Intergalactic 'stream of stars' 10 times longer than the Milky Way is the 1st of its kind ever spotted

Harry Baker
Tue, December 12, 2023 

A map of galaxies with a large stream of stars running through it.

Astronomers have accidentally discovered the first known intergalactic trail of stars. The gigantic "stellar stream," which is around 10 times longer than the Milky Way, suggests that more of these structures could be lurking in deep space, a new study reveals.

Stellar streams are elongated threads of gravitationally entwined stars that have likely been ripped away from their parent galaxies or nebulas by the gravitational pull of other nearby galaxies. Scientists have mapped dozens of these streams within galaxies, including the Milky Way. But until now, none had been discovered in intergalactic space, meaning the space between galaxies.

In the study, which was published Nov. 30 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the researchers identified and mapped the first-ever intergalactic stellar stream, which stretches through the Coma Cluster, also known as Abell 1656, a group of more than 1,000 small galaxies located around 321 million light-years from Earth. The researchers named the first-of-its-kind structure the Giant Coma Stream — so named because it is also the largest stellar stream ever found.


"This giant stream crossed our path by coincidence," study lead author Javier Román, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, said in a statement. The team was initially studying halos of dispersed stars around the Coma Cluster, in an attempt to measure the dark matter that surrounds the galaxy group, when they came across the starry trail.

Related: How Far are the Constellations?

A map of galaxies with a large stream of stars running through it

Study co-author R. Michael Rich, an astronomer at the University of California, Los Angeles, made the first observations of the Giant Coma Stream with his personal telescope. The team then turned to the more powerful William Herschel Telescope, located on La Palma in the Canary Islands, Spain, to properly study the stream.

The researchers were surprised to find the stellar stream lurking within the galaxy cluster. The structure is "a rather fragile structure amid a hostile environment of mutually attracting and repelling galaxies," study co-author Reynier Peletier, an astronomer at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, said in the statement. Normally, you would expect something like this to be ripped apart by the more massive galaxies, he added.

The team is unsure how the stellar stream has persisted and grown so large, but one explanation could be the elusive material they were originally looking for — dark matter. While this mysterious entity makes up most of the matter in the universe, it is effectively invisible and can be detected only through its gravitational interactions with visible matter. It's possible, the team said, that dark matter lurking within the galaxy group helped to stretch the stellar stream into its current shape.

related stories

—Streams of stars orbiting the Milky Way shed light on galaxy’s dark matter

—Dark Energy Survey Finds New Stellar Streams Infiltrating the Milky Way

—'River of Stars' Streaming Through the Milky Way Was Hiding in Plain Sight for 1 Billion Years

The researchers are planning to study the stream with more powerful telescopes to learn more about the mysterious structure and its origins. They also hope to analyze individual stars within the stream to see if they are unique in any way.

The discovery of the Giant Coma Stream also opens the door for more intergalactic stellar streams to be found. The researchers believe there could be many more out there and hope that increasingly advanced telescopes, coupled with their findings, could help other astronomers find more of these stellar streams.

Scientists uncover a surprising phenomenon in the Himalayas that might be slowing the effects of climate change

Allison Chinchar, CNN
Tue, December 12, 2023 


Glaciers in the Himalayas are melting rapidly, but a new report showed an astonishing phenomenon in the world’s tallest mountain range could be helping to slow the effects of the global climate crisis.

When warming temperatures hit certain high-altitude ice masses, it sets off a surprising reaction that blows robust cold winds down the slopes, according to the study published December 4 in the journal Nature Geoscience.


The warming climate creates a greater temperature gap between the surrounding air above Himalayan glaciers and the cooler air directly in contact with the ice masses’ surface, explained Francesca Pellicciotti, professor of glaciology at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria and lead author of the study.

“This leads to an increase in turbulent heat exchange at the glacier’s surface and stronger cooling of the surface air mass,” she said in a news release.

As the cool, dry surface air gets cooler and denser, it sinks. The air mass flows down the slopes into the valleys, causing a cooling effect in the glaciers’ lower areas and neighboring ecosystems.

With ice and snow from the mountain range feeding into 12 rivers that provide fresh water to nearly 2 billion people in 16 countries, it’s important to find out whether the Himalayan glaciers can keep up this self-preserving cooling effect as the region faces a likely rise in temperatures over the next few decades.

Schematic diagram of the air cooling in the surroundings of Himalayan glaciers as they react to global warming. - Salerno/Guyennon/Pellicciotti/Nature Geoscience
Glacier melt

A June report previously covered by CNN showed that glaciers in the Himalayas melted 65% faster in the 2010s compared with the previous decade, which suggests rising temperatures are already having an impact in the area.

“The main impact of rising temperature on glaciers is an increase of ice losses, due to melt increase,” said Fanny Brun, a research scientist at the Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement in Grenoble, France. She was not involved in the study.

“The primary mechanisms are the lengthening and intensification of the melt season. They cause glaciers to thin and retreat, leading to deglaciated landscapes that tend to further increase the air temperature due (to) larger energy absorption by the surface,” Brun said.

