further confirmation of interbreeding between the Denisovans and modern humans, specifically modern humans living in Island Southeast Asia, an area that encompasses tropical islands between east Asia, Australia, and New Guinea. Denisovans—a sister group of Neanderthals—reached the area some 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, but archaeologists have yet to uncover a shred of fossil evidence related to these so-called “southern Denisovans.” That’s obviously weird, given the overwhelming genetic evidence that they lived in this part of the world, but it means there are important archaeological discoveries still waiting to be found. At least in theory.
So, the new paper, co-authored by anthropologist Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London, suggests modern humans interbred with Denisovans but not H. floresiensis or H. luzonensis. That’s an important result, because it could help to explain the presence of the diminutive humans, who died out around 50,000 years ago, in this part of the world. Excitingly, it could mean that these “super-archaics,” in the parlance of the researchers, “are not super-archaic after all, and are more closely related to [modern] humans than previously thought,” explained Teixeira, a population geneticist, in an email.
In other words, H. floresiensis or H. luzonensis might actually be the elusive southern Denisovans.
Image via Gizmodo
Space is a vast and unknown area that holds more mysteries than we can comprehend. Sure, we know some aspects of the system the Earth is in, but how about outside the solar system? Well, astronomers may have figured out how to navigate around interstellar space. Check the full video here!
(via Flipboard)
Image via wikimedia commons
Experts believe that the voice coming from living beings, such as animals and humans are powered by the lungs and emitted through the mouth. Technically, this is correct. But did you know that every voice (animal or human) comes from a common ancestor? The common ancestor is something we didn’t expect: primordial fish. Science Focus has the details:
To understand how this could possibly be so, we must travel to a time around 530 million years ago, when the first fish evolved. Like their living descendants, these ancient fish sustained life by extracting oxygen from the water and expelling CO2 with a specialised membrane that lines the inside of the throat: gills.
Some of these primordial fish, however, evolved in shallow lakes or swamps and during droughts would become stranded on land. Many suffocated to death, but at least one was lucky enough to undergo one of those random mutations that drive natural selection.
In this case, a possible copying error in one of the genes responsible for building gills, rendering the subtly altered membrane capable of pulling a little oxygen from the air – a tiny sip that kept the landlocked fish alive long enough, not only to survive the dry spell, but to mate and pass along the mutated gill gene and the tiny survival advantage it conferred to its offspring.
Over hundreds of thousands of years, and many other random mutations that improved the animal’s ability to survive on land, a new species evolved in these swampy, shallow-water areas, a transitional, hybrid animal that possessed both water-breathing gills and rudimentary air-breathing lungs, which had formed from the hollow swim bladders it used for flotation. These creatures are known as lungfish, and they are our oldest air-breathing, land-dwelling relatives.
Image via Science Focus
