Hot-mixed Roman concrete used quicklime “healing” clasts that seal cracks over time, explaining Pompeii’s long‑lasting structures and inspiring tougher, lower‑carbon concretes today.

A construction site dating back nearly 2,000 years to the putative demise of Pompeii in 79 CE has revealed new evidence for the secret behind Ancient Rome's ultra-durable concrete. Last year, from ...

Neglect a modern concrete structure for a few decades and it’ll start to fall apart – and yet, structures built by the ancient Romans are still standing strong after 2,000 years. Now, engineers have ...

Roman concrete has shrugged off two millennia of earthquakes, wars, and weather that would pulverize most modern structures in a fraction of the time. The surprising reason is not mystical at all, but ...

Rome’s Pantheon stands defiant 2,000 years after it was built, its marble floors sheltered under the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome. For decades, researchers have probed samples from Roman ...

Concrete is an incredibly useful and versatile building material on which not only today’s societies, but also the ancient Roman Empire was built. To this day Roman concrete structures can be found in ...

Katherine Martinko is an expert in sustainable living. She holds a degree in English Literature and History from the University of Toronto. There is the famous scene in Monty Python's "Life of Brian" ...

When excavators stepped into a half-finished living room in Pompeii, they were not just walking into a frozen renovation, they were entering a 2,000‑year‑old construction workshop that still held its ...

Ancient Roman concrete is known as some of the strongest in history, and a new study finally explains why. MIT researchers studied the self-healing properties of the concrete mix. Extreme temperatures ...

MIT scientists examined concrete samples from the archaeological site of Privernum, Italy (left) and mapped out the ingredients within (right). The red section is a calcium-rich lime clast. Courtesy ...

Scientists have long pondered the durability of ancient Roman concrete structures, which have not only stood the test of time but have held up under extreme conditions, assuming it came down to a ...

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