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Astronauts say there must be life in space

Mon, 12 May 2008 14:44:03 GMT

clipped by: invictus

TOKYO (AFP) - The human race will find life elsewhere in the universe as it pushes ahead with space exploration, astronauts back from the latest US space mission said Monday.

"If we push back boundaries far enough, I'm sure eventually we'll find something out there," said Mike Foreman, a mission specialist on the Endeavour, which returned to Earth in March.

"Maybe not as evolved as we are, but it's hard to believe that there is not life somewhere else in this great universe," he told a news conference in Tokyo.

Tags: space, universe, life, science

Thousands dead in Chinese quake

Mon, 12 May 2008 14:40:27 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Between 3,000 and 5,000 people may have been killed by an earthquake measuring 7.8 in just one county of south-western China's Sichuan province, reports say.

Some 10,000 people are also feared to have been injured in Beichuan county.

Desperate efforts are under way to find survivors. One school that collapsed has buried an estimated 900 students.

President Hu Jintao has urged "all-out" efforts to rescue victims of the quake, which hit 92km (57 miles) from Chengdu, Sichuan's provincial capital.

The quake was felt as far away as Beijing, he says, meaning millions of people will feel connected to the disaster and will be watching TV screens closely to see how the government responds.

Tags: earthquake, china

85,000-year-old finery recovered in Moroccan cave

Sun, 11 May 2008 21:09:31 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.dailystar.com.lb

Archaeologists have uncovered shells used for finery by prehistoric communities 85,000 years ago in a cave in eastern Morocco, the country's heritage institute said Tuesday.

A research team, led by archaeology and heritage institute (INSAP) member Abdel-Jalil Bouzouggar and Oxford University's Nick Barton, found the 20 perforated shells in a cave near Taforalt between March and April this year.

According to a statement from the Moroccan Ministry for Culture, the shells are the type prehistoric people would have worn.

"This discovery shows that the making and use of objects of finery is very anchored in the traditions of Morocco's prehistoric people," said Bouzouggar, in whose opinion the country is the original center of artistic and symbolic creation.

Objects of finery discovered in Morocco are "now considered to be even more ancient than those discovered in Algeria, South Africa and in Palestine," said the Culture Ministry.

Tags: archaeology, prehistory, morocco

Vikings: from ram-raiders to fishmongers

Sun, 11 May 2008 21:06:11 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Archaeologists and scientists have revealed that 1,000 years ago cod was traded extraordinary distances across Europe, from the Norwegian Arctic to England and the Baltic.

The research may force yet another revision of the image of the Vikings, from longship ram-raiders, to mainly traders and colonising farmers, to the fishmongers of Europe. Vikings in York were eating cod caught off the Norwegian coast.

The research, reported in this month's Journal of Archaeological Science, also shows the 1,000-year-old origins of the modern problem of declining fish stocks, as fishing grounds had to supply far more than a local market. The emergence of commercial fishing "may represent the point at which people started to have an impact on marine ecoystems," said James Barrett, of Cambridge University's archaeology department.

Tags: archaeology, vikings, europe, fish, trade, history

Ancient Seaweed Tells of Earliest Americans

Thu, 08 May 2008 23:12:52 GMT

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Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

May 8, 2008 -- Remains of meals that included seaweed are helping confirm the date of a settlement in southern Chile that may offer the earliest evidence of humans in the Americas.

Researchers date the seaweed found at Monte Verde to more than 14,000 years ago, 1,000 years earlier than the well-studied Clovis culture.

And the report comes just a month after other scientists announced they had found coprolites â€“ fossilized human feces -- dating to about 14,000 years ago in a cave in Oregon.

Taken together, the finds move back evidence of people in the Americas by a millennium or more, with settlements in northern and southern coastal areas.

Tags: archaeology, chile, america, prehistory, science

Lost ancient city of Marhashi found in Iran - Claims

Thu, 08 May 2008 23:09:31 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Very interesting, but we need to wait and see the further reports.

Clip Source: www.andhranews.net

Tehran, May 7 : Archaeologists have come up with a new theory, which suggests that the prehistoric site of Jiroft in Iran is the lost ancient city of Marhashi.

Marhashi, (also known as Warahshe) was a 3rd millennium BC polity situated east of Elam, on the Iranian plateau. It is known from Mesopotamian sources, and its precise location has not been identified.

