research help capture the ancient

Monster Hunter World: How To Catch The Living Fossil

Here's everything you need to know about how to complete the Capture the Ancient bounty and capture the Petricanth fish in Monster Hunter World.

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Where to find the petricanth, how to catch the prehistoric fish.

The prehistoric fish known as the Petricanth is an addition to the Endemic Life monsters in Monster Hunter World and it is the rarest fish in the whole game. Catching the Petricanth is a challenging experience.

Related: Monster Hunter World: How To Defeat Barroth

You'll need to catch one of these to complete the "Research Help: Capture the Ancient" bounty, plus, you'll be rewarded with a trophy/achievement and the ability to place it in your house. Our guide entails the fishing locations of prehistoric fish in Monster Hunter World and mentions how to catch this rarest fish faster.

In the world of Monster Hunter World, the Petricanth spawns only at two locations , and those are:

• At a small pond in Sector 15 of Rotten Vale.
• The Eastern Camp in Sector 8 of Elder's Recess . It rarely spawns there, but still, the chances are high.

Note: If you have the Iceborne DLC for Monster Hunter World, it can also be pawswapped with plunderers in the Rotten Vale.

Rotten Vale, by far, is the best place to catch Petricanth. However, you will at least need to have unlocked five-star quests in Monster Hunter World to increase the chances for the fish to spawn in Rotten Vale.

The steps below will help you to catch the Petricanth quickly.

• Firstly, depart for an expedition on Rotten Vale at the central Camp in Area 11 .
• Now open up your map and go to the level below that to find Area 15 . Now, put a marker on your map at the location shown in the image above and let the Scout Flies guide you there.
• Once you reach Area 15, go to the very end of it, and you will see two small blue ponds . However, you will never see any fish on the left one, so you need to head for the right one at this point.
• The ponds will mostly have green and yellow fish there. However, if you get lucky, you will find Petricanth there.
• End your expedition and start a new one if you do not find the Petricanth. Then repeat all the steps we have mentioned so far. Since the Petricanth is a rare spawn, you will find it in your first five to ten tries.
• So when you do find the Petricanth, equip your Fishing Rod , and throw the fishing rod near the Petricanth. While trying to catch the Petricanth, do not wiggle your bait too much as it will scare the fish away.
• Other fish in the pond might cause you problems by biting the bait. However, you must focus on catching them, and eventually, you will get rid of them.

If you are having trouble getting the Petricanth to bite, then we recommend using the Baitbug . You can find some of them near the pond.

Once you reel the Petricanth, you will achieve the “A Living Fossil Achievement” trophy and get 500 RP points . Once you have caught the Petricanth, you can place it inside the Aquarium in your home and admire it. To do this, go back to your living quarter, talk to your housekeeper, select "Place Your Pet" , and then choose the Petricanth. Next, walk up to the Aquarium, and you will get the option to admire.

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All Piscine Researcher Critical Bounties in Monster Hunter World

Complete all critical bounties from the Piscine Researcher in Monster Hunter World.

There are a lot of quests to complete in Monster Hunter World. Some of these will stay on your HUD indefinitely, even if you’d rather worry about other things. Some you’ll get while out on an expedition and struggle to keep track of going forward. The latter group of quests are often Critical Bounties, and usually given to you from the Piscine Researcher or Endemic Life Researcher. Today we’ll be focusing on the former.

Piscine Researcher Critical Bounties

Last updated on March 6, 2020 at 4:31 p.m. EST.

There are six Critical Bounties that are given to players from the Piscine Researcher. Most will give you a small reward, but the final quest will give you a Gold Wyverian Print that you can redeem at the Elder Melder . That, my friends, is reason enough alone to grind through this list of tasks, as the Gold Wyverian Print can be redeemed for gems, extremely rare crafting materials. It should be noted, though, that as of the Iceborne DLC, hunters can receive Gold Wyverian Prints for helping lower-ranked hunters with quests. For example, if you are Master Rank and help someone defeat Nergigante on High Rank, you might score a Gold Wyverian Print for your trouble.

