skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Although I'm not greatly surprised at this news, I think NASA could be missing out on an opportunity to maintain momentum in their own long-term ambitions to establish a permanent presence on the Moon.
Bearing in mind the huge cost and uncertain future funding for such projects, it might be better if the burden of cost was shared between nations, but I think there is consideration of a Helium-3 fuelled future that the US would prefer to exploit themselves, or at least independently of others - who could well include China, Japan and India, amongst other nations also casting covetous glances at a celestial body with the word's 'Vast Profits For The Taking' written in invisible ink across its earthward facing moonscape.
"We were ready to co-operate, but for unknown reasons, the United States have said they will undertake this programme themselves," Anatoly Perminov said.
US space agency Nasa has said it plans to start work on a base on the Moon when astronauts return there in 2020...
...Mr Perminov announced that Roskosmos had signed a "contract for nearly $1bn" with Nasa to supply cargo shuttles between now and 2011 for the ISS.
Mr Perminov said that he hoped Russian and US expertise could also be pooled as part of Nasa's plan to build a permanently-occupied Moon base.
"Strange as it is, the United States is short of experts to implement the programme," Interfax quoted him as saying.
And although the US is quite capable of attracting the best brains in the world to participate in projects such as these, recent decisions like that which decreed $10 billion should be spent on shoring up the Shuttle fleet, I think budgetary difficulties will prove to be a major stumbling block - whereas nations like Russia, currently cash-rich from the exploitation of their natural resources, are at the moment, more likely to to take the lunar initiative.
However, the US also boasts various individuals such as Robert Bigelow, who have their own vision of getting humans into space and onto places like the Moon, and NASA may well prefer working with the private sector of their own economy, to pooling resources with with the public sectors and space agencies of other nations with whom relationships in the future may not be so predictable.
see also: NASA Denies Snubbing Russia's Moon Offer
image from here
Although this news came out a couple of weeks ago, it was overshadowed by other news from Mexico regarding sacrificial victims from it's more recent, bloodier past. However, this story is in my opinion more interesting, because it relates the discovery of ancient Mexicans dating back to between an estimated 10,000 bp and 14,500 bp., a time frame that spans pre-Clovis through to a time when there is undisputed evidence of human occupation of North America. Here's some detail from Tulúm, in the south-eastern region Yucatán region of Mexico...
The remains were found in the Las Palmas, El Templo and Naharon Caves, in an area previously thought to be uninhabited. They are not Mayas because they do not have the classic Mayan skull deformation.
The woman found in Naharon cave, 368 meters from its entrance and 22.6 meters underground, was 1.41 meters' tall, weighed around 53 kg and was between 20 and 30 years old when she died. The woman found in Las Palmas cave was between 44 and 50 when she died.
The body found in El Templo cave was a man aged between 25 and 30. His body was the least well preserved because it had been eroded and most of its organic material was gone.
During the last Ice Age, the caves where the bodies were found are said to have been dry, but rising water-levels from the post-glacial melt, caused them to become flooded - I assume from this the caves are once again dry, and it seems fortuitous that the remains survived the inundation. It is believed the area was used possibly both for habitation and as a graveyard.
I'm not sure whether all three burials date from the same time, or whether they cover the estimated date range quoted above, but the early date of 14,500 bp would put this site on a par with Monte Verde, much further to the south in Chile. It would also be interesting to know if any stone tools or other artifacts have been recovered from this site, but in the meantime it looks as though there will be a wait before further information is released.
Mayan Tulúm
see also: Anthropologist Finds Earliest Evidence Of Maize Farming In Mexico
image from here
Black holes look set to be going through another identity crisis, this time because it is thought they may in fact be wormholes, that might allow us, or other elements of our Universe, to travel into neighbouring universes - assuming of course others actually exist.
Wormholes are warps in the fabric of space-time that connect one place to another. If you imagine the universe as a two-dimensional sheet, you can picture a wormhole as a "throat" connecting our sheet to another one. In this scenario, the other sheet could be a universe of its own, with its own stars, galaxies and planets.
Phycicists Thibault Damour and Sergey Solodukhin studied what such a wormhole might look like, and were surprised to discover that it would mimic a black hole so well that it would be virtually impossible to tell the difference.
