Science Special News

[Rasputin]

Ancient weapons discovered in Syrian ruins

Submitted by Tower of Babel: It was the ancient version of a last stand: Twelve clay bullets lined up and ready to be shot from slings in a desperate attempt to stop fierce invaders who soon would reduce much of the city to rubble. The discovery was made in the ruins of Hamoukar, an ancient settlement in northeastern Syria located just miles from the border with Iraq. Thought to be one of the world's earliest cities and located in northern Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, it is the site of joint excavations by the University of Chicago and the Syrian Department of Antiquities. Excavations have been going on at the site since 1999, but in digs conducted this past fall, researchers uncovered new evidence of the city's end and more clues about how urban life there may have begun. The University of Chicago was to announce the findings Tuesday. The site is so close to Iraq that Clemens Reichel, the American co-director of the expedition, has seen explosions on the other side of the border.

"It's somewhat surreal. We're not living in a vacuum there. We know exactly what's happening across the border," Reichel said. "But working in Syria is like working in the eye of the storm. It's very peaceful to work there. Practically no problems." The site was anything but peaceful in approximately 3,500 B.C. The archaeologists have previously detailed how they believe Hamoukar's independence was ended by a battle that caused its buildings and walls to collapse and burn.

[Rasputin]

Dharma & Greg's Jenna Elfman Expecting a Baby

Mona Lisa death mystery solved

An expert on the “Mona Lisa” says he has ascertained with certainty that the symbol of feminine mystique died on July 15, 1542, and was buried at the convent in central Florence where she spent her final days. Giuseppe Pallanti found a death notice in the archives of a church in Florence that referred to “the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, deceased July 15, 1542, and buried at Sant’Orsola,” the Italian press reported Friday.Born Lisa Gherardini in May 1479, she is thought to have been the second wife of Del Giocondo, a wealthy silk merchant, with whom she had five children.While intrigue has surrounded the identity of the woman in the famous unsigned, undated Leonardo da Vinci painting housed at the Louvre in Paris, Lisa Gherardini is widely accepted to have been the subject.

Sant’Orsola, where she died at age 63, now disused and in ruins, is near the San Lorenzo basilica.“It was in this convent that Mona Lisa placed her youngest daughter Marietta, who later became a nun. And it was there that Lisa, as stipulated in the will of her husband who died four years before her, ended her life,” Pallanti told the daily La Repubblica.Pallanti, author of “Mona Lisa Revealed: The True Identity of Leonardo’s Model,” has spent nearly three decades combing Florence’s archives.

[Rasputin]

Iranians report 'radiant UFO'

Submitted by Mj12 Mason: A UFO omitting a "yellow ray" has been seen across Western Iran, the Fars News Agency claimed in a report recently. "Witnesses told FNA (Fars News Agency) that the object has been observed for more than an hour," the report said, adding: "In a similar incident last Monday, an Unidentified Flying Object was witnessed in the same area and at the same time." According to eye witnesses, "the UFO has been as big as a ball, with a yellow ray and a bright reddish color in the center. They also stated that the object has been flying at a very low altitude." The FNA said Iranian officials declined to comment. The Iranian news outlet also reported a UFO "crashing" last Wednesday, "in Barrez Mounts in the central province of Kerman."

"Deputy Governor General of Kerman province Abulghassem Nasrollahi told FNA that the crash, which was followed by an explosion and a thick spiral of smoke, has caused no casualties or damage to properties," the report said, adding: "He further denied earlier reports that the explosion has been the result of a plane or chopper crash, reminding that all the passing aircrafts have been reported as sound and safe." Iranian authorities were investigating the crash, described by witnesses as an explosion "caused as a result of the crash of a radiant unidentified flying object onto the ground. "

[Rasputin]

Revealing the real Frankensteins

Hidden deep in a Russian forest, and guarded by soldiers with orders to shoot intruders on sight, the medical research laboratories on the outs***ts of Moscow were one of the Soviet Union's best-kept secrets. So the carefully-vetted journalists who were allowed past the forbidding perimeter fence on a cold February morning in 1954 were both apprehensive and curious about what lay ahead. Led to a courtyard outside an austere brick building, they waited in the bright winter sunshine to find out why they had been summoned. For a few minutes, only the sound of birdsong and the rustling of leaves filled the air but then a door slowly opened to reveal experimental surgeon Vladimir Demikhov - accompanied by the strangest looking animal they had ever seen. Blinking unhappily in the daylight as Demikhov paraded it on its lead, this unfortunate beast had been created by grafting the head and upper body of a small puppy on to the head and body of a fully-grown mastiff, to form one grotesque creature with two heads. The visitors watched in horror and fascination as both of the beast's mouths lapped greedily at a bowl of milk proffered by Demikhov's assistants.

