🔎 The Curiosity Files #2: Lost Pharaohs, Hidden Cities, White Holes, Artificial Sun, How Language Evolved, Deep Spiritual States, Origins of Water on Earth & the Mysteries of Time
Curiously exploring the mysteries of our past, present, and future
“Curiosity is its own reason. Aren’t you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure behind reality?” Albert Einstein
Welcome to the second edition of The Curiosity Files!
Twice a week, I’ll journey through the most fascinating discoveries across archaeology, ancient history, human origins, space, consciousness, cutting-edge science and the unexplained.
🗿 Ancient Mysteries, Archaeology & Lost Civilizations
Lost Pharaoh Thutmose II’s Tomb Unearthed in Luxor.
This significant find marks the first royal tomb uncovered since Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922.
The inner ear of Neanderthals reveals clues about their enigmatic origin.
It was long believed that no significant changes occurred throughout the evolution of Neanderthals, yet recent paleogenetic research based on DNA samples extracted from fossils revealed the existence of a drastic genetic diversity loss event between early Neanderthals (or ancient Neanderthals) and later ones (also referred to as "classic" Neanderthals).
Scientists astounded after discovering unique ancient monument in France.
Items found nearby are indicative of the Bell Beaker culture, which thrived during the European Bronze Age around 2800 BC.
Secret ingredient from space found in unearthed Iron Age ornaments.
Early Iron Age ornaments unearthed in Poland have been found to contain iron from meteorites, suggesting the ancient inhabitants of the region were adept at working the metal much earlier than thought.
Lasers reveal 15th-century fortified Zapotec city in Mexico.
They found that "it covered 360 hectares [890 acres], with over 1,100 buildings, four kilometres [2.5 miles] of walls, a network of internal roads and a clearly organized urban layout with temples and communal spaces such as ballcourts, and the elites and commoners lived in separate neighbourhoods," according to a statement describing the research. There is a river that runs near the city.
🌌 Cosmic & Space Mysteries
A high resolution shot of a crater on Mars. The camera is placed on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) that is searching the planet for water.
Quantum mechanics, white holes, and the relational universe.
Once considered pure speculation, black holes are now a well-established scientific entity. In this IAI interview, Carlo Rovelli makes the case that white holes—though still theoretical—warrant serious attention. White holes are the hypothetical opposites of black holes; instead of pulling matter in, they expel it out and cannot be entered. Rovelli explains how quantum mechanics suggests that black holes could eventually transform into white holes through a process called quantum tunnelling, challenging our understanding of space, time, and gravity.
New Theory Explains How Ancient Earth Came to Be So Wet.
When Earth first formed, it was too hot to retain ice. This means all the water on our planet must have originated from extraterrestrial sources.
How Does Earth’s Magnetic Field Work?
Learn how forces deep underground generate a protective bubble between us and space.
🧠 The Mind, Consciousness & the Origins of Life
Scientists capture end-of-life brain activity that could prove humans have souls.
Dr Stuart Hameroff explained how researchers placed small sensors on the brains of seven chronically ill patients minutes before they were taken off life support, allowing them to capture activity after each patient's blood pressure and heart dropped to zero.
Why Do Some People See Faces Everywhere While Tripping?
This is known as face pareidolia. Are some people just wired differently, so that they are more likely to experience face pareidolia than others? It turns out that this is part of the story, but there can be other reasons as to why someone might trip and then start seeing faces everywhere.
Scientific insights into how humans access deep spiritual states.
Two seemingly opposite spiritual practices -- Buddhist jhana meditation and the Christian practice of speaking in tongues -- have more in common than previously thought, a new study suggests. While one is quiet and deeply focused, and the other emotionally charged and expressive, both appear to harness the same cognitive feedback loop to create profound states of joy and surrender.
Doctor sees rare 'angel pattern' in some people's brains linked to supernatural experience.
The medical expert states that if an individual experiences a significant spike in brain activity in the rear part of their brain, they will inform Dr. Hardt of having had supernatural encounters.
The Brain Science of Elusive ‘Aha! Moments’.
What happens in your mind when insight strikes?
You are both one self and many selves.
Is there one self or many competing selves within us? Some argue we contain multiple selves, warring for attention and even control of the organism.
🦠 Evolutionary Oddities & Life on Earth
Why is it so hard to rewrite a genome?
Synthetic biologists have the know-how and ambition to retool whole genomes. But the hidden complexity of biological systems continues to surprise them.
Can You Hear a Virus? Scientists Use Light To Listen to the Sounds of Life.
New research at MSU uses light to reveal viruses’ unique vibrations, opening new doors for biological imaging and antiviral research.