It would be quite interesting to know if there was some symmetry involved here, whereby upon exiting the other end of a back hole/wormhole, whether one would find oneself at another galactic centre in the adjoining Universe, meaning that each galaxy in this Universe, with a black hole or wormhole at its centre, might have a mirror image of itself in the next Universe along. Which in turn might mean that in a mirrored Milky Way, there would be a mirror Us, possibly pondering exactly this same question - unless of course our 'twin' Earthlings had already worked out how to access this Universe, and were making visits which manifest themselves by means of the various phenomena we consider supernatural or ET related. Pretty unlikely in my opinion, but back to the article, and the tricky question of how we tell a black hole from a wormhole...
It seems the only way to decide the issue for sure with astronomical black holes is to make a daring plunge inside. That would be a dangerous gamble, because if it is a black hole, the incredibly strong gravitational field inside would tear apart every atom in your body. Even if it turns out to be a wormhole, the forces inside could still be deadly.
Assuming you could survive, and the wormhole was not symmetric, you might find yourself in another universe on the other side. Without further intervention, the wormhole would tend to suck you back in and carry you back to the opening in your universe.
One factor that might indicate that black holes or wormholes don't connect to other Universes is the fact that galaxies, and by default their centres, are not stationary in this acceleratingly expanding Universe, which might make it difficult to maintain permanent links with other Universes which (in the Big Bang paradigm) would also be expanding, but probably not at the same rate or in the same direction. However, I suspect my lack of knowledge in the fields of cosmology and physics has caused me to ruminate erroneously, so once again it's back to Messrs. Damour and Solodukhin...
An added benefit of wormholes is that they could resolve the so-called black hole information paradox. The only way anything can exit a black hole is in the form of Hawking radiation, but it is not clear how the radiation carries information about the original object that was swallowed. This scrambling effect conflicts with quantum mechanics, which forbids such erasing of information.
"Theoretically, wormholes are much better than black holes because all these problems with information loss don't exist in this case," Solodukhin says. Since wormholes have no event horizons, things are free to leave without first being converted into Hawking radiation, so there is no problem with lost information.
It looks as though the problem of telling a black hole from a wormhole could be resolved by the creation of miniature versions in someone's lab, with the aid of one of those much vaunted atom smashers, or particle colliders - if the resulting Black Saturns give off Hawking radiation, they will apparently be proven to be black holes rather than wormholes - but what interests me more is what contingency plans are in place in the event of a created black hole growing exponentially - particularly as the people in the best position to solve the problem would be among the first to be swallowed up by said black hole, leaving the rest of us in the dark.
see also: Atom Smasher May Give Birth To 'Black Saturns'
and: Black Holes: The Ultimate Quantum Computers?
image: 'Bajoran Wormhole' from here
A quick look by Science Daily at how our two nearest planetary neighbours, Venus and Mars, have both had something of a difficult climatic past, although before the problems started, it is possible that both planets bore some resemblance to Earth, in that they may once have had biospheres of their own.
David Grinspoon, involved with the Venus Express mission, is among those who believe that by studying the climate history of these two planets, we may be able to gain an insight into the future of our own.
The key weapon in a climate scientist’s arsenal is the climate model, a computer programme that uses the equations of physics to investigate the way in which Earth’s atmosphere works. The programme helps predict how the atmosphere might change in the future. “To members of the public it must seem like climate models are crystal balls, but they are actually just complex equations” says David Grinspoon, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and one of Venus Express’s interdisciplinary scientists.
Actually I don't think the average lay-person does have a perception of scientists using crystal balls to predict the future, and there would be much despondency and lowering of public morale if this was thought to be the case.
The problem here is to inform the public as accurately as possible, without giving us too much incomprehensible data that renders the research opaque, while still giving enough relevant detail for us to be able to have a clear idea of some of the dangers facing us, and what actions, if any, we can take on a societal or individual basis that will forestall some of the effects. Back to Venus...
They believe that the planet experienced a runaway greenhouse effect as the Sun gradually heated up. Astronomers believe that the young Sun was dimmer than the present-day Sun by 30 percent. Over the last 4 thousand million years, it has gradually brightened. During this increase, Venus’s surface water evaporated and entered the atmosphere. “Water vapour is a powerful greenhouse gas and it caused the planet to heat-up even more. This is turn caused more water to evaporate and led to a powerful positive feedback response known as the runaway greenhouse effect,” says Grinspoon.