Resembling something dreamed up by Mary Shelley's Dr Frankenstein, it seemed literally incredible. But as the Soviet propaganda machine informed the world, this canine curiosity was both very real - and a scientific triumph. As revealed in a National Geographic documentary to be screened later this month, the creation of the two-headed dog was the first step in an astonishing race by Cold War scientists to achieve the seemingly impossible - the first ever human head transplant. In pursuing this medical goal, Vladimir Demikhov - and his American rival, Robert White - may seem to be the epitome of immoral scientists who ignored all ethical considerations in their pursuit of scientific advance. But in their own minds, they were brilliant pioneers prepared to think the unthinkable for the greater good of mankind.

[Rasputin]

Why aliens haven't found us yet

Submitted by Ccleslie: It ranks among the most enduring mysteries of the cosmos. Physicists call it the Fermi paradox after the Italian Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi, who, in 1950, pointed out the glaring conflict between predictions that life was elsewhere in the universe - and the conspicuous lack of aliens who have come to visit. Now a Danish researcher believes he may have solved the paradox. Extra-terrestrials have yet to find us because they haven't had enough time to look. Using a computer simulation of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, Rasmus Bjork, a physicist at the Niels Bohr institute in Copenhagen, proposed that a single civilisation might build eight intergalactic probes and launch them on missions to search for life. Once on their way each probe would send out eight more mini-probes, which would head for the nearest stars and look for habitable planets.

Mr Bjork confined the probes to search only solar systems in what is called the "galactic habitable zone" of the Milky Way, where solar systems are close enough to the centre to have the right elements necessary to form rocky, life-sustaining planets, but are far enough out to avoid being struck by asteroids, seared by stars or frazzled by bursts of radiation. He found that even if the alien ships could hurtle through space at a tenth of the speed of light, or 30,000km a second, - Nasa's current Cassini mission to Saturn is plodding along at 32km a second - it would take 10bn years, roughly half the age of the universe, to explore just 4% of the galaxy. His study is reported in New Scientist today.

[Rasputin]

What will the new year bring ?

The capital of India, New Delhi saw the mass wedding of 30,000 couples assembled together to marry on one of the most astrologically auspicious days of the year on December 13 2006. To maximize the good omens for 2007The whole city has been awash with music festivities and celebrations for several days, and this was even mentioned in the Indian parliament.The downside is that so many people wanted to take their holidays at the same time that many companies’ timetables were badly disrupted.There are said to be 10,000 practicing astrologers in the U.S.A with a clientele of over one million, many of these are politicians, stock exchange annylists and other educated professionals, yet in the west astrology is ridiculed by many in academia.

So while accepting that newspaper horoscopes are not to be taken seriously, in fact they are not even horoscopes they are sun sign solarscopes, and traditionally are written by an in house journalist with time on their hands, and this is the crux of the problem, many of the books and particularly magazines on these subjects are written not by practitioners but by journalists, who know about writing but not the subject matter, and people get turned off by this.Astronomers represent the main body of astrological criticism but just this year a N.A.S.A spokesman said;” the new information coming in from the Mars probe means all the present information we have is now defunct” so even astronomers make mistakes, and this has been a grand bumper year for scientists doctors and astronomers who were caught fudging and faking up research papers, taking bribes, lies and general dishonesty. My weekly postbag contains so much in the way of complaints about fake psychic readings, and a quick browse across the internet shows this is the tip of the iceberg. But we were fooled in other areas too, in 2006, look at how we were tricked into another foreign war on Muslims, while the same government filled up our towns and cities with these same people we were told were so dangerous we had to bomb and burn them in their homes.

A recent report claimed that more people read their horoscope in Britain than read the Bible, so what are people searching for ?The T V news which replaces “real news” with football and sport, it tells us that others are spending more money than we are at the Christmas sales, and to be happy we must spend spend and spend again, and all on borrowed money. Psychologists have a formula for happiness which runs as follows;“Personal chacteristics” e.g. outlook and adaptability, shortened to “P” “E” for existence, health money, friends and “H” for higher order, self esteem ambition and sense of humour.

