Imagine mounting a scaffold in the atrium of a historic Roman estate. You spy a small trap door in the vaulted ceiling; on inspection the hatch opens into a cavity between the new ceiling and an older one. In the older ceiling is a second trap door …

Imagine setting out for a springtime stroll. Not here on Earth but on some distant planet — call it Novathis-458b — orbiting a distant star. Even light-years from home, you recognize some familiar pleasures: The sun (albeit a different sun) is …

Further studies are needed to determine whether K2-18b, which orbits a star 120 light-years away, is inhabited, or even habitable.

It may not have been the tax-evasion trial of the century — the second century, that is — but it was of such gravity that the defendants faced charges of forgery, fiscal fraud and the sham sale of slaves. Tax dodging is as old as taxation itself, but …

Among the most successful music producers in the 1970s and ’80s, he helped churn out hits for acts like Queen, the Cars, Journey and Foreigner.

Like many feminist artists, she took the body as her subject. But while others were exploring their own bodies, she painted the male anatomy.

A leading sociologist, he explored American society up close — living in a Levittown at one point — to gain insight into issues of race, class, the media and even the Yankees.

Her career at Israel’s national intelligence agency included working undercover before serving as deputy under three directors.

Pope Francis, who rose from modest means in Argentina to become the first Jesuit and Latin American pontiff, who clashed bitterly with traditionalists in his push for a more inclusive Roman Catholic Church, and who spoke out tirelessly for migrants …

His heavily textured paintings brought him renown in the 1980s. In the ’90s, Nick Nolte played a character inspired by him in a Martin Scorsese film.