Month: January 2022

Fans finally get to welcome Oscar Isaac to the MCU. As promised, Marvel Studios dropped the official trailer for its forthcoming series, Moon Knight, during the NFL Super Wild Card matchup, along with a new poster. Isaac plays the title role: a former mercenary with multiple personalities who becomes the avatar of an Egyptian moon god.

Moon Knight is one of the lesser known characters in the Marvel Comics pantheon. The son of a rabbi, Marc Spector is marked at a young age by the Egyptian moon god Khonshu to be the god's avatar on Earth. But Khonsu is a supernatural entity with many aspects to his nature—and also exists out of phase with normal time and space—so forging a psychic connection with the human Marc has a bad effect on the young man's mental health.

Marc develops dissociative identity disorder (DID), eventually becoming a mercenary with his buddy, Jean-Paul "Frenchie" DuChamp. He is hired by the ruthlessly amoral Raoul Bushman for a job, in which the latter kills an archaeologist who has uncovered an Egyptian tomb. Marc saves the archaeologist's daughter, Marlene, leading to a major fight with Bushman. Marc loses the fight and is left for dead, but the locals carry him into the tomb and leave him in front of a statue of Khonshu. Khonshu revives and heals the dying Marc.

Enlarge / The ship's ram as it was found on the seabed off Sicily at a depth of nearly 90 m, covered in marine life. (credit: K. Egorov/SDSS-GUE)

Shipwrecks hold an enduring fascination, both because of how they connect us to the past and because of the potentially priceless treasures that could be lurking within their sunken remains. They are also invaluable resources for scientists interested in studying how marine ecosystems evolve and thrive, since sea creatures inevitably colonize the wreckage, transforming destruction into life. In fact, more than 100 distinct animal species were found living on a 2,200-year-old Mediterranean shipwreck, according to a recent paper published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

"Shipwrecks are often studied to follow colonization by marine organisms, but few studies have focused on ships that sank more than a century ago," said co-author Sandra Ricci of Rome's Istituto Centrale per il Restauro (ICR). "Here we study for the first time colonization of a wreck over a period of more than 2,000 years. We show that the ram has ended up hosting a community very similar to the surrounding habitat, due to 'ecological connectivity'—free movement by species—between it and the surroundings."

Rome and Carthage were archrivals in the mid-3rd century BCE who fought three wars. The first war began in 264 BCE on and around the island of Sicily, and it dragged on for 23 years. Almost everything we know about the First Punic War comes from the writings of Greek historian-turned-Roman hostage Polybius, who wrote The Histories about a century after the First Punic War ended. While there has been some debate about the accuracy of his accounts, most modern historians still rely heavily on Polybius, and his version of events is typically accepted when there are contradictions in other historical sources.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Over the past few months, geopolitical tensions have escalated as Russia amassed tens of thousands of troops along Ukraine’s border and made subtle but far-reaching threats if Ukraine and NATO don’t agree to Kremlin demands.

Now, a similar dispute is playing out in cyber arenas, as unknown hackers late last week defaced scores of Ukrainian government websites and left a cryptic warning to Ukrainian citizens who attempted to receive services.

Be afraid and expect the worst

“All data on the computer is being destroyed, it is impossible to recover it,” said a message, written in Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish, that appeared late last week on at least some of the infected systems. “All information about you has become public, be afraid and expect the worst."