Below is a list of Piscine Researcher tasks to complete:

• Ancient Forest Research Help - Pink Paraxus Capture
• Wildspire Waste Research Help - Sushfish Capture
• Coral Highlands Research Help - Gunpowderfish Capture
• Rotten Vale Research Help - Goldenfish Capture
• Elder Recess Research Help - Platinumfish Capture
• Research Help - Capture the Ancient

When you are about to head out on an expedition, look at the world map. As you hover over a location, you’ll get a key on the right side that gives you some important details. One of these will be at the bottom under the Field Researcher section. If you see the Piscine Researcher listed there, you’ll be able to find them at that location and get their quests, assuming you don’t already have it.

If you’d like to see which critical bounties you already have active, which ones are done, and which ones you’ve yet to pick up, visit the Resource Center in Astera or Seliana. Active Critical Bounties will be in the list and the text around them will be lit up. Completed Critical Bounties will be in the list by greyed out, and if you have yet to obtain the critical bounty from the Piscine Researcher, it will be absent from the list entirely. Use that information to see what critical bounties you need to finish by cross referencing it with my list.

It should also be noted that once you finish the first five critical bounties on the list, the sixth will be given in a random location it seems. No fear, just bring up the World Map and you can scan each location for the Piscine Researcher. Locate and pay them a visit in order to get the final critical bounty to complete the set.

Now that you are aware of all critical bounties from the Piscine Researcher in Monster Hunter: World, visit our  Monster Hunter: World hub to check in on what else you’ve been missing thus far in your journey.

Bill, who is also known as Rumpo, is a lifelong gamer and Toronto Maple Leafs fan. He made his mark early in his career through guide writing and a deep understanding of editorial SEO. He enjoys putting in the work to create a great content, be it a wild feature or grinding out an in-depth collectible guide. Tweet him @RumpoPlays if you have a question or comment about one of his articles.

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Monster Hunter World Capture The Ancient Quest - A Living Fossil Trophy

Home » Monster Hunter World » Monster Hunter World Capture The Ancient Quest – A Living Fossil Trophy

Capture the Ancient is a quest in Monster Hunter World. It’s the last mission you’ll get from the Piscine Researcher, in which he’ll ask you to find the Petricanths, an ancient creature that’s part of the endemic life of the New World. Once you do, you’ll get the A Living Fossil trophy. It’s easier said than done, though – he has no hints about the location, or what the beastie looks like. That’s why we’ve decided to write this guide, to help you complete the Monster Hunter World Capture The Ancient quest .

Ancient fish location

We’ve caught the ancient fish at Elder’s Recess, in the crystal-encased pond in sector 8. The pond is right next to the Eastern Camp – you can’t miss it. Before you head off, make sure you have some proper bait, like the Bait Bug. Regular Fodder won’t work on this sea monster.

If the fish isn’t there at once, you can fast travel away and back. You’ll easily spot it – it’s large, black and has light blue spots all over. Once it spawns, simply throw the bait – don’t wiggle it. When you turn in the quest, you’ll get 800 research points and a Deluxe First Wyverian Print.

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He can be caught multiple times. He’s just an extremely rare spawn that’s dependent on RNG to even have a chance to be there. Additionally, regular fodder does work on this fish. I caught him my first time with it.

It came back for me, but I had to start a new expedition like 15 times.

I caught this fish before they gave me the quest and I got the trophy, and now it does not appear, I’ve tried a lot of times. Does it appear only once?

I’m running into the same thing. Did you ever get it?

Yeah, how do you unlock that particular mission again? I’ve looked in every map for the man and he hasn’t given me the task yet.

After doing the other fishing missions you have to find the fisherman guy on a low rank expedition.

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What are Bounties?

Bounties list, monster hunter world (mhw) related guides.

More often than not these bounties are not that hard to perform while on other hunts and offer good reward, so there's no reason not to get them.

Limited Bounties

Limited Bounties are the most common bounties you can complete. They reward you with precious Armor Spheres and even Wyverian prints!

The following Limited Bounties are from the week of February 26, 2021 . Check back if it is not updated yet; it will be up soon enough!

Critical Bounties

Critical Bounties are Bounties that are needed to be completed to unlock certain facilities. These facilities are then able to reward you further so make sure to complete Critical Bounties when you can!

Critical Bounties in Monster Hunter World (MHW)

Critical bounties exclusive to iceborne, list of quests and quest types.