It is thought that as we pollute our own planet to the extent that dangerous greenhouse gases are created in great quantity, the fate of the Earth will be to become Venus 2.0 - although of course, other factors than humans may be involved in the case of Earth, it would appear that humans have played a large part in our potential downfall. Next, we're off to 'frigid' Mars...
Understanding Mars’ past is equally important. ESA’s Mars Express is currently investigating the fate of the Red Planet. Smaller than the Earth, Mars is thought to have lost its atmosphere to space. When Martian volcanoes became extinct, so did the planet’s means of replenishing its atmosphere turning it into an almost-airless desert.
“What happened on these two worlds is very different but either would be equally disastrous for Earth. We are banking on our ability to accurately predict Earth’s future climate,” says Grinspoon. Anything that can shed light on our own future is valuable. That is why the study of our neighbouring worlds is vital
However, just studying other planets may only help us understand what is going wrong here, and there is no way at the moment that we can prevent climate change from happening, especially given some of the wild and sudden temperature swings that have happened here, in times before humans were around in sufficient number to cause climatic change.
see also: Earth's Climate Is Seesawing, According To Climate Researchers
and: Ocean's 'Twilight Zone' Plays Important Role In Climate Change
and: Climate Change Hits Mars
and: Climate Change Controversies: A Simple Guide
No matter what time of day or night is deemed the best to finish blogging for the day, there's invariably one last story that requires a brief post, and on this occasion we're off to India, where solar power looks set to become available to those previously unable to gain access to such technology - basically they get to borrow several hundred dollars, the equivalent of roughly 20 years worth of fuel bills rolled into one.
So far, an estimated 100,000 rural residents have taken advantage of this 'offer', which to me still seems mightily expensive - I also wonder how much interest is being charged on the loans - but at least they sound a great deal less hazardous than kerosene lamps...
There are also health benefits associated with making the switch. The majority of homes in rural India are poorly ventilated, leaving the occupants exposed to harmful particles emitted by the lamps.
In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the UN says a single wick lamp each year burns about 80 litres of kerosene, which produces more than 250kg of carbon dioxide. An estimated 100 million families in India use kerosene lamps.
The health of may will also doubtless improve, as they will no longer be obliged to breathe in the noxious fumes generated by the existing technology, which thus far has caused "the terrible health toll taken by dirty fuels."
Furthermore, this and similar schemes are planned for other parts of the world, including "China, Indonesia, Egypt, Mexico, Ghana, Morocco and Algeria."
And while such programmes will generate billions more people being in debt to institutions who will earn ever more billions of dollars in interest charges, at least those in the red will be flushed with increasingly good respiratory health.
see also: Indian Solar Loan Programme
Solar Power For Communities, Farmers And Market Traders Across India
A rather lurid story on which to end the day, one in which archaeologist Timothy Taylor argues that monogamy was a social consequence of sedentary humans becoming accustomed to settling for a single partner or spouse - and that prior to this fairly recent adjustment, the impression is given that pretty much the whole of Stone Age society was at it hammer and tongs, morning, noon and night...
Practices ranging from bondage to group sex, transvestism and the use of sex toys were widespread in primitive societies as a way of building up cultural ties.
According to the study, a 30,000-year-old statue of a naked woman - the Venus of Willendorf - and an equally ancient stone phallus found in a German cave, provide the earliest direct evidence that sex was about far more than babies.
To find out why he reached such conclusions isn't revealed in much detail here, but his ideas have received the backing of Petra Boynton, who adds...
“So much evolutionary theory promotes the idea that humans, particularly women, are preprogrammed for monogamy, but that is often simply overlaying science on a pre-existing view of society,” she said.
Moving onto matters biological, we hear once more from Taylor...
"...the human attitude to sex arose from the complex interaction of physical and mental development. By comparison with modern humans, who appeared about 300,000-100,000 years ago, apes have tiny male genitals, no female breasts and are hairy. But they are easily able to distinguish the sexes because males can weigh up to three times as much as females."
And because sexual dimorphism in humans is generally much less pronounced, he suggests that humans evolved their more sexually alluring features as a means of helping us to easily distinguish potential partners amongst numerous other humans who are more similar in size to one another. He also mentions face-to-face sex as being important, but bearing in mind that a great deal of human sexual behaviour involves numerous other situations where the faces of those involved are certainly not one-on-one, I'm not entirely sure how true that supposition may be.
