Peanut-Sized Bacteria, Red Skeletons, Sunken Treasures and More Mysterious News Briefly — February 25, 2022

Mysterious News Briefly — February 25, 2022

Jordanian and French archaeologists discovered a roughly 9,000-year-old shrine at a remote Neolithic site in Jordan's eastern desert that contains two carved standing stones bearing anthropomorphic figures, an altar, hearth, marine shells and miniature model of nearby wild gazelle traps used to corral them for slaughter – showing symbolism, artistic expression and spiritual culture. Except for the gazelle-killing part.

A new image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a head-on collision between two galaxies (NGC 2445 and NGC 2444) that formed a "space triangle" by creating a "tsunami of starbirth" made of shared gas and dust. For many astronomers, this is as close as they’ll get to watching a ménage à trois.

The Colombian government is fighting with Spain and Bolivia over a sunken Spanish galleon -- the San José shipwreck which was discovered off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia in 2015 – containing a treasure of 200 tons of gold, silver and jewels that is estimated to be worth about $17 billion today. How about a game of diamond-gold leaf-silver scissors?

Astronomers have discovered a Tatooine – a rare exoplanet named Kepler-16b that is orbiting two stars at once – that is only the 11^th ever discovered and the first by a ground-based telescope. Doctor Who wants to know why these are never compared to Gallifrey.

A new study found that rats are capable of not only performing time-based tasks but are able to estimate the duration of their actions, evaluate their performance and correct themselves in order to do better next time – an ability formerly thought to be exclusive to humans. It’s time to worry when you see rats adjusting clocks for Daylight Saving Time.

A newly described bacterium living in Caribbean mangroves can grow up to 2 cm (.78 inches) or as long as a peanut and 5000 times bigger than many other microbes. They’re so big, you can almost see them giving the finger to bottles of antibacterial soap.

New evidence shows that the dinosaur-killing asteroid which hit the Gulf of Mexico 66 million years ago happened in the spring in the northern hemisphere and that hurt northern animals just emerging from the harsh months of winter more than southern hemisphere animals that were spending autumn in burrows. Did they emerge and have a Mardis Gras parade?

Mysterious fast radio bursts have tracked to a galaxy 11.7 million light-years away from Earth -- 40 times closer to us than the next-known extragalactic FRB – named FRB 20200120E that is a clump of old stars which is not usually where FRBs come from. Astronomers better be careful they don’t get sued by FRB 20200120E for negative ageist comments.

A team of scientists from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences exploring two large burial mounds in northern Serbia dating back to around 3000 BCE  found male skeletons which had been completely painted from head to toe with red ochre dye. You’re showing your age if “red skeleton” reminded you of a famous comedian.

In a case of “We said, they said” denial tennis, a rocket stage scheduled to crash into the moon around March 4th was first attributed to SpaceX, then to a Chinese Chang’e 5-T1 booster, then back to SpaceX, and is now pinned back on the Chinese space program. Rockets may look like a giant penis, but they’re more like giant fingers pointing.