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MHW: ICEBORNE | How To Get Ingredients & Upgrade Canteen

Check out this Monster Hunter World: Ice Borne guide to learn how to get ingredients to upgade the canteen! Find out all of the ingredients by type, and how to unlock them to upgrade the canteen!!!

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Quest Givers are important NPCs that give you quests to finish. Once you finish these quests, you will unlock the ingredient for the canteen. Even if you have the ingredient with you, if you did not complete the quest given, it will not be added to the Canteen.

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Quest Givers can be found in Astera with an exclamation point above their head. They can also be found in different locales. Once you interact with these NPCs, they will automatically give you the quest in order for you to unlock ingredients for the canteen!

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you forgot "lily squid", "cudgel onion", and half of the beverages ingredient. Plz fix this

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Endemic life researcher | monster hunter world wiki.

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Endemic Life Researcher is an NPC in Monster Hunter World (MHW). NPCs are non-playable characters that interact with the Hunter during the story or optional activities in game.

A cheerful woman, archiving her research on the creatures most other people tend to forget when hunting large monsters. She asks the Hunter for help in finding certain species for her studies.

When choosing a destination from the map, make sure there is "Endemic Life Researcher" in the Field Researcher section. She then appears on the map and minimap as a green dot.

• Ancient Forest : sector 5, 11
• Wildspire Waste : sector 1
• Coral Highlands : sector 4
• Rotten Vale : sector 1
• Elder's Recess : sector 2
• Hoarfrost Reach , sector 8

Quests & Services

Talking to the Endemic Life Researcher on the field unlocks Critical Bounties, which then appear in the Resource Center in Astera and Seliana .

About the Endemic Life Researcher

No one surpasses this passionate scientist in knowledge and techniques for catching endemic life. She is one of those responsible for compiling data for the endemic life field guide, and she herself is in charge of smaller animals and insects. She sometimes becomes too engrossed in her observations and forgets to report to Astera, leading to a scolding by the Lynian Researcher. Apparently, her excuse is "I can't take my eyes off these ants". 

• Endemic Life Researcher is the leader of the 3 researchers, but let the other 2 do as they please with their research. Lynian Researcher  praises her for this.
• Actually, she is the next head of a certain distinguished family. She joined the Fourth Fleet along with two attendants.
• She gives information on some Endemic Life relative to the area she's in when talked to casually.

3====>({})

she gets turned on by flesh eating spiders and kicking small defenseless animals. she a freak. a sadistic BFF of guild marm. endemic life researcher >handler

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WOPACyk29Lw Phantom Bird

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April 5, 2024

How Ancient Humans Studied—And Predicted—Solar Eclipses

Dragon bones, mysterious carvings and simple math reveal ancient eclipses

By Leo DeLuca

An annular solar eclipse as seen over the Pueblo Bonito cultural site at Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico.

Stan Honda/AFP/GettyImages

This article is part of a special report on the total solar eclipse that will be visible from parts of the U.S., Mexico and Canada on April 8, 2024.

During an eclipse , as the moon slowly begins to veil the sun, crescent-shaped shadows appear on the ground, and the world drops into an eerie daytime twilight. On Monday , this will happen across a large swath of North America.

How did ancient cultures respond to the darkness shrouding the light? In the past few decades, a scientific field called archeoastronomy has emerged to investigate questions such as this. Although it’s a challenge to know what earlier humans saw when they stood in the shadow of an eclipse—especially the further back we go—archeoastronomers have used clues ranging from bark books to petroglyphs to ancient Chinese oracle bones to piece together these bygone stories of the cosmos.

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The “Six-Five Beat”

Humans have been calculating the recurrence of solar eclipses for thousands of years. Many ancient cultures predicted these events mathematically using what Anthony Aveni, a pioneer of archeoastronomy and professor emeritus at Colgate University, calls the “six-five beat.” Solar and lunar eclipses usually recur every six lunar months or, more rarely, every five lunar months. Over time, by observing and calculating these intervals, the ancient Maya, Chinese and Babylonians all homed in on two predictable patterns for when identical solar and lunar eclipses would recur: one pattern spans 41 months, the other 47. Here’s how these patterns, denoted as “A” and “B”, come about:

A. The 41-month pattern: 6 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 5 = 41 months , or some 3.4 years, after a total or near-total eclipse, an almost identical eclipse occurs.