I'm not sure how far we can push such ideas as constant free-for-all sex throughout all the various societies that lived in prehistoric times - it's much more likely that in addition to relaxed codes of conduct, different attitudes and mores existed in ways we could never imagine, but where sex itself may have been prohibited just as much as it was permitted.
All of which was a long way of telling us that his research has been published in a book, 'Handbook of the Evolution of Human Sexuality', which he is undoubtedly hoping many of us will read.
see also: Prehistoric Sex Gadgets From China: Excavating Porn
image: Venus of Willendorf from here
Following the news that Professor Stephen Hawking was last week experiencing zero gravity in an aeroplane specially adapted and flown for those wishing to experience weightlessness, it also turns out that he is set to embark on a sub-orbital flight 140 km up in the sky.
By embarking on such adventures, Hawking claims to be attempting to persuade others to take an interest in space, because as he says...
"I think the human race doesn't have a future if it doesn't go into space," he told the BBC News website, who communicates by twitching the one muscle he has control of - his cheek - to select words on his computer. These are then verbalised by a voice synthesizer.
"I therefore want to encourage public interest in space. A zero-gravity flight is the first step towards space travel," he said.
And although he's definitely right in opining that a human race forever confined to this planet is a human race facing certain doom, I'm not at all sure how safe we will be from each other once we are living out in the cosmos - unless of course there are numerous groups of humans living so far from each other, that any threat from bellicose others would be negligible.
In the unlikely event that one day in the future, every single human will have left this blue bubble of a biosphere, it would be interesting to see how this planet would repair itself, or otherwise change back to a state where only nature would be the dominant force influencing stability and concomitant change.
Hawking Takes Zero-Gravity Flight - (with video)
Returning to today's vague theme of the sky, and some of the strange things that emanate therefrom, Tim Binall's latest show is also out, and this week he interviews Michael Salla, a fairly controversial figure within ufology, dealing as he does with the matter of what has become known as 'exopolitics', a brief explanation of which is from his own website...
"Exopolitics is the study of the key individuals, institutions and political processes associated with extraterrrestrial life. This website produces exopolitics research papers using scholarly standards and methods developed by the Founder from almost two decades of academic research in a number of major universities. The exopolitics papers focus on the political implications of an extraterrestrial presence known to clandestine government organizations who keep official knowledge of this presence secret from the general public and elected political officials. The supporting evidence is overwhelming in scope and shows that decision making is restricted to a small group of officials drawn primarily from the military and intelligence branches of various national governments who operate on a strict 'need to know' basis. The policies and appointments of these officials are conducted in ways that 'stretch' or break accepted constitutional processes."
This is a subject which I've somewhat neglected of late, and although I'm not personally convinced of secret government departments engaged in ongoing nefarious and shady dealings with ETs and their friends, there appear to be a great many people who take such matters very seriously indeed - walls of silence, misleading garden paths and closed doors are the common currency of such research, and although I haven't had time to check out this particular edition, I'm sure Michael Salla will have plenty to tell us about.
The one show I do want to review is Tim Binnall's recent interview with Mac Tonnies, Part 1 available here, with Part 2 here - I have listened to this one, and as it's a double episode, there's a lot to get through, but for a slightly different take on a world where even the smoke and mirrors change their appearance and form without warning, this is one show I would recommend to anyone.
For a synopsis of the current show, and indeed access to the free audio files, click the headline - as ever, I'll try to comment more meaningfully once I've listened to it.
Issue 65 of COTG has hit the equivalent of the news-stands, and it looks like a good one with plenty of good entries as ever, largely from blogs I'm not familiar with - nothing from remotecentral, but I did submit a piece via Anthropology.net about the Creationist Museum being built by Ken Ham, who pretty much disgraced himself with a fairly thoughtless missive immediately following the school shootings in Virginia.
There's a nice intro from host Michael Klaas, whose blog is 'Light Remembered', and my recommendation would be to head over there and check out what's on offer, so click the headline above, and enjoy...
p.s. as ever I'll try and review some of the entries when I've read them, but I have a load of other stuff to quickly catch up on, so best to give it a couple of days.
3 a.m. and thinking vaguely of getting some sleep, I nevertheless feel myself compelled to write a quick post on the subject of staying up late, and the benefits to be derived therefrom, if indeed, any exist.
