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From a bone of contention, scientists can tease out fascinating information about the past.
Analysis of ancient DNA recovered from human remains has revealed the characteristics and ancestry of historical individuals – be it a mummified iceman, a Chinese emperor or a legendary composer.
As techniques improve, researchers are taking advantage of this valuable tool to investigate human remains from multiple cemeteries, resulting in large data sets that help them better understand the dynamics of entire communities. .
The results are very exciting when applied to the shadowy empires of people like the Avars, who had no written records.
Dig this
Known mainly from the accounts of their Byzantine troubles, the Avars were great warriors on horseback who came to Central and Eastern Europe in the sixth century seemingly out of nowhere.
The origins of the empire and its people remained obscure until a landmark April 2022 study found that they originated from the Mongolian steppe.
Now, a new analysis of the unearthed remains of 424 people from cemeteries in Hungary has provided data about Avar family and social life and how the newcomers interacted with the population of their adopted homeland.
The results indicated a dense population with marriage practices that are not common today.
Around the globe
Mankind’s most distant spacecraft is back in touch with Earth. For the first time in five months, NASA engineers received coherent data from Voyager 1 .
It is currently about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away, and at 46 years old, the probe has shown multiple quirks and signs of aging in recent years.
The most recent issue experienced by Voyager 1 first surfaced in November 2023 when the flight data system’s telemetry modulation unit began sending an unbreakable repetitive pattern of code.
The settlement was the result of a clever bit of trial and error and the revelation of a mystery that left the team on one piece.
Lunar update
High-resolution images captured on the closest flyby of Jupiter’s moon Io in more than 20 years revealed the celestial body’s volcanic plumes, mountain peaks and a glass-smooth lake of cooling lava.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which arrived to study Jupiter and its moons in 2016, flew within about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of the lava world’s surface in December and February to capture the first detailed images. of Io’s northern latitude to capture.
“Io is littered with volcanoes, and we’ve caught several in action,” Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute, said in a statement.
Bolton described Io as “Jupiter’s tortured moon” because of the turbulent forces it regularly experiences.
Explorations
On June 8, 1924, colleague George Mallory and fellow climber Andrew Irvine saw from afar the men on their way to the summit of Mount Everest; no one saw them alive again.
Mallory’s words from the mountain, however, are now available to read online in their entirety for the first time. Hundreds of pages of correspondence and other documents written and received by Mallory were recently scanned at Magdalene College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, where he studied.
The letters outline Mallory’s detailed preparations and equipment tests, and his optimism about their prospects. But the letters also show the dark side of mountaineering: the bad weather, health issues, difficulties and doubts.
Days before he disappeared, Mallory wrote that the odds were “50 to 1 against us” in his last letter to his wife, Ruth, dated May 27, 1924.
Once upon a planet
Naturalists saw the first arrivals in this spring’s historic dual cicada emergence.
The insects will infiltrate a much larger geographical area than in other years because they are part of the synchronous emergence of two separate periodic cicada broods that have not met since 1803.
More than a dozen states in the South and Midwest will experience the glorious and mysterious natural phenomenon when it’s in full swing.
Experts have some tips about what to expect and how to prepare. And, most importantly, for those who view cicadas as a noisy, anxiety-inducing nuisance, there are steps you can take if you’re not a bug fan.
Discoveries
Check out these mind-blowing stories.
— Boeing and NASA have decided to go ahead with the historic crew launch of a new spacecraft after long delays.
— Surgeons have completed the first transplant to combine a mechanical heart pump and a gene-edited pig kidney.
— What foods are the most plastic? You might be surprised.
— The Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of a glowing nebula ejected from a dying star that may also show evidence of stellar cannibalism.
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