Mark Strauss

Archaeologists Find Royal Entryway To King Herod’s Hilltop Palace

King Herod’s most ambitious project was Herodium, a fortified palace on top of a hill in the Judean desert. Honeycombed with passages and chambers, it also became his mausoleum. Now, archaeologists have found a resplendent, 65-foot corridor to provide the royal entourage direct entry into the palace courtyard. According to a statement issued by Hebrew…

NASA Celebrates Anniversary Of Earth Observing System With Amazing GIFs

In December 1999, NASA launched the Terra satellite to collect climate data. It would be the first spacecraft in a fleet of 18 Earth-observing satellites that, over the last 15 years, have opened up a new era of exploration of our home planet. To celebrate, the space agency has compiled some of its most stunning…

For 7,500 Years, We’ve Made Sculptures Out Of Data

Our desire to create 3D visualizations of data—for practical purposes, artistic expression or both—stretch back many millennia. Two experts in the field have created a stunning online archive of such physical artifacts from 5,500 BC to the present day, and beyond. The List of Physical Visualizations, curated by Pierre Dragicevic and Yvonne Jansen, currently has…

A Planet In The Dreaded “Rotisserie” Alignment Could Still Support Life

One of the criteria for the habitability of exoplanets is their obliquity—the angle of the axis relative to the orbit around a star. Current thinking holds that the more extreme the tilt, the less likely the possibility of life. But MIT researchers suggest one notable exception: a world completely covered by water. Illustration by Christine…

Archaeologist Finds Artifacts Possibly Linked To Kings David And Solomon

Many scholars dismiss David and Solomon as mythical figures, arguing that kingdoms didn’t exist in the region during the early Iron Age, when the events in the Bible supposedly took place. By a new discovery in southern Israel suggests there was more political complexity in the 10th century BC than previously thought. At an ancient…

Bloomberg News asked foreign policy analysts, military experts and economists to identify the possible worst-case scenarios in 2015. Potential future crises include armed conflict in the South China Sea, the collapse of Nigeria and political upheaval in Saudi Arabia prompted by the death of 90-year-old King Abdullah.

A Tube Map To Assist Time Travelers In Medieval London

The official Transport For London website offers multiple variations of the iconic Tube map to assist virtually any traveler. The bicyclist map, the step-free map, the avoiding stairs map, and the all-important toilet map. Now, finally, there’s a Tube map for anyone commuting during the Middle Ages. The Londonist magazine has updated (downdated? backdated? undated?)…

Pretty Much Every U.S. Demographic Group Believes Torture Is Justified

The good news: For those who are worried that the nation is more divided than ever, there’s finally one contentious issue that a majority of Americans agree upon. The bad news: Most people are okay with the CIA torturing suspected terrorists. According to a new poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News, 58%…

In 1945, Scientists Calculated How Many Nukes Could Destroy The World

A newly declassified document obtained by a nuclear historian reveals that the Manhattan Project scientists who designed and detonated the first atomic bomb estimated that 10 to 100 enhanced “superbombs” would produce enough atmospheric radiation to wipe out the human race. Although the development of sophisticated nuclear weapons was still in its infancy, scientists at…

Some Exoplanets May Be Too Stiff To Support Life

A solar system’s habitable zone is the region of space that is warm enough to allow water to exist in a liquid state on a planet. But new geological research suggests that, even if an exoplanet has water, it is doomed to be a dying world unless its rocky mantle is soft enough to allow…

The U.S. Considered An “Accidental” Bombing Of China’s Nuke Facilities

Recently declassified documents obtained by the National Security Archive reveal that the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations were considering military action to prevent or delay China from building nuclear weapons — even if that meant working with Moscow to stage an accidental bombing. The pertinent document is the June 21, 1963 entry in the journal of…

Drone Footage Shows Extent Of Greenpeace’s Damage To Peru’s Nazca Site

Last week, Greenpeace activists provoked international outrage when they undertook a publicity stunt, trespassing on the Nazca Lines World Heritage Site. Newly released done footage shows how much damage they left behind. https://gizmodo.com/this-greenpeace-stunt-may-have-irreparably-damaged-peru-1669728616 As PBS Newshour reports: The Nazca figures were drawn between 500 BC and 500 AD by removing a thin patina of dark…

Computer Simulation Suggests The Alcatraz Escapees Could Have Survived

On the night of June 11, 1962, three inmates escaped Alcatraz aboard a makeshift inflatable raft. They were never seen again and are believed to have died in the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay. But a new computer model using historical tide data indicates they had a narrow time window to make it safely…

While the spiral pastel colors of this image are evocative of a painting, they are in fact a visualization of data from ESA’s Planck satellite showing the interaction between interstellar dust and the Milky Way’s magnetic field. Scientists are studying how the dust’s alignment with that field influenced our galaxy’s formation.

A Tax On Smartphones Could Help Pay For The Removal Of Space Debris

So far, governments have opted to deal with the problem of space junk by implementing policies to reduce the creation of more debris. But that alone won’t cut it — we also need to be removing stuff from orbit. One way to cover the high costs of space junk disposal would be a $1 tax…

The Navy’s ship-mounted laser cannon has been a long time coming, notes Brian Resnick, who chronicles the 50-year history of the military’s “dream” project. “The LASER may be the biggest breakthrough in the weapons area since the atomic bomb,” the head of the Army Ordnance Missile Command wrote in 1962.

Decoding Hidden Messages In Those Geeky Spy Satellite Mission Patches

Last year, the National Reconnaissance Office sparked a media frenzy when it released a spy satellite mission patch depicting an Earth-eating octopus. But, that’s not even close to the weirdest logos bestowed upon U.S. spy satellites—and space enthusiasts believe they’re codes for the secret mission payloads. https://gizmodo.com/us-spy-agency-launched-this-earth-conquering-octopus-lo-1479029015 While NASA mission patches tend to be rather…

A color image of Comet 67P has finally been released, revealing that it is… grey. The picture is composed of three images taken by Rosetta’s scientific imaging system OSIRIS in red, green and blue filters. In reality, it’s even darker, but the image has been brightened enough for us to see the comet’s features.

The Equation That Can Help Predict Zombie Migration Patterns

The scenario: News reports say that there’s been a zombie outbreak at the city hospital. The undead are pouring into the streets, biting hapless citizens. How much time do you have to gather supplies, get out of town and set up a fortified site, before the horde catches up with you? As always, there’s a…

This Two-Headed Israeli Salamander Is Kind Of Freaking People Out

A University of Haifa ecology lab that collected wild specimens of an endangered salamander got more than it expected, when one of the salamanders gave birth to an offspring with two heads. The lab also got some unwelcome publicity, when the media began referring to it as the “radioactive” salamander. The Near Eastern fire salamander…