centuriesold

For centuries, mathematicians have sought to understand and model the motion of fluids. The equations that describe how ripples crease the surface of a pond have also helped researchers to predict the weather, design better airplanes, and characterize how blood flows through the circulatory system. These equations are deceptively simple when written in the right mathematical language. However, their solutions are so complex that making sense of even basic questions about them can be prohibitively difficult.Perhaps the…

Artist’s reconstruction of Gangtoucunia aspera as it would have appeared in life on the Cambrian seafloor, circa 514 million years ago. The individual in the foreground has part of the skeleton removed to show the soft polyp inside the skeleton. Credit: Reconstruction by Xiaodong WangScientists have finally solved a centuries-old riddle in the evolution of life on earth, revealing what the first animals to make skeletons looked like. This discovery was possible due to an exceptionally well-preserved collection of fossils…

After two years of fieldwork, a group of researchers and First Nations Australians have announced the discovery of centuries-old carvings on 12 boab trees in Australia’s Tanami Desert.Carvings on boabs were first reported in the mid-19th century,but they weren’t investigated thoroughly until a century later. The carvings depict snake figures believed by the team to be the King Brown Snake, a character in Indigenous oral traditions, among geometric patterns and other representations of animals. The team’s research…

The Kyrie from the Missa de beata virgine by Josquin des Prez in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Cappella Sistina 45, folios 1v-2r. Credit: Wikimedia The 15th-century French composer and singer Josquin des Prez, or "Josquin," as he is commonly known, achieved the Renaissance equivalent of rock star status. Despite his fame, many details of Josquin's life and career are hazy, and a big mystery of early music is how…

For the last 50 years, David Harrington, the founder and artistic director of San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet, has been playing what he calls “pretty athletic music” on a violin made in 1721. I’ve heard him play all kinds of compositions on it, from the galloping notes of Orange Blossom Special to the minimalism of Terry Riley and even the occasional bit of Bach. The instrument made by Carlo Giuseppe Testore in Milan has survived three centuries, providing music for countless audiences, and can be heard on more than 60…

Tombstones investigated in new research, most from 1338. Credit: P.-G. Borbone/Nature, Author provided It is not an exaggeration to say that the question of where and when the Black Death, the deadliest pandemic ever, originated is one of the biggest mysteries in human history. After all, the Black Death was the first wave of the second plague pandemic of the 14th to early 19th centuries. It killed some 50–60% of the…