Narwhals are toothed whales, renowned for their distinctive straight, spiraling tusks, which many people in medieval times believed were the horns of unicorns and thus held magical healing properties. That belief was debunked long ago, but the tusks remain popular souvenirs in Canada and Greenland. And they still hold a fascination for scientists keen to learn more about their unusual structure. A new paper published in the journal Nature Communications reports that rather than one left-oriented spiral, narwhal tusks also have a second internal spiral oriented in the opposite direction.

Inuit legend holds that a woman was dragged into the ocean by a harpoon rope after the weapon had hit a narwhal and was transformed into the animal herself. Her hair, which she'd worn in a twisted knot, became the spiral tusk. The tusk is actually a canine tooth in the left upper jaw of male narwhals, pushing through the lip when the males reach two or three years of age and growing to lengths as long as 1.5 to 2 meters (just under 5 feet to 9 feet 10 inches). Some males may develop two long spiral tusks or, in rare cases, none at all.

There's a general consensus that these tusks most likely evolved via sexual selection as a form of social status. They clearly aren't crucial for survival, since the females usually don't develop the tusk—and if they do, the tusks are much smaller with fewer spirals—and yet typically live longer than the males. But the precise function of the tusk is still a matter of considerable debate.

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Egypt's Theban necropolis holds over 400 tombs, a rich resource for archaeologists eager to learn more about that region's ancient history. A new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology outlines how Egyptian burial trends likely changed over the course of centuries, shifting from individual burials in elaborate coffins to reusing earlier burial sites for later interments, resulting in greater density and the occasional superposition of bodies.

There has been prior research on the reuse of tombs in Thebes. This latest paper focused on a Theban tomb known as 209 in the western necropolis, dating back to the early 25th Dynasty (754–656 BCE) and ultimately abandoned in the Ptolemaic period (305–30 BCE). The original owner was likely a high official of Nubian origin named Nisemro. Over the centuries, the tomb was prone to repeated flash flooding due to its location within an active drainage channel of the Wadi Hatasun, so it's a complex site, archaeologically speaking.

That made it ideal for what the authors term an "integrated archaeothanatological approach," incorporating collected data on body position, coffin use, superpositions of remains, and stratigraphic relationships with osteological analysis in order to reconstruct the chronological sequence of the burials. They focused on a site known as Side Chamber 3, one of the main secondary areas of the tomb that was largely undisrupted.

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It was a busy first day at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, in Anaheim, California, with Marvel Studios releasing the first trailer for VisionQuest. We also got the first teaser for Ahsoka S2; the public release of the Avengers: Doomsday special footage featured last month for attendees only at San Diego Comic-Con; a special sneak peek (for attendees only) for Star Wars: Starfighter; casting news for the MCU's X-Men movie; and a trailer for an animated special, LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian, coming to Disney+ next month.

(Some spoilers below. One MAJOR spoiler for Spider-Man: Brand New Day; we'll give you a heads-up when we get there.)

VisionQuest

Marvel's streaming TV portfolio has kind of been all over the place: a handful of hits, a few misses, and a bunch of middling offerings. One of the standout hits was WandaVision, followed by an excellent sequel (of sorts), Agatha All Along. VisionQuest will complete the trilogy. Yes, Vision (Paul Bettany) died in Infinity War, but WandaVision resurrected an all-white version whose memories were restored in the finale. We finally get to learn what happened afterward.

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There is a lot of excitement and some trepidation among The X-Files fans about Ryan Coogler's reboot for Hulu, currently in production. While we're waiting, Hulu just released Chris Carter's revamped (and R-rated) director's cut of the 2008 standalone spinoff film The X-Files: I Want to Believe, distinguishable from its predecessor with a slightly different title: The X-Files: I Want to Believe–Vrach Frankenshteyn.

(Minor spoilers below but no major reveals.)

I Want to Believe received mixed reviews at its release and didn’t exactly light up the box office, but it still grossed $68 million against its $30 million budget. By 2015, the project led to the return of The X-Files as a limited-run TV series, with the six-episode season 10 debuting in 2016. Mulder and Scully were reunited 14 years after the events of season 9 as the FBI reopened the X-Files under Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi). The response was strong enough to warrant a follow-up ten-episode season in 2018, focusing on Mulder and Scully’s search for their missing son, William.