I suppose the first archaic humans to become nocturnal were those who were selected by their peers, or drew the short straw, to stay up all night, on watch while everyone else got down to some deep sleeping and dreaming. It's difficult to say in which part of prehistory this practice became common, but in a world in which humans were relatively scarce, and carnivorous predators were numerous, having someone keeping an eye out for unwelcome visitors would have seemed prudent to people maybe going back as far as the Neanderthals and beyond. And by the time humans became significantly more numerous, keeping a night-watch would have been essential to protect themselves from the most dangerous predators of all, other humans - in this instance I'm assuming this time to have been the Neolithic, though it's possible such caution might have extended back into the Mesolithic as well.
Meanwhile, back at the linked article...
A genetic mutation called the "after-hours gene" may explain why some people are night owls, it is revealed in Science journal today...
...The altered gene, named "after hours" or Afh, is a variant of a gene called Fbxl3, which had not been linked to the body clock that keeps our metabolism, digestion and sleep patterns in tune with the rising and setting of the sun.
However, the article doesn't mention if this is a phenomenon unique to humans, though it would seem likely, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn, though it could never be proved, that this genetic mutation arose as a consequence of those members of archaic communities who regularly carried out nocturnal sentry duties.
Moreover, it is precisely those people staying awake whilst everyone else slept, who would have had more time to watch the Moon and stars as they traversed the heavens above, in the course of what appeared to be their own nocturnal wanderings, though what these earliest of astronomers made of it all, I am at present unable to say.
image: Edward Hopper, "Nighthawks", 1942
The May edition of Scientific American is out, and one article in particular grabbed my attention, as part of it described finding a fossil New World monkey in South America, many thousands of miles across an ocean from Africa, which is from where this particular specimen appears to have originated.
But before I discuss the mystery of displaced monkeys - as well as their caviomorph counterparts - it's worth taking a look at the broader research that was being undertaken in the Tinguiririca Valley, in deepest alpine Chile, from the deep-time, pre-Internet days of 1988. A group of palaeontologists from the American Museum of Natural History, and the Universities of San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and of Chile, Santiago, took it upon themselves to search for fossils in the seemingly unpromising medium of volcanic rock. What they found there opened up a captivating glimpse into mammalian evolution in South America, spanning the period between 40 million and 10 million years bp.
Patagonia is more commonly recognised for its fossil bearing deposits, and indeed it is home to some of the most impressive dinosaur specimens ever recovered; moreover, the volcanic layers in Chile, as with volcanic geology elsewhere in the world, had hitherto been considered unsuitable for investigation, as their hot and dynamic formation were thought to be incapable of preserving fossil remains.
But the team got lucky; they heard that dinosaur footprints had been discovered in the locale, and accordingly they turned their attention to this previously overlooked environment. They naturally assumed that these rocks would be in an age range of roughly 65 million to 100 million years old, and seemingly without even the slightest hope of discovering anything more exciting than fossils of shrew-like mammals that were known to have been contemporaneous with the later dinosaurs, set to work.
I'm constantly surprised at the amount of digs, be they archaeological, geological or otherwise, that turn up something crucial on the last day of a given campaign, and this was to prove no exception back in '88. As we see...
On the last day of a one-week reconnaissance trip in 1988, our team of four split up to prospect the precipitous slopes flanking each side of the Tinguiririca River. Almost immediately, the pair working north of the river reached the layer of ancient sediments that bore the dinosaur tracks, then continued up the valley in search of more potential fossil-bearing deposits. To their dismay, however, the only fossils they recovered were from fish, ammonites and other ocean-dwelling creatures--no reptiles or mammals...
...Late in the afternoon, though, their spirits soared when they spied a few fossilized scraps of bone and teeth eroding out of a large patch of reddish-brown volcanic sediments nearly 1,000 meters above the valley floor. A closer look revealed that the fossils were land-dwelling vertebrates about the size of a small horse.
But although these fossils appeared unmistakeably mammalian, they were too large to have been living more than 50 million years bp, and as the scientists still believed the rock matrix to be Mesozoic , they initially thought that the fossils must be unknown dinosaurs or previously unknown fauna from the same era. But over the the following years, it slowly dawned on them that they were seeing the fossils of mammals that had lived much more recently. Here's a description of some of those animals and the environment in which they had evolved...
