“At the heart of many galaxies lie supermassive blackholes. These engines power quasars—active galactic nuclei that emit some of the brightest light astronomers can possibly see in the sky. How these extreme objects formed in the earliest years of the universe—when the cosmos was less than a billion years old—has long been something of a mystery.

But now, the European Space Agency's Euclid Space Telescope has identified a clutch of primordial quasars, dating to some 13 billion years ago—putting them among the oldest of these objects ever found in the universe.

Ancient quasars offer glimpses into the universe in its chaotic infancy; but actually finding these primordial objects can be very difficult. Because they formed so long ago, they are extremely far away from Earth, which can cause their bright light to be mistaken for a signal of a more run-of-the-mill celestial object.”

From Scientific American.

“Scientists have long been fascinated by prehistoric cave art, which offers a rare glimpse into the creative minds of our ancestors. Now, they might finally be able to ‘meet’ some of the artists who created these masterpieces thousands of years ago.

Traces of ancient DNA from humans can survive for millennia on cave walls and in rock art, scientists report in a new paper published in June in the journal Nature Communications.

In the past, scientists have extracted ancient DNA from cave dirt, chewing ‘gum’ and a 20,000-year-old pendant. But no one had recovered it from rock art, until now.

‘It’s the start of a new era,’ study co-author Genevieve von Petzinger, a paleoanthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, tells NewScientist’s Alison George. ‘This gives us the potential to meet the actual artists, the individuals who did this art. It’s extraordinary.'”

From Smithsonian Magazine.

“Scientists have long dreamed of discovering the alchemy by which chemicals can be turned into life. On Wednesday, a team at the University of Minnesota announced that it had taken a major step toward that vision.

Blending together dozens of ingredients, the researchers have synthesized simple cells that feed, grow, reproduce and compete with one another for food. If these cells are not yet fully alive, they have most of the hallmarks of life.”

From New York Times.

“For almost 2,000 years, the carbonized library of Herculaneum has kept a cruel bargain: its scrolls survived the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, but only by becoming too fragile to open. To read one was to destroy it. Hundreds of rolls have therefore remained sealed, their contents preserved yet unreachable.

Today that changes. We have completely virtually unwrapped and read PHerc. 1667 — the scroll the Vesuvius Challenge community knows as Scroll 4 — without ever touching its pages. It is the first Herculaneum papyrus to be digitally unrolled and read in full, end to end, and made available for sustained scholarly study.”

From Vesuvius Challenge.