The scientists are pictured here discussing the findings during a field trip. From left to right: Nicolas Guyennon (IRSA-CNR), Francesca Pellicciotti (ISTA) and Thomas Shaw (ISTA). - Franco Salerno/The Institute of Science and Technology Austria

That energy absorption at the surface is determined by something called the albedo effect. Light or “white” surfaces such as clean snow and ice will reflect more sunlight (high albedo) compared with “dark” surfaces such as the land that is exposed as glaciers retreat, soil and oceans (low albedo). In general, Brun said this phenomenon is interpreted as a positive feedback loop, or a process that enhances a change, but it is overall poorly studied and difficult to quantify.

At the base of Mount Everest, however, measurements of overall temperature averages appeared curiously stable instead of increasing. A close analysis of the data revealed what was really happening.

“While the minimum temperatures have been steadily on the rise, the surface temperature maxima in summer were consistently dropping,” said Franco Salerno, coauthor of the report and researcher for the National Research Council of Italy, or CNR.

However, even the presence of these cooling winds is not enough to fully counteract increasing temperatures and glacier melt due to climate change. Thomas Shaw, who is part of the ISTA research group with Pellicciotti, said the reason these glaciers are nevertheless melting rapidly is complex.

“The cooling is local, but perhaps still not sufficient to overcome the larger impact of climatic warming and fully preserve the glaciers,” Shaw said.

Pellicciotti explained that the general scarcity of data in high-elevation areas across the globe is what led to the study team’s focus of using the unique ground observation records at one station in the Himalayas.

“The process we highlighted in the paper is potentially of global relevance and may occur on any glacier worldwide where conditions are met,” she said.

The new study provides a compelling motivation to collect more high-elevation, long-term data that are strongly needed to prove the new findings and their broader impacts, Pellicciotti said.
Treasure trove of data

Located at a glacierized elevation of 5,050 meters (16,568 feet), the Pyramid International Laboratory/Observatory climate station sits along the southern slopes of Mount Everest. The observatory has recorded detailed meteorological data for almost 30 years.

It’s those granular meteorological observations that Pellicciotti, Salerno and a team of researchers used to conclude that warming temperatures are triggering what are called katabatic winds.

The cold winds, created by air flowing downhill, usually occur in mountainous regions, including the Himalayas.

The Pyramid International Laboratory/Observatory climate station on Mount Everest has recorded hourly meteorological data for nearly three decades. - Franco Salerno/The Institute of Science and Technology Austria

“Katabatic winds are a common feature of Himalayan glaciers and their valleys, and have likely always occurred,” Pellicciotti said. “What we observe however is a significant increase in intensity and duration of katabatic winds, and this is due to the fact that the surrounding air temperatures have increased in a warming world.”

Another thing the team observed was higher ground-level ozone concentrations in connection with lower temperatures. This evidence demonstrates that katabatic winds work as a pump that’s able to transport cold air from the higher elevation and the atmospheric layers down to the valley, Pellicciotti explained.

“According to the current state of knowledge, Himalayan glaciers are doing slightly better than average glaciers in terms of mass losses,” Brun said.
Glacier loss in Asia vs. Europe

Brun explained that in Central Himalaya, on average, the glaciers have thinned about 9 meters (29.5 feet) over the past two decades.

“This is much lower than glaciers in Europe, which have thinned of about 20 meters (65.6 feet) over the same time span, but this is larger than other regions in Asia (for example in the Karakoram region), or in the Arctic region,” Brun said.

Understanding how long these glaciers are capable of locally counteracting global warming’s impacts could be crucial in order to effectively address our changing world.

“We believe that the katabatic winds are the response of healthy glaciers to rising global temperatures and that this phenomenon could help preserve the permafrost and surrounding vegetation,” said study coauthor Nicolas Guyennon, a researcher at the National Research Council of Italy.

Further analysis is needed, however. The study team next aims to identify the glacial characteristics that favor the cooling effect. Pellicciotti said more long-term ground stations for testing this hypothesis elsewhere are virtually absent.

“Even if the glaciers can’t preserve themselves forever, they might still preserve the environment around them for some time,” she said. “Thus, we call for more multidisciplinary research approaches to converge efforts toward explaining the effects of global warming.”

A separate report in 2019 found that even in the most optimistic case, in which average global warming was limited to only 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures, the Himalaya region would lose at least one-third of its glaciers.

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Massive 'lighthouses' on the moon could light the way for future lunar astronauts

Leonard David
Wed, December 13, 2023 

A tower bathes the moon's surface below it in light, while darkness surrounds the circle of light it projects. stars can be seen outside of the cone of light.


A lighthouse for the moon — what a bright idea.

In long-form engineering speak it is called Lunar Utility Navigation with Advanced Remote Sensing and Autonomous Beaming for Energy Redistribution, or LUNARSABER. The idea comes from Honeybee Robotics, a concept selected as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's 10-year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) initiative.

This tower of power would be nearly 330 feet (100 meters) tall, a deployable structure topped by solar panels that integrates such things as power storage and transfer, communications, as well as position, navigation, and timing, even surveillance capacity into a single infrastructure.

