This week’s science news was full of discoveries that were once thought lost to time—especially the oldest known rock art in the world was discovered in Indonesia.
A roughly 70,000-year-old human hand stencil found in a cave in Sulawesi promises to fill a major gap in scientists’ understanding of the migration of humans across the islands of Southeast Asia to Australia, and may have been left by an ancestor of Aboriginal Australians.
A giant freshwater reservoir beneath the seabed of the East Coast
An expedition off the coast of Massachusetts this week confirmed the existence of a giant undersea reservoir that could supply a city the size of New York with fresh water for around 800 years.
The freshwater reservoir stretches from coastal New Jersey as far north as Maine and probably formed 20,000 years ago during the last ice age, when rainwater was trapped underground before sea levels rose.
Definitive results on how and when the reservoir took shape, along with bacterial and mineral content, are expected soon. The scientists who found it say the information could prove vital to those who want to use it in the future.
Discover more stories about planet Earth
—An Arctic blast probably won’t cause trees to explode in the cold — but here’s what will happen if and when they go boom
—Californians are using far less water than utilities estimated — what does that mean for the state?
—‘Scientific costs would be high’: Trump’s takeover of Greenland would jeopardize climate research
Life’s little mysteries
It is true that we often miss what is right under our noses, but what about our noses themselves? How is it that we go through life ignoring fleshy bows because we only see them right on our faces with conscious effort? The answer is not because they are out of our sight, but because of the ingenuity a neurovisual trick that may be the key to our survival.
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The biggest solar storm in decades
The strongest solar storm on Earth in more than two decades hit Monday (Jan. 19), sending curtains of aurora across the night sky as far as Southern California, Arizona and New Mexico.
While some publications reported that the storm was the largest geomagnetic storm since 2003, this was a slight exaggeration; The Mother’s Day 2024 storm was stronger. However, the latest storm was one of the strongest solar radiation storms on record – meaning the sheer amount of radiation thrown at Earth was extraordinary.
Discover more space stories
—‘Like watching a cosmic volcano erupt’: Scientists see black hole ‘reborn’ after 100 million years
—New images suggest an Arctic-sized ocean once covered half of Mars
—‘Goddess of dawn’: James Webb telescope spots one of the oldest supernovae in the early universe
Also in science news this week
—Coyote climbs to Alcatraz Island after a dangerous, never-before-seen swim
—Diagnostic dilemma: A woman experienced delusions of communicating with her dead brother after nighttime chatbots
—Study confirms that stones were transported to Stonehenge by humans, not glaciers
Science Spotlight
Not so long ago, astronomers thought they knew the story of how giant supermassive black holes came to be. They believed it happened the same way regular black holes are born: by collapsing from large stars and slowly merging until they reach a billion times the mass of the Sun.
However, the James Webb Space Telescope appears to have disproved this story by finding supermassive black holes in the earliest epochs of our universe that should not have had time to grow by merging or eating matter.
So how did these monsters get so huge? Live Science explored the explanations—and all their revolutionary potential—in this fascinating Science Spotlight.
Something for the weekend
If you’re looking for something longer to read this weekend, here are some of the analysis, crosswords and opinions published this week.
—Living Science Crossword #26: Nothing can travel faster than this — 12 across [Crossword]
—Indigenous TikTok star ‘Bush Legend’ is actually created by AI, leading to accusations of ‘digital blackface’ [Opinion]
Science in motion
A stunning time-lapse of the sun was released this week that could help unravel one of the most enduring mysteries surrounding our home star.
Images taken by the European Space Agency’s Proba-3 mission show three large plumes of plasma rising from the Sun’s surface. With another study, astronomers want to learn why the weak solar atmosphere, or corona, is hundreds of times hotter than its surface.
A better understanding of the warp and weft of the Sun’s magnetic field lines could help researchers better predict when these lines will break to unleash solar flares, some of which can have devastating consequences for Earth.
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