This week’s science news was packed with stories that highlighted humanity’s complex, often-fraught relationship with nature, with forecasters predicting the possible onset of a “super El Niño” this summer.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center announced that there’s currently a 62% chance that El Niño will emerge between June and August, with a 1-in-3 likelihood it will be especially strong. If that happens, the climate pattern could easily boost already-warming ocean temperatures to make 2027 the hottest year on record.
Divers find Acropolis marble treasure in British shipwreck
In the early 19th century, Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin and British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, arrived at the ruins of Athens’ Acropolis to remove roughly half of the marble sculptures that once adorned the Parthenon temple’s top exterior — ripping many from the ancient Greek holy site’s walls.
Many of these seized sculptures (which later became known as the Elgin Marbles) were shipped back to the United Kingdom, where they remain controversially on display to the present day. Yet not all of Bruce’s ships made it. The Mentor, a brig that sank in the Aegean while transporting some of the sculptures, scattered its cargo around its wreck.
Now, divers have discovered an overlooked piece of marble that had remained unsalvaged — a triangular, marble block with what looks like a peg at the bottom. Archaeologists will now conduct further analyses of the block, which will hopefully enable them to establish whether it came from the Parthenon itself or somewhere else in the Acropolis.
Discover more archaeology news
—Monte Verde, one of the earliest Indigenous sites in South America, is much younger than thought, study claims. But others call it ‘egregiously poor geological work.’
—Equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius: The only surviving larger-than-life-size statue of a pagan Roman emperor — a rarity that Michelangelo refurbished
—Will the Indus Valley script ever be deciphered?
Life’s Little Mysteries
Yes, you read that right. While other animals may have jawbones, no other animal — not even gorillas, chimpanzees or extinct human relatives like Neanderthals — sports the bony, mental protuberance we commonly call the chin. So how and why did the chin evolve?
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Scientists create the world’s first “hexagonal diamond”
Researchers in China claim they have synthesized the very first samples of “hexagonal diamond” — a mysterious and coveted material believed to be harder, stiffer and chemically tougher than natural diamond.
Scientists have been arguing about hexagonal diamonds, whose carbon atoms arrange themselves in hexagons instead of the cubic lattices seen in natural diamonds, for decades. First theorized in 1962, the diamonds were later discovered in meteorites that arrived to Earth from the mantles of shattered dwarf planets, although the evidence for this is disputed.
Now, three separate research groups appear to have made pure to nearly pure hexagonal diamond samples. If their findings are replicated consistently and can be scaled up, they could open up all kinds of new applications, such as drilling and quantum sensing.
Discover more physics and space news
—Scientists witness birth of one of the universe’s strongest magnets for the first time, thanks to a general relativity ‘magic trick’
—All 5 ‘letters’ of DNA found on an asteroid speeding through our solar system. What do they tell us about the origins of life?
—Rare ‘daytime fireball’ meteor creates powerful sonic boom as 7-ton space rock explodes above eastern US
Also in science news this week
—An experimental AI agent broke out of its testing environment and mined crypto without permission
—Diagnostic dilemma: A man went to the doctor for a bad UTI and learned he had an extra kidney
—‘We got evidence of boars, deer, bears, aurochs’: Ancient DNA reveals sunken realm
—‘1,800-year-old nails discovered in 3 burials in Roman necropolis, possibly to ‘protect’ both the living and the dead
—A single injection of mRNA-like treatment healed heart muscle after a heart attack in mice and pigs. Could it work in humans too?
—How plants moved from sea to land and changed Earth forever
Science Spotlight
Alzheimer’s disease, which accounts for 60% to 80% of all dementia cases, affects tens of millions of people worldwide. It is a complicated, multifactorial and tenacious disease that has resisted all inroads to treatment, even a leading one centered around the elimination of amyloid plaques found in the brain.
However, a study published in January has potentially tied the risk of developing the condition primarily to one gene, called apolipoprotein E (APOE). Does this mean a gene therapy for the disease is in hand? Live Science contributor RJ Mackenzie investigated in this long read.
Something for the weekend
If you’re looking for something a little longer to read over the weekend, here are some of the best analyses, crosswords and opinion pieces published this week.
—Artemis II: NASA is preparing for a return to the moon, but why is it going back? [Analysis]
—Live Science crossword puzzle #34: Famous space telescope launched in 1990 — 5 across [Crossword]
—Measles’ resurgence in the US is a grim sign of what’s coming [Opinion]
Science news in pictures
This rainbow-flecked white expanse is a 2011 aerial photo of the Etosha Pan, a roughly 1,800-square-mile (4,700 square kilometers) salt flat north of Namibia’s capital, Windhoek.
The satellite photo shows a serpentine pair of ephemeral rivers that drain into the pan. Surrounding the winding waterways are around a dozen bowl-like depressions that occasionally fill with water when the rivers sporadically flood their banks.
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