Honeybee Robotics technologists anticipate that LUNARSABER can be scaled to over 650 feet (200 meters) in height above the lunar landscape to boost its service range. "LUNARSABER can be above the lunar horizon and always see the sun if we're in the south pole of the moon," Kris Zacny, vice president of Exploration Systems at Honeybee Robotics in Altadena, California. "Right on top of the structure there are cameras, communications systems. We have a flood light to illuminate areas for rovers," Zacny told Space.com. "You put one or two of them at the south pole of the moon and you cover the entire area. It's your lighthouse," he said.

Related: The moon has been altered by human activity. Are we in a 'Lunar Anthropocene?'
Deployable structure

Vishnu Sanigepalli is Honeybee's principal investigator of LUNARSABER on the DARPA LunA-10 effort.

Sanigepalli said that it was speculated that the poles of the moon would have peaks of eternal light where deploying a solar panel would help generate power throughout the year.

But after NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) started to map out the moon, it was discovered that there are no locations near the poles that receive sunlight consistently throughout the year.

"There has been a lot of analysis done using the lunar topography where it was discovered that rims of craters near the South Pole have long lunar days due to their height, just not 100 percent," said Sanigepalli.

Just being at the lunar south pole doesn't give you the long lunar days. You would also have to be located at the tallest mountain or crater feature.

a tall tower on the moon beams a laser beam to another tower in the distance
Location and height

"If we have the ability to build really tall structures near the south poles, we can essentially ensure that there is greater than 95 percent illumination throughout the lunar year," Sanigepalli said. "This depends on the location and the height," he emphasized.

Sanigepalli said that rims of craters are a great option as they are already elevated. If even taller structures are built, more than 1,640 feet (500 meters) high, they can bolster expansion into other regions and deployment locations on the moon.
Utility solution

For lunar settlement, Sanigepalli said, constant illumination isn't enough. "We also need communication with Earth to keep lunar rovers, robotics systems, and other equipment running. So, it becomes an optimization of illumination for power and direct-to-Earth communications," he said.

LUNARSABER can enable resource utilization on the moon as it is a highly adaptable utility solution that would lay the groundwork for a thriving lunar economy, the firm believes.

"We're looking forward to partnerships with both commercial and non-commercial customers to host payload and services that will help accelerate lunar infrastructure," said Sanigepalli.

a tall, slender tower rises out of the gray, dusty surface of the moon
RedWater

While furthering moon exploration ideas is at a near-term high, Honeybee Robotics is also developing RedWater, a mining system intended to drill into the surface of Mars and melt/extract water from specific Red Planet locales.

"This mining system would go tens of meters in depth, going into subterranean ice, then melts and pumps water to the surface," Zacny said. "It's a robotic system capable of planetary mining and drilling," he said, and could extract tens of tons of water from Mars' subsurface ice deposits.

RedWater is another In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) technology that can and sustain human exploration of Mars by mining water that be used for everything from life support and agriculture to fuel cells and propellant.
RAT and scoop

RELATED STORIES:

— DARPA-funded 'Inchworm' robots could help us build moon bases. Here's how

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Honeybee Robotics is no stranger to designing, building and having their hardware land on other worlds. The innovative company provided the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) that was put to use on NASA's Spirit and Opportunity Mars exploration rovers that landed on the Red Planet in January 2004.

Their hardware also was deployed and demonstrated on the NASA 2008 Mars Phoenix Lander mission. That Icy Soil Acquisition Device was better termed the "Phoenix Scoop."

Other equipment supplied by Honeybee Robotics is on NASA's two now-active Mars rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance.

Japan's Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission, now slated for a 2026 sendoff, is outfitted with a Honeybee Robotics-supplied P-sampler. That device is mounted along the leg of the MMX lander, designed to perform sampling operations after the Japanese probe lands on Phobos.

Making mechanisms for off-Earth operation is a challenge, Zacny said, "but that's part of the fun developing something from scratch. Otherwise our life would be boring if you had cookie-cutter robots."

A volcano on Hawaii's Big Island is sacred to spiritual practitioners and treasured by astronomers

DEEPA BHARATH and AUDREY McAVOY
Wed, December 13, 2023 

MAUNA KEA, Hawaii (AP) — Shane Palacat-Nelsen’s voice drops to a reverent tone as he tells the story of the snow goddess Poliahu who Native Hawaiians believe inhabits the summit of Mauna Kea, the highest point in Hawaii.

The tale speaks of a chief who yearned to court Poliahu but was stopped by her attendants guarding the sacred mountain top — the abode of the gods and cradle of creation.

Today, this sublime summit on Hawaii’s Big Island is also treasured by astronomers as a portal to finding answers to the universe’s many mysteries, creating varied — and sometimes incompatible — views on what’s best for Mauna Kea’s future.

The chief was eventually granted access on the condition that he stepped only on the same set of footprints left by the attendant escorting him up and down, said Palacat-Nelsen. He says it’s a metaphor for why Mauna Kea must be protected from further human intrusion, pollution and erosion.

