This week, evidence has been revealed of a city existing 5,400-4,900 years ago in what is now Morocco, scientists have discovered that a strange winged fish uses its “legs” like tongues to taste the sea floor, and a 1,000-year-old biblical tree has been revived from a seed found in a Judean cave. Finally, we question if the Hubble tension has been solved as astronomers race to save the standard model of cosmology. 

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The World’s Oldest Cheese Has Been Found... Rubbed On A Bunch Of Mummies

Around 20 years ago, a group of archaeologists made a curious discovery: something had been smeared on the heads and necks of several mummies in the Xiaohe cemetery in Northwestern China’s Tarim Basin. It was a whitish substance, and clearly very old, but nobody knew exactly what it was. Now, a new study has solved the mystery: they were looking at the world’s oldest known cheese sample. Read the full story here

Five Thousand Years Ago, Africa Had A Major Civilization We Forgot

Evidence has been revealed of a city existing 5,400-4,900 years ago in what is now Morocco, that its discoverers claim was the era’s largest in Africa outside of the Nile Basin. There are signs the region had extensive trading links with settlements across the Strait of Gibraltar in Iberia, and its influence may well have stretched much further afield around the Mediterranean. Read the full story here

The Latest Idea For Deflecting Threatening Asteroids? X-Ray Pulses

A high-powered pulse of X-rays could vaporize part of an incoming asteroid and change its trajectory in the process, a new study proposes. Whether the approach would be more cost-effective than alternatives under consideration remains to be seen, but questions also need to be asked about the safety of building a suitable instrument that could nuke an asteroid in the first place. Read the full story here

This Winged Fish Uses Strange Tongue-Like "Legs" To Taste The Seafloor – Yes, Really

Scientists have just discovered the mechanism through which a winged fish uses its “legs” to taste the seafloor. The peculiar fish is so good at tasting the seabed, in fact, that other animals follow it for clues on where to find food. Isn’t the ocean just absurd? Read the full story here

Scientists Revive 1,000-Year-Old Biblical Tree From Seed Found In A Judean Cave

Researchers have resurrected a strange seed that was discovered in a cave in the Judean desert during the 1980s. According to radiocarbon dating, the seed was over 1,000 years old when it was found, and its DNA links it to a genus of tree that, although lost today, was mentioned in the Bible. Read the full story here

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Feature of the week: 

Hubble Tension Solved? Astronomers Race To Save Standard Model Of Cosmology

The universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, however, the nature of this expansion – why it's expanding and why it's doing so at such an accelerated rate – is uncertain. One culprit has been dubbed "dark energy", a hypothetical form of energy that could be seen as anti-gravity. While what dark energy is precisely remains unknown, as a cosmological constant astronomers could roughly agree on its effects to measure the expansion rate of the universe, known as the Hubble constant. But not anymore. Read the full story here

More content:

Have you seen our e-magazine, CURIOUS? Issue 26 September 2024 is available now. This month we asked, “Should We All Be Journaling?” – check it out for exclusive interviews, book excerpts, long reads, and more.

PLUS, season 4 of IFLScience's The Big Questions podcast continues. So far, we’ve asked:

• Are The Drugs Of The Future Coming From The Deep Ocean?
• How Did Dinosaurs Have Sex?
• How Will The Solar System End?
• Can We Make Dogs Live Longer?
• Is Evolutionary Biology Sexist?
• How Is Climate Change Impacting Our Health?
• Why Are We The Only Surviving Human Species

The We Have Questions podcast – an audio version of our coveted CURIOUS e-magazine column – has begun. In episode 1, we ask How Do Sunken Cities End Up Underwater?