Feb 28th, 2026 - If you are planning a trip to Rome and want to explore something beyond the famous landmarks, Roman catacombs tours are a perfect choice. These underground burial sites offer a unique look into early Christian history, ancient Roman culture, and hidden stories beneath the city streets. In this complete guide, you will learn what the Roman catacombs are, why they are important, what to expect during a tour, and how to plan your visit. What Are the Roman Catacombs? The Roman Catacombs are underground burial tunnels built between the 2nd and 5th centuries AD. They were mainly used by early ... [Read More]

Feb 27th, 2026 - Interactions between neighboring materials is mediated by virtual photons. Despite the headline, this isn't really a story about superconductivity—at least not the superconductivity that people care about, the stuff that doesn't require exotic refrigeration to work. Instead, it's a story about how superconductivity can be used as a test of some of the weirder consequences of quantum mechanics, one that involves non-existent particles of light that still act as if they exist. Researchers have found a way to get these virtual photons to influence the behavior of a superconductor, ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - WASHINGTON (AP) — Billions fewer birds are flying through North American skies than decades ago and their population is shrinking ever faster, mostly due to a combination of intensive agriculture and warming temperatures, a new study found. Nearly half of the 261 species studied showed big enough losses in numbers to be statistically significant and more than half of those declining are seeing their losses accelerate since 1987, according to Thursday's journal Science . The study is the first to look at more than the total bird population by examining the trends in their decrease, ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - About 30 seals had died as of Thursday, nearly all of them weaned pups, amid the rise of avian influenza An outbreak of a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu has killed more than two dozen elephant seal pups in California , leading to the temporary closure of seal-viewing areas at a popular Bay Area park. California's Año Nuevo state park is home to an elephant seal colony with about 5,000 seals during the marine mammals' breeding season, which runs from mid-December through March. Researchers said about 30 seals had died as of Thursday, nearly all of them weaned pups, amid the rise ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - Questions about how power changes the face of Judaism often go unacknowledged amid festivities Purim is meant to be loud: a holiday for drinking, dressing up, yelling and retelling a story of miraculous survival. Which means it's easy to miss a brief but significant verse near the end of the Book of Esther — one that deserves to be lingered over: "And many of the people of the land professed to be Jews, for the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them." That line doesn't lend itself to celebration. It does not describe people drawn to Judaism by teaching or conviction. Instead, it ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - Reading time 3 minutes The Vera C. Rubin Observatory spent the night staring at the dark cosmos, alerting astronomers of ongoing changes in the skies in real-time. The observatory fired off its first wave of notifications from its new alert system on Tuesday night, sending 800,000 alerts to astronomers' computers around the world. The Alert Production Pipeline, a software developed at the University of Washington, is designed to eventually produce up to 7 million alerts per night, documenting celestial events spotted by Rubin. "The scale and speed of the alerts are unprecedented," Hsin-Fang ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - It may have been an extreme act meant to destroy rival bloodlines. First excavated in the 1970s, the mass grave at Gomolava in Serbia was long thought to be the tragic but natural result of a pandemic. In this 9th-century BCE mass grave, archaeologists were stunned to find the remains of 77 people, almost all of them women and children. The Iron Age mass grave was found beneath a mound. This artificial hill, or "tell," was built from the debris of collapsed mud bricks, broken pottery, and the old fires. But a second look with modern tools shows these people didn't succumb to disease. They ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Sydney will experience a total solar eclipse on July 22, 2028, when the Moon completely blocks the Sun for a short time. Over a span of less than two years, the world will see three of these full eclipses and three more "ring of fire" eclipses – when the Moon leaves a bright ring of sunlight visible around its edges. Tracking the eclipse corridor Updated eclipse maps trace the shadow's narrow corridor, showing it jumping from Europe to Africa to Australia. By publishing the schedule on its eclipse table , NASA pins down six headline eclipses. Across those rows, ... [Read More]