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The icy extremes of Earth have long beckoned explorers with the promise of discovering uncharted territory.
The challenges of reaching such unforgiving destinations stirred excitement in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with expeditions venturing to Antarctica and the Arctic. Some achieved pioneering success, while others resulted in tragic failure.
Crews encountered obstacles that entrapped ships or submerged them beneath ice-covered waters, creating an enduring mystique about what went wrong.
Now, new research is unveiling stunning insights into polar expeditions that have intrigued the public for decades.
Ocean secrets
An awe-inspiring 3D scan has brought the shipwreck of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton’s HMS Endurance, found in 2022, back to life.
Previously unseen details, such as a boot possibly worn by Shackleton’s deputy, are now visible on the deck of the ship, which sits nearly 2 miles (3,008 meters) beneath the Weddell Sea. Despite sea ice crushing the vessel in 1915, Shackleton and his men all lived to tell the tale.
Meanwhile, a more somber finding gleaned from DNA identified the cannibalized remains of James Fitzjames, captain of the HMS Erebus. The ship was part of a 19th century Arctic expedition through treacherous parts of the Northwest Passage that resulted in the death of expedition leader Sir John Franklin and 23 other men.
Fitzjames led 105 survivors on a retreat from the ice-trapped ships in Canada’s Nunavut territory, but eventually, all of the men died under mysterious circumstances.
Trailblazers
The Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine were awarded this week to bright minds who have made groundbreaking discoveries and advances.
The Nobel Prize in chemistry went to a trio of scientists — biochemist David Baker of the University of Washington and Demis Hassabis and John Jumper at Google DeepMind in London — who used artificial intelligence to “crack the code” of almost all known proteins, which are the building blocks of life.
The Nobel Prize in physics also recognized AI advances, honoring polymath John Hopfield of Princeton University and Geoffrey Hinton, a University of Toronto computer scientist, for their foundational work in machine learning, which powers AI-based products and applications.
And the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine went to US scientists Victor Ambros of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Gary Ruvkun of Harvard Medical School for their work on microRNA, a molecule that governs how cells in the body function. Their research revealed how genes create different types of cells.
The night sky
Grab your binoculars and keep an eye on the western part of the sky shortly after sunset Saturday for a chance to glimpse comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan–ATLAS.
The recently discovered celestial object was likely last seen when Neanderthals walked the Earth, and it won’t show up again for at least another 80,000 years.
The once-in-a-lifetime comet will come within about 44 million miles (nearly 71 million kilometers) of our planet on Saturday and appear as a bright fireball with a long, extended tail.
Meanwhile, a severe solar storm reached Earth on Thursday and created dazzling auroras across North America, the UK and Europe that were visible even aboard the International Space Station.
Wild kingdom
In 1898, two massive male lions hunted and killed at least 28 people constructing a bridge across the Tsavo River in Kenya.
Civil engineer Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson eventually shot the lions, dubbed the Tsavo “man-eaters,” and sold the remains in 1925 to Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History.
Thomas Gnoske, a collections manager at the museum, spied thousands of hairs trapped inside the cavities of the lions’ broken teeth. Using an innovative technique, Gnoske and his colleagues removed some of the hairs and sequenced the DNA.
The genetic analysis revealed the lions preyed not only on humans but also a variety of large animals, including some that caused the lion duo to range far from home.
Other worlds
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is the largest storm ever found on any planet in our solar system, and it has persisted for nearly two centuries.
Now, new images from the Hubble Space Telescope show the storm wiggles like gelatin and contracts in a way similar to a stress ball as it oscillates. The observations over a 90-day period suggest the vortex has less stability than previously thought.
Meanwhile, the European Space Agency launched the Hera spacecraft and two shoebox-size satellites to conduct a “crash scene investigation” of a double-asteroid system after NASA’s 2022 DART mission intentionally slammed into the space rock Dimorphos and altered its orbit.
Take note
These intriguing stories might blow your mind:
— Researchers captured video of bottlenose dolphins using a humanlike tactic as they played to make sure their games weren’t misunderstood as fights.
— A 2,000-year-old skeleton clutching a remarkably preserved grave good was uncovered in a tomb beneath the Treasury monument in the city of Petra, Jordan, which served as the site of the Holy Grail in the 1989 film “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”
— A human foot inside a boot found on Mount Everest may hold the key to one of mountaineering’s greatest mysteries that has persisted for a century.
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