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If you could walk the streets of medieval England, it would seem as alien as a foreign environment.
The culture, landscape, and even languages of Medieval English, Anglo-French, and Latin will shock you as you step into a world you expect to understand.
In other words, it probably won’t match what you might have seen in the comedy “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
Historical records share details of royal and wealthy life, but details of ordinary people are often missing, making it difficult to imagine what our own lives would have been like if we had been born centuries earlier.
This scarcity of clues makes it difficult to gain a true understanding of the past, especially for a tumultuous millennium.
But a new project is bringing these stories to light.
we are a family
DNA analysis has provided an intimate look into the lives of 16 people who lived in medieval Cambridge, including survivors of the Black Death.
Scientists conducted a detailed genetic study on hundreds of skeletons unearthed from cemeteries in England. The research team was able to create “bone biographies” of townspeople, academics, long-distance travelers and artisans.
Osteobiographies include how people ate, their activities, whether they suffered physical trauma, and sometimes how they died. To make them more relatable, researchers He gave his subjects pseudonyms and illustrated portraits, such as Anne, who limps with her shortened leg after multiple injuries.
Wat survived the plague and died of cancer in his 60s. And he was one of many residents of a charity hospital that provided an early welfare system for the poor and sick.
power of nature
Aftershocks are expected to occur in the hours and days following a major earthquake. But a team of geoscientists finds that aftershocks from some of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in the United States are still lingering almost 200 years later.
In 1811 and 1812, three earthquakes with magnitudes between 7.3 and 7.5 occurred near the border between Missouri and Kentucky. They are likely responsible for 30% of the earthquakes that occurred near the region from 1980 to 2016, according to new research.
7.0 magnitude earthquake In 1886, the city of Charleston, South Carolina, also appeared to be responsible for 16% of modern activity in the area.
It’s unclear why large earthquakes occur in these relatively stable areas, but assessing seismic activity can help scientists determine the future disaster risks of these areas.
All Over the Universe
Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to peer into the opaque, dusty, box-shaped cloud at the center of our galaxy and came up with more questions than answers.
The cloud, called “Brick” due to its shape and lack of visibility, was thought to be a center of star formation. But Webb’s sharp infrared gaze failed to see the young stars hidden by the dust.
Instead, the observatory detected copious amounts of frozen carbon monoxide.
The research team isn’t sure why Brick has solid ice inside instead of stars, but studying this galactic region could change the way astronomers understand star formation.
uncovered
The fossils, which were first thought to be the leaves of an extinct plant, are actually the shells of baby turtles that lived among dinosaurs.
When researchers recently took a closer look at the fossils, which were first found between the 1950s and 1970s, they discovered that the leaf-like structure was composed of bone.
After solving the mystery, scientists named the turtle species “Turtwig” after a Pokémon that was half plant and half turtle, a reference to the surprising nature of the fossil.
Meanwhile, for the first time, paleontologists have unearthed a tyrannosaur fossil with its stomach contents still intact, revealing the dinosaur’s last meal before it died 75 million years ago.
fantasy creatures
Antarctica’s chinstrap penguins, so named for the distinctive black band that runs under their chins, are experts when it comes to “micronapes”.
Breeding chinstrap penguins take more than 10,000 naps a day, with each one lasting an average of four seconds, according to new research.
Colony-dwelling penguins observed during the study used micronaps to sleep for about 11 hours each day while incubating and protecting their nests from a predatory bird called a brown skua.
The international team of study authors said that while fragmented sleep patterns are harmful and inadvisable for humans, they appear to be a survival adaptation for penguins.
discoveries
These new findings will catch your attention:
— Ancient Egyptians revered baboons, but a new study of baboon mummies shows that the imported primates did not fare so well in their new environment.
— The propulsion module that powered India’s Chandrayaan-3 voyage to a historic moon landing has returned to Earth orbit and is conducting a bonus mission that could aid the search for life on other worlds.
— The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved two gene-based treatments for sickle cell disease, including the first treatment using CRISPR gene editing.
– NASA astronaut Frank Rubio lost one of the first tomatoes grown in space during his mission aboard the International Space Station. Months later, his colleagues found him and closed the case (and proved Rubio didn’t eat him).
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