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A SpaceX rocket carrying 125 miniature moon sculptures by Jeff Koons launched at 1:05 a.m. on February 15.

Art Meets Science

A Lunar Lander Carrying Jeff Koons’ Art Is Flying Toward the Moon

The spacecraft, which finally launched on February 15, is expected to touch down on February 22

The museum offered an experience called "Van Gogh's Palette," allowing visitors to immerse themselves in one of the artist's paintings.

Art Meets Science

Musée d’Orsay Breaks Attendance Records With Interactive Vincent van Gogh Exhibition

The show exploring the artist’s final works featured an interactive recreation of the painter trained on hundreds of his letters

An example of the cave art found in northwestern Patagonia, Argentina. Researchers dated the paintings to as early as 8,200 years ago.

This Ancient Cave Art Passed Survival Information Across 130 Human Generations in Patagonia, Study Suggests

Dating to as early as 8,200 years ago, the paintings may have maintained collective memories during an extremely dry period in history

Georgina Hogarth lived with Charles Dickens for nearly three decades.

Who Was Georgina Hogarth, Charles Dickens’ ‘Best and Truest Friend’?

Unpublished letters reveal new insights into the baffling relationship between the English novelist and his sister-in-law

Today, the rongorongo script survives on less than 30 objects.

New Research

Did the People of Easter Island Invent a Writing System From Scratch?

Radiocarbon dating has found that a tablet inscribed with the mysterious rongorongo script predates European contact

In a study of great apes' playful antics, chimpanzees seemed to enjoy slapping adults, especially those that were dozing off.

Great Apes Love to Tease, Poke and Pester, Suggesting the Urge to Annoy Is Millions of Years Old

The desire to get a rise out of others is a 13-million-year-old trait humans and great apes share with a common ancestor, new research suggests

Phobos passes across the sun's surface on February 8, as captured by NASA's Perseverance rover.

What Does a Solar Eclipse on Mars Look Like? New, Breathtaking Images, Caught by NASA’s Perseverance Rover, Give Us an Idea

The robot recently observed each of the Red Planet’s moons passing across the sun in the Martian sky

Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper in Milan, Italy

Ken Burns Turns His Lens to Leonardo da Vinci

An upcoming two-part documentary will be the filmmaker’s first foray into a non-American subject matter

The proposed changes to isolation guidelines would bring the CDC's approach to Covid-19 closer to California's and Oregon's. Both states amended their isolation guidance within the last year.

CDC Considers Dropping Five-Day Covid Isolation Guideline

While no official decision has been made, symptomatic patients might be able to stop isolating if they are fever-free for 24 hours and are beginning to feel better under the proposed change

Protesters with the activist group Last Generation stand in front of Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus at Florence's Uffizi Gallery on February 13. 

Climate Activists Stage Protest in Front of Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’

Two men taped images of flooding in Tuscany to the Renaissance painting’s protective glass

The 43-foot-tall replica of Constantine's statue was constructed to mirror the dimensions of the fourth-century original.

Experts Recreate Looming 43-Foot-Tall Statue of Constantine Using 3D Modeling

Although only fragments of the 1,700-year-old colossus remain, experts hope to paint a fuller picture for the public with a new installation at Rome’s Capitoline Museums

University of Nebraska engineer Sean Crimmins loads the robotic arm into its case. A surgeon on Earth will remotely guide the robot through a surgical simulation while it is on the International Space Station.

This Remotely Controlled Robot Will Conduct a Simulated Surgery on the International Space Station

Robot surgeons could treat astronauts on long space missions—but they could also be used on Earth in places where surgeons aren’t present, such as rural areas or war zones

Cats can be infected with plague by flea bites or by eating infected rodents.

Oregon Resident Catches Rare Case of Plague, Likely From Their Cat

The patient was treated during the earlier stages of disease, so the community faces little risk, according to health officials

The five-inch-long Bronze Age dress fastener may have once been worn by an "important person,"

Cool Finds

Metal Detectorist Finds a Rare 3,000-Year-Old Dress Fastener

The gold accessory is one of only seven artifacts of this kind discovered in England and Wales

A reconstruction of how the newly discovered wall could have served as a hunting structure during the Stone Age, trapping deer alongside a body of water.

Stone Age Wall Discovered Beneath the Baltic Sea Helped Early Hunters Trap Reindeer

Made up of some 1,600 stones, the submerged “Blinkerwall” might be Europe’s oldest known megastructure

The hollow bone containing the seeds was discovered at a Roman-era settlement in 2017.

New Research

Romans Stored Hallucinogenic Seeds in a Vial Made From an Animal Bone

Ancient scholars wrote about the medicinal, poisonous and psychoactive properties of black henbane seeds

Babies might start learning the words for objects at around six to nine months old. In a new study, an A.I. was also able to match some objects to their names after getting trained on video recordings from a headcam worn by a young child.

A.I. Learns Words From a Human Baby’s Perspective, Using Headcam Footage

With only limited training, the model could correctly identify certain objects, suggesting some elements of learning language are not innate to humans

Taylor Swift performs in New Jersey during her Eras tour on May 27, 2023.

At the Swiftposium, Scholars Gather to Analyze a Superstar’s Astonishing Influence

The University of Melbourne welcomed academics from all over the world for its Taylor Swift conference

The newly unveiled medals will be awarded at this summer's Olympic games, which will take place between July 26 and August 11.

The Paris Olympics

New Olympic Medals Feature Fragments of the Eiffel Tower

This summer’s Paris Olympic and Paralympic medals will be decorated with pieces of iron from the landmark

Researchers pose with a fragment of asteroid 2024 BX1 they found in Germany. The rock is a very rare type of meteorite called an aubrite.

A ‘Very Rare’ Kind of Space Rock Fell in Germany—and Scientists Recovered the Pieces

Analyses revealed the asteroid was an “aubrite,” a classification that applies to only 80 of 70,000 previously found meteorite fragments

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