Science Special News

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Meteorite is oldest object ever found

As lumps of rock go it looks much like any other, unexceptional despite the deep red of its cool, smooth surface. The pieces range in size from pea-sized lumps to larger fist-sized chunks. But today, scientists will announce this is no ordinary stone. Prised from a frozen lake in northern Canada, it has become a prime candidate for the oldest known object on Earth. The chunk came from a meteorite that scored an arc of fire across the skies before slamming into Lake Tagish in British Columbia in 2000. It has been pored over by scientists ever since, and is today revealed to contain particles that predate the birth of our nearest star, the sun. The Tagish Lake meteorite was already regarded as exceptional because its mineral composition linked it to the earliest days of the formation of the solar system, more than 4.5bn years ago.

The fragments of meteorite that still exist are among the most pristine in the world, as they were protected from contamination when they became wedged in blocks of lake ice. The latest research shows that peppered throughout the meteorite are grains that formed even earlier, in a frigid cloud of molecules, possibly at the edge of the swirling disc of dust that ultimately collapsed to form the sun and all the planets of the solar system.

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Ancient body prompts new theories

A Roman sarcophagus discovered near Trafalgar Square could lead to the map of Roman London being redrawn. The limestone coffin containing a headless skeleton was found during excavations at St-Martin-in-the-Fields Church, central London. The find, which dates from around 410AD, lies outside what were the city walls of Roman London. Archaeologists previously thought Westminster possibly contained Roman roads but not sacred buildings. Taryn Nixon, director of the Museum of London Archaeology Service, said: "It means that perhaps St-Martin-in-the-Fields has been a sacred site for far, far, far longer than we previously thought. "This gives us an extraordinary glimpse of parts of London we haven't seen before, particularly Roman London and Saxon London. "All of a sudden we're having to rethink what Roman London really was. This work has literally stopped us in our tracks and given us a new phrase, Roman Westminster."

Vicar Rev Nicholas Holtam said: "I can't tell you how thrilling it is to have discovered these finds. "St Martin's history tells us that the earliest church that we know of on the site was there in 1222, but these discoveries take us way before that.

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UFOs: The proof is out there

B J Booth: Much of the skeptical view of the UFO phenomena is based on the quality or lack thereof of photographs and video that purportedly show images of UFOs. Those of us who study UFOs are kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. A photograph of an unknown flying object that is not very clear is not good enough to convince the non-believer, and yet a nice clear shot of a UFO falls into the "too good to be true" category. I have found myself falling into the later category when seeing a nice, clear shot of an unknown. Why? Well...we are so used to seeing the grainy, blurry photos that anything else must have been created in a graphics program on a computer. And most importantly, we know that when the photograph is put into a report on the Net, we are going to get negative feedback from the skeptics. Also, even those who are fence sitters will say, "Now, see, this is what gives Ufology a bad reputation." So...what does one do?

I was recently asked by a gentleman why there are so many photos of UFOs that are out of focus, and why are there so many in which the object in question was not seen at the time the image was shot, and only noticed later when the pictures were uploaded to the computer. I would like to address these questions.As to seeing UFOs, there are several things at play, and the most important rule is there are no rules. You have to remember that everyday people go about their lives with their eyes on the busy world around them: watching traffic, store signs, talking on the cell phone, listening to the radio, watching television, and more. It is very rare that anyone really looks into the sky to see if there is a UFO there.

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Experts reconstruct Leonardo fingerprint

This undated photo released by the University of Chieti, Italy, on Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006, shows fingerprints on a paper believed to be handled by Renaissance master Leonardo Da Vinci. Anthropologists said they have pieced together Leonardo da Vinci's left index fingerprint _ a discovery that could help shed light on such thing as the food the artist ate and whether his mother was of Arabic origin. The three-year research was based on a first core of professional quality photographs of about 200 fingerprints -- most of them partial -- taken from about 52 papers handled by Leonardo in his life.The reconstruction of the fingerprint was the result of three years of research and could help attribute disputed paintings or manuscripts, said Luigi Capasso, an anthropologist and director of the Anthropology Research Institute at Chieti University in central Italy. "It adds the first touch of humanity. We knew how Leonardo saw the world and the future ... but who was he? This biological information is about his being human, not being a genius," Capasso said in a recent telephone interview.

The research was based on a first core of photographs of about 200 fingerprints - most of them partial- taken from about 52 papers handled by Leonardo in his life. Capasso's work, presented in 2005 in a specialized magazine called Anthropologie, published in the Czech Republic, is on display in an exhibition in the town of Chieti through March 30. The artist often ate while working, and Capasso and other experts said his fingerprints could include traces of saliva, blood or the food he ate the night before. It is information that could help clear up questions about his origins.

