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If you could walk the streets of medieval England, it might seem as unfamiliar as a foreign environment.
The culture, landscape and even the languages of Middle English, Anglo-French and Latin would surprise you as you enter a world you had hoped to understand.
In other words, it probably wouldn’t align with what you might have seen in the comedy “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
Historical accounts share the details of royal, well-to-do life, but those 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.
The paucity of these clues makes it difficult to have a true sense of the past, especially in a turbulent thousand-year period.
But a new project is bringing those stories to light.
We are family
DNA analysis has provided an intimate insight into the lives of 16 people who lived in medieval Cambridge, including some who survived the Black Death.
The scientists carried out a detailed genetic study of hundreds of skeletons recovered from cemeteries across the English city. The research team was able to create “bone biographies” of city dwellers, scholars, long-distance travelers and artisans.
Osteobiographies include how people ate, their activities, whether they suffered bodily trauma, and sometimes how they died. To make them more identifiable, researchers he gave his subjects pseudonyms and illustrated portraits, such as Anne, who limped with a shortened leg after multiple injuries.
Wat survived the plague and died of cancer at age 60. And he was one of many who stayed at a charitable hospital, which provided an early type of benefit system to the poor and sick.
Force of nature
Aftershocks are expected within hours and days after a major earthquake. But a team of geoscientists believes that aftershocks from some of the strongest earthquakes recorded in the United States are still rumbling nearly 200 years later.
A trio of earthquakes occurred near the Missouri-Kentucky border in 1811 and 1812, with magnitudes between 7.3 and 7.5. According to new research, they are probably responsible for 30% of the earthquakes that have occurred near the area between 1980 and 2016.
A 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1886 also appears to be responsible for 16% of the region’s modern activity.
It is unclear why large earthquakes occurred in these relatively stable regions, but assessing seismic activity can help scientists determine future disaster risks in these areas.
Through the universe
Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to look inside an opaque, dusty box-shaped cloud at the center of our galaxy, and they got more questions than answers.
The cloud, called “the Brick” because of its shape and lack of visibility, was thought to be a center of star formation. But Webb’s sharp infrared gaze did not see any young stars hidden by dust.
Instead, the observatory detected a large amount of frozen carbon monoxide.
The research team isn’t sure why there is solid ice inside the Brick instead of stars, but studying this galactic region could change the way astronomers understand star formation.
unearthed
Fossils initially thought to be leaves from an extinct plant are actually the shells of baby turtles that lived among dinosaurs.
When researchers recently took a closer look at the fossils, initially found between the 1950s and 1970s, their analysis revealed that the leaf-shaped structure was made of bone.
After solving the mystery, scientists nicknamed the turtle species “Turtwig” after a Pokémon that is half plant, half turtle, as a nod to the puzzling nature of the fossil.
Meanwhile, paleontologists have for the first time discovered a Tyrannosaurus fossil with its stomach contents still intact, revealing the dinosaur’s last meal before it died 75 million years ago.
Fantastic creatures
Antarctic chinstrap penguins, named for the distinctive black band under their chin, are experts when it comes to “micro-naps.”
Breeding chinstrap penguins take more than 10,000 naps a day, each lasting an average of four seconds, according to new research.
Penguins living in the colony observed during the study used micronaps to sleep approximately 11 hours each day while incubating and protecting their nests from a predatory bird called the brown skua.
While fragmented sleep patterns are harmful and inadvisable for humans, they appear to be a survival adaptation for penguins, the study’s international team of authors said.
Discoveries
These new findings will catch your attention:
— Ancient Egyptians revered baboons, but a new study of baboon mummies has shown that the imported primates did not fare well in their new environments.
— The propulsion module that powered India’s Chandrayaan-3 journey toward a historic moon landing is back in Earth orbit and carrying out an additional mission that could help in the search for life on other worlds.
— The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved two gene-based treatments for sickle cell anemia, including the first therapy to use CRISPR gene editing.
— NASA astronaut Frank Rubio lost one of the first tomatoes grown in space during a stint aboard the International Space Station. Months later, his colleagues found him, closing the case (and proving that Rubio did not eat him).
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