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Physicists with the Beijing Spectrometer III (BES III) experiment have uncovered convincing new evidence of the existence of so-called glueballs, an elusive composite particle made entirely of gluons predicted by quantum theory. The results appeared in a preprint posted to arXiv last month and were also presented last week at the International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP).

All the stuff we see around us is made up of quarks held together by gluons (carriers of the nuclear strong force) to form protons and neutrons, which comprise the core of every single atom. The Higgs boson, discovered in 2012 after decades of searching, was widely touted as the final missing piece of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. But there are still plenty of unanswered questions, including whether or not glueballs really exist. They should, if the Standard Model is correct; they're a direct prediction of quantum chromodynamics, i.e., the theory of the strong nuclear force. There should even be several kinds of glueballs.

As Matthew Francis wrote for Ars in 2015:

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In 2018, 20,000 Google employees worldwide made headlines when they staged a walkout to protest how the company had handled sexual misconduct allegations against key corporate executives, among other grievances. One of the organizers was Claire Stapleton, a communications specialist whose distinctive voice and ability to channel the corporate ethos had once earned her the internal moniker "Bard of Google."

Six months later, a disillusioned Stapleton resigned, claiming she had been demoted during the most recent restructuring as retaliation for helping to spearhead the walkout. The story of how she went from enthusiastic cheerleader to proactive dissident, and the many lessons she learned along the way, are featured in her new book, Don't Be Evil: Bad Bosses, Fake Promises, and My Escape from Big Tech—A Biting Memoir of Twelve Years Inside Google.

Stapleton didn't set out to be a rabble-rouser. When she joined Google out of college in 2007, it was like "getting the golden ticket in Willy Wonka," she told Ars. Awareness of her good fortune offset any initial uneasiness or skepticism, although Stapleton was sufficiently independent-minded not to move into what was then Google's new corporate housing development in Mountain View, California. Stapleton was very good at her job, and she quickly moved up the ranks, playing a key role in shaping the company's public image.

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Any dog owner would tell you that their canine companions are attuned to their humans' emotional state and respond accordingly. Scientists have performed fMRI scans on dogs and identified a specific brain region that processes happy human facial expresses, like a smile, according to a new paper published in the journal iScience. They also found that dogs can tell the difference between negative facial expressions, specifically anger, sadness, and fear.

“Humans are really good at picking up small details on the face, and so are dogs,” said co-author Raúl Hernández-Pérez of the University of Vienna. “This makes dogs very interesting. By studying their brains, we can understand what adaptations have developed to support their remarkable social and emotional understanding of humans.”

Prior behavioral studies have shown that dogs are sensitive to emotion in human faces. Dogs will, for example, choose a box their human has identified with a happy expression over one the human treats with fear or disgust. Past fMRI studies found that an area in the canine left temporal cortex showed a stronger response to human faces compared to dog faces, as well as a greater response in the caudate, hippocampus, and amygdala to human faces showing emotion versus neutral faces.

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Snails are well-known for their mucus. The slime is highly valued as an anti-inflammatory and anti-aging ingredient in certain skin care products, and snails can secrete different kinds of mucus with properties tailored to specific functions. A team of German scientists has determined a recipe for how snails achieve that so-called tunability: Collagen and calcium work in tandem to achieve the varying mechanical properties, according to a new paper in the journal Science.

Snail mucus is mostly water; it's the mucins (glycoproteins) and complex carbohydrates that give it that slimy, viscous texture. In addition to cosmetics, the mucus holds great potential for drug delivery. In 2020, scientists found that combining snail slime from a common garden snail with gold nanoparticles helped accelerate wound healing and exhibited anti-inflammatory properties in mice. Most relevant to this latest paper is a 2023 study on garden snail slime that identified three distinct types of secreted mucus: a hydrating version to protect its skin, one that acts as an adhesive glue, and a third that serves as a lubricant so the snail can more easily glide across a surface.