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US plans permanent base on Moon

US space agency Nasa has said it plans to start work on a permanently-occupied base on the Moon after astronauts begin flying back there in 2020. The base is likely to be built on one of the Moon's poles and will serve as a science centre and possible stepping stone for manned missions to Mars. The US has already said it plans to build a new lunar spacecraft to succeed the last Apollo mission in 1972. Funds will be moved from space shuttle flights, due to be scrapped in 2010. The structure of the base and the exact duties of the astronauts stationed there have not been decided. Nor is it clear when the base will begin functioning. "We're going for a base on the moon," Scott "Doc" Horowitz, Nasa's associate administrator for exploration, said. The agency's deputy head, Shana Dale, is quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying that the "fundamental lunar approach" will be very different to earlier Moon missions. Nasa has elected to build a lunar outpost rather than operate brief trips to the satellite as it did in the 1960s.

Nasa is also expected to ask other countries - and businesses - to help it build the base. The permanent base will be built near one of the two poles, as these are felt to have a moderate climate and more sunlight - essential if the base is to use solar energy. "It's exciting," Shana Dale told the Reuters news agency. "We don't know as much about the polar regions." According to Reuters, funds for building the lunar base will be diverted from the space shuttle programme, which is to be phased out by 2010. After the Columbia space shuttle accident, US President George W Bush announced plans to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020.

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India's Excalibur halts dam progress

North-east India's equivalent of King Arthur has ridden to the rescue of thousands of people opposing a massive dam project that will flood their homes. The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, cancelled plans to lay the foundation stone for the dam this weekend in the face of massive protests by tribal groups who say it will inundate the sacred lake still believed to hold the region's answer to Excalibur.Manipur, the state where the dam is supposed to be built, lies in India's impoverished and insurgency-racked north-east, and is home to tribal groups who have their own distinct culture. Now that culture has brought a major project to build a 520ft hydroelectric dam to a standstill.Manipur's tribal people say the dam will destroy the lake where the sword of one of their greatest heroes, Jadonang, is believed to lie.

It will also submerge an island called Thiledam, meaning "Life and Death", where they believe the souls of the dead rest, an echo of the isle of Avalon, the supposed resting place of King Arthur.The Tipaimukh dam will also flood 60 villages and displace 40,000 people. But local beliefs have galvanised opposition far beyond those directly affected, and tribal groups had called for a 24-hour strike and blocked roads across the state.

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Britain's last witch trial

In 1944, medium Helen Duncan became the last woman in Britain to be convicted of witchcraft when one of her seances exposed a government attempt to cover up the deaths of 861 sailors. Now, campaigners aim to clear her name. It started much the same as her other seances. With a chilling moan and strange white substance leaking from her mouth, Helen Duncan began communicating with the dead...But suddenly, the eerie calm was pierced by a police whistle and officers piled into the house, in Portsmouth, Hants, to arrest Britain's top medium.The following morning Helen, known as Hellish Nell, was charged under section four of the 1735 Witchcraft Act.It was 1944, and, astonishingly, officials had ordered her arrest because they were afraid she would reveal top-secret plans for the D-Day landings.They had been monitoring her since she had revealed the sinking of a British battleship earlier in the war - even though the government had suppressed the news to maintain morale at home.

It took a jury just 30 minutes to find her guilty and she became the last person to be convicted of witchcraft in Britain.As she was led away to start her nine-month sentence in London's Holloway Prison, the housewife cried out in her broad Scottish accent: "I never heard so many lies in all my life!"Helen's "gift" had long put her on a collision course with the authorities and led to one of the most bizarre chapters in British judicial history.Today, exactly 50 years after her death, campaigners hope to persuade Home Secretary John Reid to overturn the verdict. "Helen Duncan was one of the world's top mediums, a woman who gave hope and comfort to many," says Ray Taylor, editor of Psychic World.

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Link between stock market and Moon cycles ?

It's the full moon, of course, which legend says brings on depression and pessimism, not to mention werewolves. If that's true, presumably it would also trigger a gloomy outlook about future cash flows, causing investors to take fewer risks, and stock prices to fall. "We find strong lunar cycle effects in stock returns," say University of Michigan Business School professors Ilia D. Dichev and Troy D. Janes in a research report."Specifically, returns in the 15 days around new moon dates are about double the returns in the 15 days around full moon dates. This pattern of returns is pervasive," they report.The scholars set out to examine the folk wisdom that moon cycles affect human behavior, especially abnormal behavior around full moons. They turned to stock markets to get a big enough sample, as millions of people make billions of trades on a regular basis.They gathered data on major U.S. stock markets over the past 100 years, and on the markets of 24 other nations going back 30 years."Taken as a whole, this evidence is consistent with popular beliefs that lunar cycles affect human behavior," the researchers concluded.

