Science Special News

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Fossils of new dinosaur found in Brazil

Brazilian paleontologists have discovered a new giant dinosaur species based on fossilized fragments of the herbivorous reptile that lived 80 million years ago. The Maxakalisaurus topai, of the Titanosauria group, was 13 meters (yards) long and weighed about nine tons.It had a large body, long tail and neck with a relatively small head. Some of the bones found had the marks of teeth on them, which led scientists to believe that the specimen was devoured by carnivorous dinosaurs after its death.The fossils date back to the Late Cretaceous period. They were found during excavations between 1998 and 2002 next to a highway in a place called Serra da Boa Vista in central-southern Minas Gerais state. It then took some time for the scientists to categorize the species and reconstruct the skeleton.The name of the species, Maxakalisaurus topai, derives from an Indian tribe, Maxakali, which lives in the area. Topa is a divinity that the tribe worships. It is a custom in Brazil to give native Indian names to paleontological finds.The find is extremely important as Maxakalisaurus topai is closely related to a highly evolved group of dinosaurs, called the Saltasaurinae, researcher Alexander Kellner said on Monday after presenting a reconstructed skeleton of the reptile in the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro .

The Saltasaurinae lived 70 million years ago and the fossils have only been found in Argentina."Among its specific traits are some peculiarities that we found in the vertebrae, especially a protuberating sacral vertebra ... It also has teeth with carinae (ridges), which we think served to better process the food," Kellner said.Dinosaurs from the Titanosauria group were the main herbivorous dinosaurs of the ancient super-continent known as Gondwana, which grouped Australia, India, Africa, South America and Antarctica some 200 million years ago.

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Vatican exorcist: Hitler, Stalin 'possessed'

Adolf Hitler and Russian leader Stalin were possessed by the Devil, the Vatican's chief exorcist has claimed. Father Gabriele Amorth who is Pope Benedict XVI's 'caster out of demons' made his comments during an interview with Vatican Radio. Father Amorth said: "Of course the Devil exists and he can not only possess a single person but also groups and entire populations. "I am convinced that the Nazis were all possessed. All you have to do is think about what Hitler - and Stalin did. Almost certainly they were possessed by the Devil. "You can tell by their behaviour and their actions, from the horrors they committed and the atrocities that were committed on their orders. That's why we need to defend society from demons." According to secret Vatican documents recently released wartime pontiff Pope Pius XII attempted a "long distance" exorcism of Hitler which failed to have any effect. Father Amorth said: "It's very rare that praying and attempting to carry out an exorcism from distance works.

"Of course you can pray for someone from a distance but in this case it would not have any effect. "One of the key requirements for an exorcism is to be present in front of the possessed person and that person also has to be consenting and willing. "Therefore trying to carry out an exorcism on someone who is not present, or consenting and willing would prove very difficult.

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Plan to store blueprints on the Moon

On 21 July 1969, we made one giant leap. Man walked on the moon, and, as one, America and the world rejoiced. But, since then, what purpose the moon? We know we can get there and what it looks like, but short of practising our long irons on the most expensive golf range in the galaxy, why would we want to go back? William Burrows knows why: to save mankind. Burrows is the spokesman for the elegantly named Alliance to Rescue Civilization (ARC), a body of American scientists and thinkers who think the moon is humanity's ultimate insurance policy. For the ARC, it represents a chance to save a back-up of the blueprint for life on Earth and, in the event of disaster, a few people, too. But is he for real, or is he just another science-fiction nutter?"Well, I can't vouch for that," says Burrows at his research centre in Stamford, Connecticut. "In fact, at an airforce base in Omaha, someone asked me whether I wrote fiction or non-fiction. I said, 'That depends on who you ask.'"Despite this self-deprecating manner, Burrows is something of an authority on the subject.

Now professor of journalism and mass communication at New York University, Burrows's early training was as an aviation and space reporter for The New York Times. From there, he developed into one of the country's leading space writers. In 1986, his book Deep Black caused a sensation when it exposed America's spy satellite programme. And, in 1999, his history of the first space age, This New Ocean, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, and has since become the subject's standard work.