“You do not go up the sacred mountain unless you are called. You do not go up without a purpose.”

Mauna Kea is a dormant 14,000-foot shield volcano. In Native Hawaiian lore, it is the first-born son of the sky father and earth mother. The mountain’s dry atmosphere and limited light pollution make for a perfect location to study the skies — one of just a handful on the planet.

Over the past 50 years, astronomers have mounted a dozen giant telescopes on the summit, with several yielding exalted discoveries, like proving the Milky Way has a supermassive black hole at its center. That research led to a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020.

The proliferation of observatories has troubled many Native Hawaiians, who have pushed back. In their view, such construction is polluting the sacred mountain top and eroding the environment. In 2019, thousands protested a proposed $2.65-billion Thirty Meter Telescope project near the summit. This protest catalyzed the passage of a new state law transferring jurisdiction of the mountain to a new stewardship authority comprising scientists and Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners.

Neither side wants to reduce this debate to a culture-versus-science conflict because Hawaiian spirituality embraces science, and many astronomers respect Hawaiian culture. Some observatory staff and cultural practitioners are taking small, tentative steps toward new dialogue, but overcoming the divide will involve difficult conversations and understanding different perspectives.

Mauna Kea's summit soars 13,796 feet (4,205 meters) above sea level, evoking an ethereal feeling as fluffy clouds swaddle its cinder cones and blanket its reddish, almost Mars-like soil. On a clear day, Mauna Loa, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, is visible.

Climbing Mauna Kea is like peeling the layers of an onion, says Kealoha Pisciotta, a longtime activist. Its slopes contain ceremonial platforms, ancestral burial sites and and the waters of Hawaii's lone alpine lake, believed to possess healing properties.

“The higher you go, the closer your heart is to the heavens,” she says, adding that building and bulldozing near the summit threatens people’s sacred connection to the land.

Palacat-Nelsen, who served on the working group that laid the foundation for the new authority, says to protect the mountain and preserve the summit’s sacredness, people must be ready to have uncomfortable conversations.

John O’Meara, who moved to Hawaii to become the chief scientist at Keck shortly before the 2019 protest, is now a key player in that dialogue. He's learning about the strong connection many Native Hawaiians have to Mauna Kea, and he's fascinated by similarities between spirituality and astronomy.

“We are fundamentally asking the same questions, which are: Where are we? Where did we come from? And where are we going? There is a deep connection to the universe…which is the thing that we should be focusing on,” he said.

Doug Simons, director of the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, points to the opening lines of the Kumulipo, a centuries-old Hawaiian creation chant which describes a scene strikingly similar to what astronomers believe existed during the Big Bang.

The Kumulipo’s description of a dark, eternal form of energy from which everything emerges sounds to Simons like dark energy, which astronomers believe predated the universe. Mauna Kea’s telescopes are at the forefront of discoveries about dark energy, Simons said.

Lanakila Mangauil, a Native Hawaiian spiritual practitioner, was around 9 when he first stepped on the mountain for snow play at lower elevations. His family never went to the summit.

“One of the important spiritual practices on Mauna Kea is our absence,” he said. “We stay off it because it is sacred.”

Mangauil doesn't like to use the word “religion” to describe his spiritual practice. Hawaiians don’t have a central religion, he said, but spiritual practices born of different communities, families and environments.

Not all Native Hawaiians hold Mauna Kea sacred in a religious sense, including Makana Silva, an astronomer who grew up on Oahu and was raised Catholic. He is now a post-doctoral fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and visited Mauna Kea’s summit for the first time three years ago. He believes astronomy on the mountain should thrive so there's a place for Hawaiians to perpetuate their legacy of innovation.

The future of astronomy on the mountain will in large part be decided by the Mauna Kea Stewardship and Oversight Authority, which is taking over managing the mountain from the University of Hawaii. Astronomers like Simons worry that if the 65-year lease for the summit lands expires as scheduled in 2033, it could mean the end for astronomy in Hawaii. Simons says that would be “catastrophic” and hurt the aspirations of Hawaii's budding astronomers.

Palacat-Nelsen doesn't believe astronomy on the summit will end any time soon. But he does see the lease being renewed at a higher price than the $1 a year the University of Hawaii pays now.

He holds out hope for better understanding between the two communities. He recently invited a few Keck astronomers and officials to his family’s “heiau” or place of worship on Big Island. It had an impact on Rich Matsuda, Keck’s interim director, who said the experience shed light on the extensive preparation required to enter a sacred space, such as leaving one’s everyday troubles outside. He has since followed similar protocols when traveling to the summit and believes they could be shared more broadly with other telescope workers.

Palacat-Nelsen said such efforts by observatories give him hope that people will become more mindful of their footprints on Mauna Kea. He is grateful to his ancestors for preserving Mauna Kea so current generations have the opportunity to experience the divine. He wonders if he can do that for posterity.

“Can they speak about me in that way 200 years from now?” he asks. “I hope.”

