discoveries

Read the latest news stories about recent scientific discoveries on Newser.com

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Teen Makes Pricey Find in German Lake

It was a gold bar, which the girl then turned over to police

(Newser) - A teenager has made an unexpected find while swimming in a lake in the German Alps: a 17.6-ounce bar of gold. Police say they're still trying to figure out where the bar comes from and how it got into the Koenigssee lake, a popular tourist destination near Berchtesgaden...

Thief's Ex Clueless She Had Stolen Stradivarius for Years

Says she almost fainted when appraiser said they had to call the FBI

(Newser) - Philip Johnson was dying of pancreatic cancer when he brought his former wife, Thanh Tran, to the basement of his home in Venice, Calif. Under a tarp weighted down with bricks was a violin case with a combination lock. He gave the case to Tran and didn't say a...

Scientists Create a Healthier Peanut

It's said to be more resistant to disease

(Newser) - If you've been puzzling over ways to get more oleic acid into your body, the USDA has just come through. In a joint venture with Oklahoma State University, the agency has released a brand-new peanut that's said to boast a richer flavor, health benefits, and resistance to crop...

Study Identifies the Worst Fats for Your Heart

To protect your heart, choose butter over margarine: study

(Newser) - If nothing else can get you to cut back on trans fats, maybe the threat of death will do it. Researchers who analyzed 123 observational studies on saturated and trans fats published in the last 30 years found people who consumed a diet high in saturated fats saw no increased...

Why a Venezuela Lake Is Home to Most Lightning on Earth

New satellite images show that lightning flashes most often near the equator

(Newser) - At a lake in Venezuela, a nine-hour display of thousands of flashes of lightning—averaging 28 strokes a minute—is the norm, with the concentration hitting its peak in the October rainy season, reports the BBC . And though the mountain village of Kifuka in DR Congo has long been hailed...

Linguist Claims He's Solved Gulliver's Travels Riddle

Irving Rothman says he's solved the centuries-old mystery

(Newser) - Long have scholars debated the origins of the "nonsense" language in Jonathan Swift's most famous novel, Gulliver's Travels, though Isaac Asimov once said making sense of it is a "waste of time" because "I suspect that Swift simply made up nonsense for the purpose."...

Your Eyes &#39;Change Scenes&#39; While You Sleep
 Scientists Unlock a 
 Mystery of REM Sleep 
NEW STUDY
Aug 12, 2015 3:13 AM CDT

Scientists Unlock a Mystery of REM Sleep

Here's what your flickering eyes may be seeing

(Newser) - Exactly what your flickering eyes are doing during the rapid-eye-movement phase of sleep has long been a mystery to scientists, but a team that monitored the neurons of volunteers says it has figured it out. The neuroscientists say that brain activity during eye flickers in REM sleep is "very,...

MLK's First 'I Have a Dream' Speech Is Revealed

Long-lost reel-to-reel tape turned up in North Carolina library

(Newser) - Thanks in part to the "mysterious appearance" of a box containing an old reel-to-reel tape and bearing the message "Please do not erase," Martin Luther King Jr.'s original "I Have a Dream" speech has been replayed in public for the first time. It's...

Has Queen Nefertiti's Lost Tomb Been Found?

'This is potentially the biggest archaeological discovery ever made'

(Newser) - Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered in 1922. Now, nearly a century later, a University of Arizona archaeologist says that tomb may hold a long-buried secret: the remains of Nefertiti . Nicholas Reeves says he stumbled upon the possibility while analyzing scans posted online in early 2014 by Spanish art-replication experts. The...

It's Crazy How Bad Southern Food Is for Your Heart

Study: Southern-style diet raises heart attack risk by 56%

(Newser) - Fried chicken and gravy is delicious, but it's also dangerous for your heart. That alone might seem to come from the Department of the Obvious, but just how dangerous a Southern-style diet can be might surprise you: Researchers at the University of Alabama say it can boost a person'...