For most of the past 80 million years, following the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea and its southern portion, Gondwana, tectonic plate motions kept South America separated from other landmasses. This period of isolation fostered the evolution of native mammals uniquely adapted to that island's conditions and every bit as bizarre as those indigenous to modern islands such as Australia (like the platypus and koala) and Madagascar (famous for its lemurs). Unusual predecessors of South America's modern groups include hopping marsupials; saber-toothed marsupial "pseudocats"; armadillo cousins equipped with massive, spike-studded tail clubs; bear-size rodents; sloths as big as elephants; and sloths that swam in the sea.
Next we come to the caviomorph rodents, enigmatic creatures that were at first thought to have originated in North America, arriving in what was then the island of South America sometime between 55 million and 25 million years ago. But examination of the dentition revealed that they were in fact African in origin, and that they must have somehow made their way across the Atlantic, which even at its narrowest, was still about 1,000 miles wide, making a formidable barrier for any fauna attempting to make the trip, which would have lasted a good couple of weeks.
Skipping through to the final page of SciAm's free preview, we next learn of a New World monkey, that in fact had come from the Old World, and once again, a puzzling mystery rears its curious head...
Named Chilecebus carrascoensis, this creature resembled modern New World monkeys, such as marmosets and tamarins. As with the caviomorph rodents, experts had long debated whether New World monkeys originated in North America or Africa. But anatomical details of the Chilecebus skull and teeth argue for its common heritage with a group of primates originating in Africa. Like the caviomorph rodents, it seems the ancestors of Chilecebus somehow made the Atlantic crossing from Africa.
The good news is that mammal fossils have also been turning up outside the Tinguiririca Valley, and there is optimism that many more similar discoveries await discovery elsewhere in Chile. I'm not sure if other volcanic deposits elsewhere in the world will also turn out to be fossil-bearing, but the message from this particular team seems to be that in order to find really good material, long and arduous treks into the hinterlands of desolate locations, far from civilisation are necessary.
All in all, an excellent and fascinating article, and very worthwhile reading in full, by clicking the headline to this post.
New World Monkeys
image from Scientific American
During a recent wet spell, when I was blogging from somewhere else in Europe, one of the few decent things on the TV was a BBC World show, looking at the life and tempestuous times of Caravaggio, painter of extraordinary compositions and by the sound of it, something of man in a permanent temper, who was never far from trouble or controversy - indeed, the very events surrounding his death remain something of an enigma, but more of that another time.
The painting that impressed me most was the 'Martyrdom of Ursula', completed in May 1610, just about the final painting of the artist before his death - although as we can see from the figure immediately behind Ursula, Caravaggio was presaging his own imminent demise, and it is this image of himself, eyes brimming with black despair, which etched itself most strongly into the nebulous image bank of my mind.
But what marks out this picture, and indeed several other works by the same artist, is the way in which light becomes a shorthand way of expressing content, with vast areas of the painting left deliberately in the dark, with all we need to know sharply focused in the shards of light that splinter the gloom.
Brief look at the six science books short-listed for this year's Royal Society Prize for Science Books, previously known as the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and until this year the Aventis Prize. And just to add further complexity to the mix, this particular book prize is considered the equivalent of the "Booker prize for Science writing".
The title that most immediately caught my eye was Chris Stringer's "Homo Britannicus", mostly because I already own it, and can readily attest that it's an excellent read, even though I've yet to finish it. The book focuses on the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project, and this is one area of palaeoanthroplogy that is both ongoing and continually yielding surprising evidence that this part of the world may have had archaic human residents dating back as far as 800,000 bp to 1 million bp, roughly coinciding with the famous Atapuerca fossils found near Burgos, northern Spain - this would seem to indicate that Homo heidlebergensis or antecessor ranged far further north than had previously been thought.
For the reader's convenience, the linked page gives a brief synopsis of each of the titles jostling for supremacy, and although bias would prompt me to vote for Chris Stringer, the other books all promise to be excellent reads as well.
One of the judges is Colin Pillinger, and although the other judges get a credit for their achievements, he does not. So to put the record straight, Colin Pillinger is the man who ran the Beagle 2 mission to Mars several years ago, and although the lander went missing in action somewhere over the Martian skies, he and his team still did a remarkable job, despite the fact that Pillinger himself had to devote much of his time chasing extra money due to the usual chronic underfunding that this country apparently deems an appropriate response to space missions that don't involve the manufacture of profitable communications satellites and the like.