Sacred Mauna Kea
Kealoha Pisciotta, a cultural practitioner and longtime activist, sits on lava rock part of the way up Mauna Kea while giving an interview on the Big Island of Hawaii, on Saturday, July 15, 2023. Over the last 50 years, astronomers have mounted 13 giant astronomical observatories on Mauna Kea's summit. In 2019, Native Hawaiians including Piscioitta staged a year-long protest over construction of an additional telescope. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

The 15 best art, design and archaeology discoveries of 2023

Jacqui Palumbo, CNN
Wed, December 13, 2023

Whether lost at the bottom of the ocean, tucked away in a library’s archives or hidden behind a kitchen wall, this year’s arts, archaeology and literary discoveries spanned an astonishing range. Some had only been mysteries for a few decades, like the identity of a man whose photo was used on the cover one of rock’s most famous albums, while others dated back a bit longer — say, 6,000 years? And though many of these great finds were excavated through more conventional means, others required ambitious technological feats: an AI algorithm programmed to identify a centuries-old anonymous play, drones sent high into hard-to-reach caves, and groundbreaking scans made of the Titanic wreckage.

Below are some of the most significant discoveries of 2023.

A still-glimmering sword

It sometimes requires a bit of imagination to visualize a millenia-old artifact in its full glory — but that wasn’t the case with an octagonal sword (pictured above) found still gleaming in a Bavarian grave this past June. Thought to be more than 3,000 years old, from the Middle Bronze Ages, the sword required further examination by archaeologists when it was discovered at a site in at a site in Donau-Ries, Germany, along with the remains of three people. But a statement from researchers later confirmed it was a real weapon, rather than ceremonial or decorative, with “the center of gravity in the front part of the blade indicat(ing) that it was balanced mainly for slashing.”
AI discovery in the archives

The author of a 17th-century Spanish play remained a mystery for centuries — until AI technology identified it in January as a late-career work by one of the country’s most famous authors, Felix Lope de Vega.

The original manuscript of "La francesa Laura." - Juan Medina/Reuters

Researchers at the country’s National Library were using AI to transcribe some 1,300 anonymous manuscripts and books and check them against works by known authors when it made the discovery. The Spanish Golden Age-era playwright wrote “La francesa Laura,” or “The Frenchwoman Laura,” in the years before his death in 1635. The play is a tale of love, jealousy and poison when the heir to the French throne becomes enamored with Laura, the wife of a Count.

A classic rock mystery, solved

Who is the man carrying a bundle of sticks on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s 1971 album? After half a century, his identity has been revealed as a thatcher from the late-Victorian era, according to the Wiltshire Museum in southwestern England, which made the announcement in November after a visiting research fellow located the original image by photographer Ernest Howard Farmer.

The long-uncredited star of “Led Zeppelin IV” - Courtesy Wiltshire Museum

Thought to be of a widower named Lot Long or Longyear, who lived the town of Mere in the 19th century, the portrait was part of a larger album of architectural and countryside scenes inscribed to the photographer’s aunt. And as to how a colorized portrait wound up the star image of “Led Zeppelin IV”? It was an antiquing find made by the band’s lead singer Robert Plant, in a store in Berkshire, southern England.
Lost Truman Capote story resurfaces

The famed American author Truman Capote received a surprising posthumous addition to his oeuvre this year, after an editor from “The Strand” magazine discovered a previously unknown short story scrawled in one of Capote’s notebooks. Andrew F. Gulli found “Another Day in Paradise” — a story about a disillusioned American woman uses her inheritance to buy a villa in Sicily — while sifting through works held at Washington’s Library of Congress. Along with representatives of the writer’s estate, a team of people subsequently worked to decipher the story, which was written in “very challenging” handwriting, according to Gulli.

“These libraries have millions and millions of pages from all sorts of writers. So, you know, I can only guess that sometimes some of these things can just get missed,” Gulli said.

Ancient sandals get a new superlative

When 22 woven sandals discovered by Spanish miners in 1857 were first carbon dated in the 1970s, they were thought to be about 5,000 years old. But new analysis from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Alcalá University in Spain has found that estimation to be shy of about 1,000 years: In September, researchers announced that the footwear, made of plant fibers, are, in fact, the oldest known European shoes.

Meet the world’s oldest-known flip-flops. - Martínez-Sevillaet al.,Sci. Adv

Preserved thanks to dry conditions in the cave in southern Spain, along with an assortment of fiber baskets and other goods, the sandals demonstrate “the ability of prehistoric communities to master this type of craftsmanship,” according to an author of the study.

Two new “Mona Lisa” revelations

So much has been debated about Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” over the years: who she was, why she’s smiling, even where she was painted — with an historian recently asserting that the bridge in the background is actually in a different picturesque Tuscan town than previously believed, for example. And now, scientists in France and the UK have discovered a new piece of the portrait’s puzzle, hidden within the base layer of Leonardo’s paint.

Using X-ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy, the team detected a mineral compound known as plumbonacrite, which forms when oil and lead oxides are mixed and helps paint dry faster. While it’s known that later artists including Rembrandt used such a technique, the authors of the study pose that Leonardo might have been the first.