B. The 47-month pattern: 6 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 5 = 47 months , or some 3.9 years, after a total or near-total eclipse, an almost identical eclipse occurs.

Then, after more time, these cultures found even more patterns. The Babylonians, for instance, noticed that after A + A + B + B + B, or 223 months (18.5 years), another identical sequence of eclipses occurred, called the Saros cycle. All these patterns, governed by the laws of planetary motion, were made by simply observing the sky with the naked eye—so it’s possible, or even likely, that these Maya, Chinese and Babylonian cultures had been using the six-five beat to predict eclipses even in prehistoric times, before written records. “I have no doubt that people could do this a few thousand years [prior] and then pass that information on orally,” Aveni says.

Cairn Carvings

The oldest surviving depiction of an eclipse might be one from Loughcrew Megalithic Cemetery , also known as the Hills of the Witch, near Oldcastle, Ireland. This site’s Neolithic passage tombs, marked by large cairns, were built in the fourth millennium B.C.E.—making them nearly a millennium older than Stonehenge.

Examining one of the cairns in 1999, archaeoastronomer Paul Griffin discovered a stone carving of overlapping concentric circles that he thought may depict an eclipse. He found that a near-total eclipse occurred at Loughcrew on November 30, 3340 B.C.E., around the time the cairns were built; this makes it plausible that the carving, called a petroglyph, did indeed represent an eclipse. But such a thing can’t be proven, and Aveni says the concentric circles could have any number of possible meanings.

Dragon Bones and Oracle Bones

A few millennia later, the oldest verifiable solar eclipse records were carved in Anyang, China. This city, then called Yin, was the capital of the ancient Shang dynasty (1600–1045 B.C.E.)—the first Chinese period that left behind written records. This legacy was rediscovered relatively recently, in 1899, when an Anyang pharmacist gave antiquarian and philologist Wang Yirong a prescription for a traditional remedy made by grinding up “dragon bones.” Wang was about to grind the bones when he noticed that they were adorned with ancient Chinese inscriptions. These weren’t dragon bones but oracle bones : oxen shoulder blades and tortoise shells once used to predict the future. Eventually the artifacts were traced to a site near Anyang where some 50,000 inscribed oracle bones dating from 1400 to 1200 B.C.E. have since been discovered.

“Divination played an enormously important role at the time,” says Xueshun Liu , a Chinese language lecturer in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. These bone inscriptions are the oldest known Chinese-language documents—and they include descriptions of eclipses. During the Shang dynasty, when an eclipse loomed, specially marked oracle bones were placed over a fire; heating caused small cracks that were believed to be messages from deceased ancestors. A diviner, or oracle, then interpreted the cracks and inscribed prophecies on the bones.

One of the many oracle bones that mentions an eclipse says: “The king, reading the crack, said: ‘There will be harm.’ Another simply read, “The sun has been eaten.”

A Dark, Belching Sun

Any given place on Earth’s surface will only experience one total solar eclipse, lasting only a few minutes, every 375 years on average. So it’s even rarer for this to coincide with another solar event called a coronal mass ejection, or CME. These occur when giant bubbles of plasma and magnetic field burst from the sun’s corona, or its outer atmosphere. These ejections could be visible to the naked eye during a total solar eclipse, with the moon shielding everything but the sun’s corona.

“CMEs are not that rare. We get several of them during the day, especially during solar maximum,” or the peak of the sun’s 11-year activity cycle, says C. Alex Young , associate director for science in the Heliophysics Science Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. But he notes that the odds of one coinciding with “four or so minutes of an eclipse are slim.”

It’s possible, however, that the ancient Pueblo people of Chaco Canyon, a city that thrived from C.E. 850–1250, may have witnessed such a spectacle. Evidence comes from Piedra del Sol, or “Rock of the Sun,” a large boulder in modern-day New Mexico inscribed with numerous previously identified Chaco astronomical markers. In 1992 solar astronomer Kim Malville was helping lead a three-week field trip for college students when he “noticed a peculiar petroglyph” on the boulder. It looked like the sun was belching out rays. What’s more, “there was a pecked mark where [Venus] would have been,” says Malville, a professor emeritus of astrophysical and planetary sciences at the University of Colorado. Venus can be visible during an eclipse.

