Why Do Planets Orbit the Sun?
Why do planets orbit the Sun instead of falling into it? The short answer is that gravity pulls the planets inward while their sideways motion carries them forward. The combination…
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Ivan Petricevic
Ivan Petricevic is an investigative journalist and researcher with more than a decade of experience covering ancient history, UAP phenomena, space, and science. He writes about space, science, and history for Večernji list and has appeared as an expert on Discovery Channel and History Channel. He founded Curiosmos, where he reports from primary sources, archaeological research, and field investigations.
Fifty Roman Parchment Fragments Rebuild a Lost Page of Tax Law
A collection of 50 battered parchment fragments has been joined into a page of Roman law that had been broken apart for centuries. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati matched…
How Did Bronze Age Trade Connect Distant Cities?
How did Bronze Age trade connect distant cities? It worked through a chain of exchanges rather than one giant market controlled from a single capital. Copper and tin moved toward…
OP 313 Is the Most Distant Blazar Ever Seen in the Highest-Energy Gamma Rays
Astronomers have detected the highest-energy gamma rays ever recorded from a blazar at this distance. The source, OP 313, is an active galaxy whose central black hole is feeding on…
What Is a Supernova—and What Happens After a Star Explodes?
What is a supernova? It is a stellar explosion powerful enough to briefly outshine an entire galaxy. Some supernovae mark the collapse of massive stars. Others happen when a dense…
An Archaic Greek Statue Was Found Face-Down in a Roman Street at Sardis
At Sardis in western Türkiye, archaeologists have recovered a statue that spent part of its life as building material. The figure was made nearly 2,500 years ago, broken in two…
How Do Archaeologists Reconstruct an Ancient Diet?
How do archaeologists reconstruct an ancient diet? They rarely find a complete meal waiting in a bowl. Instead, they assemble small traces: charred seeds, animal bones, fish scales, grinding stones,…
Webb Maps Water Ice and Carbon Dioxide Across Jupiter’s Moon Callisto
JWST observations reveal uneven water-ice and carbon-dioxide patterns across Callisto, including a striking difference between its leading and trailing hemispheres.
Historic Sulfur Pollution May Have Damaged More Murujuga Rock Art Than Expected
Murujuga in Western Australia holds one of the world’s largest concentrations of rock art, with engravings made over roughly 50,000 years. New research suggests that historic sulfur pollution may have…
How Do We Know an Exoplanet Has an Atmosphere?
How do astronomers know an exoplanet has an atmosphere? They usually do not see the atmosphere as a separate blue shell. Instead, they measure the way the planet changes the…
Ancient Egyptian Paint Contained More Than Animal Glue, Study Finds
Ancient Egyptian artists were working with a much wider range of materials than the usual picture of "paint and glue" suggests. A new analysis of 28 microscopic samples from 14…
Stone Tools in Saudi Arabia May Record a Neanderthal Presence
Stone tools from a Saudi Arabian desert site resemble Neanderthal technology, offering evidence of a possible Neanderthal presence 60,000–50,000 years ago.
Comet 28P Has No Visible Coma Even Far Beyond Saturn
Comets are usually introduced through their tails, but a recent Subaru Telescope observation captured one without the cloud that gives a comet its familiar appearance. Comet 28P/Neujmin was more than…
A Lab-Made Quantum Field Reveals the Jitter Expected in Empty Space
Physicists have observed the tiny, random fluctuations expected in a quantum field by building a version of the field in the laboratory. The experiment did not photograph literal empty space.…
How Did Ancient People Navigate Without Modern Maps?
How did ancient people navigate without modern maps? They did not rely on one magical instrument or a single star. Travellers learned the shape of a coastline, the direction of…
A Viking Woman’s Brooches Preserved Fragments of Her 1,300-Year-Old Clothing
Fragments of clothing have survived inside an eighth-century Viking woman’s grave in western Denmark, giving archaeologists a rare chance to study what she wore. The pieces were found attached to…
JWST Finds Planet-Forming Disks Losing Gas Before Giant Planets Can Finish Growing
Planets are assembled inside broad disks of gas and dust around young stars, but those disks do not last forever. A new James Webb Space Telescope survey shows that winds…
Curiosity Reaches a New High on Mars—and the View Explains Why the Climb Matters
NASA’s Curiosity rover has climbed roughly a kilometre up Mount Sharp, the 5-kilometre-high mountain rising from the floor of Gale Crater. The milestone is more than a distance record. Each…
How Does a Gravity Assist Send a Spacecraft Farther Into the Solar System?
How does a gravity assist send a spacecraft farther into the Solar System? The spacecraft flies close to a moving planet or moon and uses the body’s gravity to bend…
Neolithic People Marked Obsidian Arrowheads in Ways Archaeologists Still Cannot Explain
Eleven marked obsidian arrowheads from Tepecik-Çiftlik in Turkey reveal deliberate Neolithic incisions, but their purpose remains unresolved.
Roman Space Telescope Is About to Test a New Way of Seeing Distant Exoplanets
Most exoplanets are found indirectly. Astronomers watch a star dim when a planet crosses its face, or measure the tiny wobble caused by the planet’s gravity. The Nancy Grace Roman…
The Waves Inside Enceladus’ Ocean May Be Carving Its Famous Tiger Stripes
Enceladus’ south pole is cut by four long fractures that spray water vapour and ice into space. Scientists call them the “tiger stripes,” and a new model suggests that waves…
What Can Ancient DNA Tell Us About Lost Populations?
What can ancient DNA tell us about lost populations? In the right sample, it can reveal relationships that bones alone cannot show: who was related, which groups moved, where populations…
Cacao DNA in Etowah Pottery Shows How Far Ancient North American Trade Reached
Two fragments of pottery from Etowah, a major Mississippian centre in what is now Georgia, contain traces of cacao DNA. The discovery is the first direct evidence that people at…