Science news this week: Gold tongues discovered in tombs, sugar found in space, a new monkey identified in the Congolian rainforest, and ancient impact crater ‘geoguessed’ by an amateur astronomer
The ancient Egyptians believed that gold was the flesh of the gods, meaning that giving the deceased a tongue of gold could help them speak in the afterlife. But it is not entirely certain whether all the newly found gold objects were tongues (indeed one might depict ears of wheat, a symbol of fertility), and the mystery of a possible false door inside the tomb is also giving rise to debate.
A Hubble image of the center of the galaxy in Sagittarius. Researchers in this area have discovered sugar found in raspberries buried in clouds.
(Image credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Brammer)
Astrochemists delivered a sweet surprise this week, with the news that they’ve detected a type of sugar called erythrulose in interstellar space near our center. galaxy Galaxy.
Erythrulose, consisting of four carbon atoms, is found in raspberries on Earth. But its presence in space is a surprising sign that the elements necessary for life are extremely abundant in our galaxy. This could make life more prevalent than we thought, and could mean that aliens might also have a sweet tooth.
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The bullet’s worm curls into a round ball for protection.
(Image credit: Lophius via Alamy)
Animals come in all shapes and sizes, but is there a satisfyingly perfect area? It turns out that this deceptively simple question is true some evolutionarily profound implications.
Amateur astronomer ‘Geoges’ finds an ancient crater
The large crater discovered on Google Maps in 2024 is actually a 390 million year old meteor impact crater.
(Image credit: Gordon Osinski via Google Earth)
Geoguessing emerged in the last decade as a geography game (and later a popular eSport) in which players extract locations from Google Maps imagery. But what about geo-estimating something that is completely undocumented, and which only trained scientists should be able to identify?
In that situation, amateur astronomer Joel LaPointe should be crowned this year’s champion. While using Google Maps to plan a hiking trip in the Côte-Nord region of Quebec, Lapointe came across an indentation that scientists have now confirmed to be a 390-million-year-old scar from a giant asteroid collision.
“I get a lot of messages from the public who think they’ve found a pothole and 99/100 of the time it turns out not to be the case,” Gordon Osinski, Professor of Planetary Geology at Western University in Canada, who confirmed the discovery, told Live Science in an email. “This is one of those rare examples that shows it’s possible.”
If you’re looking for things to keep you busy over the weekend, here’s a selection of our best opinion pieces, interviews, clinical dilemmas and crosswords we’ve published this week.
The newly described monkey has orange lips and a patch of white fur around the anus.
(Image credit: Daniel Rosengren, Frankfurt Zoological Society)
hello! A new monkey just dropped!
nominated Colobus congoensis Named after the remote region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo where it was found, this fascinating new species has orange lips and emits a unique roar and snoring.
The monkey’s discovery is notable, most likely because it is extremely rare to find new primates – only five new primates have been identified in Africa in the past 75 years – and also because of its relatively large size. Identifying this species took years of careful tracking and documentation, as well as working with people from eight local villages who had information about it.
Besides being a spectacular discovery in itself, the discovery points to there being potentially many more undiscovered mammals, fish, reptiles and plants hidden deep inside the Congolese rainforest.