After referencing a list of historic eclipses, Malville discovered that only one total solar eclipse—that of June 29, 1097 —occurred at the peak of Chacoan culture. A few years later, solar physicists confirmed that the 1097 eclipse occurred during a period of high solar activity, making the tandem appearance of an eclipse and a CME likelier.

Credit: Katie Peek; Source: NASA ( eclipse track data )

This year on April 8, eclipse watchers in North America will have similarly elevated chances of seeing a CME because the sun is currently at the peak of its activity—and is belching out plasma multiple times per day. “While the chances of seeing a coronal mass ejection coincide with an eclipse are rare, the chances are much higher right now,” Young says. “I’ve studied these things for 20 years, and the idea of seeing this from the ground, with my own eyes—well, that would really be quite a sight.”

Look Outside the Lens

As we try to understand how the peoples of the past experienced the world, it’s important to look around the lens of our modern and often Western-dominated culture, says Aveni, who began his career as an astronomer and then moved to studying the cosmos through anthropology and Native American studies.

“We must be very careful about treating all cultures that came before us as capital-O ‘Other,’” Aveni says. “They traveled a totally different road from Western eclipse science. Sometimes our questions can be misguided. Did they know the Earth was round? Did they know about the galaxy?” Those aren’t the right questions to ask, he says. “They didn’t live in our world.”

And we don’t live in theirs. With our ultraprecise clocks and compasses, we can often choose to forget the sky altogether—something unthinkable for many peoples of the past. “When it comes down to it, other cultures didn’t do things the way we do them,” Aveni says. “And that’s what makes studying them so fascinating.”

Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z Views ‘Rockytop’

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to capture this rocky hilltop nicknamed “Rockytop” on July 24, 2022, the 507th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

The feature is named after Rockytop in Shenandoah National Park.

Figure A is a video showing a pan/zoom view into the image.

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology , including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

For more about Perseverance: mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

(png) (45.00 MB)

Figure A (4918  x 1080)

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Original (14578  x  3201)

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• HISTORY & CULTURE

These ancient texts were once unreadable. Now technology is decoding them

Burned, baked, or broken, many historic documents were once thought lost to time, but AI and imaging innovations are allowing scholars to reveal their secrets.

People write down lots of things—from epic poems and sacred texts to tax decrees and shopping lists. But these things are of little use to anyone if they can’t be read.  

Broken tablets , fragile scrolls , or coded manuscripts have intrigued scholars for centuries. Many devoted countless hours to decoding past people's scribblings. Thanks to them, humanity has compiled a massive knowledge base of writing systems and languages. But some texts still elude our understanding.

In the past few decades, innovative technology has been advancing not only our ability to decode these ancient scripts but also to recover information from objects once thought too damaged to be understood. Tools like X-rays, CT scans, and AI are helped today’s scholars tease out the contents of seemingly impossible sources.

1. The old-fashioned way

In the beginning, 18th- and 19th-century language scholars had to figure out how ancient writing systems worked. To decipher writing in an unknown ancient tongue, they would do the time-consuming work of comparing their samples to other known languages as well as to written works from the era.

In the late 1790s, Napoleon’s troops were stationed in Egypt when they discovered a 4-foot-tall chunk of black rock, now known as the Rosetta Stone . It was once part of a giant stele that dated to around 204 B.C. On it was a pharaoh's proclamation written in three different languages, including hieroglyphics which eluded modern understanding in the 18th century. Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion used the two other scripts (Demotic Egyptian script and ancient Greek) and began a decades-long process of trial and error before he finally decoded Ptolemaic hieroglyphics in 1822.

One of humanity’s oldest poems came to light in a similar matter—with tons of painstaking work. In the late 1800s, Assyriologist George Smith spent hours in the British Museum reconstructing shattered clay tablets covered in cuneiform. He compared the writing to other works from Mesopotamia to reveal the Epic of Gilgamesh , the tale of an ancient hero embarking on a quest for immortality and learning of a great flood that wiped out humanity.

2. CT Scans and computers reveal a holy book

Fast forward to 2016, and scholars announce that they have made a breakthrough deciphering the Ein Gedi Scroll. About 1,500 years ago, the animal-skin parchment was housed in a the Holy Ark of a synagogue on the Dead Sea’s western shore. When a fire tore through community, the town was lost but the ark survived. The intense heat from the fire had hardened the scroll into a charcoal tube.

