Early humans used ochre and traded tools amid turbulent times in Africa 300,000 years ago

As the earth shook and the climate swung between extremes, early humans in East Africa underwent a radical shift in cultural behaviour. This happens to be around the time anatomically modern Homo sapiens appear in the fossil record.

Jupiter: deep jet streams, dense liquid core — and cyclone mystery

Below whirling jet streams, 3,000 kilometres deep, lies a dense, rotating core of liquid hydrogen and helium.  Under such crushing pressures, atoms are torn apart, and the fluid core acts like a solid mass.  But the new data also toss up a mystery of their own: what's causing the strangely symmetrical, stable pattern of cyclones at Jupiter's poles?

Signals from the first stars in the universe detected

Astronomers have detected a signal from the first stars as they appeared and illuminated the universe, in observations that have been hailed as “revolutionary”.  The faint radio signals suggest the universe was lifted out of total darkness 180m years after the big bang in a momentous transition known as the cosmic dawn. The faint imprint left by the glow of the earliest stars also appears to contain new and unexpected evidence about the existence and nature of dark matter which, if confirmed by independent observatories, would mark a second major breakthrough.