A tiny carving of a bird discovered in what is now modern China is one of the oldest known sculptures unearthed there. The find suggests sculpture was invented separately in Europe and Asia. “It’s quite possible that it is a tradition that originated in China or east Asia,” says Francesco d’Errico at the University of […] More
Rutger Bregman’s new book Humankind argues that people are innately good, and that if we assume this to be true, the whole world could benefit Humans 10 June 2020 Humankind: A hopeful history Rutger Bregman Bloomsbury IN 1651, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes startled the world with Leviathan, an account of the good and evil lurking […] More
Greg Daniels’s new show Upload is fizzing with interesting ideas, but the characters may not be strong enough to keep you interested, writes Emily Wilson Humans 10 June 2020 TV Upload Greg Daniels On Amazon Prime Video UPLOAD is the latest creation of Greg Daniels, a TV showrunner with an amazing CV that includes the […] More
CONFIRMED cases of covid-19 have surged in South America in recent weeks. As daily infections surpassed those in Europe and the US, the World Health Organization declared the region the pandemic‘s “new epicentre” on 22 May. More than a million cases of coronavirus and 60,000 deaths had been registered as of 7 June in Latin […] More
Scientists around the world are striking to raise awareness of institutional and systemic racism against Black academics. This event comes in conjunction with widespread protests against police violence after the killing of George Floyd, who died on 25 May after a Minneapolis police officer pinned him to the ground by his neck. The strike was […] More
A medieval forerunner to the Great Wall of China was thought to have been designed to defend against the Mongol armies of Genghis Khan, but the first major study of this wall suggests it was built before he was born. The Great Wall of China is actually a collection of many walls. The 8850-kilometre stretch […] More
Mysterious cosmic bubbles are being seen in a new light. For the first time, scientists have observed visible light from the Fermi bubbles, enormous blobs of gas that sandwich the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. The newly spotted glow was emitted by hydrogen gas that was electrically charged, or ionized, within the bubbles. Astronomer […] More
Astronomers think they’ve spotted the first example of a superbright blast of radio waves, called a fast radio burst, originating within the Milky Way. Dozens of these bursts have been sighted in other galaxies — all too far away to see the celestial engines that power them (SN: 2/7/20). But the outburst in our own […] More
