Viking 'treasure' of rare artifacts revealed on a long-lost mountain trail

 Posted on January 6, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  739 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Archaeologists recently documented a rare treasure trove of Viking Age objects littering a long-forgotten mountain pass, including the remains of a dog wearing its collar and leash. As climate change melts Norway's glaciers, pockets of history hidden for centuries or millennia are finally seeing the light of day. Melting along a high-altitude trail in the Lendbreen glacier has revealed hundreds of artifacts dating to the Viking Age, the Roman Iron Age and even the Bronze Age. [Read More]

Why Alexander the Great May Have Been Declared Dead Prematurely (It's Pretty Gruesome)

 Posted on January 6, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  748 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Alexander the Great may have been killed by Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological condition in which a person's own immune system attacks them, says one medical researchers. The condition may have led to a mistaken declaration of the king's death and may explain the mysterious phenomenon in which his body didn't decay for seven days after his "death." Alexander the Great was king of Macedonia between 336 and 323 B.C. During that time, he conquered an empire that stretched from the Balkans to modern-day Pakistan. [Read More]

Workout Supplement Contains Meth-Like Compound

 Posted on January 6, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  654 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

A widely available workout supplement contains a compound that is chemically similar to the drug methamphetamine, according to a new study. The supplement, called Craze, made by Driven Sports Inc., is marketed as a way to improve workout performance and "enhance muscle gains." The product's label says it contains extract from dendrobium orchids. Several athletes who reported taking Craze failed urine drug tests. The new study, prompted by those failed tests, found Craze contains a methamphetamine-like compound that is not listed on the product's label, and has not been studied in people. [Read More]

World Will Get More Religious by 2050

 Posted on January 6, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  751 words  |  Fernande Dalal

The world is becoming more religious, as the number of agnostics and others who don't affiliate with a certain religion shrinks as a percentage of the global population. By 2050, just 13 percent of people in the world will say they are unaffiliated, compared with 16 percent who said the same in 2010, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The United States is an exception, where more Americans are expected to flee organized religion. [Read More]

World's rarest seals have a secret breeding cave in Cyprus

 Posted on January 6, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  732 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

The world's rarest seals have been caught on camera in secret breeding caves in northern Cyprus. The new breeding sites provide hope for a struggling species, but the caves are now in need of protection. Mediterranean monk seals (Monachus monachus) are the most endangered of all the pinniped species — a group that includes seals, sea lions, sea otters and walruses — with just 700 individuals left in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of endangered species. [Read More]

8 Bizarre Animal Surprises From 'True or Poo' — Can You Tell Fact From Myth?

 Posted on January 5, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  623 words  |  Fernande Dalal

True or Poo?In the new book "True or Poo: The Definitive Field Guide to Filthy Animal Facts and Falsehoods," authors Dani Rabaiotti and Nick Caruso (the writers behind 2017's literary sensation "Does It Fart?") team up again to bring you some of the weirdest, grossest, smelliest animal traits and behaviors, while also debunking popular myths about animals. Here are a few peculiar examples from their book: Can you tell which are true facts, and which are " [Read More]

8 Human-Animal Encounters That Went Horribly Wrong in 2017

 Posted on January 5, 2023  |  6 minutes  |  1069 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Bad decisionsTaking selfies near large and dangerous wildlife. Toying with snakes. Fighting bedbugs with fire. Sometimes when people interact casually with animals, their behavior is inappropriate, deliberately provocative, ill-informed or careless, and this can have catastrophic or even deadly consequences. The outcomes of such encounters — which often result in people or animals suffering injury or even death — seem all the more tragic because they could have easily been avoided, had the human participants practiced a little more common sense. [Read More]

Air Force's X-37B robotic space plane wings past 500 days in Earth orbit

 Posted on January 5, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  612 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

(opens in new tab)That enigmatic U.S. military X-37B robotic space drone has now chalked up more than 500 days circling the Earth. The Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-6) is also called USSF-7 for the U.S. Space Force and launched May 17, 2020, on an Atlas V 501 booster. OTV-6 is the first to use a service module to host experiments. The service module is an attachment to the aft of the vehicle that allows additional experimental payload capability to be carried to orbit. [Read More]

Are We Living Inside a Computer Simulation?

 Posted on January 5, 2023  |  5 minutes  |  1039 words  |  Trudie Dory

The popular film trilogy, The Matrix, presented a cyberuniverse where humans live in a simulated reality created by sentient machines. Now, a philosopher and team of physicists imagine that we might really be living inside a computer-generated universe that you could call The Lattice. What's more, we may be able to detect it. SLIDE SHOW: Violent Beauty of Our Evolving Universe In 2003, British philosopher Nick Bostrom published a paper that proposed the universe we live in might in fact really be a numerical computer simulation. [Read More]

Cosmic Rays Could Spark Earth's Lightning

 Posted on January 5, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  424 words  |  Trudie Dory

All lightning on Earth may have its roots in space, new research suggests. Lightning flashes on Earth about 100 times per second, but what triggers lightning in thunderstorms remains mostly unknown. Especially odd is the fact that decades of analysis suggest electrical fields within thunderclouds have only a tenth or so of the strength needed to spark a lightning bolt. More than 20 years ago, physicist Alex Gurevich at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow suggested lightning might be initiated by cosmic rays from outer space. [Read More]