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Science news this week: A lost Biblical tree and a memory crystal that could 'survive to the end of the universe'

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From record-breaking stays in space to a "knife-wielding orca," it has been a busy week in the world of Science news. But the story that has most captured our imagination is that of what Earth could look like 8 billion years into the future. The exoplanet KMT-2020-BLG-0414, located 4,000 light-years from ours, is a rocky world that orbits a white dwarf — a hot Earth-size core from a sun that has exhausted all its nuclear fuel, just as Earth's sun will in billions of years.

However, before the sun shrinks to this diminutive size, it will expand into a red giant, which threatens to swallow Earth alongside Mercury and Venus. If our planet survives, then we may well resemble KMT-2020-BLG-0414. Whether humanity will be there to see it …

Lost Biblical tree resurrected from mystery seed

A collage of two pictures showing a small tree standing in a pot in a greenhouse.

Scientists have grown an ancient seed from a cave in the Judean Desert into a tree. (Image credit: Dr. Sarah Sallon)

For 14 years, researchers have been growing a tree from an ancient seed that archaeologists excavated from a Judean Desert cave in the late 1980s. Now that the specimen stands at around 10 feet (3 meters) tall, the scientists believe that the tree grown from this 1,000 year old seed could belong to a long-lost lineage mentioned in the Bible.

The seed of the tree, dubbed "Sheba," dates back to somewhere between A.D. 993 and 1202, and the researchers believe that the fully-grown specimen could be the source of Biblical "tsori" — a resinous extract associated with healing in Genesis, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

"The identity of Biblical 'tsori' (translated in English as 'balm') has long been open to debate," the researchers wrote in the study. Now, having revived Sheba, the team thinks it has finally unraveled its mystery of this ancient plant.

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