“Each time you discover something on his processes, you discover that he was clearly ahead of his time,” Gilles Wallez, an author of study, told CNN in October

.
A luxurious lavatory

In February, archaeologists released details on what may be the world’s oldest known flush toilet. The 2,400-year-old lavatory and bent pipe — likely a status symbol among China’s elite at the time — were discovered last summer in the ruins of a palace at the Yueyang archaeological site in the city of Xi’an, according to Chinese state media.

This toilet seat and pipe provides a peek into Han period luxury. - Xinhua/Shutterstock

The toilet was likely only used by a select few in the ruling class, according to researcher Liu Rui, who helped excavate the broken pieces. Liu told state media that the design likely required the assistance of servants to pour in water with each use.
The Great Pyramid’s hidden hallway

Over the past few years, the Great Pyramid of Giza has given up some of her secrets — including a mysterious ‘void’ — thanks to the Scan Pyramids project, which uses technology including infrared thermography and cosmic-ray imaging to better understand its architectural intricacies and still-hidden areas. The latest finding? A 30-foot corridor close to the main entrance

The space may have been constructed to redistribute weight around the entrance, or possibly to allow access to an unknown chamber, according to Mostafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, who spoke to reporters in March. An article published in the scientific journal Nature stated that further study of the hallway could help scientists better understand how the pyramid was made.

Sending in the drones

As part of continued efforts to survey an area in Alicante, Spain, known for its prehistoric cave paintings, archaeologists this year employed drones to scout out terrain — caves, quarries and the like — deemed either inaccessible or risky to humans. Within days, the drones had found new imagery of deer, goats and human figures.

With the art later confirmed by climbers, the new group of cave paintings are some of the most significant of their kind in the region found in recent decades, according to the archaeology team.

Drones gave a front-row seat to new cave paintings. - Courtesy Javi Molina

“On many occasions we have risked our lives to access cavities located in rugged geographical areas,” Francisco Javier Molina Hernández, an archaeologist at the University of Alicante who was dubbed “Indiana Drones” by local press, told CNN in June. “Many other caves have never been inspected because they are located in inaccessible areas.” Next up, they’ll use more powerful drones to continue scouting across in Spain and Portugal, he said.

Extraordinary artworks in unassuming places

Each year, a select few homeowners, treasure hunters or construction workers stumble upon a lost piece of art history in their residences or on a plot of land — always check your attics — and 2023 was no different.

While appraising their home, one family in northern France discovered that the dusty painting in their living room is actually one of the largest-known works of Flemish 17th-century painter Pieter Brueghel the Younger — it later sold for $850,000 at the Daguerre auction house in Paris.

“The Payment of the Tithes,” by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, cleaned up well. - Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images

In northern England, meanwhile, a couple in the midst of renovating their kitchen discovered that their modest their one-bedroom in York housed two 400-year-old murals, with the wall in question pre-dating the rest of the apartment building.

And finally, while excavating a plot of land earmarked for a new Aldi supermarket in Buckinghamshire, England, archaeologists uncovered a Roman mosaic with colorful tiles while surveying the area ahead of construction. The mosaic is thought to have been part of a villa with a nearby bathhouse.

Spotlight on Henry VIII’s doodles

The mercurial British monarch Henry VIII may have been a bit out of touch at times, reshaping the country’s religious trajectory to calamitous effect simply to get a divorce, but in other ways he was just like us, doodling in the margins of books. A Canadian professor spotted the royal marginalia unexpectedly while looking at an ancient prayer book owned by the Tudor king late in his life. His annotations — some 14 in total — were compared to other known markings to confirm their authenticity.

Henry VIII’s pious markings. - The Trustees of The Wormsley Fund

The book, a gift to Henry, “contains prayers for repentance, for wisdom, for the destruction of enemies, and for the King and his army,” according to the professor, Micheline White. “Towards the end of his reign he definitely had a lot to be worried about,” she noted.

Two portrait glow-ups

Chiseled bone structure and lip filler aren’t just the beauty standards of the 21st century, it seems — new analysis this year revealed two different paintings hundreds of years old were altered to enhance the features of their subjects.

Merchant Derich Born got a more chiseled look. - Royal Collection Trust

In one 16th-century painting by Hans Holbein the Younger, X-rays show the artist worked to sharpen the cheekbones of the subject, a young merchant, Derich Born, who had commissioned him.

And a different painting made by Cornelius Johnson a century later, of the noblewoman Diana Cecil, received an unwelcome makeover sometime in the 19th or 20th century, with edits that plumped her lips and filled in her hairline. Conservators restored Cecil to her natural beauty ahead of an exhibition in November.

A necklace on the ocean floor

Move over, (fictional) “Heart of the Ocean,” because there’s a new Titanic necklace ready for the spotlight. A piece of jewelry featuring the tooth of a Megalodon, a prehistoric shark, was identified in the ocean liner’s wreckage by the deep-water investigation company Magellan, as part of its undertaking an ambitious project to produce a full-size scan of the ship, which has been at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, some 13,000 feet deep, since the infamous disaster in 1912.