Why being bilingual really does seem to delay dementia.
Multiple studies suggest that speaking more than one language pushes back the onset of dementia, but doesn't seem to stop it entirely.
The origin of feathers remains a mystery.
Feathers predate birds—having first belonged to extinct dinosaurs. Finding out exactly when feathers evolved, and which animals had them, could offer important new insights into the distant past.
Surprising Chimpanzee Signal Reveals Secrets of Ape Communication.
A rare and deliberate signal between a mother chimpanzee and her daughter raises new questions about ape communication, culture and the meaning of sharing a language.
A single protein may have helped shape the emergence of spoken language.
Researchers discovered that when they put this exclusively human variant of an RNA-binding protein in the brain known to be crucial to neural development -- into mice, it altered their vocalizations as they called to each other. The study also confirmed that the variant is not found in either Neanderthals or Denisovans, archaic humans that our ancestors interbred with, as is evidenced by their genetic traces that remain in many human genomes today.
Dinosaur Extinction Allowed Seeds to Grow and Fruits to Flourish.
Learn how the extinction of dinosaurs around 66 million years ago caused seeds to grow larger, filling in an important piece in the evolutionary history of fruit.
How white skin evolved in Europeans: Incredible map reveals how pale complexions only became the norm 1,700 years ago.
Light skin tones originally appeared in Sweden in the Mesolithic period – starting about 14,000 years ago – but remained rare, according to the researchers.
Scientists Just Unearthed a 14.6-Million-Year-Old “Bee Fossil”—Its Origins Don’t Make Sense.
Scientists have unearthed a 14.6-million-year-old fossilized bee in New Zealand, the first ever found in the submerged continent of Zealandia. Preserved in volcanic mudstone, this tiny insect hints at a lost ecosystem and an unexpected evolutionary mystery. Its lineage may not be what we thought, and its role in ancient pollination remains unclear.
Cellular clean-up: Solving the mystery of how cells initiate their recycling process.
A new discovery from an international collaborative research team has solved the mystery of how cells turn on their recycling process and create "garbage bags" to remove proteins.
🚀 Cutting-Edge Science & Technology
China debuts world’s first two-way brain-computer interface with ‘100-fold efficiency’.
The dual-loop system allows for four-degree-of-freedom control using only brain signals, improving accuracy by 20 percent.
Nuclear fusion breakthrough: 'Artificial sun' reactor sets a new world record by generating a steady loop of plasma for 1,337 seconds - taking the world closer towards limitless clean energy.
The WEST reactor, in southern France, is at the forefront of efforts to produce huge amounts of energy from the nuclear reaction when two atoms fuse.
Large Language Models explained briefly - Why large language models are mysterious – even to their creators.
🛸 The Unexplained & the Unusual
OpenAI Deep Research: “Majestic 12, UAP Secrecy, and the Hidden Integration of Non-Human Intelligences: A Deep Analysis”.
This report proceeds under the analytical stance that UAPs are real, NHIs exist and interact with humanity, and a secret governmental body known as “Majestic 12” (MJ-12) was formed to manage these realities.
🌀 Beyond the Known
Scientists unlock vital clue to strange quirk of static electricity.
The most basic physics is well understood, but long-standing mysteries remain, most notably how different materials exchange positive and negative charges. Now scientists have identified a critical factor explaining that inherent unpredictability: It's the contact history of given materials that controls how they exchange charges in contact electrification.
Can time emerge from a timeless world?
The concept of time is indispensable in modern physics, yet in our equations for quantum gravity it is shown to disappear. Some have accepted the fundamental timelessness of nature and others have sought a deeper theory in which a time is recoverable, but other physicists and philosophers of physics have attempted a different approach – to show that that time emerges from a timeless world.
The bookends of time.
Nothing lasts forever: not humanity, not Earth, not the Universe. But finitude confers an indelible meaning to our lives
🔮 Closing Thought
From lost pharaohs to the possibility of time being an illusion, hopefully today’s edition continued to expand your mind and push the boundaries of what you know.
Which story intrigued you the most? Let me know in the comments below and provide links to any curiosities you have found!
Until next time, stay curious!
Amazing
Loads to think about, and re read
Thank you. Several of the items interested me, no particular favourite. As for the post about us having many selves, and knowing you like book recommendations - The Holographic Universe: The Revolutionary Theory of Reality by Michael Talbot and Nick Mondelli comes to mind. There's a great chapter in there on this issue that inspired me to discover an alternate self which I was able to call in to help me perform a physical task that I was finding impossible. There's so much creative potential once we embrace this about ourselves.