10 Secrets of the Vatican Exposed

Vatican City may have fewer than 1,000 citizens and span only 110 acres, but it also has a multimillion-dollar budget and an unbelievably complex history. Understanding how it all works requires parsing through centuries of religious texts. Is the Vatican confusing and mysterious? Is the Pope Catholic? Here’s a look behind the scenes.

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Via: Mental Floss

Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?

Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple.

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Via: Smithsonian

The 14 Freakiest Serial Killers You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

We all know of the Mansons, Dahmers and John Wayne Gacys of the world—the mass killers that are media darlings. But for every nutbar killer who are splashed all over the headlines, there are plenty who never make the limelight. Some are from other parts of the world, some from too long ago to remember. But each of them is interesting and terrifying in their own right.

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Via: Pop Crunch

The Lost Art of Bloodstopping

Back in the days before modern medicine, in the parts of North America where the work was rough and a doctor might be a day’s ride away — the Ozarks, the mining towns of Appalachia, and among the lumberjacks of the great North woods — there existed a trade, a kind of faith-healing, really — called bloodstopping. Legends and folktales of bloodstoppers and their inexplicable medical miracles have been passed down through the generations, though I had never heard of it recently.

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Via Mental_Floss

Hatfield The Rainmaker: The Man Who Courted Nature

The greatest rainmaker of modern times. For more than 30 years he practiced his art and won a name for himself by filling lakes, saving crops, and breaking droughts, from the Yukon to Guatemala. He offered to clear London of its fog and to water the Sahara. But the scene of his most spectacular achievement was San Diego, California.

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Via: Socyberty

7 Mad Science Experiments You Can Do At Home But Probably Shouldn't

Theo, a columnist for the magazine Popular Science, recently published a book titled Theo Gray’s Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do At Home – But Probably Shouldn’t. The book is full of experiments so outrageous (Ignite your own phosphorus sun in a globe filled with pure oxygen! Make your own shotgun ammo by pouring molten lead off the roof! Heat a hot tub with 500 pounds of quicklime!) that it sounds like a parent’s nightmare. It’s actually quite the opposite: there’s no a better way to spark the imagination of the young minds of proto-scientists than to bring science to life with Theo’s hands-on experiments. Yes, these are dangerous experiments but that’s why they’re so much fun!

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Via: Neatorama

Views Of Earth From The Middle Ages To The Space Age

From Earth as the center of the cosmos to just a speck amid the vastness of space, Robert Poole, a historian at the University of Cumbria in the United Kingdom and author of Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth, takes us on a journey of how we’ve imagined our planet through the ages.

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Via: NPR

End of the world?

December 21th, 2012? Check out this great info-graphic that compares both sides of the argument. The Mayans thought the Spanish were Gods and sacrificed virgins. They do not seem to enlightened to me.

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Via: Pixl Monster

10 Book Burnings

This weekend, sadly, marks the anniversary of the bonfire of the vanities. Not that novel from the ‘80s, but the actual bonfire of the vanities, the event in 1497 when thousands of objects that might tempt people to sin were reduced to nothing but ash. Unfortunately, burnings such as this one weren’t that unusual – they have happened many times over the course of history and have cost us countless priceless works of art.

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Mental Floss

Ancient East Asian Found in Roman Empire

The discovery is the first good evidence of an Asian living in Italy during Roman times.

Researchers found his body on an imperial Roman estate and took dental samples. Why examine teeth? Well, the water you drink at birth leaves a distinct signature in your teeth. That water signature is in the form of oxygen isotopes, atoms of oxygen with different numbers of neutrons. Isotopes say something about the latitude and elevation of your birthplace—which in the case of our mystery man definitely wasn’t southern Italy.

Then the researchers tested his mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through your maternal lineage. And this fellow had east Asian genes. The finding appears in the Journal of Roman Archaeology.

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Scientific American

5 Sources of Alternative Energy You May Not Have Heard Of

As fossil fuels increasingly fall out of favor, many are looking into alternative energy sources to help us power our lives with a smaller impact on the environment. You already know about solar power and wind energy, and hydro-electric power and nuclear power have been around for decades. But scientists are increasingly looking to the natural world for additional solutions.

Here are 5 alternative energy sources that you may hearing more of soon:

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Physorg

Ancient Mongolian Tomb Holds Skeleton of Western Man

THE GIST:

* DNA analysis of 2,000-year-old bones found in eastern Mongolia reveal a man of Western heritage.

* At the time, the vast territory in and around Mongolia included ethnically and linguistically diverse nomadic tribes.

* Two other skeletons found at the site show genetic links to people living in northeastern Asia.

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Discovery News

The Real Rules for Time Travelers

Time travel may in fact be possible, but it wouldn't work like in Back to the Future. (For one thing, you don't have worry about your parents failing to create you—you already exist.)

Einstein described our universe in four dimensions: the three dimensions of space and one of time. So traveling back in time is nothing more or less than the fourth-dimensional version of walking in a circle. All you would have to do is use an extremely strong gravitational field, like that of a black hole, to bend space-time. From this point of view, time travel seems quite difficult but not obviously impossible.

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Via: Discover Magazine

Ultra-high-strength composite metal foam

The ultra-high-strength composite metal foam created by Afsaneh Rabiei is a highlight of a well-traveled career during which the researcher has tried to learn everything she can about advanced materials. The result: a brand new material that can save energy and lives.

“Basically, it is a new material for all sorts of safety devices,” said Rabiei, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University.

Rabiei’s invention isn’t the first metal foam, but she says it’s the strongest. The main weakness of existing metal foams is the varying sizes of their cells — tiny pockets of space inside the material. Instead, Rabiei used cells of standard sizes and combined them with a metallic matrix to support the cell walls.

After five years of work —with a group of her students — she has the results. Rough traffic accident calculations show that by inserting two pieces of her composite metal foam behind the bumper of a car traveling 28 mph, the impact would feel the same to passengers as impact traveling at only 5 mph.

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Via: Live Science

15 Big Cheats and Fakers Who Won

There are all sorts of fakers and cheats; many win and get away with it, many others get caught and shunned for their actions. Some are even found out, but walk away as though nothing happened, because the public simply doesn’t care. These are the 15 biggest cheats, fakers and frauds who won. Some kept their winnings, and some are hated and reviled to this day.

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Via:Manolith

15 Cute Animals That Will Cause You Horrible Harm

When we think of animals that will destroy us, rend us limb from limb, and leave us in a bloody mess, we usually thing of the huge and horrifying. Which means we forget about the real threats: the tiny, the cute, the gorgeous. The animals at which we ooh and aaah over, but are deadly, poisonous and generally all around nasty. And, after writing this list, I've come up with two pieces of advice. 1) Never go in the water. 2) Never visit Australia. Combine the two, and it's even more true: never go in the water in Australia! Seriously, terrifyingly deadly critters everywhere.

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Via: Brainz