This prehistoric shark necklace was an unlikely Titanic find. - Magellan/Youtube

Richard Parkinson, CEO of Magellan, called the necklace “astonishing, beautiful and breathtaking.”

“What is not widely understood is that the Titanic is in two parts and there’s a three-square-mile debris field between the bow and the stern,” Parkinson told British television network ITV in May. “The team mapped the field in such detail that we could pick out those details.”

And more underwater treasure

A diver’s chance glance at something metallic on the sea floor of the coast of Sardinia, Italy, turned out to be right on the money — literally. In all, the glimmering treasure they spotted totals somewhere between 30,000 to 50,000 large bronze coins dating back to the fourth century AD.

The drowned treasure could point to an as-yet-undiscovered shipwreck in the area, the Italian culture ministry said in a statement in November. In addition to the surprisingly well-preserved coins, divers subsequently found pieces of amphorae, narrow-necked Roman or Greek jars with two handles.

A Stonehenge-like sanctuary

A town east of Rotterdam can now lay claim to an ancient celestial architectural mystery not unlike the enigma of Stonehenge.

This sprawling plot in Tiel was once a sacred place, - Municipality of Tiel/Reuters

Archaeologists have been excavating a site in Tiel since 2017, and have unearthed a 4,000-year-old sanctuary there that they believe was designed to align with the sun on solstices. The massive site contains offerings including animal skeletons and treasures, including a bronze spearhead, as well as graves.

“This sanctuary must have been a highly significant place where people kept track of special days in the year, performed rituals and buried their dead,” said a statement from the municipality of Tiel, where the site is located. “Rows of poles stood along pathways used for processions.”


‘Huge’ art gallery found carved near Colorado cliffs. See the centuries-old scenes

Moira Ritter
Thu, December 14, 2023 at 2:06 PM MST·2 min read

While conducting research at the Castle Rock Pueblo settlement complex in Colorado, a team of archaeologists from Poland was encouraged by locals to explore “higher, less accessible parts of the canyons.” What they found exceeded their “wildest expectations.”

Approximately 2,600 feet above the ancient Pueblo cliff settlements, the archaeologists discovered a sprawling collection of “huge rock panels” stretching about 2.5 miles around a large plateau, according to a Dec. 13 news release from Jagiellonian University. The collection of “previously unknown huge galleries and petroglyphs” wasn’t created all at once but was added to over time.

The Pueblo people lived on the border between Utah and Colorado as early as 3,000 years ago, the university said. Now, Pueblo sites are popular among archaeologists and tourists alike because they are “built into rock niches or carved into canyon walls.”

The Pueblo people lived in settlements carved into rock niches and canyon walls, according to experts.

“The agricultural Pueblo communities developed one of the most advanced Pre-Columbian cultures in North America,” Radosław Palonka from the university’s Institute of Archaeology said in the release. “They perfected the craft of building multistory stone houses, resembling medieval town houses or even later blocks of flats. The Pueblo people were also famous for their rock art, intricately ornamented jewelry, and ceramics bearing different motifs painted with a black pigment on white background.”

The oldest carvings depict warriors and shamans and date to approximately the third century, known as “the Basketmaker Era,” according to the university. During this time, people lived on flatlands in partly underground pit houses, and they “engaged in farming and produced characteristic baskets and mats.”


The types of carvings changed throughout the centuries, researchers said.

Archaeologists surveying a wall of carvings.

Most of the newly discovered carvings date to between the 12th and 13th centuries, archaeologists said. They portray different things, but many include “complicated geometric shapes.”

Art from this period also included “spirals” up to about 3 feet wide that were carved into the rock panels, Palonka said. The Pueblo people used these carvings for “astronomical observations and to determine the dates of some special days in the calendar,” including solstices and equinoxes.

Some of the carvings depicted “complicated geometric shapes,” archaeologists said.

The rock carvings were found about 1,200 feet about the cliff settlement, researchers said.

“These discoveries forced us to adjust our knowledge about this area,” according to Palonka. “Definitely we have underestimated the number of inhabitants who lived here in the 13th century and the complexity of their religious practices, which must have also taken place next to these outdoor panels.”

During the 15th to 17th centuries, the carvings began showing narratives/

Carvings from the 15th to 17th centuries depicted “large narrative hunting scenes showing bison, mountain sheep and deer hunts,” the university said. More recent additions include horses and the newest pieces even included the signature of famous cowboy Ira Cuthair from 1936.

Researchers plan to continue exploring the area, and they are currently awaiting LiDAR survey results, which they hope will reveal “new, previously unknown sites, mainly from the earlier periods,” Palonka said.

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Look inside luxurious 2,000-year-old Roman home recently uncovered near the Colosseum

Aspen Pflughoeft
Wed, December 13, 2023 at 3:09 PM MST·2 min read

In a city already teeming with the bygone glory of the ancient Roman empire, archaeologists in Rome, Italy, announced the discovery of another historic treasure: a luxurious 2,000-year-old home.

The ancient Roman home sits near the Colosseum but went unnoticed until 2018, when archaeologists uncovered some of its walls, according to a Dec. 12 news release from Italy’s Ministry of Culture. Excavations have only revealed part of the multi-story house — but its grandeur is already visible.

