The Sun has unleashed a quartet of strong solar flares, which could herald a wild week of space weather. It all kicked off at 12:33 UTC on February 1, when the Sun fired off an X1.0 flare. About 11 hours later, at 23:37 UTC, a massive eruption occurred with an X8.1 flare. Two more followed…
Amidst a cache of glittering golden treasures from the Iberian Bronze Age, a pair of corroded objects might be the most precious of all. A dull bracelet and a rusted hollow hemisphere decorated with gold are forged, researchers have found, not out of metal from beneath the ground, but with iron from meteorites that fell…
Ancient bones discovered in a cave in Casablanca, Morocco, could fill in some of the blanks about human evolution. The cave, known as Grotte à Hominidés, contains assemblages of jawbones, teeth, and vertebrae dating back to 773,000 years ago – a period close to when the modern human lineage began to diverge from the ancestors…
A study published in 2022 found a tenuous but plausible link between picking your nose and an increased risk of developing dementia. In cases where picking at your nose causes internal tissue damage, critical species of bacteria have a clearer path to the brain, which responds to their presence in ways that resemble signs of…
Scientists looking to tackle our ongoing obesity crisis have made an important discovery: Intermittent calorie restriction leads to significant changes both in the gut and the brain, which may open up new options for maintaining a healthy weight. Researchers from China studied 25 volunteers classed as obese over a period of 62 days, during which…
The bumpy trajectory of human aging may have a tipping point as we enter our twilight years, a new study has found. Past the age of around 75, our bodies can no longer easily recover from injury or illness – a sharp decline in resilience that comes with a corresponding rise in the risk of…
A discovery by researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine in the US could lead to treatments that clear the troublesome aggregations of protein thought to play a key role in Alzheimer’s disease. Using mice bred to have a condition similar to the neurodegenerative disorder, the team found that elevated levels of a protein called…
Two large gold deposits discovered in China may hold a collective mass of over 2,000 metric tons (2,200 US tons) of the precious material – the largest ever found within the country’s borders. If confirmed by further geological surveys, the Wangu deposit in Hunan province and the Dadonggou deposit in Liaoning province could be worth…
Magnetic signatures hidden inside rocks tell us a lot about Earth’s magnetic field and the way continents and tectonic plates have shifted across millennia – but for some periods, the geological record doesn’t make much sense. A fresh analysis of rocks from one of these periods, the Ediacaran (about 630-540 million years ago), aims to…
Charred coffee grounds could make concrete up to 30 percent stronger, scientists in Australia found. Their clever recipe could solve multiple problems at once. Each year, the world produces about 10 billion kilograms (22 billion pounds) of coffee waste, most of which ends up in landfills. Related: Coffee Could Be The Secret to Healthy Aging…