Being notoriously hopeless at remembering peoples' birthdays, it comes as no surprise to me that Hubble's birthday also eluded me, but thanks to those who maintain the Hubble website, this is one anniversary that for once doesn't go unnoticed for days and weeks afterwards.
To celebrate, a panoramic view stretching 50 light-years in breadth, taking in the Carina Nebula, and a star-birth event which began a mere 300 million years ago - around the same time as the fossil forest discussed a few posts down from here, was preserved down here on Earth.
Hubble's view of the nebula shows star birth in a new level of detail. The fantasy-like landscape of the nebula is sculpted by the action of outflowing winds and scorching ultraviolet radiation from the monster stars that inhabit this inferno. In the process, these stars are shredding the surrounding material that is the last vestige of the giant cloud from which the stars were born.
The immense nebula contains at least a dozen brilliant stars that are roughly estimated to be at least 50 to 100 times the mass of our Sun. The most unique and opulent inhabitant is the star Eta Carinae, at far left. Eta Carinae is in the final stages of its brief and eruptive lifespan, as evidenced by two billowing lobes of gas and dust that presage its upcoming explosion as a titanic supernova.
The image itself is a composite of 48 images, lovingly stitched together in a way which reminds me of people constructing a patchwork quilt - although of course, the results here are slightly more spectacular. And although I often bemoan the vast amounts of cash squandered on the Shuttle fleet, one positive benefit has been the ability to service and repair the venerable telescope, as it whiles away its days gazing farther into the cosmos than any unaided human eyes could ever probe.
Brief link to a EurekAlert article from a few days ago, which in turn mentions a new study conducted by Erik Trinkaus, appearing in this week's edition of PNAS.
As would be expected from one of the foremost researchers into Neanderthals and their posited interactions with Early Modern Humans at the time of the transition of Middle to Upper Paleolitihc, this study looks at the way in which some of those early moderns seem to have definite traces of Neanderthal architecture apparent, particularly in cranial material.
"When you look at all of the well dated and diagnostic early modern European fossils, there is a persistent presence of anatomical features that were present among the Neandertals but absent from the earlier African modern humans," Trinkaus said. "Early modern Europeans reflect both their predominant African early modern human ancestry and a substantial degree of admixture between those early modern humans and the indigenous Neandertals."
And at the end, as mentioned elsewhere, is this rather curious, but possibly quite accurate opinion expressed thus...
This analysis, along with a number of considerations of human genetics, argues that the fate of the Neanderthals was to be absorbed into modern human groups. Just as importantly, it also says that the behavioural difference between the groups were small. They saw each other as social equals.
I'm not sure how society back then was structured, but this idea of the two populations regarding each other as 'equals' sounds good, although I'm not sure exactly how such a notion could be definitively proven.
Abstract: European Early Modern Humans And The Fate Of The Neanderthals
see also: Science Daily: The Emerging Fate Of The Neanderthals
Washington Post: Modern Man, Neanderthals Seen As Kindred Spirits
image from here
One of the drawbacks of blowing $10 billion on shoring up a Shuttle fleet that should have been retired over 20 years ago, is that there is far less money in the coffers to spend on projects that are not only worthwhile, but in the current climate, veritably essential. As we see...
If present trends continue, they (National Research Council) conclude, by 2015 the number of US Earth-observing satellite missions will be reduced by half, putting the scientific systems they support "at risk of collapse."
They warn that such a loss would severely hamper the ability of scientists to collect basic information about the Earth's climate system, to monitor changes - including those that directly affect human health, such as disease outbreaks and water contamination - and provide accurate weather forecasts.
Programmes involving measurements of temperature, ozone, ocean winds, water vapour, and solar radiation are among those expected to be curtailed.
One of the disadvantages of a diminished satellite climate monitoring fleet is aptly described thus...
"Our knowledge of how the climate has changed and is changing relies heavily on satellite remote sensing," comments Richard Somerville from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego, a lead author on the recent IPCC climate science report.
"How are you going to measure shrinking sea ice without a satellite?" he asks.
"The Arctic is a big place, and you can't have guys floating out there in canoes taking measurements."
And although NASA are not the only space agency able to fund and launch such projects, they are one of the best and biggest, and if they downgrade their service significantly, the loss will be keenly felt here in the West, and it's doubtful that private enterprise will take up the slack.