Scientists Devise Way to Clean Up Cow Burps

Small molecule could also curb greenhouse gas emissions

(Newser) - Cows are notorious methane gas producers, belching somewhere between 132 and 264 gallons of gas produced by food fermenting in the rumen (one of the four parts of their stomachs) every day. As the Washington Post reports, that's so significant that ruminant animals—including sheep and goats—actually contribute...

Physical Proof of Missile Possibly Found at MH17 Site

But prosecutors aren't even going so far as to say there's a 'causal connection'

(Newser) - Dutch prosecutors have said for the first time that they have found possible parts of a BUK missile system at the site in eastern Ukraine where Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was brought down last year , killing all 298 people on board. Prosecutors say in a statement today the parts "...

Shakespeare Gets a 400-Year-Old Drug Test

Scientists determine what was in tobacco pipes found in his garden

(Newser) - "To smoke or not to smoke" was not the question. Something had been smoked in the pipe bowls and stems unearthed from William Shakespeare' garden in Stratford-upon-Avon; the question was what. Researchers in South Africa now have gas chromatography mass spectrometry to thank for their answer. A piece in...

Hatfields, McCoys Pinpoint Key Feud Location

Descendants of feuding families find artifacts at site of 1888 attack

(Newser) - The Hatfield and McCoy descendants came armed—with digging tools. Side by side, they worked together to help archaeologists unearth artifacts from one of the bloodiest sites in America's most famous feud. The leader of the dig says they have pinpointed the place where Randolph McCoy's home was...

This Methane-Run Tractor Could Be a Gamechanger

New Holland T6 could significantly cut costs and pollution

(Newser) - Luca Remmert's dream of running a self-sustainable farm is within sight. He produces energy from corn and grain near the northern Italian city of Turin and hopes in the not too distant future to run all of his eight tractors on methane generated at the farm. Remmert's 1,...

Archaeologists Find Rare Writing, Then It Disappears
 Archaeologists 
 Find Rare Writing, 
 Then It Disappears 
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Aug 9, 2015 7:00 PM CDT

Archaeologists Find Rare Writing, Then It Disappears

Inscriptions on plaster in ritual bath have now been sealed

(Newser) - Archaeologists digging for ruins ahead of a new construction project in Jerusalem made an incredible discovery—that immediately began to vanish. During the last hours of a "salvage excavation" two months ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority stumbled upon a 2,000-year-old ritual bath when a stone suddenly disappeared into...

Roanoke Island Mystery May Finally Be Solved

Archaeologists dig up new items in North Carolina

(Newser) - The mystery of Roanoke Island may be one for the books. Two archaeological teams have dug up new evidence pointing to the fate of English colonists who mysteriously vanished from the North Carolina island 425 years ago, National Geographic reports. One collection of items appears to support the long-held theory...

Sexting: Everyone's Doing It, and It May Be Good for You

New study shows correlation between sexting and overall sexual satisfaction

(Newser) - Sexting gets a bad rap. A quick survey on the subject turns up political scandals , creepy cops , teen sex rings , and horny FBI agents . But, a new study shows sexting can be a part of a healthy, satisfying sex life and is far more common than you might think. In...

Scientists Discover Venomous Frogs— the Hard Way

One gram of frog's venom is enough to kill 80 humans

(Newser) - Miss Piggy's split with Kermit wasn't the only painful frog-related news this week. Researchers have released their findings on the world's first known venomous frogs, whose abilities were only discovered when one of them stung a researcher's hand, leaving him with what a colleague calls...

Sharks Have a Sixth Sense for Killing, Literally

They're better at sensing electric fields than even our best tools

(Newser) - It turns out there's something sharks are even better at than spicing up your average made-for-TV movie about tornadoes: sensing electricity. Back in 1971, a Dutch scientist discovered sharks use tiny pores on their heads to sense the electric fields produced by other aquatic animals—and hunt those creatures,...

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