Ancient Brain Surgery, 3D Heart, Supermassive Black Hole

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6 • 963 Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2023

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today you’ll learn about how archaeologists have found evidence of brain surgery from the Bronze era in the Middle East, how 3D-printed hearts are becoming closer to a reality than ever before, and the recent discovery of how a black hole is eating a dust cloud in space.

Ancient Brain Surgery

“Archaeologists uncover early evidence of brain surgery in Ancient Near East” by Brown University
- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/02/230222141115.htm
“Cranial trephination and infectious disease in the Eastern Mediterranean: The evidence from two elite brothers from Late Bronze Megiddo, Israel” by Rachel Kalisher et al.
- https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0281020
“Ancient Legacy of Cranial Surgery” by Mohammad Ghannaee Arani, Esmaeil Fakharian, and Fahimeh Sarbandi
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3876527/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20French%20physician,mentally%20ill%20people%20(4).
“Clues to Bronze Age cranial surgery revealed in ancient bones” by Ari Daniel
- https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/02/22/1158721573/clues-to-bronze-age-cranial-surgery-revealed-in-ancient-bones
“Curiosities of medical history: Trepanation” by Maria Cohut
- https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326281

3D Heart

“Custom, 3D-printed heart replicas look and pump just like the real thing” by Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/02/230222141222.htm
“Soft robotic patient-specific hydrodynamic model of aortic stenosis and ventricular remodeling” by LUCA ROSALIA et al.
- https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.ade2184

Supermassive Black Hole

“A mysterious object is being dragged into the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way’s center” by Holly Ober
- https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/X7-debris-cloud-near-supermassive-black-hole
“The Swansong of the Galactic Center Source X7: An Extreme Example of Tidal Evolution near the Supermassive Black Hole” by Anna Ciurlo et al.
- https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/acb344
“A black hole is destroying this object. Scientists are watching its last days.” by Mark Kaufman
- https://mashable.com/article/black-hole-destroying-object-milky-way-galaxy

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery.
0:08.7	Time flies when you're learning super cool stuff.
0:10.8	I'm Nate.
0:11.6	And I'm Callie. If you're dropping in for the first time
0:13.9	welcome to curiosity where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind.
0:18.3	If you're a loyal listener, welcome back. Today you'll learn about how
0:22.2	archaeologists have found evidence of brain surgery from the
0:25.4	Bronze era in the Middle East, how 3D printed hearts are becoming closer to a reality
0:29.8	than ever before, and the recent discovery of how a black hole is eating a dust cloud in space.
0:35.2	Without further ado, let's satisfy some curiosity.
0:38.3	Cal, if you had to try and guess how old brain surgery is, what would you go with?
0:44.0	I mean I feel like it's probably something pretty modern like a few hundred years maybe at best.
0:49.6	Well there's evidence that people from places as far away as South America, Africa, and beyond,
0:54.4	an area we call the ancient near east, have practiced something called Cranial Trefination
1:00.0	for thousands of years.
1:02.0	Now that term sounds scary, but it's just a medical procedure that involves
1:05.6	drilling a hole in the skull. What? So it's much scarier than it sounds.
1:11.6	Especially back then, like just email, oh, imagine.
1:15.0	Anyway, it was done for a number of reasons,
1:17.2	but it's believed that one of the most common reasons
1:19.6	was to alleviate pressure on the brain
1:21.7	after a head injury. Now all that being said
	...

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