Human Behavior, features and articles | Educational Science

Dec 20, 2019

The Force of 'Star Wars': The Staying Power of a Sci-Fi Icon Explained

Movie-goers didn't know what was waiting for them when Star Wars first opened in theaters on May 25, 1977. This Western in space showed dogfighting spacecraft, vehicles traveling at hyperspeed, and an array of colorful characters — even aliens — all locked in the classic battle of good and evil....

Feb 7, 2020

Stolen painting reappears after 23 years, in the same gallery where it was taken

A famous painting by Austrian Gustav Klimt had been missing for 23 years. Now, it turns out, the painting was hidden in the walls of the gallery from which it was stolen. The 1917 Klimt, known as Portrait of a Lady, was found missing from the Ricci Oddi modern art...

Mar 31, 2020

20 sci-fi movies and TV shows to binge watch on Netflix right now

Strange things are afoot on the planet Earth. In a series of events that could themselves form the plot of a sci-fi nightmare, we find ourselves in the middle of the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. Residents across the US, like many countries, are being encouraged to work from home and enforce...

Apr 10, 2020

Statue of Liberty blueprints discovered, showing last-minute changes

The Statue of Liberty is famous for her torch-bearing arm, but newly discovered blueprints reveal that this arm was revised to be more slender at the last minute, changing the plans of the French engineer Gustave Eiffel who helped design the statue. Eiffel, of course, is famous for his tower...

Jun 23, 2020

'Time travel' to the 1890s in AI-remastered silent movies that look like HD video

Shot more than a century ago, a scene showing Buffalo Bill as he conducts an interview with an Oglala Lakota leader looks as if it were filmed yesterday. This old film clip was recently remastered using artificial intelligence (AI), and the result lookslike high-definition video. The artist behind this transformation...

Jun 24, 2020

Famous 'immaculate conception' painting is unrecognizable after art restoration failure

A botched restoration has left yet another famous painting unrecognizable. This time, the restoration has left a painting of the Virgin Mary looking more like a kindergartener's lopsided self-portrait. The painting was a copy of The Immaculate Conception of El Escorial, of the Virgin Mary was one of a famous...

Jul 1, 2020

Did Leonardo da Vinci's 'quick eye' help him capture Mona Lisa's fleeting smile?

The famed Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci may have been blessed with the same quick eye that may give top tennis and baseball players an edge. In Leonardo's case, this super-vision may have enabled him to see and capture fleeting moments in his paintings — such as the enigmatic half-smile...

Jul 21, 2020

Picasso painting found hidden beneath his famous 'Still Life'

A hidden drawing by Pablo Picasso has been found beneath one of the artist's abstract paintings, called Still Life. A team from the Art Institute of Chicago was interested in looking more closely at the painting, which is held at the institute, to help understand its complex layers of paint...

Nov 12, 2020

Botched restoration leaves Spanish statue looking like a confused potato head

Is it ... a statue that's melted in the heat? Forky from Toy Story 4? A clay figure crafted by a preschooler? President Donald Trump? In yet another extraordinary restoration-gone-awry, a 20th-century Spanish statue of a smiling woman next to a flock of livestock has turned into a slightly confused-looking...

Nov 23, 2020

Rebuilding Notre Dame will be incredibly hard

Putting out the inferno that tore through the roof of Notre Dame in April 2019 was only the beginning of saving the iconic cathedral. From the precarious spaghetti of burnt scaffolding hanging over the building to the potential for the walls to collapse on themselves, architects and conservation experts had...

Nov 28, 2020

The best Lego sets for alien, sci-fi, space fans and more

Attention, Lego fans! If you love aliens and UFOs, or spaceflight and sci-fi, we've got the perfect sets for you and your kids. From the cutest (or creepiest?) alien minifigures, to alien spaceships, to Star Wars droids and real NASA spacecraft, this gift guide is bursting with fun ... and...

Dec 14, 2020

Longest-exposure photo ever was just discovered. It was made through a beer can.

Eight years and one month ago, a Master of Fine Art student at the University of Hertfordshire fitted a beer can with photographic paper and created a low-tech pinhole camera. She then placed the can on a telescope at the university's Bayfordbury Observatory and eventually forgot about the project. Now,...

Jan 20, 2021

Italian cops recover stolen da Vinci replica no one knew was missing

An important copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous “Salvator Mundi” painting is back in the hands of an Italian museum after being stolen at some point in the last year. No one knew it was missing. Police found the copy, which shows Jesus with his right hand raised in a...

Feb 22, 2021

Australia's oldest rock painting is an anatomically accurate kangaroo

A nearly-life-size depiction of a kangaroo — realistic genitalia included — is the oldest known rock painting in Australia. Scientists recently pinpointed its age to 17,300 years ago with a technique that had never been used on Australian ancient art before: measuring radioactive carbon in wasp nests from rocks near...

Feb 22, 2021

Hidden 'madman' message on 'The Scream' traced back to Munch himself

Written in tiny faint letters on the top-left corner of Edvard Munch's painting The Scream, is a mysterious inscription that reads, Could only have been painted by a madman! Experts have long debated the identity of the inscriber, with some suggesting a dissatisfied vandalizer is the author, while others pointed...