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3000-yr-old "pyramid" discovered in China

Chinese archaeologists have discovered a group of ancient tombs shaped like pyramids, dating back at least 3,000 years, in Jiaohe City of northeast China's Jilin Province. The tombs, covering an area of 500,000 square meters (1,000 meters long and 500 meters wide), were found after water erosion exposed part of a mountain, revealing two of the tombs. Six smaller tombs had eroded away leaving no indications of their original scale and appearance, but the biggest tomb, located on the south side of the mountain, could clearly be discerned as a pyramid shape with three layers from bottom to top. The pyramid's square bottom is about 50 meters long and 30 meters wide, about the size of a basketball court, with an oval platform on the top, about 15 meters long and 10 meters wide. The tomb was made of stone and earth dug out from the hill. A stone coffin, surrounded by four screen boards and covered by a granite top, was placed on the top platform. The coffin appeared to belong to the king of an early tribe based on the dimensions of the site, according to experts with the Jiaohe Archaeological Research Institute.

The tombs are part of the Xituanshan cultural ruins site, which dates back 3,000 years to China's Bronze Age period. The ruins were excavated in Jilin in 1950. A lot of ancient hunting and domestic tools, including a stone knife and axe, as well as bronzeware and earthenware, have been unearthed from the stone coffin and other six smaller graves. The discovery will provide valuable clues on study of ancient funeral customs and the tomb structure and culture of ethnic groups in the area.

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Original neanderthal found 150 years ago

It was the early part of August 1856 when two workers at a limestone quarry found strange-looking bones in a cave they were digging in the Neander Valley east of Dusseldorf. Thinking the bones belonged to a bear, the quarrymen showed them to a local amateur naturalist, Johann Carl Fuhlrott, who identified them as human and very old. Fuhlrott believed the 16 bone fragments he examined represented the remnants of an ancient human race, different from contemporary humans. But this view was not immediately accepted as it contradicted literal interpretations of the Bible and came before Charles Darwin's work about evolution was published. It took some years before the Neanderthal man gained acceptance as a species of the homo genus that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia. The first proto-Neanderthal traits appeared in Europe as early as 350,000 years ago, by 130,000 years ago full blown Neanderthal characteristics had appeared and by 50,000 years ago Neanderthals disappeared from Europe, although they continued in Asia to 30,000 years ago.

More than 300 examples of homo neanderthalensis have been found in different parts of Europe and the Middle East since the original discovery. But the bones found in the Neander Valley remains to this day the most popular and best researched prehistoric man in the world. "The Neanderthals were much further developed than we originally believed," according to Frankfurt-based palaeo-biologist Friedeman Schrenk.

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Big Bang fails intergalactic shadow test

The apparent absence of shadows where shadows were expected to be is raising new questions about the faint glow of microwave radiation once hailed as proof that the universe was created by a "Big Bang." In a finding sure to cause controversy, scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) found a lack of evidence of shadows from "nearby" clusters of galaxies using new, highly accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background. A team of UAH scientists led by Dr. Richard Lieu, a professor of physics, used data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to scan the cosmic microwave background for shadows caused by 31 clusters of galaxies. "These shadows are a well-known thing that has been predicted for years," said Lieu. "This is the only direct method of determining the distance to the origin of the cosmic microwave background. Up to now, all the evidence that it originated from as far back in time as the Big Bang fireball has been circumstantial. "If you see a shadow, however, it means the radiation comes from behind the cluster. If you don't see a shadow, then you have something of a problem. Among the 31 clusters that we studied, some show a shadow effect and others do not." Other groups have previously reported seeing this type of shadows in the microwave background.

Those studies, however, did not use data from WMAP, which was designed and built specifically to study the cosmic microwave background. If the standard Big Bang theory of the universe is accurate and the background microwave radiation came to Earth from the furthest edges of the universe, then massive X-ray emitting clusters of galaxies nearest our own Milky Way galaxy should all cast shadows on the microwave background. These findings are scheduled to be published in the Sept. 1, 2006, edition of the Astrophysical Journal. Taken together, the data shows a shadow effect about one-fourth of what was predicted - an amount roughly equal in strength to natural variations previously seen in the microwave background across the entire sky. "Either it (the microwave background) isn't coming from behind the clusters, which means the Big Bang is blown away, or ... there is something else going on," said Lieu. "One possibility is to say the clusters themselves are microwave emitting sources, either from an embedded point source or from a halo of microwave-emitting material that is part of the cluster environment.

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Da Vinci Code author on new exorcism book

Dan Brown, author of "The Da Vinci Code" is writing a book about exorcism with the apparent help of a former Roman Catholic archbishop from Zambia. Emmanuel Milingo, who was recalled to the Vatican after marrying a South Korean woman, reportedly met with representatives of Brown about working with him on a new novel, The Times of Zambia reported Wednesday. Brown and Milingo plan to meet in late September in England to discuss the project. Besides working with Brown on the new novel, Milingo is also said to have reached an agreement to collaborate with Sony Pictures on the production of a film based on Brown's earlier novel entitled "Angels and Demons." The Vatican has been worried about Milingo's since he disappeared from his residence outside Rome in June of this year. A month later he turned up in Washington, publicly calling for the Catholic Church to permit married clergy.