The house has a main room that functioned like a banquet hall during the summer and was designed to imitate a cave, archaeologists said. The room boasted water features and an elaborate mosaic.

The elaborate mosaic found inside the ancient Roman house.

The mosaic is made of seashells, stones and other materials intricately arranged into complex patterns, a close-up photo shows.

Photos show this colorful, well-preserved mosaic filling one of the cavernous walls. The central scene shows four shrines separated by pillars, archaeologists said.

A close-up photo showing two of the shrines depicted in the mosaic.

One of the shrines has weapons, tridents and trumpets that archaeologists said might reference the owner’s triumph in land and naval battles.

A close-up photo showing the rocks, shells and other materials used in the mosaic.

The upper section of the mosaic has a semicircular shape and depicts a separate scene. Photos show this part of the wall. The scene centers on a large building and coastal city that archaeologists said might reference a wartime conquest of the home’s owner.

A close-up photo showing the upper section of the mosaic.

A close-up photo showing the center building of the mosaic’s upper section.

In a different room, excavations uncovered another type of wall art: white carvings of detailed architecture features, archaeologists said. A photo shows these walls.

Some of the other wall art found at the house.

Based on the home’s extravagant interior and central location, archaeologists think its owner was an elite aristocrat, possibly even a senator or governing official, of ancient Rome.

The home is at least 2,000 years old, dating between the second century B.C. and the first century B.C., archaeologists said.

A YouTube video shared by Italy’s Ministry of Culture shows the area outside of the house and its luxurious interior.

The house is located on the southwestern edge of the Colosseum Archaeological Park and just over half a mile from the Colosseum itself.

Excavations of the recently uncovered ancient home will continue into 2024, the Ministry of Culture said. Officials plan to restore the structure and eventually open it to the public.

Google Translate was used to translate the news release from Italy’s Ministry of Culture.

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James Webb Space Telescope spies record-breaking 'failed star' that shouldn't exist 

Robert Lea
Wed, December 13, 2023 

The star cluster IC 348 as seen by the JWST and where it spotted three "failed star" brown dwarfs. A pink and purple red gaseous nebula fills the image, many bright twinkling stars.


The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has spotted a record-breaking free-floating brown dwarf and two other so-called "failed stars" in a young star cluster just 1,000 light-years from Earth.

The record-breaking brown dwarf is not associated with a parent star and has a mass around eight times that of Jupiter. Meanwhile, the smallest one has a mass around three times that of Jupiter, making it a challenge to current theories about how these celestial objects are born. The discovery could help astronomers better determine where the line between planets and stars is drawn.

"One basic question you'll find in every astronomy textbook is, what are the smallest stars? That's what we're trying to answer," research lead author and Pennsylvania State University scientist Kevin Luhman said in a statement.


Related: 'Failed star' is the coldest radio wave source ever discovered


The star cluster IC 348 as seen by the JWST and where it spotted three

The team discovered these three brown dwarfs, including this new record breaker, when they trained the JWST's Near-infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the heart of the wispy gas and dust of the IC 348 star cluster, which lies within the larger star-birthing Perseus star-forming region. . Because of the youth of this cluster, the brown dwarfs within it are still glowing with infrared light, which is the result of heat left behind from their formation.

The most promising targets from this investigation were selected for a deep-dive follow-up investigation with the JWST's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) micro shutter array. Sensitive enough to detect fainter objects than ground-based telescopes, NIRSpec allowed the team to distinguish brown dwarfs from back background galaxies, narrowing eight potential brown dwarfs down to three.

Why do some stars "fail"?

The three brown dwarfs seen by the JWST and their locations in IC 348

Brown dwarfs get their unfortunate "failed stars" nickname from the fact that they are born from collapsing clouds of gas, just like all stars are, but they never gather enough mass to trigger the nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium with their cores — the process responsible for generating the majority of the energy and light a star puts out in its main sequence lifetime.

There is an overlap between star brown dwarfs and large planets, with many of these failed stars having masses a few times that of the solar system's most massive planet, Jupiter. Yet scientists aren't exactly sure what the smallest body that can be born like a star might be and at what minimum stellar mass the fusion of hydrogen to helium begins.

This is complicated by the fact that brown dwarfs aren't complete failures when it comes to nuclear fusion. They are believed to be massive enough to fuse heavy hydrogen — also known as deuterium — together in their cores.

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The small brown dwarf in this young star cluster is a problem for star formation models because of the small size of the cloud of gas. A smaller cloud would have weaker gravity and should therefore struggle to collapse and birth such a small brown dwarf. Likewise, this diminutive brown dwarf should not have been able to form like a planet in this system, according to the astronomers behind this discovery.

"It's pretty easy for current models to make giant planets in a disc around a star," research principal investigator and European Space Agency scientist Catarina Alves de Oliveira said. "But in this cluster, it would be unlikely that this object formed in a disc, instead forming like a star, and three Jupiter masses are 300 times smaller than our sun.

"So we have to ask, how does the star formation process operate at such very, very small masses?"