So are you ready ? P-5 x E=3 x H they tell us can predict our happiness quotient just like an astrologers chart, but this year has brought conflict and argument to psychology also. So what will 2007 bring ? Added together the numbers make a 9, the number of Mars the god of war, Britain is ruled by Mars, of this Shakespeare said “Oh England thou seat of Mars” and this year has the omens of great bloodshed. With its nucleus in April we must be aware that as 9 is the number of man, greed and materialism, so truly did the master say ; “ only the meek will inherit the earth”

[Rasputin]

Mystery deepens over 'feral woman'

When they found her last week, her father said, she was "bare-bones skinny" and shaking, scuttling like a monkey along the ground to snatch up grains of rice, her eyes "red like tigers' eyes". So when the first pictures of Rochom P'ngieng, the woman supposedly lost in the jungle for 18 years, emerged yesterday showing a calm and apparently healthy young woman rather than an emaciated, feral beast, the mystery surrounding her remarkable story deepened.Sal Lou, 45, a policeman from a remote village on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border, told a local newspaper on Thursday that his daughter, who disappeared, aged eight, in 1988 while tending a buffalo herd, had mysteriously re-emerged from the Cambodian jungle. She was naked and unable to speak any intelligible language but unquestionably, he insisted, she was his lost daughter Rochom P'ngieng. Yesterday, however, as further intriguing reports emerged of a mysterious naked man who had been spotted with the woman but ran off when challenged, the family began to close ranks. They have withdrawn permission to take DNA samples to confirm the woman's identity, and police have thrown a cordon around their isolated home, in an effort to keep at bay curious neighbours and the world's media. The family of the woman, who would be 27 if she is indeed their daughter, say they want to be left alone in order to make up for lost time. But Sal Lou's claims are so remarkable that there is little chance that they will be left in peace.

Pen Bonnar, a widely respected human rights campaigner in Cambodia, is due to arrive today in the Oyadao district where the family live, 200 miles from Phnom Penh, to assess the disturbed woman's needs and try to unlock the many puzzles surrounding her story. The remoteness of the village, in the rugged mountain area close to the Vietnamese border, has made disentangling the woman's story all the more difficult. Sal Lou says that he first heard the story last Saturday of a woman who had been captured after a farmer caught her stealing his rice. The naked woman was starving, with wild hair down to her face and a body blackened by dirt. Mr Lou says he travelled to the Rattana***i area where she had been found and was immediately convinced she was his daughter.

[Rasputin]

Conservation for world's weirdest animals

A conservation effort announced today aims to protect some of the world's oddest and most overlooked animal species. The Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) program, led by the Zoological Society of London, focuses on animals that have unique evolutionary histories and face immediate risk of extinction. The project combined existing data on species relatedness and threat status to develop a list of a hundred top animals. In 2007 the project will focus on ten high priority species from that list "with potential for slipping through the gaps without notice," said Samuel Turvey, a project scientist with the zoological society. "Of the top 100 species which we're focusing on, more than 70 percent receive either no conservation attention or extremely limited attention," Turvey said. The highest priority species, the Yangtze River dolphin, may already be extinct, he added. Turvey recently visited China to survey the entire known range of the dolphin, which diverged from all other river dolphins 20 million years ago, and failed to locate any.

"It appears to have died out because there wasn't any conservation action done in time," he said. "For 20 years conservationists recommended things that needed to happen that no one ever acted on," he added. "We need to make sure that what happened to the Yangtze River dolphin never happens to any other species."

[Rasputin]

Does 'Murphy mover' explain pyramids ?

A retired navy man's musings on riding a backyard swing as a young boy gave him the idea for an invention that he says can explain one of histories enduring mysteries - the construction of the great pyramids of Egypt. James Murphy said his Apex Delivery and Lifting System - or Murphy Mover - is more than just an explanation. It's a nearly energy free way of lifting and moving large objects.It doesn't take much power and doesn't need any major outside energy - just gravity.The problem is getting it publicized.He's built small versions of the Murphy Mover, but would like to get a grant to get the funding to build and operate a large scale one.“If you have the most valuable nickel in the world, and if nobody knows about it, it's just worth a nickel” he said.That's the hold up for Murphy's invention, which he has demonstrated and shown to several experts.While no one calls it an unqualified success, no one has laughed it off either.They do want to see some more proof.So does Murphy.He's trying to get a scientific paper on the Murphy Mover published to attract the attention that could lead to a grant to demonstrate his theory and models.

Murphy is looking for someone with an engineering or technical background to help him write an article for publication in a robotics magazine.Murphy came across his idea reminiscing about riding his swing set as a young boy. As he swung higher and higher, the swing set started moving -- frightening to a young boy, but a revelation to an inventor.“I would swing so high that the back legs would come off the ground, then the front legs would come off the ground.”Years later, as he looked back on it, he realized what was happening - gravity acting on his weight made the swing set walk.He mused on that thought and ended up with his invention, the Murphy Mover.