The Harvard Business Review, reporting the research in its current issue, says that while these findings "are a bit off the beaten path, they're the product of rigorous research.""So even though we might not be ready just yet to consult lunar cycles for guidance on all our stock trades and other major decisions," the Harvard Business Review says, "we should keep in mind that unexpected sources can beget robust data and analysis, and that correlation and causality must be carefully examined."

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New images suggest water flows on Mars

NASA photographs have revealed bright new deposits seen in two gullies on Mars that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years. "These observations give the strongest evidence to date that water still flows occasionally on the surface of Mars," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program, Washington. Liquid water, as opposed to the water ice and water vapor known to exist at Mars, is considered necessary for life. The new findings heighten intrigue about the potential for microbial life on Mars. The Mars Orbiter Camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor provided the new evidence of the deposits in images taken in 2004 and 2005. "The shapes of these deposits are what you would expect to see if the material were carried by flowing water," said Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. "They have finger-like branches at the downhill end and easily diverted around small obstacles." Malin is principal investigator for the camera and lead author of a report about the findings published in the journal Science.

The atmosphere of Mars is so thin and the temperature so cold that liquid water cannot persist at the surface. It would rapidly evaporate or freeze. Researchers propose that water could remain liquid long enough, after breaking out from an underground source, to carry debris downslope before totally freezing. The two fresh deposits are each several hundred meters or yards long. The light tone of the deposits could be from surface frost continuously replenished by ice within the body of the deposit. Another possibility is a salty crust, which would be a sign of water's effects in concentrating the salts. If the deposits had resulted from dry dust slipping down the slope, they would likely be dark, based on the dark tones of dust freshly disturbed by rover tracks, dust devils and fresh craters on Mars. Mars Global Surveyor has discovered tens of thousands of gullies on slopes inside craters and other depressions on Mars. Most gullies are at latitudes of 30 degrees or higher. Malin and his team first reported the discovery of the gullies in 2000. To look for changes that might indicate present-day flow of water, his camera team repeatedly imaged hundreds of the sites. One pair of images showed a gully that appeared after mid-2002. That site was on a sand dune, and the gully-cutting process was interpreted as a dry flow of sand.

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Supernatural belief originates in childhood

Supernatural beliefs can best be explained by looking at an individual's tendency to rely on indistinguished childhood perceptions of the world. These perceptions tend to mix the core attributes of non-living, living and psychical things. In adults this mixing of core knowledge can operate in conjunction with scientific and other knowledge acquired through education. Reliance on uniformed, childhood perceptions of the world is related to the individual's tendency to think intuitively or, in other words, subconsciously. These are the conclusions reached by Docent Marjaana Lindeman's research project "Enchantment of superstitions", which was funded by the Academy of Finland. According to the study, beliefs, whether called superstitious, paranormal, supernatural or magical, are all one and the same. "If you believe in one supernatural phenomenon, you generally believe in other supernatural phenomena, as well. You could therefore say that there is a general tendency to believe in such phenomena. The propensity for paranormal beliefs is also the singlemost powerful variable in faith healing, or alternative medicine," states Lindeman.

The first phase of the study involved 3240 students of varying educational levels from all over Finland. Follow-up studies involved some 500 students, on whom experimental studies were also conducted. In the study, students were asked about their beliefs in, for example, witches, telepathy, horoscopes, God and ghosts. In addition to this, the test subjects' personality, values, knowledge constructs and ways of processing information were examined using psychological evaluation methods.

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A debate on Indigo children

Little Kai looks and talks like any other 3-year-old. "I like to play chicken games and another game about tigers," he said. But his mother, Lon Bloomfield, says he has supernatural gifts ... and remembers past lives."Maybe about a year ago, he told me, 'Remember Mom, when I was your dad?'" Lon said.Do you know a child like this?Smart, intuitive, sensitive, strong-willed, and full of energy, they're often called "Indigo children" -- a popular label for kids who are especially gifted. Many psychologists and parents believe these children have psychic powers and are more evolved. Shannon Parsons says her four kids are also Indigos. "They're always talking about when they were in heaven and what they knew and who they knew," she said.Her 7-year-old son Chandler frequently talks to an imaginary friend he says he met in heaven ... "We talk about everything in the world," Chandler added, "[like] what he did on his vacation."

Parapsychologist Nancy Ann Tappe was the first to describe these children more than 20 years ago. She says they're called Indigo because of the dark blue aura that surrounds them. And she believes Indigos are more evolved than past generations."They're straight-talkers," Tappe, formerly of San Diego State University and currently represented by Spelling Publishers, explained. "They don't want to be talked down to. They'll catch you at three if you do."