The team focused their research efforts on the grove snail/lemon snail (Cepaea nemoralis), which they deemed well-suited as subjects because the snails secrete five different kinds of mucus with distinct functions. As with the garden snails, there is one that acts as a lubricant to help with locomotion and an adhesive mucus to help the snail stick to various surfaces. Then there's a mucus layer known as the epiphragm that the snail secretes when it hibernates in winter, which contains calcite and effectively seals the shell to protect the snail from predators and harsh environmental conditions.

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The parasitic fungi in the Cordyceps genus are a favorite subject of nature documentaries. They've also infiltrated popular culture via the zombie-apocalypse video game The Last of Us (2013) and its TV adaptation, in which a parasitic fungus mutates to infect humans. Scientists are keen to study Cordyceps to learn more about the origins and intricate mechanisms underlying these pathogen-based diseases.

The latest finding: DNA analysis revealed the same fungus in both parasitized insects and surrounding mosses, according to a paper published in the journal IMA Fungus. (Yes, really.) This suggests a second life stage during which the fungus lives inside the moss, possibly an evolutionary adaptation to survive when insect hosts may be scarce. It could also explain why the host species seems to prefer biting into mosses during their final death throes.

As we've previously reported, there are more than 400 different species of Cordyceps fungi, each targeting a particular insect species, like ants, dragonflies, cockroaches, aphids, or beetles. The spores attach to the target insect, such as a carpenter ant, and germinate, spreading through the host’s body via long tendrils called mycelia. Cordyceps essentially turns its host into a zombie slave, compelling the ant to climb to the top of the nearest plant and clamp its tiny jaws in a death grip around a leaf or twig.

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Over the past few years, it has become a rather rare treat when I end up genuinely, unequivocally enjoying the latest superhero film. Mostly I find them to be middling entertainment, sometimes a bit dull—and for The Eternals, nearly unwatchable—with the notable exception of 2024's Deadpool & Wolverine and last year's Thunderbolts*.

Add Spider-Man: Brand New Day to that list of exceptions. Tom Holland's latest outing as the titular web-slinger reminds us that superhero movies can still be very, very good—as much about well-drawn characters with interesting developmental arcs and well-timed emotional beats as CGI-filled action extravaganzas. There's plenty of the latter in Brand New Day, of course, but it's the grounded humanity at its heart that makes director Destin Daniel Cretton's film work so well.

(Spoilers below but no major reveals until after the gallery. We'll give you a heads up when we get there)

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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. So every month, we highlight a handful of the best stories that nearly slipped through the cracks. July’s list includes outfitting cyborg cockroaches with a tiny diving suit for navigating flooded terrain; confirmation that a Medici duke died of malaria, not poisoning; the best evidence to date that Betelgeuse is orbited by a companion star; and evidence that some ancient Egyptian princesses were skilled archers.

Sacrificial Incan boy died of blunt force trauma

Credit: Administrative Archive, Regional Museum of Iquique–CORMUDESI

It's known that the Incas practiced a human sacrifice ritual known as Capachoca, in which children were offered to the mountains and believed to become divine themselves, serving as intermediaries with the gods. This often involved pilgrimages to the remote sacrificial sites, with colonial accounts describing strangulation, asphyxiation, and blunt force trauma as the most common methods of sacrifice. Archaeologists have reanalyzed the remains of one such victim and concluded the boy died from blunt force trauma, rather than freezing to death as previously believed. They described their findings in a paper published in the journal Science Advances.

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Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has been a lightning rod for controversy ever since the first casting and design reveals, igniting afresh with each new trailer. The film has garnered plenty of well-deserved accolades (and earnings) since its release, and yet somehow the debates rage on between classicists and the general public alike—all this over an adaptation of an epic poem that's been around since roughly the 8th century BCE.

My take: the IMAX scale might be epic, but Nolan gives the story an intimate feel, weaving a captivating, nearly three-hour cinematic spell. While the magic slowly starts to dissipate once one leaves the theater, the powerful imagery will resonate for days. And the film gave me, personally, a fresh perspective on the central character of Odysseus.

(Spoilers below.)

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