A copper awl is the oldest metal object unearthed to date in the Middle East. The discovery reveals that metals were exchanged across hundreds of miles in this region more than 6,000 years ago, centuries earlier than previously thought, researchers say.
The artifact was unearthed in Tel Tsaf, an archaeological site in Israel located near the Jordan River and Israel’s border with Jordan. The area was a village from about 5100 B.C. to 4600 B.C., and was first discovered in A.D. 1950, with digs taking place from the end of the 1970s up to the present day.
A massive cult complex, dating back about 3,300 years, has been discovered at the site of Tel Burna in Israel.
While archaeologists have not fully excavated the cult complex, they can tell it was quite large, as the courtyard alone was 52 by 52 feet (16 by 16 meters). Inside the complex, researchers discovered three connected cups, fragments of face masks, massive jars that are almost as big as a person and burnt animal bones that may indicate sacrificial rituals.
The archaeologists said they aren’t sure who was worshiped at the complex, though Baal, the Canaanite storm god, is a possibility. “The letters of Ugarit [an ancient site in modern-day Syria] suggest that of the Canaanite pantheon, Baal, the Canaanite storm god, would have been the most likely candidate,” Itzhaq Shai, a professor at Ariel University who is directing a research project at Tel Burna, told Live Science in an email.
Economic growth may spell the end of many of the world’s nearly 7,000 spoken languages, say scientists. Languages in the tropics and Himalayan region are likely to be increasingly threatened in the near future.
More than 3,300 years ago, in a newly built city in Egypt, a woman with an incredibly elaborate hairstyle of lengthy hair extensions was laid to rest.
She was not mummified, her body simply being wrapped in a mat. When archaeologists uncovered her remains they found she wore “a very complex coiffure with approximately 70 extensions fastened in different layers and heights on the head,” writes Jolanda Bos, an archaeologist working on the Amarna Project, in an article recently published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology.
Researchers don’t know her name, age or occupation, but she is one of hundreds of people, including many others whose hairstyles are still intact, who were buried in a cemetery near an ancient city now called Amarna.
The six thieves were caught plundering the 2,000-year-old archaeological site known as the “Cave of the Skulls.” In the process, they destroyed some of the cliffside where the cave was located.
More than 200 researchers responded with videos, images and essays explaining the science of sleep to thousands of 11-year-old judges. The winners, announced Sunday (May 31) here at the World Science Festival, joked about dreaming of mutant ninjas and playing the video game “Destiny” late into the night, but also explained how sleep helps the brain heal the body, as well as organize and strengthen skills learned throughout the day.
With absurdly low temperatures gripping the eastern half of the United States and Canada, several cities and towns have cancelled school for the day, leaving parents with youngsters stuck indoors — a recipe for cabin fever.
For those looking to keep their kiddos occupied, there’s a way to use the extreme cold for some entertainment (and sneak in a little science education, too). Here, LiveScience has rounded up a few fun experiments that can be done with just a little time outdoors (make sure to bundle up!), from making frozen soap bubbles to creating your own colorful snow. (There’s also one experiment to make sure the little ones don’t try.)
Kids love bubbles. And while summer is typically the time to crack open a bottle of bubbles, there’s a way to make them work in the winter. If it’s cold enough outside (this post at the blog Apartment Therapy recommends temperatures below about 9 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit, or about minus 11 degrees Celsius), you can make the bubbles freeze. The trick is to blow them up in the air so that they have time to freeze before hitting the ground or another surface. The bubbles will form crystalline patterns and some might break, looking a bit like the shell of a cracked egg. Don’t have any bubble solution handy? The post also has a simple homemade recipe.
Do just like Half Pint did in the “Little House on the Prairie” books and make your own maple syrup candy. Just heat butter and syrup together, according to this recipe, and after it cools, you can pour it onto fresh snow and it will harden into something like maple taffy. Yum!
Okay, so maybe they’re not magic, but they will seem that way to the kids, and this one is quite easy. Just inflate and tie up a balloon, then stick it outside and watch it deflate. Bring it back inside to warm up and watch it re-inflate. (This is a nice lesson in the volume of a gas, in this case, air volume, changes with temperature, shrinking in the cold, as its density increases, and expanding in the heat, as its density decreases.)
This one is for those of you experiencing really cold temperatures. Meteorologist Eric Holthaus demonstrates it nicely in a video posted to Youtube (see it also below): If it’s cold enough outside, you can take some boiling water throw it up in the air (make sure it will blow away from you), and it will freeze into snow. When Holthaus did his experiment in Viroqua, Wis., it was minus 21 F (minus 29 C) with a wind chill of minus 51 F (minus 46 C).
How does water turn into snow? Colder air holds less water vapor than warmer air, while the boiling water is giving off lots of water vapor (that’s the steam you see rising from the pot). When the hot water is thrown into the cold air, the air gets more water vapor than it can hold, Mark Seeley, a climatologist at the University of Minnesota, explained previously to LiveScience’s Life’s Little Mysteries, so the water vapor clings to tiny particles in the air, crystallizing into snow. Seeley says it has to be quite cold to attempt this one, somewhere in the region of minus 30 F (minus 34 C) or lower.
One “experiment” to make sure the kids don’t attempt is triple-dog daring anyone into sticking their tongue to that frozen flagpole. Maddie Gilmartin, 12, of East Kingston, N.H., gave this one a try and, sure enough, her tongue was frozen to the pole, as the New York Daily News notes. Her parents tried to blow warm air on her tongue and douse it with warm water to get it unstuck, but to no avail. Eventually the paramedics were able to free her; and her tongue is expected to recover, though it could take up to six months for the swelling to go down.
Why does this happen? The tongue is warm, and when it touches the frigid pole, the pole saps that warmth and cools the tongue, causing the body to send more heat to the cooled area. But the high thermal conductivity of the metal pole means it sucks up that warmth faster than the body can resupply it to the tongue. The upshot: The moisture on the tongue freezes in the pores of the tongue and the metal and, voila, you’re stuck.
The largest “four-winged” dinosaur known has been found, and this predator has the longest feathers yet outside of birds, researchers say. This new findingyieldsinsights on how dinosaurs may have flown.