An inscription of Lugal-Anne-Mundu, the most important king of the Adab city-state in Sumer, locates it, along with Elam, to the south of Gutium, an ancient polity in upper Mesopotamia.

The inscription also explains that Lugal-Anne-Mundu confronted the Warahshe king, Migir-Enlil.

Steinkeller had previously been searching the Kerman region in order to identify a site from the 3rd millennium BC, which he could consider it as Marhashi.

But, Steinkeller found that Jiroft, which had been located between Anshan and Meluhha, lies in the heart of the ancient city of Marhashi, which led him to come up with his theory.

Tags: archaeology, mesopotamia, iran, jiroft, marhashi, sumer, elam

'Androgynous' Pharaoh Had Feminine Physique

Fri, 02 May 2008 17:54:52 GMT

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Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Akhenaten wasn't the most manly pharaoh, even though he fathered at least a half-dozen children. In fact, his form was quite feminine. And he was a bit of an egghead.

So concludes a Yale University physician who analyzed images of Akhenaten for an annual conference Friday at the University of Maryland School of Medicine on the deaths of historic figures.

The female form was due to a genetic mutation that caused the pharaoh's body to convert more male hormones to female hormones than needed, Dr. Irwin Braverman believes. And Akhenaten's head was misshapen because of a condition in which skull bones fuse at an early age.

The pharaoh had "an androgynous appearance. He had a female physique with wide hips and breasts, but he was male and he was fertile and he had six daughters," Braverman said. "But nevertheless, he looked like he had a female physique."

Tags: archaeology, egyptology, ancient egypt, akhenaten, science

Turkish site a Neolithic 'supernova'

Fri, 02 May 2008 17:50:55 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: The archaeological discoveries in Gobeklitepe - Turkey, continues to stun the archaeology world. The site is dated to 9,500 BCE.

Clip Source: www.stonepages.com

Klaus Schmidt, a member of the German Archaeological Institute, has found in Turkey a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable. "This place is a supernova," said Mr. Schmidt. "Within a minute of first seeing it, I knew I had two choices: go away and tell nobody, or spend the rest of my life working here."

The stone circles of Gobekli Tepe are his workplace since 1994.

Dated at about 9500 BCE, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.

"Everybody used to think only complex, hierarchical civilizations could build such monumental sites and that they only came about with the invention of agriculture," said Ian Hodder, a Stanford University anthropology professor who has directed digs at Catalhoyuk,

"Gobekli changes everything. It's elaborate, it's complex, and it is pre-agricultural. That fact alone makes the site one of the most important archaeological finds in a very long time."

Tags: archaeology, prehistory, neolithic, turkey, klaus schmidt, science

Human line 'nearly split in two'

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:24:48 GMT

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Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Ancient humans started down the path of evolving into two separate species before merging back into a single population, a genetic study suggests.

The genetic split in Africa resulted in distinct populations that lived in isolation for as much as 100,000 years, the scientists say.

This could have been caused by arid conditions driving a wedge between humans in eastern and southern Africa.

Details have been published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

It would be the longest period for which modern human populations have been isolated from one another.

Tags: anthropology, humans, science

Hubble telescope captures crashing galaxies

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:20:16 GMT

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Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Images of colliding galaxies show them spinning, sliding and slipping into one another, wreaking stellar destruction that will give birth to new and larger galaxies.

The Maryland-based Space Telescope Science Institute released 59 new images from the Hubble Space Telescope on Thursday to celebrate the 18th anniversary of its launch.

"This new Hubble atlas dramatically illustrates how galaxy collisions produce a remarkable variety of intricate structures in never-before-seen detail," the Institute said in a statement.

"Astronomers observe only one out of a million galaxies in the nearby universe in the act of colliding. However, galaxy mergers were much more common long ago when they were closer together, because the expanding universe was smaller."

The color images, available online at http://hubblesite.org/news/2008/16, are a look back in time.

Tags: hubble, space, galaxies, images, science

5000 years old "Mini Stonehenge" discovered in Manchester

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:32:08 GMT

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Clip Source: www.andhranews.net

Archaeologists have unearthed a "mini-Stonehenge" in Greater Manchester, England, which dates back to about 5,000 years.

Archaeologist Stuart Mendelsohn spotted two sites near the moors of Rochdale, believed to be ancient burial sites, during a walk on the hills in December.

English Heritage claimed that both sites were "possible of Bronze age date", suggesting that they could date back to 3,000 BC.

