All posts tagged: mystery

Teenager solves ancient mystery by decoding 4,000-year-old Egyptian text

Teenager solves ancient mystery by decoding 4,000-year-old Egyptian text

Published by skeptic

The book, which centers around a teenager named Pepi and his father’s efforts to secure him a job in the royal court, draws on a 4,000-year-old piece of literature known as The Instruction of Khety, or The Satire of the Trades. Hoffen’s journey into ancient texts began in middle school, where he developed a fascination with translating hieroglyphics. His interest led him to the Middle Kingdom period of ancient Egypt, a time when The Instruction of Khety was written on papyrus. This ancient writing material, made from reeds, has provided invaluable insights into the societies of ancient Judea, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Hoffen collaborated with two Egyptologists, Christian Casey and Jen Thum, to translate this ancient text into modern prose. Their work spanned three and a half years, during which they meticulously translated the hieroglyphics and gathered images to bring the story of Kheti and Pepi to life. 19th Dynasty ostrakon inscribed with part of the Satire of the Trades. (CREDIT: Turin, Museo Egizio, CC BY 4.0) The resulting book, “Be A Scribe!” is not …

We may have solved the mystery of what froze Earth’s inner core

We may have solved the mystery of what froze Earth’s inner core

Published by skeptic

How did Earth’s inner core freeze solid? Rost9/Shutterstock A high concentration of carbon within Earth’s inner core could explain a long-standing mystery about how the deepest part of our planet froze solid – a process that kick-started the magnetic field protecting life on the surface. Earth’s inner core presents a paradox for geophysicists: it first formed as a massive liquid ball of mostly iron, then began to solidify within the last billion years. In order for that freezing process to start in a pure iron object, it would have had to cool by at least 700 kelvin in… Source link

They Searched Through Hundreds of Bands to Solve an Online Mystery

They Searched Through Hundreds of Bands to Solve an Online Mystery

Published by skeptic

The first advancement in years came in May, when a user on the buzzing Reddit community r/TheMysteriousSong found a reference to Hörfest, a contest for amateur bands the radio station held every year in Hamburg, Germany. “It was a very likely way to solve our riddle,” says Arne, a moderator of the subreddit who posts under the handle LordElend (Arne declined to give their last name, citing privacy concerns), “since this was a good explanation as to why an amateur band tape would have been aired on NDR, which usually had high standards.” A search of local government archives turned up thousands of pages on Hörfest, but they wouldn’t be easy to comb through. “We realized that 800 bands, most obscure and not on Google, will need a larger group of researchers,” says Arne. Soon, hundreds of people across multiple platforms were collaborating on extensive spreadsheets, listing band members, sounds, songs, and anything else they could find. One of these investigators, who posts using the handle marijn1412, found that a member of a band on …

It all started with a Big Bang – the quest to unravel the mystery behind the birth of the universe

It all started with a Big Bang – the quest to unravel the mystery behind the birth of the universe

Published by skeptic

How did everything begin? It’s a question that humans have pondered for thousands of years. Over the last century or so, science has homed in on an answer: the Big Bang. This describes how the Universe was born in a cataclysmic explosion almost 14 billion years ago. In a tiny fraction of a second, the observable universe grew by the equivalent of a bacterium expanding to the size of the Milky Way. The early universe was extraordinarily hot and extremely dense. But how do we know this happened? Let’s look first at the evidence. In 1929, the American astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that distant galaxies are moving away from each other, leading to the realisation that the universe is expanding. If we were to wind the clock back to the birth of the cosmos, the expansion would reverse and the galaxies would fall on top of each other 14 billion years ago. This age agrees nicely with the ages of the oldest astronomical objects we observe. The idea was initially met with scepticism – and …

The mystery of the Milky Way’s most bizarre supernova

The mystery of the Milky Way’s most bizarre supernova

Published by skeptic

Sign up for the Starts With a Bang newsletter Travel the universe with Dr. Ethan Siegel as he answers the biggest questions of all Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. Across the cosmos, only two main pathways exist for making a supernova. Many of the cataclysms that occur in space are typical supernovae: either core-collapse from a massive progenitor star or type Ia from an exploding white dwarf. The most massive stars of all have hundreds of times the mass of the Sun and live just 1 or 2 million years, total, before running out of fuel and dying in such a cataclysm. Credit: NASA Ames, STScI/G. Bacon One is when a very massive star reaches the end of its life. This image of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant shows the aftermath of a type II, core-collapse supernova that occurred more than 350 years ago. The supernova remnant glows in a variety of electromagnetic wavelengths, including in various X-ray and infrared bands, with the latter shown here. The color-coding reveals the diversity of elemental …

Centuries-old mystery over Christopher Columbus to be revealed | World News

Centuries-old mystery over Christopher Columbus to be revealed | World News

Published by skeptic

A centuries-old mystery is about to be revealed – the origins of explorer Christopher Columbus. Spanish scientists have already used DNA analysis to confirm his remains are buried in a tomb in Seville Cathedral in Spain. Long cited by authorities as his final resting place, there had been rival claims – but now arguments over the nationality of 15th-century explorer are also set to be laid to rest. A divisive figure, Columbus led Spanish-funded expeditions from the 1490s onward, opening the way for the European conquest of the Americas. Many historians have questioned the traditional theory that Columbus came from Genoa, Italy. Other theories range from him being a Spanish Jew, a Greek, Basque or Portuguese. Researchers, led by forensic expert Miguel Lorente, have been testing tiny samples of remains buried in the cathedral, comparing them with those of his known relatives and descendants. The findings are due to be announced in a documentary titled Columbus DNA: The True Origin on Spain’s national broadcaster TVE on Saturday. Image: Pic: Reuters Findings ‘almost absolutely reliable’ Briefing …

‘An Ass-Backward Sherlock Holmes’ | J. W. McCormack

‘An Ass-Backward Sherlock Holmes’ | J. W. McCormack

Published by skeptic

Television’s best jokes turn hierarchies upside-down. In some cases ghoulish beauty standards are treated as ordinary, like when Morticia Addams clips the heads off roses to display the thorny stems, or when comely Marilyn Munster feels like the outcast in a family of vampires and Frankensteins. In others an authority figure gets taken for a perp or lowlife. Consider Peter Falk’s Lieutenant Columbo, the disheveled detective who spent much of the 1970s as the tentpole of NBC’s prime-time mystery programming block. Throughout the series he finds himself mistaken for various riffraff. At a soup kitchen where he’s collecting testimony, an overzealous nun assumes he’s without a home and needs a meal; at a porno shop where he’s following up on a clue, a customer takes him for a fellow pervert; at a crime scene, a policeman dismisses him as a rubberneck until he bashfully admits to being the investigating officer. It’s an easy mistake to make. Columbo expects to be underestimated. In fact he’s counting on it. He always wears an earth-tone, threadbare raincoat, unless …