🔎 The Curiosity Files #5 - Are you curious enough to read?

Curiously exploring the mysteries of our past, present, and future

Mar 02, 2025

“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 Curiosity Files!

Twice a week, I’ll journey through the most fascinating discoveries - from ancient enigmas and human origins to cosmic wonders and the unexplained!

🗿 Ancient Mysteries, Archaeology & Lost Civilizations

Excavations at Göbekli Tepe continue to yield findings.
Göbekli Tepe, a Neolithic archaeological site situated in the Germuş mountains of southeastern Anatolia revolutionized our understanding of prehistory and the origins of civilization. The oldest parts of Göbekli Tepe date back to around 10,000 BCE, with its construction occurring up to 15,000 years ago.
The Search to Find the Remains of Homo Erectus in a Vanishing Landscape.
A paleontologist journeys through Indonesia’s Riau Archipelago in search of our earliest ancestors, and uncovers how environmental devastation has erased much of the region’s history.
‘Lost city of gold’ discovered in Egypt after 3,000 years in archaeology breakthrough.
The site, a once-flourishing gold-mining settlement, was unearthed beneath Luxor’s Valley of the Kings.
Groundbreaking Archaeological Discoveries in China Span Millennia.
In a bustling conference held in Beijing on February 19, 2025, the Institute of Archaeology under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences showcased some of the most groundbreaking archaeological finds from the previous year.
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🌌 Cosmic & Space Mysteries

Invisible matter, invisible brains?
The contents of the Universe are divided between ordinary matter, dark matter, and dark energy. This phenomenological model is exquisitely constrained by observations, but it is not known what dark matter and dark energy actually are or why the Universe is this way.
Mars's northern ice cap is surprisingly young, planetary scientists find.
The team's measurements indicate the ice cap is young—well more than any other large-scale feature seen on the planet. It's most likely to be between 2 and 12 million years.
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🧠 The Mind, Consciousness & the Origins of Life

From Messi to Mika Häkkinen, how top athletes can ‘slow down time’.
The key to understanding time expansion is through altered states of consciousness. Our normal time perception is linked to our usual state of consciousness. In some mildly altered states (such as being in a state of flow) time passes very quickly. But during intense, altered states, time usually expands dramatically, or seems to disappear altogether.
Joe Rogan interviews Ky Dickens, host and creator of “The Telepathy Tapes” podcast.
Scientists discover all humans can read minds... and how you can tap into telepathic abilities.
Researchers in Canada uncovered that parts of the brain actually act as a 'psi inhibitor' - meaning it suppresses the natural psychic, telepathic, and clairvoyant abilities people have but don't know about.
Study reveals three distinct mechanisms of language comprehension.
A recent study has shed light on how humans comprehend language, revealing that our ability to understand what is said to us is not a single skill, but rather relies on three separate mental mechanisms.
Sad Art Gives Voice to Our Own Sadness.
People tend to show greater liking for expressions of sadness when these expressions are described as art. Why does this effect arise? In this alternative hypothesis derived from the philosophical literature, describing something as art makes people more inclined to appropriate it, that is, to see it as an expression of their own sadness.
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🦠 Evolutionary Oddities & Life on Earth

“Weird and Wonderful” – Ancient Fossil Challenges What We Thought We Knew About Bird Evolution.
A newly studied Vegavis iaai skull from Antarctica confirms that modern bird lineages, like ducks and geese, were evolving alongside non-avian dinosaurs. This study supports Vegavis’ placement in the Anseriformes group despite its unexpected beak shape, highlighting the diversity of ancient birds.
Your Knees and Elbows Exist Thanks to This Ancient Fish.
Scientists have uncovered a shocking link between human mobility and a 380-million-year-old fish. A groundbreaking fossil discovery suggests that the very joints that allow us to move today first evolved in ancient jawed fish. But how did this evolutionary leap shape the course of vertebrate history?
Ancient glacier finding reveals clues to how complex life on Earth evolved, scientists say.
More than half a billion years ago on a frigid, ice-covered Earth, glaciers stirred up ingredients for complex life by bulldozing land minerals and then depositing them in the ocean, according to a new study.
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🚀 Cutting-Edge Science & Technology

China discovers 'limitless' energy source that could 'power the country for 60,000 years'.
Scientists estimate the mining complex could yield 1 million tonnes of thorium if fully exploited.
From Scraps to Sips: Everyday Biomass Produces Drinking Water from Thin Air.
Discarded food scraps, stray branches, seashells and many other natural materials are key ingredients in a new system that can pull drinkable water out of thin air developed by researchers from The University of Texas at Austin.
We’ve figured out the basics of a shape-shifting, T-1000-style material.
A pack of small robots can do liquid/solid transitions and adopt different shapes.
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🛸 The Unexplained & the Unusual

Ancient People May Have Thought UAPs Were Gleaming Ships in the Sky or Bad Omens.
It's impossible to know exactly what ancient people saw in the night sky. Learn more about their relationships with outer space and possible aliens.
If Aliens Looked at Earth from Far Away, What Might They See?
Whether aliens could detect our modern civilization depends on what signs they’re looking for—and, crucially, their distance from us.
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🌀 Beyond the Known

Does mass or energy increase near the speed of light?
Every massive particle, inherently, has an amount of intrinsic energy to it given by arguably the most famous equation of all: Einstein’s E = mc². But when particles near the speed of light, they experience changes: a change in how they perceive distances and time, but also a change in the total amount of energy they possess. So what is it that increases? Rest mass? Kinetic energy? Something else? Different interpretations have confused many, even physicists, for a long time. Let’s bring some clarity to our physical reality.
Shock discovery tears up the rules of time and space inside a computer.
Time and memory space are the two main constraints on what we can compute, and understanding their relationship is a key part of computational complexity research.
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