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In recent years, competing nations have turned the moon into a hotspot for activity not seen since the Apollo 17 astronauts left the moon's surface in 1972.
In one lunar region, Japan's "Moon Sniper" mission has exceeded expectations, surviving three long, frigid moon nights since landing sideways on Jan. 19.
Engineers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency didn't design the spacecraft to last one lunar night, a two-week period of frigid darkness, but the Moon Sniper continues to thrive amid lunar extremes and send back new images of its landing site.
Elsewhere, an international team of astronomers believes it has settled in a crater created a few million years ago when something huge crashed into the moon's surface - and a chunk of the far side of the moon, or the side that faces the looks away from the earth, hurtles down. into space. The chunk of moon became a rare quasi-satellite, or asteroid, orbiting near Earth.
The Tianwen-2 mission will visit the space rock later this decade. But first, China has set its sights on returning to the 'hidden side' of the moon.
Moon update
The Chang'e-6 mission, launched on Friday, aims to return the first samples from the South Pole-Aitken Basin, or the largest and oldest crater on the moon. Since the Chang'e 4 mission in 2019, China remains the only country to have landed on the far side of the moon, also known as the 'dark side' of the moon.
The moon's "dark side" is actually a misnomer, experts say, and the moon's remote hemisphere is illuminated; scientists simply don't know as much about the region as they would like.
The far side, with its thicker crust, is vastly different from the near side explored during the Apollo missions.
Scientists hope that returning samples from the other side could solve some of the moon's biggest remaining mysteries, including the moon's true origins.
A long time ago
Papyrologists studying the Herculaneum scrolls have deciphered revealing details about Plato's last night and final resting place.
When Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD Volcanic ash erupted, charred and buried the papyrus scrolls, but experts have used innovative technology to extract insights from the fragile artefacts.
According to Graziano Ranocchia, professor of papyrology at the University of Pisa, the Greek philosopher's burial place was probably a secret garden near the sacred sanctuary for muses in the Platonic Academy of Athens.
And the translated text, Ranocchia added, indicated that Plato was not a fan of the flute music played as he languished on his deathbed, noting that he commented to a guest on its "scanty sense of rhythm."
We are family
About 75,000 years ago, a Neanderthal woman was laid to rest in a cave with a stone under her head as a pillow.
Now scientists have reassembled her skull using 200 bone fragments in a 'high-stakes 3D jigsaw puzzle' to recreate the face of Shanidar Z, named after the cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where paleoanthropologist Dr. Emma Pomeroy found the remains in 2018.
"She actually has quite a big face for her size," says Pomeroy, an associate professor of archeology at the University of Cambridge. "She has quite large brow ridges, which we wouldn't normally see, but I think, dressed in modern clothes, you probably wouldn't look twice."
Dig this
Amateur archaeologists have uncovered a mind-boggling 1,700-year-old artifact that represents "one of archaeology's great mysteries," according to the Norton Disney History and Archeology Group.
The 12-sided object is 8 inches wide, hollow and covered in holes. It is one of the largest Roman dodecahedrons ever found, and only about 130 exist in the world.
No one knows what they were used for, and dodecahedrons are still missing from Roman literature and mosaics. But it is possible that the objects played a role in ritual or religious rituals.
Fantastic creatures
Rakus, a Sumatran orangutan living in Gunung Leuser National Park in South Aceh, Indonesia, surprised scientists when they saw him deliberately treating a wound on his face with a medicinal plant.
It is the first time researchers have documented such behavior in great apes.
Rakus, probably injured by another male orangutan, was chewing leaves of a plant locally known as akar kuning, which is used in traditional medicine to treat dysentery, malaria and diabetes.
He then applied the sap of the leaves to his wound, leading researchers to wonder whether the pain-relieving treatment was an accident or a learned behavior among other wild orangutans.
Curiosities
Dive deep into these intriguing texts:
- A new analysis of hunter-gatherer remains from a cave in Morocco has revealed the true 'paleo' diet and what was really on the Stone Age menu 13,000 years ago.
- Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, with astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore aboard a test flight, now has the green light from NASA to attempt a launch to the International Space Station on Monday evening.
- Do you remember the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"? Scientists have identified a so-called 'degrees of Kevin Bacon' gene, which could provide a genetic basis for determining how central you are in your social network.
- Here comes that sound! Learn all about periodical cicadas in a visual guide to the rare double emergence of 2024.
And don't forget to look up early in the morning on Sunday and Monday to see the Eta Aquariid meteor shower as it dazzles in the night sky.
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