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A concoction of vilca seeds and fermented alcohol may have provided a mild hallucinogenic experience, enabling Wari leaders in South America to bond with their people Humans 12 January 2022 By Michael Marshall Anadenanthera colubrina, a tree species common to nearly all regions of South American Matt Lavin/Flickr Get high, make friends. Members of the … Read more
The time is up for hellfire.
Between 500 and 1100 C.E., the highlands of Peru were home to a far-reaching empire known as the Wari. Like the Inca after them, the Wari managed to spread their culture over the vast distances and rugged terrain of the Andes Mountains. Now, new finds from a small site in Peru suggest the Wari may … Read more
COVID-19 vaccines saved nearly 241,000 lives in the United States and prevented more than 1 million virus-related hospitalizations in the first six months of the country’s inoculation program, according to a new research model. A research letter, published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA Network Open, found coronavirus vaccinations also prevented more than 14 … Read more
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Written by Sara Webb, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology. By far my favorite thing about my job as an astronomer is those rare moments when I get to see beautiful distant … Read more
Warning: Spoilers ahead for “The Book of Boba Fett” chapter 2 We were all pretty excited upon our first watch of the first installment of “The Book of Boba Fett” on Disney Plus, and while it was only 38 minutes long, deep down we were secretly hoping for maybe just a teeny-tiny bit more action. … Read more
The clues will be with you, always. Amazon is currently offering a galactic 30% off the “Star Wars” edition of the classic whodunit game “Clue.” That works out to a savings of $14. The classic game is transported to the “Star Wars” universe, where players find themselves on the Death Star and must figure out which … Read more
Richard Leakey, paleoanthropologist, conservationist and Kenyan political leader, died January 2 at his home near Nairobi. His expeditions discovered hundreds of hominin fossils, leading Fred Spoor, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London to tell me his findings were “a most extensive and diverse fossil record of early human evolution.” Other scientists, conservationists, … Read more
A distant exoplanet looks more like a football than the usual sphere, researchers report in a groundbreaking new study. The strange shape of ultrahot WASP-103b, which is more than 1,000 light-years from Earth, is due to the planet being stretched by the gravitational forces of its parent star, according to the new research. WASP-103b was … Read more
Doctors have transplanted the heart from a genetically modified pig into the chest of a man from Maryland in a last-ditch effort to save his life. The first-of-its-kind surgery is being hailed as a major step forward in the decades-long effort to successfully transplant animal organs into humans. Although it’s been tried before—one of the … Read more