Author: n Jennifer Ouelletten

Easter Island is famous for its giant monumental statues, called moai, built some 800 years ago. The volcanic rock used for the moai came from a quarry site called Rano Raraku. Archaeologists have created a high-resolution interactive 3D model of the quarry site to learn more about the processes used to create the moai. (You can explore the full interactive model here.) According to a paper published in the journal PLoS ONE, the model shows that there were numerous independent groups, probably family clans, that created the moai, rather than a centralized management system.

“You can see things that you couldn’t actually see on the ground. You can see tops and sides and all kinds of areas that just would never be able to walk to,” said co-author Carl Lipo of Binghamton University. “We can say, ‘Here, go look at it.’ If you want to see the different kinds of carving, fly around and see stuff there. We’re documenting something that really has needed to be documented, but in a way that’s really comprehensive and shareable.”

Lipo is one of the foremost experts on the Easter Island moai. In October, we reported on Lipo’s experimental confirmation—based on 3D modeling of the physics and new field tests to re-create that motion—that Easter Island’s people transported the statues in a vertical position, with workers using ropes to essentially “walk” the moai onto their platforms. To explain the presence of so many moai, the assumption has been that the island was once home to tens of thousands of people.

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It’s a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we’ve featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we’re experimenting with a monthly collection. November’s list includes forensic details of the medieval assassination of a Hungarian duke, why woodpeckers grunt when they peck, and more evidence that X’s much-maligned community notes might actually help combat the spread of misinformation after all.

An assassinated medieval Hungarian duke

Credit: Tamás Hajdu et al., 2026

Back in 1915, archaeologists discovered the skeletal remains of a young man in a Dominican monastery on Margaret Island in Budapest, Hungary. The remains were believed to be those of Duke Bela of Masco, grandson of the medieval Hungarian King Bela IV. Per historical records, the young duke was brutally assassinated in 1272 by a rival faction and his mutilated remains were recovered by the duke’s sister and niece and buried in the monastery.

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The emergence of synthetic pigments in the 19th century had an immense impact on the art world, particularly the availability of emerald-green pigments, prized for their intense brilliance by such masters as Paul Cézanne, Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh, and Claude Monet. The downside was that these pigments often degraded over time, resulting in cracks and uneven surfaces and the formation of dark copper oxides—even the release of arsenic compounds.

Naturally it’s a major concern for conservationists of such masterpieces. So it should be welcome news that European researchers have used synchrotron radiation and various other analytical tools to determine whether light and/or humidity are the culprits behind that degradation and how, specifically, it occurs, according to a paper published in the journal Science Advances.

Science has become a valuable tool for art conservationists, especially various X-ray imaging methods. For instance, in 2019, we reported on how many of the oil paintings at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, had been developing tiny, pin-sized blisters, almost like acne, for decades. Chemists concluded that the blisters are actually metal carboxylate soaps, the result of a chemical reaction between metal ions in the lead and zinc pigments and fatty acids in the binding medium used in the paint. The soaps start to clump together to form the blisters and migrate through the paint film.

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Millions of people around the world are living with the harsh reality of Alzheimer’s disease, which also significantly impacts family members. Nobody is immune, as A-list actor Chris Hemsworth discovered when his own father was recently diagnosed. The revelation inspired Hemsworth to embark on a trip down memory lane with his father, which took them to Australia’s Northern Territory. The experience was captured on film for A Road Trip To Remember, a new documentary film from National Geographic.

Director Tom Barbor-Might had worked with Hemsworth on the latter’s documentary series, Limitless, also for National Geographic. Each episode of Limitless follows Hemsworth on a unique challenge to push himself to the limits, augmented with interviews with scientific experts on such practices as fasting, extreme temperatures, brain-boosting, and regulating one’s stress response. Barbor-Might directed the season 1 finale, “Acceptance,” which was very different in tone, dealing with the inevitability of death and the need to confront one’s own mortality.

