This week, Jupiter may have gained a brand new ring when it was struck by a comet in the ’90s, an ancient tablet found by fishers in Iran is written in an unknown language, a new-to-science predator is discovered in the Atacama Trench, human genomes reveal when inter-hominid hook-ups between us and Neanderthals took place, we may finally know how to play an ancient board game and are donor recipients getting memories as well as organs with their transplants?
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The First Comet We Ever Saw Slam Into Jupiter May Have Left It With A New Ring
The rings of Jupiter might not be as spectacular as Saturn’s (whose are?) but they are there. However, one of them may not have existed before just a few decades ago. A new hypothesis suggests that the breaking apart and eventual collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 – the first space rock ever directly observed hitting another Solar System body, Jupiter – left behind a stream of dust within the area of influence of the gas giant. Over the last 30 years, these particles might have organized into a thin ring. Read the full story here
Unknown Written Language Found On Ancient Stone Tablet
A bunch of fishers in the Dmanisi region of Georgia picked up an unexpected catch recently when they hauled in a stone tablet bearing an ancient inscription in a language that has never been seen before. Researchers aren’t entirely sure when the mysterious text was engraved or by whom, but suspect it probably dates back to the Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age. Read the full story here
First-Of-Its-Kind Predator Caught 8,000 Meters Deep In The Atacama Trench
A new-to-science predator has been identified from the hadal depths of the Atacama Trench, a first for this island-like ecosystem in the Southeast Pacific. Here, scientists had loaded bait traps with some chicken in an effort to lure in some scavengers and instead found themselves with a whopping great predatory amphipod – something that had been documented in other hadal subduction trenches, but never the Atacama. Read the full story here
Oldest Human Genomes Sequenced, Revealing When We First Slept With Neanderthals
Scientists have successfully sequenced the genomes of seven people who lived in Europe between 42,000 and 49,000 years ago, revealing that they belonged to the earliest known group of humans to split from the original “Out-of-Africa” lineage. The ancient individuals were also part of the very first population to mix with Neanderthals, picking up sections of DNA from these extinct hominids that can still be found in all non-African populations today. Read the full story here
After Losing The Rules For 4,000 Years, We May Know How To Play This Ancient Board Game
We may finally know how to play an ancient board game, or at least a decent approximation of it. The board game was not buried with a copy of the rules, and so thousands of years later we have a (hopefully) complete board game with no idea how to play. But we do have a few clues, helping researchers to try and pin down some likely rules. Read the full story here
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Feature of the week:
Do Donor Organs Transfer Memory? Heart Transplant Patients Report Strange Personality Changes
A curious phenomenon has been reported among people who have undergone heart transplants. Some believe that they may have received more than just an organ in the exchange, as they report altered emotions, tastes, and even memories that seem to belong to the person who donated it. Could it be that these organs are somehow transporting a bit of their previous owner’s personality into the new one? Read the full story here
More content:
Have you seen our e-magazine, CURIOUS? Issue 29 December 2024 is available now. This month we asked, “Why Is Laughter Contagious?” – check it out for exclusive interviews, book excerpts, long reads, and more.
PLUS, the We Have Questions podcast – an audio version of our coveted CURIOUS e-magazine column – continues. In episode 3, we ask “The Biggest Wild Goose Is… Poisonous?”
Season 4 of IFLScience’s The Big Questions podcast has concluded. To revisit all four season’s episodes, click here.