[Rasputin]

When does SETI throw in the towel ?

Seth Shostak: “At what point would you abandon the search?” That’s a question I get relatively frequently from folks who think that SETI may be a quixotic quest, as futile as searching for the Seven Cities of Gold. After all, modern efforts to find signals from extraterrestrial transmitters are now in their fifth decade. Could it be that those of us who still hope to tune in other worlds may be missing some writing on the wall? Some dead-obvious, chiseled text with a simple, if disappointing message: “There are no aliens”?The question seems fair, since SETI’s obvious analogs–the historical voyages of discovery made in the centuries following the Renaissance–were completed in considerably less time than SETI has been beating the cosmic bushes. Columbus spent five weeks finding North America (and he wasn’t even looking). Captain Cook, a true paragon of explorers, and a man who mapped places that Europeans didn’t even know were places, never mounted an expedition that lasted more than three years.But those analogs are false. The South Pacific, for all its watery wastes, is comprehensible in size. Even Cook’s unimpressive Whitby collier, powered by sailcloth, could cross the Pacific in a matter of months, come about, and cross again in a different direction.

His quarry, the islands peppering the ocean like coins scattered onto a living room carpet, signaled their presence by clots of clouds even when the islands themselves were below the horizon.The SETI wilderness is incomparably larger, obviously, and its quarry is cryptic. Even if there are ten thousand transmitting societies nestled in the arms of the Milky Way, we might need to search millions of star systems before we find one. The actual number of star systems that radio SETI experiments have carefully examined is fewer than a thousand.

[Rasputin]

13th century text hides words of Archimedes

The book cost $2 million at auction, but large sections are unreadable. Some of its 348 pages are torn or missing and others are covered with sprawling purple patches of mildew. Sooty edges and water stains indicate a close escape from a fire."This manuscript is, by far, the worst of any manuscript I've ever seen," said William Noel, curator of manuscripts for the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, where it now resides. "It's a book that is on its last legs."The sheepskin parchment originally contained a 10th century Greek text, which was erased by a 13th century scribe who replaced it with prayers. Seven hundred years later, a forger painted gilded pictures of the Evangelists on top of the faded words.Underneath it all, however, is an exceptional treasure — the oldest surviving copy of works by the ancient Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes of Syracuse, who lived in the 3rd century BC. About 80% of the text had been transcribed and translated in the 1910s after it was rediscovered in an Istanbul monastery, but since then much of it became unreadable again because of deterioration. Fully deciphering its mysteries has had to wait for advanced technologies, some of which had never been applied to ancient manuscripts.The unusual cast of detectives includes not only the imaging specialists who helped photograph the Dead Sea Scrolls, but also a Stanford University physicist who studies trace metals in spinach with a particle accelerator. Together, they have been carrying out one of the most remarkable "salvage jobs" in the history of codicology, the study of ancient manuscripts.

Archimedes, it turns out, is only one secret of the text.Among the mathematicians of antiquity, Archimedes was one of the greatest and most cunning. He was one of the earliest to devise ways to calculate the area beneath curves and was the first to prove that a circle's circumference and diameter are related by the constant pi. He developed the Archimedes Screw to lift water and invented deadly devices, such as the Claw of Archimedes, which was designed to grapple enemy warships.Archimedes died in 212 BC, when Syracuse was sacked by the Romans. Legend holds that he was drawing figures in the sand. "Don't disturb my circles," he supposedly told the soldier who killed him.

[Rasputin]

James Randi attacks Uri Geller again

Uri Geller is an Israel born psychic (so he claims) who mostly lives in UK for the last 20 or more years. Geller was a huge phenomenon during the 1970ies when he conquered the international stage by displaying feats of telekinesis and psychic extra-sensory perception, mostly by performing spoon bending and similar stunts. He also was verified by several researchers in US and, apparently found genuine. After his huge success he lowered his profile, partly after an unfortunate appearance on a TV show where he was asked to display his abilities without his prior knowledge. In any way, Uri Geller is one of the most controversial figures in the parapsychology community.James Randi is a stage magician and the most known sceptic of any paranormal phenomena. He is also the head of an international association of skeptics. In the past Randi has furiously attacked Uri Geller, along with other people who claimed to be psychic. Randi even wrote a whole book on Uri Geller titled Truth About Uri Geller.

In this book Randi describes how all of Geller’s “tricks” can be performed using ordinary stage magic.More than anything James Randi is known for what’s called “Randi’s million dollars challenge”, where he promises to give $1m to one who’ll be able to prove his paranormal abilities under strict scientific conditions. There’s a lot of talk about this challenge and Randi has recently revamped it to filter all the “lunatics” who try to claim the prize and decided, instead, to actively attack known claimed psychics. The first four to be attacked are Sylvia Browne, Jonh Edward, James Van Praagh, and, who else, Uri Geller.

