A new archaeological discovery has been made, and as with the previous discovery of undiscovered chambers in the Bent Pyramid in Egypt, the key to making the find was found in the cosmos: this time, the connection was made by a high school student, using the stars to plot the locations of ancient Mayan cities.
read more

Due to the limitations presented by our culture’s fledgling space travel technology, simply going to a planet orbiting another star isn’t a practical way of determining whether or not there’s any life there. Instead, researchers are using indirect methods of looking for extra-solar life, such as the conditions presented by the planet’s host star in relation to it’s orbit, the presence of an atmosphere, temperature, and so on. Now, a research team has devised a list of signature gases that astronomers can look for, that might be produced when a potential extraterrestrial organism metabolizes.
read more

Breaking yet another record, the global average temperature for April of 2016 marked the 12th consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th century average, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reporting levels a full 1.10ºC above normal. This makes for the longest streak of record-breaking monthly temperatures — a full year’s worth — since record-keeping began in the 19th century.

That 1.10ºC above average (1.12ºC according to NASA) also places last month as the hottest April on record, and also stands to mark 2016 as the hottest year on record, with the January through April period seeing 1.14ºC above average around the globe.
read more

The mainstream scientific theory that North and South America’s indigenous cultures came across the Bering land bridge from Asia at the end of the last ice age appears to be in jeopardy, with the growing acceptance of archaeological finds across the two continents that point to a much earlier period of habitation. A recent paper published regarding an underwater sinkhole in Florida that contains human-made artifacts dating back to 14,550 years ago — over a thousand years before humans were even supposed to be in Alaska — is one such example, although the acceptance of these ideas has been slow.
read more