Milingo's apparent interest in Brown, whose novel cast aspersions on Catholicism, raises the specter of yet more trouble for the Vatican, as the former archbishop has already said publicly that the Roman Catholic Church has devil worshipers in it. Five years ago Milingo stunned the religious world by announcing his embrace of the Unification Church, led by the self-proclaimed Korean messiah, Sun Myung Moon, and his decision to marry a woman selected for him by Moon. Shortly after that, however, Pope John Paul II persuaded Milingo to recant and move to Rome where he lived quietly, without a pastoral assignment. Since his recent Washington appearance, Milingo has returned to his South Korean bride, and continued to push for a married clergy.

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Physics proves horror movies get it wrong

Who needs ghostbusters when you've got Newton, says a scientist who has used physics and maths to poke holes in the way Hollywood depicts ghosts and vampires. In a paper, published recently on the physics website arXiv, theoretical physicist Professor Costas Efthimiou of the University of Central Florida shows that when it comes to things supernatural, the figures just don't add up.For instance, the ability to walk through walls is a common talent of celluloid ghosts.But Newton's laws of physics suggest that if a ghost can walk it shouldn't be able to pass through walls, say Efthimiou and Cornell University postgraduate student Sohan Gandhi.Newton says a body at rest will remain at rest until it's acted on by an external force and for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.So in order to walk, we apply a backward force on the floor with our feet, propelling the feet up and us forwards.But if a ghost can walk through walls, it must be "material-less", the authors argue, and incapable of exerting force.By the same token, a ghost that can walk through walls should also sink through the floor, and a ghost that can walk should be bouncing off the walls it tries to pass through."The depiction of ghosts walking contradicts the precept that ghosts are material-less," they write.Efthimiou and Gandhi also use the mathematical principle of geometric progression to rule out the existence of vampires.

They argue it would take just two and a half years for vampires to wipe out the entire human race from the day the first one appeared, based on the myth that vampires turn their victims into other vampires by sucking their blood.If vampires feed once a month, the great grandaddy of all vampires would have killed one human and produced one vampire in the first month. So in total there would be two vampires and one less human, or a tally of vampires 2, humans -1.By the next month, the 2 vampires would kill 2 humans, and so on. After n months there would be 2 x 2 x 2 ... x 2 = 2n, or a geometric progression with ratio 2."The vampire population increases geometrically and the human population decreases geometrically," they say.Using the principle of reductio ad absurdum, they conclude that vampires can't exist as their existence contradicts the existence of humans.

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The day the Earth fell over

Submitted by Sharm: Earth might have spun on its side to keep its balance in the distant past, and could do so again, scientists reported today. Alaska was suddenly at the equator, the thinking goes. Scientists already know that the North Pole wanders over time. But a theory known as true polar wander suggests that if a very heavy object, like an oversized volcano forms far from the equator, the force of the planet's rotation would pull the object away from the axis the Earth spins around. Should a mass such as the very heavy volcano become unbalanced, Earth would tilt and rotate itself until the extra weight moves somewhere near the equator.Analyzed samples of ancient sediments found in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard show that such an event may have indeed happened in the past.

"The sediments we have recovered from Norway offer the first good evidence that a true polar wander event happened about 800 million years ago," said Adam Maloof, an assistant professor of geosciences at Princeton University. "If we can find good corroborating evidence from other parts of the world as well, we will have a very good idea that our planet is capable of this sort of dramatic change."

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DNA test confirms 'beast' is dog

DNA tests have removed the veil of mystery from a creature that created a media and Internet sensation. It was just a dog -- 100 percent dog, according to the Sun Journal.The newspaper ordered up tests to end the speculation by readers who thought the creature may have been a Tasmanian devil, a dingo, a wolf, or coyote. Some of the more outlandish theories involve mutations and extraterrestrials.Dr. Yuri Melekovets, the laboratory director at HealthGene Corp. in Toronto, said he's certain the creature was just a dog.The animal, which was hit by a car while chasing a cat, was photographed by a resident. People in Turner speculated that it had been a mystery creature that killed pets and screamed at night , terrorizing residents.

It had a short snout, small ears, and blue eyes.State wildlife biologists and local animal control officers declined to go to Turner to examine the remains of the animal.Without any official findings, the creature obtained near-mythical status as word spread in the media and on the Internet. The newspaper obtained a paw from the animal's remains and ordered up its own tests.