However, unlike the famous monument at Stonehenge, local materials are believed to have been used at the newly discovered sites.

The first site, made up of fallen stones, is 10.2m in overall diameter. The second, which includes the circle, is on the western slope.

The entire site covers an acre, according to an English Heritage report.

Tags: archaeology, england, megaliths, stonehenge, manchester, bronze age, science

Unearthing clues of catastrophic earthquakes

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:38:34 GMT

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clipper's remarks:

There is still much to be known about ancient earthquakes. The instrumental record for seismology is short, going back 100 years. The historical seismology record is a much longer, including written documentation such as news accounts and diaries, which vary widely by culture and region. The archeoseismic record serves as the bridge between historical accounts and the paleoseismic record of Earth’s history.

Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

The destruction and disappearance of ancient cultures mark the history of human civilization, making for fascinating stories and cautionary tales. The longevity of today’s societies may depend upon separating fact from fiction, and archeologists and seismologists are figuring out how to join forces to do just that with respect to ancient earthquakes, as detailed in new studies presented at the international conference of the Seismological Society of America.

Archaeoseismology, a young scientific discipline that studies past earthquakes in the archaeological record, allows scientists to broaden the time window to detect these rare seismic catastrophic events. But archaeological evidence for past earthquakes raises a lot of reservations from seismologists, some of them strongly questioning whether man-made structures can be used as earthquake indicators at all.

Tags: archaeology, seismology, ancient earthquakes, catastrophes, science

Iraq: From One Dictator to Another?

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:57:34 GMT

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clipper's remarks:

"Over a thousand Iraqis got killed and more than that number wounded just for a game of chess between warlords," Mohammad Alwan, a lawyer in Baghdad, told IPS. "All of them call for dissolving militias while they keep militias of their own. Most of those in power in the government are militia leaders."

Clip Source: www.antiwar.com

Following the failed attempt by the U.S.-backed al-Maliki to crack down on the Mahdi Army militia of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the situation in Iraq has become much worse. Iraq appears to be splintering more widely under this rule than under Saddam's.

According to statistics compiled by the U.S. military in Baghdad, there has been a sharp increase in attacks against U.S. and Iraqi security forces, from 239 in February to 631 in March. Most of these attacks are believed to have been carried out by the Mahdi Army.

The Mahdi Army is known to have substantial control of the streets of Baghdad, Basra, and many other predominantly Shia areas in southern Iraq.

Many Iraqis feel caught in a crossfire in what they see as a battle for power between the Shia factions.

After five years of occupation and suffering, with no end in sight, many Iraqis have become skeptical of all political and religious leaders.

Tags: iraq, al-maliki, mahdi army, civil war, shia

3D Moon of Mars - New pictures of Phobos

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:03:59 GMT

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Clip Source: spaceweather.com

3D MOON OF MARS: Grab your 3D glasses. Two weeks ago, NASA's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (MRO) targeted martian moon Phobos and took a pair of high-resolution pictures. Mission scientists have combined them to make a startling red-blue anaglyph. Glasses on? Behold.

The 2D view is nearly as good:

Long ago, something struck Phobos and almost shattered the tiny moon. The scar of that impact, 9km-wide Stickney crater, is located at the top of the image. Color filters in MRO's camera reveal a blue splash of material around Stickney's rim. What is it? No one knows. Equally striking are Phobos' many long grooves and crater chains. Although these seem to radiate from Stickney, recent studies show that most are not related to the crater. Instead they come from the planet below; when asteroids hit Mars, debris flies up and scores Phobos. The grooves seem to emerge from Stickney only because the crater faces Mars.

Tags: mars, phobos, moon, 3d image, nasa, space

Bush hails 'major shift' in Iraq

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:05:04 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Huh, "major shift"? Sounds very intriguing.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

President George W Bush has declared a "major strategic shift" in Iraq following the US troop surge.

He said the US now held the initiative and was looking to deliver a "crippling blow" to al-Qaeda in the country.

US troop levels in Iraq are now due to be reduced by about 20,000 by July, but Mr Bush said after that, the "drawdown" process would be frozen.

Then, he said, senior commander General David Petraeus would have "all the time he needs" to assess the next step.

Gen Petraeus had called for a 45-day "period of consolidation and evaluation" after July, before any more troops left.

Tags: iraq, war, united states, george bush