The Ein Gedi Scroll was carefully preserved for years but scholars did not know its contents. Because of the heat damage, they believed unrolling the scroll might reduce it to dust. How could they look inside it without damaging the fragile material?  

In 2015, a team of scientists figured it out. Combing CT scans and specially designed computer software, a virtual copy of the scroll was built. The team could safely unfurl this virtual version, allowing them to see the   inner-most layers and access the hidden text. A year later , the team announced their findings: The scroll was between 1,700 to 1,800 years old and contained the first two chapters of Leviticus.

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3. dna and the dead sea scrolls  .

The Dead Sea Scrolls were one of the most fascinating and famous archaeological finds of the 20th century. They were first discovered in 1947 in caves near the ancient Jewish settlement of Qumran. Since then, hundreds more have been found where they were carefully hidden away some 2,000 years ago. Written on papryus and parchment made of animal skins, they are among the oldest biblical texts ever found.

Tireless scholars have devoted lifetimes to studying these valuable documents, carefully piecing thousands of fragments to determine their contents, origins, and age. Exact authorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls is still hotly debated, but most scholars agree that the documents were written by Judean desert dwellers between the second century B.C. and the second century A.D.

Advances in genetic testing have revealed new information about scrolls. In 2020, a team of Israeli, Swedish, and American researchers tested the ancient DNA of some of the fragments and identified the different animal skin the parchment fragments were made of. This information gives scholars another data point to help reassamble the myriad pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

4.   AI and ancient Rome

After Mount Vesuvius erupted 79 A.D., Pompeii and its neighbor Herculaneum were buried in volcanic debris. Both towns have since become living museums allowing visitors to imagine ancient Roman life by the sea. But other treasures, like the library at Herculaneum, have been slower to reveal themselves.

Inside a vast villa at Herculaneum, some 1,800 ancient scrolls were carbonized by the searing heat from Vesuvius’s ash. Hardened into black lumps, the scrolls were discovered in 1752, but nobody knew much what to do with them. Like the scroll found at Ein Gedi, the Herculaneum scrolls were damaged by heat and could not be unrolled. But scholars knew that inside were the tantalizing remains of a rich Roman library, perhaps filled with works thought lost to time. So, scholars hung on to them and waited for a way to unlock the contents.

In March 2023, the Vesuvius Challenge announced a contest: use AI to decipher a portion of the contents of the Herculaneum scrolls. High-resolution CT scans of four scrolls were released, generous prizes were offered, and less than a year later, winners were announced. They had decoded five percent of one scroll, whose contents were described as a ““2,000-year-old blog post about how to enjoy life.”

But this is just the beginning: The Vesuvius Challenge announced another contest for 2024 . This time around, the biggest prize goes to whomever can translate 90 percent of each of the four scanned scrolls.

5. The world’s most mysterious book is unreadable. For now

The Voynich Manuscript isn’t as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Herculaneum Library, but its contents are just as tantalizing. Named for the Polish book dealer who purchased it in 1912, the book is 240 pages long and filled with colorful illustrations of astrological symbols, undulating plants, and lively human figures. Looping, handwritten text runs from left to right across its velum pages that date to the early 15th century.

Going by the illustrations alone, scholars believe the book is organized into six sections organized by theme: botany, astronomy, biology, cosmology, medicine, and cooking. Some believe the book contains science while others contend that its sorcery—or perhaps a mix of both.

For centuries, codebreakers have poured over the text, coming up with many different theories to its composition, but none have held up. Some of the most recent attempts by computer scientists employed AI, but nothing has yielded solid results yet.

Today, the Voynich Manuscript is housed in the rare-book collection of Yale University. It has been digitally scanned and made it available online , waiting for the right person or program to reveal its secrets.

Related Topics

• ARCHAEOLOGY
• DEAD SEA SCROLLS
• MANUSCRIPTS
• ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
• IMAGING TECHNOLOGY

Will we ever solve these 5 ancient mysteries?

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How can you tell if a photo is AI generated? Here are some tips.

