The Internet Is Beautiful

The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE; commonly referred to as the European Constitution or as the Constitutional Treaty) was an unratified international treaty intended to create a consolidated constitution for the European Union (EU). It would have replaced the existing European Union treaties with a single text, given legal force to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and expanded qualified majority voting into policy areas which had previously been decided by unanimity among member states. The Treaty was signed on 29 October 2004 by representatives of the then 25 member states of the European Union. It was later ratified by 18 member states, which included referendums endorsing it in Spain and Luxembourg. However, the rejection of the document by French and Dutch voters in May and June 2005 brought the ratification process to an end. Following a period of reflection, the Treaty of Lisbon was created to replace the Constitutional...

A team from Heidelberg University excavating in Iraq made a spectacular find: In the throne room of the North Palace of King Ashurbanipal in the ancient city of Nineveh, the archaeologists discovered large portions of a monumental relief that depicts the ruler of the Assyrian empire from the seventh century BC along with two important deities and other figures.

I learned of this oddity through this video by Tor’s Cabinet of Curiosities

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus

Gum arabic (gum acacia, gum sudani, Senegal gum and by other names[a]) (Arabic: صمغ عربي) is a tree gum exuded by two species of Acacia sensu lato, Senegalia senegal[2] and Vachellia seyal. The gum is harvested commercially from wild trees, mostly in Sudan (about 70% of the global supply) and throughout the Sahel, from Senegal to Somalia.

Colossal Biosciences, a Texas-based biotech company, made headlines this April after falsely claiming to resurrect the extinct dire wolf. The company presents this as a breakthrough for conservation biology. However, our team of conservation geneticists at the Western University — along with many other academics views it as a dangerous deception.

At a depth of about 4 meters, archaeologists found a wooden water pipe running the entire length of the construction pit, totaling 20 to 30 meters. The pipe consisted of several tree trunks, each about 1.75 meters long. Remains of what could have been a pumping installation were also found on the tree trunks.

Key Points

Most astronomers agree that life is likely common throughout the universe. While Earth is the only world known to have life, we know that life arose early in our world, and the building blocks of life, including amino acids and sugars, form readily. We also know there are countless worlds in the cosmos that might be home for life.

A man from Kiminini, Trans Nzoia County, shocked residents after exhuming the remains of his late wife, claiming that she was haunting him.

The adage that astrology is the “gateway” to other pseudosciences has never been more true. A survey of conspiracy theory groups on Telegram covering Brazil and Latin America shows that adherence to anti-vaccine communities or those that promote quackery, such as chlorine dioxide (CDS) and the so-called Mineral Miracle Solution (another formulation also based on chlorine dioxide, a disinfectant and industrial bleach presented as a substance for a supposed “vaccine detox” from the COVID-19 pandemic, or even to cure the disease) has a strong connection with occult and esoteric groups.

OP : @cambskeptics@mastodonapp.uk

A series of studies published in Science in February 2025 provides the best evidence yet that birds and mammals did not inherit the neural pathways that generate intelligence from a common ancestor, but rather evolved them independently. This suggests that vertebrate intelligence arose not once, but multiple times. Still, their neural complexity didn’t evolve in wildly different directions: Avian and mammalian brains display surprisingly similar circuits, the studies found.

Because Kosmos 482 was built to withstand conditions on Venus – scorching temperatures averaging 464 °C (867 °F), acid rain, and crushing atmospheric pressure – scientists had hypothesized that the 495-kilogram (1,091-pound) lander might at least partially survive atmospheric entry.

The Potential for Life

Scores of internet sleuths are convinced a mysterious US mountain is home to a secret alien base...apparently. Alaska's giant Mount Hayes rises 8,000 feet and is one of the largest peaks in the country. It lies in the icy wilderness and ranks as one of the most prominent peaks in the world.

Learnt this word from '13 sentinel' game.

Explanation: If you could stand on Venus -- what would you see? Pictured is the view from Venera 14, a robotic Soviet lander which parachuted and air-braked down through the thick Venusian atmosphere in March of 1982. The desolate landscape it saw included flat rocks, vast empty terrain, and a featureless sky above Phoebe Regio near Venus' equator. On the lower left is the spacecraft's penetrometer used to make scientific measurements, while the light piece on the right is part of an ejected lens-cap. Enduring temperatures near 450 degrees Celsius and pressures 75 times that on Earth, the hardened Venera spacecraft lasted only about an hour. Although data from Venera 14 was beamed across the inner Solar System over 40 years ago, digital processing and merging of Venera's unusual images continues even today. Recent analyses of infrared measurements taken by ESA's orbiting Venus Express spacecraft indicate that active volcanoes may currently exist on Venus.

