Cannibalistic Europeans likely ate their dead at funerals 15,000 years ago instead of burying them, study says

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A bone from the Upper Palaeolithic Era engraved with markings associated with ritual cannibalism.
A bone from the Upper Paleolithic Era engraved with markings associated with ritual cannibalism, from London's Natural History Museum

Reuters

SpaceX's mega-rocket has a 'decent chance' of making orbit on its next flight, Musk said. Last time, Starship blew up the launchpad and exploded in mid-air.

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Side by side images show Starship lifting off in a cloud of smoke on April 20, next to a picture of the rocket tumbling out of control and spewing flames before blowing up.
Two images from Starship's first fully integrated launch in April show the rocket taking off then tumbling out of control before blowing up

SpaceX; Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via Getty Images; Insider

Scientists used a laser beam to bend a bolt of lightning for the first time

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Side by side images show lightning seemingly curving away from its path to follow a bright laser beam being shot toward the sky
Two side-by-side pictures of a lightning bolt interacting with a laser. It shows the bolt following the path of the laser on its way to the ground.

Houard, A., Walch, P., Produit, T. et al. Nat. Photon (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-01139-z. CC-BY 4.0

An orca mysteriously died thousands of miles from home after swallowing 7 sea otters whole

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Two otters cling to each other in the ocean.
Otter populations in the Commander Islands have been decreasing in recent years.

Arthur Morris/Getty Images

The Biden administration is negotiating lower prices for 10 medications with drug manufacturers

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President Joe Biden
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during an event to discuss Social Security and Medicare held at the University of Tampa on February 09, 2023 in Tampa, Florida.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Powerball jackpot hit $1.2 billion. Here's why people believe they'll win — even when the odds are 1 in 292 million.

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hand holding powerball lottery ticket
A man displays his Powerball lottery numbers after buying a ticket at a convenience store in Miami, November 2, 2022.

Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo

NASA caught a 1.2 mile-high Martian dust devil on camera and scientists say it's way bigger than whirlwinds on Earth

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dust devil seen in distance on Mars
The dust devil appears as a white-ish moving column in the distance.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mercury is slowly shrinking, and it's giving the planet wrinkles

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A picture shows Mercury colored in shades of yellow and blue to reflect variation in its composition. the planet appears covered in craters and cracks.
A false-color picture of Mercury shows variations in its surface. The image was placed on a grey background.

NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington; Insider

A huge python built its lair in a trailer park and grew 13ft long eating the neighborhood cats

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Reticulated Python
A stock image of a reticulated python. An Oklahoma neighborhood reported half its cats missing after a 13-foot python moved under a nearby mobile home.

Mark Kostich/iStock/Getty Images

In a first-ever for space junk, Dish Network was fined $150,000 for leaving a retired satellite to orbit indefinitely in the wrong place

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space junk debris field earth orbit esa
An illustration of space junk. Satellites and debris are not to scale.

ESA

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