[Rasputin]

Vast "Cloud warrior" ruin found in Amazon

Discovered in a surprising Peruvian location, a vast ruin is shedding light on an ancient civilization known for taking on the Inca Empire. The newfound ceremonial stone structure, made public this week, was likely built by the Chachapoya Indians, a stone- and metalworking culture that thrived in Amazonian cloud forests from the 9th to the 15th century A.D. The Chachapoya are known for building mountaintop citadels and leaving behind well-preserved mummies. Examples include cliff tombs near Peru's Lake of the Condors and Huayabamba Lake.Called the Warriors of the Clouds, the battle-hardened Chachapoya were famed for their stiff resistance to Inca attacks. Nevertheless, the Inca eventually overtook the Chachapoya shortly before the arrival of Spanish explorers to Peru in the 16th century. Originally stumbled upon by a family of farmers, the structure is exceptionally large. The stepped, three-tiered, rectangular construction is about 200 feet (70 meters) long, 100 feet (35 meters) wide, and 24 feet (7 meters) high. The ruin's vast, impenetrable appearance prompted the farmers to call the find Huaca La Penitenciaría, or Penitentiary Ruin.

But while Penitentiary Ruin seems to have been topped by a plaza and other buildings, including a lookout tower, it was surprisingly unfortified, said Keith Muscutt, an explorer and assistant dean at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Muscutt announced the find Wednesday at an Institute for Andean Studies conference in Berkeley, California.

[Rasputin]

Ghost hunters explore Teackle mansion

A group of paranormal investigators think the legends of Teackle Mansion ghosts could be true, particularly in a part of the house where their equipment batteries died and they felt a cold spot. "There's enough evidence to be suspicious," Christine Power, co-director of Eastern Shore Paranormal, said at a recent meeting of the Somerset County Historical Society.Power, along with her husband, James, and two other volunteer investigators, spent nine hours in the mansion just before Christmas armed with audio and video recorders, electromagnetic field meters and infrared thermometers. Although their equipment picked up suspicious sights and sounds all over the building, much of it could be explained by equipment problems or the wind and rain outside that night. However, investigators in a second-floor room couldn't explain why the batteries suddenly went dead in a two-way radio, a digital camera and a video camera at the same time, Power said. Group members also reported a "heavy" or close feeling in the room, which is located in the oldest part of the mansion. The thermometer also recorded a drop in temperature. "That's bizarre," said Historical Society President Jill Hall, who previously said she didn't believe in ghosts. "It does make you kind of wonder." The mansion -- which has had numerous owners and tenants since it was built in 1802 -- is now owned by the Historical Society which operates it as a museum.

None of the members have seen or heard a ghost, but some said they had suspicions about the upstairs rooms in the center section where the equipment batteries died. Most reported a "creepy" feeling whenever they went upstairs, even in broad daylight. Rooms in that part of the mansion originally served as Littleton and Elizabeth Teackle's bedroom, their young daughter's bedroom and Teackle's library. A stairway in the second-floor hall leads to a finished attic that once housed some of the Teackle slaves. Since the Teackles owned the house, it changed hands numerous times, and briefly housed a school. By the middle of the 20th century, it had been converted to apartments.

[Rasputin]

Anti-satellite weapons easy to make ?

Relatively simple technology suffices to take out a satellite the way the Chinese government apparently did last week, space weapons analysts say. Essentially any country that can put a satellite in orbit could launch a weapon to destroy one.The US government says China launched a ballistic missile on 11 January that destroyed one of its own spacecraft, a defunct weather satellite called Fengyun-1C, in an apparent test of anti-satellite technology.This makes China one of just three nations in history to have successfully tested an anti-satellite weapon, along with the US and the former Soviet Union. But the technology required is not very sophisticated, potentially putting it in reach of other countries as well."It's pretty low tech – it's essentially like throwing a rock at someone," says space security analyst Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.This method is called a 'kinetic energy weapon' because the energy released by the high-speed collision itself destroys the satellite, rather than any explosives.The launch vehicle was probably just an ordinary medium-range ballistic missile, she says.

Getting the weapon to hit the 1.5-metre-wide satellite, however, would be more of a challenge than simply getting it into space.Information about satellite positions from ground-based tracking alone is not precise enough to allow a missile to hit a satellite, so the missile would have needed a built-in homing device to zero in on the satellite, Grego says.