OP:@paranormaldatabase@mastodonapp.uk

A groundbreaking study from the University of Colorado Boulder suggests that ancient Mars was far from the cold, arid planet we know today. Led by Amanda Steckel, the research team utilized computer simulations to reveal that billions of years ago, Mars experienced significant precipitation—either rain or snow—that carved out extensive networks of valleys and channels across its surface. These findings challenge previous theories that Mars was predominantly cold and dry, instead supporting the idea of a warmer, wetter climate during the Noachian epoch, approximately 4.1 to 3.7 billion years ago. The study provides compelling evidence that precipitation played a crucial role in shaping the Martian landscape, offering new insights into the planet's climatic history and its potential to have supported life.

The dream of seventeenth-century alchemists has been realized by physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), who have turned lead into gold — albeit for only a fraction of a second and at tremendous cost.

In the quiet Vasse district of WA, the evening of 27 August 1883 must have felt like something out of a mystery novel.

The study reveals four ways in which chimpanzees alter meanings when combining single calls into 16 different two-call combinations, analogous to the key linguistic principles in human language.

Lacking direct dates for the Spear Horizon, there had long been a certain air of uncertainty surrounding the deep age of the site. With claimed ages of ~400 or ~300 ka for the Spear Horizon, Schöningen stood as an outlier among sites attributed to the Lower Paleolithic and to Homo heidelbergensis, the probable last common ancestor of early modern humans that evolved in Africa and the Neanderthals of western Eurasia . Our dating evidence for the Spear Horizon corrects this mismatch and aligns the Schöningen spears within the timeframe of European Neanderthals and the Middle Paleolithic.

The geographic distribution of land masses was also very different back then. The supercontinent Gondwana, in which most of the southern continents we know today were clumped into a single landmass, had only just started to break apart. At the time, southernmost Australia was in the polar circle.

The Wikimedia Foundation has suspended access to this page due to an order by the Delhi High Court, without prejudice to the Foundation's rights. We are pursuing all available legal options.

Deep in the rainforest of Africa, a male chimpanzee approaches a tall tree with prominent roots and begins to slap them vigorously, creating a deep, percussive sound that can be heard kilometers away. Such “drumming” allows chimps to communicate across long distances. Now, two studies show the animals also drum to a distinct beat, which varies across chimp societies.

New pope is some guy from Chicago named Bob.

Punishing conditions in the clouds of Venus could be home to a DNA-like molecule capable of forming genes in life very different to that on Earth, according to a new study.

How little we’ve seen: A visual coverage estimate of the deep seafloor

Stone tools are rocks that have been selected for use or intentionally altered. This technology appeared around 3.3 million years ago and became essential to hominins – all the living and extinct species that belong to the human lineage. Currently, we Homo sapiens are the only living hominin.

Social media use is ubiquitous in our modern society, and some individuals display excessive, maladaptive use of these online platforms. This problematic social media use (PSMU) has been associated with greater impulsivity and risk-taking.

Conclusions

To find out how and where these groups moved in the Pyrenees, we can study the valuable tools and ornaments that they carried with them from their place of origin. The lithic industry discovered at Montlleó is made up of more than 25,000 pieces, of which more than 2,000 are finished flint tools and cores (masses of homogeneous rock that are carved to extract flakes for later use). We have a good number of objects to trace.

The origin of T. rex has been largely debated, but as a genus most likely arose in North America, although its direct ancestors migrated over from Asia, based on our biogeographical model and the likely younger age of Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis from sedimentation rate models.

In 1988, a recently-retired U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) agent claimed on live television that the government was working with aliens at a secret base in the Nevada desert called Area 51 and that the “extraterrestrials have complete control of this base.” In the program, the producers blacked out the OSI agent’s face, and he went by the codename “Falcon.”

Built on the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point in Utah entirely of mud, salt crystals, and basalt rocks, Spiral Jetty forms a 1,500-foot-long (460 m), 15-foot-wide (4.6 m) counterclockwise coil jutting from the shore of the lake.

