🔎 The Curiosity Files #9
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 Curiosity Files!
Twice a week, I’ll journey through the most fascinating discoveries across ancient history, human origins, space, consciousness, cutting-edge science and the unexplained.
🗿 Ancient Mysteries, Archaeology & Lost Civilizations
When Did Human Beings Invent Language? Scientists Finally Have an Answer.
A new survey of genomic evidence suggests our unique language capacity was present at least 135,000 years ago. Subsequently, language might have entered social use 100,000 years ago.
Telepylos: Gateway to a Lost World.
Forty kilometers south-southeast of Portopalo, Sicily, at the edge of the Malta-Sicily Escarpment, a submerged site rests in silent mystery. The name “Telepylos,” meaning “far-gates,” likely stems from the narrow, natural passage into its harbor, a feature that could trap ships within, rendering it both defensible and remarkable.
The epic scientific quest to reveal what makes folktales so compelling.
Linguists, psychologists and experts in cultural evolution are discovering why we tell stories, how ancient the oldest ones are and why some tales run and run. In a new study that has yet to be peer-reviewed, they report that some myths can be traced as far back as the early sorties of Homo sapiens out of Africa around 60,000 years ago.
Ancient DNA Shows Stone Age Europeans Voyaged by Sea to Africa.
Roughly 8,000-year-old remains unearthed from present-day Tunisia held a surprise: European hunter-gatherer ancestry.
Oldest Known Bone Tools Challenge Our Understanding of Human Evolution.
The discovery of 1.5-million-year-old bone tools in Tanzania suggests early human ancestors had advanced cognitive abilities and systematically crafted tools from bone much earlier than previously believed.
🌌 Cosmic & Space Mysteries
The Sun Devastated Earth and Mars.
In this interview with geologist and geophysicist Robert Schoch, Ph.D., he discusses how the Sun produces devastating solar outbursts that have catastrophically scarred Earth and Mars. These may have destroyed ancient, antediluvian civilisations, as well as Mars’ atmosphere.
Weighing in on a Mars water debate.
The fate of Mars’ water—whether it was buried as ice, confined in deep aquifers, incorporated into minerals, or dissipated into space—remains an area of ongoing research.
Scientist Says He Found Evidence Our Entire Universe Is Trapped Inside a Black Hole.
The findings add credence to an existing, Russian doll-like theory called "Schwarzschild cosmology," which suggests that our galaxy is trapped within a black hole, which in turn is located inside another universe.
🧠 The Mind, Consciousness & the Origins of Life
Twin study suggests rationality and intelligence share the same genetic roots.
The findings indicate that the ability to make rational decisions, often seen as a separate skill, is actually very closely tied to general intelligence. In fact, the study suggests that being irrational, or making illogical choices, might simply be another way of measuring lower intelligence.
Watching nature scenes can reduce pain, new study shows.
Researchers monitored the brain activity of 49 participants as they received pain delivered through a series of small electric shocks. When they were watching videos of a natural scene compared to a city or an indoor office, participants not only reported feeling less pain, but scans showed the specific brain responses associated with processing pain changed too.
Memory illusion makes you think events occurred earlier than they did.
It can be difficult to recall exactly when a specific event happened, and now it seems our memory can be tricked into pushing occurrences back in time, making us think they happened earlier than in reality.
Do you see what I see? Understanding children's subjective experiences through color.
The results revealed that young children experience colors in nearly the same way as adults, and that the structure of how children experience colors remains remarkably consistent across age groups and cultures.
Consciousness before birth? Imaging studies explore the possibility.
Fetal and infant brains offer clues to when human experience begins.
What is Consciousness? What We See vs What Is with Dr. Robert Prentner.
Prentner joins John Michael Godier to explore the nature of perception, consciousness, and reality itself. He discusses the Interface Theory of Perception, which suggests that our senses may not reveal the world as it truly is, but rather as an adaptive interface shaped by evolution. He also examines the "hard problem" of consciousness, debates whether reality itself is a construct of perception, and questions if artificial intelligence could ever achieve true awareness.
🦠 Evolutionary Oddities & Life on Earth
New map shows Antarctica without its ice.
Antarctica is the toughest of all the continents to map because almost its entire land surface and even much of the seabed around it is sealed under a perpetual cap of ice that contains 70% of the entire world's supply of fresh water.
‘Microlightning’ in water droplets may have sparked life on Earth
A Stanford study shows that electrical charges in sprays of water can cause chemical reactions that form organic molecules from inorganic materials. The findings provide evidence that microlightning may have helped create the building blocks necessary for early life on the planet.
Woman who lived to age 117 had genes keeping her cells ‘younger’, study shows.
Maria Branyas Morera, US-born supercentenarian who died in Spain last August, found to have microbiota of an infant.
Cells 'speed date' to find their neighbors when forming tissues.
In developing hearts, cells shuffle around, bumping into each other to find their place, and the stakes are high: pairing with the wrong cell could mean the difference between a beating heart and one that falters. A study demonstrates how heart cells go about this 'matchmaking' process.
🚀 Cutting-Edge Science & Technology
DARPA Wants to Build Giant Space Structures Using Living Organisms.
DARPA goes all out by requesting that these giant space structures be built with biological materials like “fungal mycelia” or protein-based fibers from “hagfish slime.” These materials can be integrated with mechanical components to achieve structural rigidity, much like a tent where the biological growth acts as the cover supported by underlying structural poles.
MIT engineers turn skin cells directly into neurons for cell therapy.
Researchers at MIT have now devised a simplified process that bypasses the stem cell stage, converting a skin cell directly into a neuron.
Scientist Who Gene-Hacked Human Babies Says Ethics Are "Holding Back" Scientific Progress.
It's been nearly three years since controversial Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui was released from prison for gene-hacking human babies — and now, he appears to be hitting back at the rules that led to his punishment.
🌀 Beyond the Known
Why does nature love spirals? The link to entropy.
In nature, the universe does not favor perfect spheres. Instead, it favors spirals, vortices, and toroidal flows. There is something universal about the spiral, something embedded in the way energy, matter and space evolve. The torus is not merely a shape; it is the embodiment of motion, of evolution, of time itself.
Why the long history of calculating pi will never be completed.
Pi is an irrational number, meaning it cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers, which is why 22/7 can only ever be an approximation. It is also a transcendental number, meaning it can’t be expressed as a finite algebraic equation. This means that pi is inherently infinite, its decimal places never-ending, and we can never fully calculate the true value of pi.
Imaginary Numbers Are an Important Tool For Technology And Engineering.
Unlike the more familiar real numbers – positive and negative integers, fractions, square roots, cube roots and even numbers such as pi – complex numbers have an imaginary component. This means they are made of both real numbers and the imaginary number i: the square root of negative 1.
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!
Thanks! I always look forward to your posts.
The Spirals story. They are everywhere in nature. "There is something universal about the spiral". Indeed. As above, so below, as the mystics said. Spiral galaxies, the nautilus shell, hurricanes, whirlpools, all spirals. A cosmic structure that exists at every scale of reality. Reminds me of the 1998 film Pi by Darren Aronofsky about what happens when you figure out the math that underlies reality!