These are some of the many claims made about the James Webb Space Telescope after the first images taken by the telescope were released. When describing an image of the Carina Nebula Katie Mack, Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, wrote: “Where Hubble’s view showed us the […]
Undersea Aussie aboriginal artefacts found, according to reports in ABC News, The Conversation and James Cook University News 2 July 2020, and PLOS ONE 1 July 2020, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0233912. Archaeologists have found hundreds of stone tools and grinding stones at two sites on the seabed near the Dampier Archipelago, off the northwest coast of Western […]
Stone tools take brains, according to reports in PLoS ONE and e!Science News 3 November 2010, and ScienceDaily 4 November 2010. Stone tools come in two main types: razor sharp flakes of stone used for cutting and hand held axes used in defence and hunting as well as cutting. The sharp flakes are considered more […]
Stone age pyrotechnology described in ScienceNOW 13 August 2009, and Science Daily and ABC News in Science, 14 August 2009. Archaeologists collecting stone tools at a site called Pinnacle Point in South Africa have long been puzzled by stone tools made of a fine grained rock named silcrete. The tools showed evidence of much working […]
Just when we thought we were evolving more brains, a 2,000 year old analogue computer made by the ancient Greeks is documented in Sky and Telescope article, 29 November 2006. It has been named the Antikythera Mechanism, and was made of brass enclosed in wood. Until recently, no one has had a close look at […]
Americans ten times older, according to reports in Nature News and Science (AAAS) News and ScienceDaily 26 April 2017, and Nature, 2017; 544 (7651): 479 doi: 10.1038/nature22065. In 1992 palaeontologists found bones, teeth and tusks from a Mastodon buried in a fine silt layer that was exposed during a road construction project in California. Many […]
Bone inspired steel made, as described in Science (AAAS) News and New Scientist 9 March 2017 and Science doi: 10.1126/science.aal2766, 10 March 2017. Metal fatigue is the weakening of a metal structure when it is repeatedly subjected to forces (“load cycling”), leading to the formation of microscopic cracks, as happens where aeroplane wings move up […]
Cooking plants in a green Sahara, reported in Science (AAAS) News and ScienceDaily 19 December 2016, BBC News 20 December 2016, and Nature Plants doi:10.1038/nplants.2016.194, published online 19 December 2016. A group of researchers from the UK and Italy have studied 110 broken pieces of pottery from archaeological sites at Takarkori and Uan Afuda in […]
God particle found according to reports in ABC Star Stuff, BBC News, ScienceNOW and ScienceDaily (and numerous other media sources) 4 July 2012. Scientists working with the world’s largest, most powerful atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), have found a particle they believe is the long sort-after Higgs boson particle. The name Higgs boson […]
“God is not in charge, we are” says test tube baby pioneer, Robert Edwards, according to a report in T2 Supplement, The Times, 24 July 2003, p.6. In an interview with Anjana Ahuja of the The Times (London, UK) Edwards explained his motive for fighting the Establishment 25 years ago to develop in vitro fertilisation. […]