A chumbox is a form of online advertising that uses a grid of thumbnails and captions to drive traffic to other sites and webpages. This form of advertising is often associated with low quality clickbait links and articles.

For decades, many scientists have relied on the "hard steps" model to suggest that intelligent life is rare — the improbable result of a series of unlikely evolutionary leaps. But new research by postdoctoral researcher and geobiologist Dr. Daniel Mills from the University of Munich challenges that idea, and the implications are game-changing for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

A zibellino, from the Italian word for "sable", is the pelt of a sable or marten worn draped at the neck or hanging at the waist, or carried in the hand.

This is a fun one to scroll through. Maybe somebody will enjoy it.

What sports did they play?

Our findings demonstrate that, the relationship between AOB and flake size and shape observed in previous controlled experiments also applies to the formation of Levallois flakes. Specifically, a lower AOB results in larger and heavier Levallois flakes compared to those made at a higher, more oblique AOB. We further showed that the influence of AOB on flake variation can be attributed to changes in the fracture trajectory angle. At a lower AOB, the fracture travels at a steeper angle relative to the striking platform, allowing the crack to propagate more parallel to the intersection plane of the Levallois core and terminate along the lateral and distal convexities of the core surface.

Hundreds of people reported seeing a fireball over several western U.S. states, especially over Utah, where it was exceptionally large, bright and green.

NASA's Statler underscored transforming dots in the sky to up-close observation. "Right now, we are in what has to be a Golden Age of asteroid exploration and understanding," he said.

This is one of the main ways new species form different traits, causing populations to evolve along separate paths. But sometimes, evolution can take a different direction. Convergence happens when unrelated species, shaped by similar pressures, independently evolve similar features.

In 1915, Einstein published his seminal work on general relativity. Just a year later, German physicist Karl Schwarzschild found an exact solution to those equations, which implied the existence of extreme objects now known as black holes. These are objects with mass so concentrated that nothing—not even light—can escape their gravitational pull, hence the term "black."

Cinco de Mayo (Mexican Spanish: [ˈsiŋko ðe ˈmaʝo]; Spanish for 'Fifth of May') is an annual celebration held on May 5 to celebrate Mexico's victory over the Second French Empire at the Battle of Puebla in 1862, led by General Ignacio Zaragoza. Zaragoza died months after the battle from an illness, however, and a larger French force ultimately defeated the Mexican army at the Second Battle of Puebla and then occupied Mexico City.

These findings, along with our inferred bulk ∼1% H/He mass fraction, imply that TOI-421 b hosts a primordial atmosphere, in line with predictions that the radius valley is shaped by mass-loss processes. Furthermore, we do not find obvious evidence for additional processes such as magma ocean interactions or fractionated outflows playing a prominent role in establishing the atmospheric composition of this planet, despite predictions that would imply otherwise.

Decades ago, fossilized teeth were discovered in Cuba dating to about 18 million years ago. They were small but tapered, sharp and serrated. They were the teeth of an apex predator. Researchers didn’t believe there was such an animal in the Caribbean, until they found another tooth in Puerto Rico, this time 29 million years old, according to an April 30 news release from the Florida Museum of Natural History. Still, the teeth alone weren’t enough to identify the prehistoric species. Then, along a road in the Dominican Republic in 2023, paleontologists unearthed not only another tooth, but vertebrae to match, the museum said. They had an identity. It was a crocodile-like reptile “built like a greyhound” and sometimes reaching 20 feet long — a sebecid.

The researchers used high-resolution satellite images to analyze nine crater sites on Mars and compared these to sites on Earth. They found that wave-like landforms on Mars have similar shapes and follow the same basic geometric patterns as features called solifluction lobes found in cold, mountainous regions on Earth such as the Arctic and the Rocky Mountains.

The researchers put several specimens in a tank in their lab to observe them as they interacted with one another. They also videotaped several specimens as they moved their arms and played the videos back to the cuttlefish to see how they would react. They found four waving patterns that appeared to be consistent—up, side, roll, and crown.

As John Rick excavated one of the many underground chambers at the ancient Peruvian site of Chavín de Huántar in 2017 his trowel hit something intriguing, and exceedingly delicate. It was a cigarette-size tube made of animal bone and packed full of sediment. The following year, his team found almost two dozen more. Rick, an archaeologist at Stanford University, suspected these bone tubes were pieces of ancient drug paraphernalia.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/63088297