The famous painting the Mona Lisa has captured for a long time the attention of both art critics and average folks who've seen it. There are numerous features that capture the attention, but, undoubtedly, the most scrutinized has been the woman's facial expression, which appears to be happy to some, while others consider it to be sad. This discrepancy in perception has captured the attention of scientists, who have decided to investigate the mystery. They now believe they may have come up with a conclusion. According to a team of investigators, the reason why the painting appears to be radiantly happy one moment and then sad the... [read more >>] Until not long ago, researchers thought that they had figured out the roots of life, at least in terms of how organisms produced energy. They argued that the method was purely chemical, in that living things used ATP (adenosine triphospate) to get their supplies. However, only a couple of decades ago, one expert showed that the energy-production methods in all living things were a bit more complicated than that. At the time, his ideas were shun and received skeptically, but now a growing number of researchers is starting to rally behind the idea, NewScientist reports. The theory, which its creator called chemiosmosis, essentially works in... [read more >>] Establishing what killed the dinosaurs is not an easy thing to do, and many ideas and proposals exist to explain why, some 65 million years ago, more than half of the planet's species, dinosaurs included, vanished from the face of it. A large portion of the scientific community believes that a comet impact, at the Chicxulub site, in the Yucatan Peninsula, just off Mexico, may have been responsible. A new proposal comes to dispute that claim and highlights that the Shiva Great Basin, in India, may have been the actual impact site, Space reports. The new idea comes from Texas Tech University paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee, who belie... [read more >>] The Greek historian and philosopher Plato represents the only Ancient account of the existence of the mythical island of Atlantis. In other words, any other evidence or tale about the “sunken island” is, in one way or the other, connected to the historian's writings. Now, experts analyzing the small circular archipelago of Santorini, which is some 200 kilometers southeast of Greece, believe that they may have found an explanation for why the Greek scholar said that Atlantis was swallowed by the waves. They argue that, sometime between 1630 B.C. and 1550 B.C., during the Bronze Age, a massive eruption took place on Santori... [read more >>] Scientists in the United States have recently reported that the analysis of a bone fragment from a skull that is believed to have belonged to former Nazi Party ruler Adolf Hitler revealed that the remains actually belonged to a yet-unidentified woman. This is the same bone section that historians used to argue in their hypothesis that Hitler shot himself in his bunker, in the last days of World War II. Russian experts previously said that the bone fragment was found near Hitler's jawbone. The relic has been on display in Moscow's federal archive since 2000. But the DNA analysis of the bone revealed that it belonged to a woman age... [read more >>] While observing the thick wooden hull of old warships, experts at the University of Haifa and the Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. became curious as to how exactly a cannonball fired from a regular cannon could have penetrated the ship's defenses. They started asking these questions after examining the hull of a 19th century warship that was sunk near Acre, a city in the Western Galilee region of northern Israel. To get some answers, they set up a battle scenario and proceeded to record the parameters of the simulation precisely.Discovered in 1966, the warship began revealing its secrets only three years ago, after experts at the U... [read more >>] Researchers at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona Institut Catala de Paleontologia (ICP) believe they may have found a new genus of hominid primate, in the els Hostalets de Pierola, l'Anoia region. The fossil, which displays some very interesting characteristics, is described in the most recent issue of the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. The face of the animal exhibits pretty bizarre features, including a flat front, and angles that are similar to those found in the great apes today. The find may help anthropologists shed some light on the evolution of our own family of species, the Homin... [read more >>] Around 79 AD, the eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius, in the central part of Italy, buried the twin cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum under 60 feet of ash and pumice. It all happened within the course of two days, but most victims were recorded during the first day. However, despite the massive devastation, from which no one escaped, a number of scrolls survived the fires and hot lava. But they are burned to a cinder, and only carbon can be found in them. Still, researchers have devised a method of obtaining the data out of them without actually having to open them. The parchments, which were found at an excavated villa, contained many... [read more >>] A fossil discovered in Germany has the potential to change the way we look at our own evolutionary pattern, its discoverers say. The 47-million-year-old “missing link” is about 20 times older than any of the other preserved remains of our ancestors, and it's also 95 percent complete, which means that anthropologists and archaeologists have a lot of material to work on. The “transactional” animal, named Ida, bears resemblance to non-human evolutionary lines, such as that of prosimians, but also to anthropoids such as monkeys, apes and humans, ScienceDaily reports. The ancient fossil, dating back from the Eocene a... [read more >>] According to the most recent archaeological discoveries, the first modern Europeans, of the homo sapiens kind, lived in the ancient forests of the Carpathian mountains some 35,000 years ago, on what is now the territory of Romania. The bone fragments indicating this were found in the Pestera cu Oase (the cave with bones) dig site, in the southwestern part of the mountain range, and include a jaw bone piece, as well as other tiny pieces of bones throughout the body. Up to this point, experts have failed to establish whether the remains belong to a male or a female, but forensic artist Richard Neave has managed to come up with this clay repr... [read more >>] | 
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