“It was really interesting to see Chris in that more intimate personal space, and he was great at it,” Barbor-Might told Ars. “He was charming, emotional, and vulnerable, and it was really moving. It felt like there was more work to be done there.” When Craig Hemsworth received his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to explore that personal element further.

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Millions of people around the world are living with the harsh reality of Alzheimer’s disease, which also significantly impacts family members. Nobody is immune, as A-list actor Chris Hemsworth discovered when his own father was recently diagnosed. The revelation inspired Hemsworth to embark on a trip down memory lane with his father, which took them to Australia’s Northern Territory. The experience was captured on film for A Road Trip To Remember, a new documentary film from National Geographic.

Director Tom Barbor-Might had worked with Hemsworth on the latter’s documentary series, Limitless, also for National Geographic. Each episode of Limitless follows Hemsworth on a unique challenge to push himself to the limits, augmented with interviews with scientific experts on such practices as fasting, extreme temperatures, brain-boosting, and regulating one’s stress response. Barbor-Might directed the season 1 finale, “Acceptance,” which was very different in tone, dealing with the inevitability of death and the need to confront one’s own mortality.

“It was really interesting to see Chris in that more intimate personal space, and he was great at it,” Barbor-Might told Ars. “He was charming, emotional, and vulnerable, and it was really moving. It felt like there was more work to be done there.” When Craig Hemsworth received his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to explore that personal element further.

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Astronomical events such as eclipses were central to Maya culture, reflected in the care the Maya took to keep accurate calendars to aid in celestial predictions. Among the few surviving Maya texts is the so-called Dresden Codex, which includes a table of eclipses. Researchers have concluded that this table was repurposed from earlier lunar month tables, rather than being created solely for eclipse prediction, according to a paper published in the journal Science Advances. They also figured out the mechanism by which the Maya ensured that table would be accurate over a very long time period.

The Maya used three primary calendars: a count of days, known as the Long Count; a 260-day astrological calendar called the Tzolk’in; and a 356-day year called the Haab’. Previous scholars have speculated on how awe-inspiring solar or lunar eclipses must have seemed to the Maya, but our understanding of their astronomical knowledge is limited. Most Maya books were burned by Spanish conquistadors and Catholic priests. Only four hieroglyphic codices survive: the Dresden Codex, the Madrid Codex, the Paris Codex, and the Grolier Codex.

The Dresden Codex dates back to the 11th or 12th century and likely originated near Chichen Itza. It can be folded accordion-style and is 12 feet long in its unfolded state. The text was deciphered in the early 20th century and describes local history as well as astronomical lunar and Venus tables.

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Not everyone appreciates the artistry of Jackson Pollock’s famous drip paintings, with some dismissing them as something any child could create. While Pollock’s work is undeniably more sophisticated than that, it turns out that when one looks at splatter paintings made by adults and young children through a fractal lens and compares them to those of Pollock himself, the children’s work does bear a closer resemblance to Pollock’s than those of the adults. This might be due to the artist’s physiology, namely a certain clumsiness with regard to balance, according to a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Physics.

Co-author Richard Taylor, a physicist at the University of Oregon, first found evidence of fractal patterns in Pollock’s seemingly random drip patterns in 2001. As previously reported, his original hypothesis drew considerable controversy, both from art historians and a few fellow physicists. In a 2006 paper published in Nature, Case University physicists Katherine Jones-Smith and Harsh Mathur claimed Taylor’s work was “seriously flawed” and “lacked the range of scales needed to be considered fractal.” (To prove the point, Jones-Smith created her own version of a fractal painting using Taylor’s criteria in about five minutes with Photoshop.)

Taylor was particularly criticized for his attempt to use fractal analysis as the basis for an authentication tool to distinguish genuine Pollocks from reproductions or forgeries. He concedes that much of that criticism was valid at the time. But as vindication, he points to a machine learning-based study in 2015 relying on fractal dimension and other factors that achieved a 93 percent accuracy rate distinguishing between genuine Pollocks and non-Pollocks. Taylor built on that work for a 2024 paper reporting 99 percent accuracy.

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