Indholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2024 i Discover

The ancient wonders of Egypt have long captured the imagination of people around the world. And for good reason—Egypt has one of the longest histories of any country. It is considered a cradle of civilization, with settlements first developing up and down the Nile River Valley as early as 11,000 B.C. The founding of a unified kingdom by King Menes around 3100 B.C. led to the emergence of one of the greatest empires the world has known, ruled by pharaohs like Tutankhamun, Khufu, Cleopatra and Ramses II. During this impressive dynastic period, which lasted more than 3,000 years, the Great Sphinx, the Pyramids of Giza, the Valley of the Kings, commanding temples and countless other monuments were constructed. Today, millions of visitors from around the world flock to see these…

THE FRIGHTENING Tyrannosaurus rex, undisputed king of the Cretaceous, is easily the most famous dinosaur to have ever lived. Since its first fossil was unearthed in the late 1800s, T. rex has been immortalized in academic research, museums, and the public imagination. If your diet of T. rex knowledge comes strictly from pop culture, you might come away with a skewed perspective on what these titanic predators ate. (In the first Jurassic Park film, it’s seen chomping on a live goat, a rubber tire, and a cowardly lawyer.) But for decades, scientists have been turning to the fossil record to unearth more and more about the most well-studied dinosaur, including its feeding habits. So, what did T. rex eat? “Tyrannosaurs were hypercarnivores, meaning they ate meat and lots of it,” says…

Zachary Manna was on duty in the coronary care unit at Jersey Shore University Medical Center when he was called down to the emergency room to see a woman, Marie, whose health had taken a turn for the worse at the most inopportune time. As an internal medicine physician at a hospital with a busy ER, Manna typically has little time — often just minutes — to diagnose patients like Marie. Manna sees plenty of people in distress every day. But few had experienced the reversal of fortune that Marie had. Just an hour ago, Marie had been in the middle of a touching family reunion, surrounded by loved ones and filled with joy. Now, it seemed like her heart was on the verge of giving out. When Manna got…

FROM ABOVE, SANTORINI’S BIGGEST ISLAND, Thera, looks like a crescent moon against the blue of the Aegean Sea. Broaden your gaze to include its island sisters, and you will see that with the curling wisp of Therasia and the tiny splinter of Aspronisi, Thera makes a shattered ring around a deep lagoon. Sharpen your focus, and you can see that far from being a perfect crescent, Thera’s shape is more a series of scallops — nested calderas — where the waves of the enclosed sea cut at the land. Edged with sheer cliffs that tumble down into the Aegean, the lagoon is a picture postcard. But you would be right to read something more ominous in the scallops that sculpt the islands’ shores. Deep beneath this tranquil tourist playground, Earth is…

California’s Death Valley National Park is known for its scorching summer heat and drought-stricken desert. Yet each spring, the region fills up with loads of wildflowers, an occurrence that has a chance of becoming a full-scale super bloom. The term super bloom refers to an unusually large swath of native flowers blossoming in an arid climate. In the U.S., super blooms erupt most prominently in California and Arizona; they can also occur in countries like Chile and South Africa. According to the U.S. National Park Service, three things must occur for a super bloom to blossom: year-round rainfall, warm weather, and few drying winds. Most often, an El Niño will occur, which is a climate pattern that brings higher than average rains and a more temperate climate to the region.…

IN A BIG LEAP FOR BROADLY NEUTRALIZING TREATMENTS, THIS ANTIBODY PROTECTS AGAINST COBRAS, MAMBAS, AND MORE. IN 1894, French immunologist Albert Calmette produced the first successful antivenom by injecting horses with small doses of cobra venom, then harvesting their antibodies. For 130 years, these life-saving concoctions have remained fundamentally the same — including their considerable defects. Each one works only against a single species, making treatment tricky if you can’t identify the snake that bit you. Plus, because they originate in animals, the foreign antibodies can prompt a severe immune response. Over the past decade, however, antivenom experts have begun to envision a new future. Hoping to release the field from its 19th-century roots, they’ve adopted next-generation therapies to address a public-health scourge that kills upwards of 100,000 people every…

If everything (and everyone)must eventually come to an end, then how could social media be designed to make experiencing death easier? Algorithms rehash dead users’ data, while memorialization and deactivation may slam the gates shut on grieving survivors too early. Jed Brubaker, associate professor of information science at the University of Colorado Boulder, imagines many creative, even simple, ways designers like himself can work with digital ghosts. He pictures features like Yelp recommendations tuned to the tastes of one’s deceased grandparents. Or, as Facebook has already done, a simple change to the wording of birthday notifications, so they’re no longer algorithmic hauntings, but rather gentle reminders for friends and family to honor their loved one’s memory. After all, humans have coexisted with the dead long before the internet: Some of…

Millions of years ago, a lush rainforest covered much of present-day Australia. Many places that are now bone dry, home to little more than grasslands and pastures, were thickly blanketed with emerald foliage. The gentle hum of insects suffused the humid air, harmonizing with the sounds of scampering feet and fluttering wings. Nearly every trace of this ancient rainforest has long been erased. But some clues remain entombed in rocks that lie just below the landscape’s surface. One particular area — a small patch of pasture in central New South Wales called McGraths Flat — provides a surprisingly clear window into the region’s past. Myriad fossils there tell the tale of a bygone ecosystem that once teemed with life. Prehistoric flowers, leaves, spiders, pollen, insects, and fishes are among the…

A WHALE AWAY This gray whale gets around. That’s what researchers at the New England Aquarium say, anyway, after spotting it off the coast of Nantucket in March 2024. Though the species (Eschrichtius robustus) disappeared from the Atlantic by the 1700s, several sightings have occurred there in the past 15 years — some possibly of the same whale pictured above, as indicated by the blotches on its skin. According to researchers, the sightings are a testament to the species’ rapid response to climate change: Rising temperatures and resulting reductions in sea ice have opened new routes from the Pacific to the Atlantic in recent years, and whales are already reacting, potentially compensating for shrinking prey populations by searching for food in more and more of the world’s warming waters.…

MANY, BUT not all, laws of physics have been broken over the centuries. Some are actively being broken right now, which is a good thing, because that means there’s more to learn about the universe. First off, the word law when it comes to physics has a bit of a loose definition, even among physicists. Sometimes the term applies to properties of the natural world that we have consistently observed to be true for a very long time. Sometimes the word is attached to fundamental ideas that form the bedrock of large, sprawling, complex theories of the cosmos. And sometimes it’s just a throwback term that doesn’t even apply anymore. But no matter what, keep this important fact in mind: All knowledge in science, up to and including the most…

In the summer of 1863, the U.S. was in the middle of its greatest-ever crisis. A bloody civil war between the Southern Confederacy and the federal government had created hundreds of thousands of casualties, and to many, no end appeared to be in sight. By July of that year, however, things finally seemed to be brightening slightly for the hopes of a united country. Decisive victories for the Union at Gettysburg and Vicksburg gave the first glimmers of foresight that the war would eventually cease and that healing would begin. Seven weeks after the Battle of Gettysburg, the nation’s leader, Abraham Lincoln, accompanied by his young private secretary John Hay, made an unannounced journey to the U.S. Naval Observatory to indulge the president’s interest in astronomy and to seek a…