Ancient Origins articles related to Science & Space in the sections of history, archaeology, human origins, unexplained, artifacts, ancient places and myths and legends.
The Histories by Herodotus (484BC to 425BC) offers a remarkable window into the world as it was known by ancient Greek astronomy in the mid fifth century BC. Almost as interesting as what they knew,...
A huge icy space rock, comet ‘Atlas’, is currently in the constellation Ursa Major in the northern sky passing through the orbit of Mars , but it’s on a trajectory with our Sun and it will get...
The impact of Alexander III of Macedon better known to us as Alexander the Great , continues to this day. Even in the Indian sub-continent, his legacy is still visible in the names of numerous...
A new botanical scientific study on ginkgo trees highlights the species’ hyper-charged defenses and apparent escalation towards “immortality.” Native to China , G inkgo biloba , also known as the...
Stars have life cycles. They're born when bits of dust and gas floating through space find each other and collapse in on each other and heat up. They burn for millions to billions of years, and then...
The star used by ancient Egyptians as their North Star has just been discovered to be one part of a pair of binary stars that periodically eclipse one another, according to NASA scientists. The team’...
The world’s oldest known measles sample has been discovered in the lungs of a girl who died in 1912 and scientists now suggest the ancient virus jumped from animals to humans around 300 BC, making...
Experiments at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are casting a new light on Egyptian soil and ancient mummified bone samples that could provide a richer...
What exactly goes on high above our heads? Why do the stars and celestial spheres seem to dance around the sky? What is the sun up to when it seems to “randomly” disappear in the day, or when it...
The skeletal remains of five bodies excavated in Ireland suggest Vikings brought leprosy to the Emerald Isle. Leprosy , also known as Hansen's disease , is a chronic infectious disease that is caused...
For the first time ever, astronomers have identified water trapped in the atmosphere of a remote planet orbiting a distant star. When Gillian Anderson played Dana Scully she famously said, “The truth...
A new species of giant penguin - about 1.6 meters (5.25 ft.) tall - has been identified from fossils found in Waipara, North Canterbury. The discovery of Crossvallia waiparensis , a monster penguin...
A team of American and Spanish scientists relocated to China to jump European laws and they have created the world’s first human-monkey embryo, in the next step in the controversial breeding of...
An international team of astronomers has characterized the first potentially habitable world outside of our solar system discovered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a mission...
One of the most fascinating things about the evolution of life on Earth is its connection to the sky above. Only under the most precise conditions could tiny molecules have burst forth into life, and...
Are we alone in the universe? This is a question most people have pondered at one time or another. Since the distances between us and the nearest habitable planets can only be measured in light years...