This ancient diary reveals how Egyptians built the Great Pyramid

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April 17, 2024

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

fact-checked

peer-reviewed publication

Anthropocene activities dramatically alter deep underground fluid flux, researchers find

by Sarah Stanley, Eos

Much of Earth's water is hidden hundreds of meters beneath our feet, among soil particles and deep within rock pores and fractures.

Mining, oil and gas production, water wells , and other human activities involve extracting various fluids from or injecting them into the ground. Much attention has been paid to the toll these processes take on shallow groundwater and the water cycle. But less is known about how these activities affect the deep subsurface (500 meters to several kilometers deep), much of which was previously isolated for very long periods of geologic time.

In a new study in Earth's Future , Ferguson and colleagues illustrate how deep subsurface fluid flow rates associated with human activities such as oil and gas production most likely already exceed natural fluxes at these depths on a global scale. If such activities expand as expected, this rate will increase substantially, meaning anthropogenic fluid flow will likely leave a lasting imprint on the geologic record.

Much of this future expansion in human activity will be in the form of mining lithium from deep subsurface brines, producing geothermal energy , and attempting to capture and sequester carbon, all of which involves injecting large amounts of fluid deep underground.

The potential effects of dramatically increased fluid flux in the deep subsurface remain unclear. The subsurface has long been considered a valuable resource, but there is growing recognition of its connection to the larger Earth system.

One major consideration is the microbial communities living in these deep environments, some of which have coevolved with their rocky surroundings for tens of millions of years and which collectively account for an estimated 15% of Earth's total biomass.

In fact, deep microbes affect many industrial processes by altering the chemistry of oil and other products. Some companies deliberately inject substances that stimulate or suppress deep subsurface microbial activities to enhance the quality or quantity of their products.

The authors call for further research into how human activities perturb the deep subsurface because improved understanding could ultimately help minimize harmful effects.

Journal information: Earth's Future

Provided by Eos

This story is republished courtesy of Eos, hosted by the American Geophysical Union. Read the original story here .

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• Share full article

Plan to Stash Pollution Beneath the Sea Could Save Money and Jobs

The Italian energy giant Eni sees future profits from collecting carbon dioxide and pumping it into natural gas fields that have been exhausted.

This gas processing plant at Casalborsetti is the focus of the first phase of an ambitious plan to capture carbon dioxide and bury it under the sea. Credit... Maurizio Fiorino for The New York Times

Supported by

By Stanley Reed

Stanley Reed, who writes on energy and the environment, visited Milan and Ravenna to report this story.

• April 4, 2024

Renowned for ancient churches and the tomb of Dante, the 14th-century poet, the city of Ravenna and its environs along Italy’s Adriatic coast are also home to old-line industries like steel and fertilizer. The manufacturing plants are of little interest to the many tourists who help sustain the area’s economy, but these sites employ tens of thousands of people.

The question is: For how long? The factories, like others in Europe, face increasing pressure from regulators to reduce the climate-altering gases that their operations produce. The worry is that rising costs from regulation will force them to close.

“We are very scared about the future of our industries,” said Michele De Pascale, the mayor of Ravenna. “We have to reach this goal to reduce CO2 emissions, but we want to do it without destroying our industries,” he said.

Italy’s energy giant, Eni, which has a large presence in Ravenna, is pushing a plan that the mayor says could help preserve the region’s heavy industries: create an industrial pollution collector.

The company is proposing to construct a network of pipelines to sweep up the carbon dioxide from the sites and store it away in old natural gas reservoirs. It sees this process, known as carbon capture and storage , as a promising new business line that would aid its shift to cleaner activities.

Eni is working on similar plans elsewhere in Europe, notably in Britain, where many mature oil and gas fields offer large volumes of storage potential. There are other carbon capture projects around the world, including in the United States, often aimed at reducing emissions from oil and natural gas production.

The company wants to diversify away from the oil and gas sales that have long been its mainstay, but it faces an uncertain future because of climate change concerns. Eni executives calculate they will have an edge because they can make use of the company’s existing infrastructure like wells and pipelines and redeploy employees.

“It is very easy to reskill or shift people,” said Claudio Descalzi, Eni’s chief executive.

Mr. Descalzi plans to turn carbon capture into a “satellite” company that could attract other investors seeking profits that he forecasts could be about 10 percent a year.

The transition to cleaner energy will succeed only if it spawns sustainable businesses, Mr. Descalzi said. “Otherwise, it will fail,” he added. “Because resources are limited and you can’t burn money.”

