The age of discovery

The Long News: stories that might still matter fifty, or a hundred, or ten thousand years from now.

We may have Google-mapped every last nook and cranny of our planet, but we’re still finding ways to push back the limits of what we know. A few recent discoveries:

1. Could Mars have sustained life? New images show evidence of ancient Martian lake

2. Further into outer space: Black hole is most massive known

3. Closer to home: Sub explores ocean’s deepest trench

4. Pushing back our understanding of our own history (it seems the gatherers, not the hunters, invented agriculture): Food storage began well before farming

5. The invention of food storage on a smaller scale: Chinese pottery may be earliest discovered

6. And this story (found by Will Hill) of a species almost as successful as we are: Ant mega-colony takes over world

We invite you to submit Long News story suggestions here.

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What is the long now?

The Long Now Foundation is a nonprofit established in 01996 to foster long-term thinking. Our work encourages imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now.

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