Material falling into a black hole casts X-rays out into space—and now astronomers have used the echoes of this radiation to map the dynamic behavior and surroundings of a black hole itself. Most black holes are too small on the sky for us to determine their immediate environment, but we can still explore these mysterious objects by watching how matter behaves as it nears, and falls into, them.

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79, the damage wreaked in nearby towns was catastrophic. Now it appears the heat was so immense it turned one victim’s brain to glass – thought to be the first time this has been seen.

British scientists may have discovered a cure for cancer — by accident. As The Telegraph reports, “Researchers at Cardiff University were analyzing blood from a bank in Wales, looking for immune cells that could fight bacteria, when they found an entirely new type of T-cell. That new immune cell carries a never-before-seen receptor which acts like a grappling hook, latching on to most human cancers, while ignoring healthy cells.”

A new molecule developed by Ohio State University scientists can harvest energy from the entire visible spectrum of light, bringing in up to 50 percent more solar energy than current solar cells, and can also catalyze that energy into hydrogen.

Just as astronomers thought they were making sense of fast radio bursts (FRBs) — the mysterious repeating signals originating deep in space — the universe threw us a curveball.

Often typecast as spear-wielding mammoth killers, some Neandertals were beachcombers and surf divers, researchers say. At Moscerini Cave, located on Italy’s western coast, Neandertals collected clamshells on the beach and retrieved others from the Mediterranean Sea, say archaeologist Paola Villa of the University of Colorado Boulder Museum of Natural History and her colleagues. Our close, now extinct evolutionary relatives waded or dove into shallow waters to collect shells that they sharpened into scraping or cutting tools, the researchers report January 15 in PLOS ONE.

NASA's planet-hunting mission TESS has found its first potentially habitable exoplanet the size of Earth orbiting a star about 100 light-years from Earth, according to the agency. The findings were announced during the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Monday in Honolulu.

There have been so many shipwrecks and sinkings in the Great Lakes, it’s just about impossible to find them all. One of ‘em that was discovered in 2018 was the 1928 wreck of the Manasoo in Lake Huron. The ship was sitting in a little over 200 feet of water in the Georgian Bay near Owen Sound, Canada.

Scientists found a 160,000-year-old jawbone from a human ancestor in a Tibetan cave. It might explain why Tibetans today can live at high altitudes.

Located in the Nazca Desert in southern Peru, the Nazca Lines are a collection of giant etchings that only make sense from a great height.

Inside a 2,200-year-old grave, archaeologists have discovered a stunning Iron Age shield, along with a chariot and two ponies buried in a leaping pose, in what archaeologists are calling one of the most important discoveries in the U.K.

Dinosaurs may have been fearsome and intimidating creatures that dominated the prehistoric earth – but it did not stop them having their feathers ruffled by parasites, researchers have found.

Two thousand years ago, this ship was crossing the Mediterranean Sea full of its cargo of amphorae -- large terracotta pots which were used in the Roman Empire for transporting wine and olive oil. For some reason, it never made it to its destination.

Deep within the central zone of the Milky Way, a bizarre cluster of dense gas clouds has taken the unusual form of a gigantic, cosmic candy cane. CNN reports that the observation may help scientists understand the process through which our galaxy forms stars — because the cosmic candy cane, and the clouds surrounding it, contain the raw materials necessary to generate tens of millions of new stars.

Scientists discovered the world’s oldest known tattoo art on an ancient Egyptian mummy exhibited at the British Museum for 100 years. Previously, academics and museum visitors saw only pale and dark spots on the right arm of the mummified man. However, recent infrared research has revealed that the marks are actually tattoos depicting two animals, a giant wild bull and a wild North African goat-like creature.

A few months ago a group of NASA exoplanet astronomers, who are in the business of discovering planets around other stars, called me into a secret meeting to tell me about a planet that had captured their interest. Because my expertise lies in modeling the climate of exoplanets, they asked me to figure out whether this new planet was habitable – a place where liquid water might exist.

For the past 100 years, a box of never-before-seen negatives has been preserved in a block of ice in Antarctica. Recently, Conservators of the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust came across the 22 exposed, but unprocessed, cellulose nitrate negatives during an attempt to restore an old exploration hut.

Mysterious seismic hums detected around the world were likely caused by an unusual geologic event — the rumblings of a magma-filled reservoir deep under the Indian Ocean, a new study finds. These odd hums were an unconventional geologic birth announcement. A few months after the sounds rippled around the Earth, a new underwater volcano was born off the coast of the island of Mayotte, located between Madagascar and Mozambique in the Indian Ocean.

Astronomers have discovered a vast structure in our galaxy, made up of many interconnected "nurseries" where stars are born. The long, thin filament of gas is a whopping 9,000 light-years long and 400 light-years wide. It lies around 500 light-years from our Sun, which is relatively close by in astronomical distances.

Images from the surface of Mars reveal the presence of mushrooms, a group of scientists claim in a controversial new study. It states some images captured by NASA's Curiosity show fungi is growing on the surface of the supposedly barren planet. The claims have yet to be confirmed or refuted by NASA.