Sickening Shipwreck Find: 5 Most Incredible Discoveries

A new Earth relative and new insights into Alzheimer's make the list:

• NASA Finds Earth's 'Cousin': NASA has discovered a planet it calls an "older, bigger cousin to Earth." Kepler-452b is about one and a half times the size of Earth and orbits a star at a distance similar to the one between our planet and the sun. Astronomers would love to find out if it's habitable for life, but there's one problem.
• Researchers Make Remarkable Koran Discovery: Pieces of what could be the oldest Koran known have been rediscovered in a library at the UK's University of Birmingham. The individual who transcribed the revelations was likely alive at the time of the Prophet Muhammad—and maybe even heard him preach.

• Women May Be More Vulnerable to Alzheimer's: About two-thirds of Alzheimer's patients in the US are women, and conventional wisdom has long explained away that stat with another: Women live longer. Now, though, three new studies suggest that women's brains are actually more vulnerable to the disease. And one of those studies should be of interest to those having major surgery.
• Stranded Explorers Became More Than Cannibals: Scientists have learned that a group of British Navy shipmen stranded in the Canadian Arctic in the mid-1840s didn't just cut the flesh off their fellow crewmen's bones to survive—they also had to resort to "end-stage" cannibalism, which involved even more desperate measures. The explanation of the fate of those who traveled on the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror is pretty gruesome.
• Women Don't Really Care About Penis Size: We're just the messenger, but researchers who conducted a study entitled "What Is a Good Looking Penis?" found that among the 105 women they surveyed about eight characteristics, length and girth were down at the bottom of the list. The position and shape of the urethral opening were deemed least important. Here's what made the No. 1 spot.

Click to read about more discoveries, including one that explains the "dad bod." (More discoveries stories.)