What did students learn about the gods in ancient Babylon?

(Image Credit and Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

New research examining Babylonian clay tablets reveals that religion was woven into scribal education rather than taught as a separate subject. Young students copied long lists of divine names, studied hymns and myths, learned about temples and sacred cities, and explored ideas about how humans related to the divine.

In some cases, their school exercises even became votive offerings deposited in temples.

The surviving tablets offer a rare look at how religious knowledge was passed from one generation of Babylonian scribes to the next — and how traditions surrounding Marduk, Babylon, Ninurta and other gods could differ from one region to another.

The evidence also reveals that Babylonian education was not simply about learning how to write. It helped preserve religious traditions, moral teachings, professional knowledge and cultural identity for centuries.

Read the full story to discover how ancient Babylonian education worked.

🚀 Could Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus make the search for extraterrestrial life easier?

[image credit: Nasa]

New research based on NASA’s Cassini observations suggests something fascinating: as water from Enceladus’ hidden ocean freezes and breaks apart inside the moon’s icy cracks, salts and organic materials can become separated and concentrated into individual ice grains.

That could give future spacecraft a better chance of detecting potential biosignatures if life exists beneath Enceladus’ ice.

And there’s more: a separate laboratory study found that an Earth microorganism capable of producing methane could continue growing under simulated Enceladus-like conditions.

Scientists have not discovered life on Enceladus — but these findings could help researchers understand where and how to look for evidence.

🌌 The search for life beyond Earth just gained another important clue.

"Believe you can and you're halfway there." — Theodore Roosevelt

🧠 Are women really more emotionally intelligent than men?

A new large-scale analysis suggests the answer is far more complicated than the common stereotype.

Researchers examined 1,279 studies involving more than 609,000 people across 76 countries and found that women generally performed better at recognizing and understanding emotions.

But the pattern changes when it comes to emotional regulation: men and boys tended to score higher at managing their own emotions, while women scored higher at managing other people's emotions.

The researchers also found that differences varied depending on how emotional intelligence was measured, where participants lived, their age and whether they were leaders.

The takeaway? Emotional intelligence may be better understood as a set of different skills—not a single ability belonging to one gender.

🧠 Could the brain have a cellular “energy switch” that helps distinguish addictive drugs from natural pleasure?

(The information in this article is strictly for general educational and informational purposes and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or consultation with a doctor.)

A new study published in Nature Neuroscience has identified a mitochondrial mechanism that appears to play a selective role in drug-related dopamine signaling.

Researchers found that opioids and methamphetamine activated a pathway involving the mitochondrial calcium uniporter (MCU) in dopamine-producing nerve terminals.

But natural rewards did not trigger the same mitochondrial response.

When researchers disrupted MCU in mice, drug-induced dopamine responses and addiction-associated behaviors were reduced, while responses to natural rewards were not similarly affected.

The discovery could give scientists a new direction for studying addiction — one that focuses on the cellular machinery behind drug-related reward rather than simply suppressing dopamine itself.

There is an important limitation: the research was conducted in mice, so it does not yet show that MCU can be targeted safely or effectively to treat addiction in humans.

Still, the findings offer a fascinating look at how mitochondria, cellular energy and the brain's reward system interact.