Eni has about 50 operating petroleum platforms in the Adriatic Sea off Ravenna, beyond lagoons dotted with flamingos. With production falling, Eni plans to pump carbon dioxide into the depleted gas reservoirs, which will act as giant sponges for the waste gas.

The company is spending about 100 million euros on modifications designed to remove about half the carbon dioxide emanating from a gas processing plant in nearby Casalborsetti. Work is largely complete, and Eni plans to begin sending the carbon dioxide through a new well into a gas field about 12 miles offshore and 10,000 feet below the seabed soon.

If this first phase goes smoothly, Eni will move to a much larger plan, initially costing as much as €1.5 billion, that will hook up factories and other large polluters in Italy and perhaps even France, to eventually draw as much as 16 million tons of carbon dioxide a year for burial.

Just as oil experts use powerful computers to crunch data into three-dimensional images to figure out how to efficiently extract gas from the ground, they are now using similar techniques to model how to safely inject carbon dioxide into porous rock.

Launching carbon capture projects, though, is proving a grind — an indication of how challenging the energy transition may be as countries shift from some of the easier areas to clean up, like electric power, to more difficult sectors like cement and steel.

Carbon capture needs to account for 8 percent of cumulative emissions reductions if the world is to achieve net zero by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization. Yet to be on track, the volume of stored carbon dioxide needs to jump twentyfold by 2030, to one billion tons a year — “a very ambitious undertaking” said Carl Greenfield, an analyst at the agency.

Polluters are struggling to evaluate whether it is worthwhile spending tens or even hundreds of millions to retrofit their plants. “They don’t have even the expertise to understand which is the best technology,” said Guido Brusco, Eni’s chief operating officer of natural resources.

But pressure from customers and taxes on carbon are pushing businesses to look seriously at carbon capture projects. Some analysts forecast that the European Union’s carbon tax will soar well above €100 a metric ton in future years, making proposals like Eni’s, which Mr. Brusco says will cost less than €80 a metric ton on average, an easier sell.

Andrea Ramonda, chief executive of Herambiente, which burns municipal waste to produce energy, is weighing the pros and cons. He figures that building what he calls a “washing machine of gases” at the plant could mean roughly doubling the €110 per metric ton that it now costs customers to to burn their garbage.

“We have to be very prudent” when managing the money of citizens, he said.

High costs and other obstacles mean that these proposals tend to require government backing, at least in the early stages.

“At the end of the day, you have to have some sort of government support,” said Bassam Fattouh, director of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, a research organization. “Otherwise, many of these projects will not be realized.”

The British government has for years backed work by Eni, including a plan to clean up emissions around Liverpool and Manchester in northwest England. As part of the project, known as HyNet North West, Eni would build and manage a 40-mile pipeline for collecting carbon dioxide from factories and other polluters in the area and pump the gas into wells beneath Liverpool Bay. Eni says it has reached a preliminary agreement with the British government to receive a guaranteed profit.

“We’re backing this industry with £20 billion,” Martin Callanan, Britain’s minister for energy efficiency and green finance, said in an emailed statement.

Negotiations with the Italian government are less advanced, although Eni executives hope Italy will copy Britain’s approach. Vannia Gava, Italy’s deputy energy minister, recently visited the Ravenna project and said afterward, “This is an enormous opportunity for Italy.”

Eni and other operators of carbon capture systems are targeting large emitters like cement and fertilizer plants that analysts say lack options to clean up their operations.

Heidelberg Materials, for instance, operates a large cement plant at Padeswood in Wales that it wants to tie into the Hynet pipeline. Simon Willis, chief executive of the company’s British business, said about 60 percent of the plant’s substantial emissions came from a chemical reaction in the cement-making process.

“There is nothing we can do about that other than collect it and store it,” he said.

Even some environmental groups are inclined to give carbon capture at least a lukewarm pass as long as it is not a means of prolonging the use of fossil fuels.

“If CO2 release to the atmosphere is otherwise inevitable from an industrial installation, then it is better to capture it,” said Doug Parr, chief scientist of Greenpeace UK.

Stanley Reed reports on energy, the environment and the Middle East from London. He has been a journalist for more than four decades. More about Stanley Reed

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