A new website alerting those interested in participating in UK archaeological digs has been announced...
Current Archaeology has launched a new website devoted to archaeological sites - both for digging and visiting. It is called "I Love the Past" (http://www.ilovethepast.com) and it is certainly the most comprehensive source of fieldwork opportunities in the UK, listing over 100 digs, and soon digs across the world.
Now we would love your help! We are keen to hear your thoughts on the various sites. If you have dug on any of the sites, we particularly want your feedback. What was good about the site? What could be done to improve the experience? What was the level of tuition like? Was it suitable for the novice, or more appropriate for experienced diggers? In addition, if you are organizing an excavation, we encourage you to add your site to our website – you can even upload your pictures.
With your help, I LOVE THE PAST will become even more useful - prospective diggers will find it even easier to choose the right excavation, and your insightful feedback will, we hope, be of benefit to the excavation directors.
Clicking the headline above will take you directly to the website.
image of Saxon dig from archaeology.about.com
The star known as Gliese 581, an M class red dwarf star, lying slightly more than 20 light-years from Earth, has been known since at least 1846, but it is the planets that have been detected orbiting around it that are attracting the attention of we humans as we scan the skies for potential new homes far away from Earth. Here's a comment from Centauri Dreams...
This is a big one, and it happens several years earlier than I had expected. A planet of about five times Earth mass, one whose radius is only 1.5 times that of our own world. Moreover, a planet that’s smack in the middle of its star’s habitable zone, with a mean temperature estimated at between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius. The models in question say that this is a rocky world, and its temperatures tell us that oceans could exist there. The first detection of a planet where carbon-based life could conceivably exist makes this one a find for the history books.
Although this newly discovered planet, Glies 581c, is so close to its sun that a single orbit is completed in a mere 13 days, Gliese 581 itself is much dimmer than our own sun, hence the relatively balmy climate. It is thought that the side of the planet which is always facing the star might just be able to support life, whereas the dark side of 581c is thought to be too cold - however, the discovery of extremophiles on Earth might yet suggest life could exist there too.
It is also thought that M class dwarf stars are more likely to have small planets in attendance - i.e. no larger than our own Neptune, rather than gas giants. And the fact that potentially habitable planets have been found so close - 20 light years is still far away, but with future advances in technology, such locations may come within the reach of earthlings in the foreseeable future.
see also Meet The Neighbours
and 'Goldilocks' Planet May Be Just Right For Life
and: Found 20 Light Years Away: The New Earth
Although we think of re-cycling books as a modern idea, a scarcity of paper, or in this case parchment, meant that writers in the past were sometimes obliged to re-use old texts themselves.
Experts are "lost for words" to have found that a medieval prayer book has yielded yet another key ancient text buried within its parchment.
Works by mathematician Archimedes and the politician Hyperides had already been found buried within the book, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest.
But now advanced imaging technology has revealed a third text - a commentary on the philosopher Aristotle.
Dr. William Noel describes how old books occasionally had their text manually erased, after which individual pages could be cut to a different size, then to be compiled into a new book.
In this case, a 13th century scribe named John Myronas used 5 old books to create a prayer book, though whether he realised the importance of some of the material he was co-opting isn't immediately clear.
In 1906 it came to light that one of the books recycled to form the medieval manuscript contained a unique work by Archimedes.
And in 2002, modern imaging technology not only provided a clearer view of this famous mathematician's words, but it also revealed another text - the only known manuscript of Hyperides, an Athenian politician from the 4th Century BC.
It now transpires that yet another text was hidden within the prayer book - researchers using a technique known as multispectral imaging discovered the third text, a commentary on Aristotle's 'Categories', part of which is reproduced here...
For as "foot" is ambiguous when applied to an animal and to a bed, so are "with feet" and "without feet". So by "in species" here [Aristotle] is saying "in formula".
For if it ever happens that the same name indicates the differentiae of genera that are different and not subordinate one to the other, they are at any rate not the same in formula.
This had been previously considered to be a lost commentary, and there will be a webcast later today from the Annual General Meeting of the American Philosophical Society.
Archimedes Palimpsest
American Philosophical Society
Although the lead story of the last day or two has concentrated on Gliese 581c, the discovery of a fossil forest in an Illinois coal-mine dating back 300 million years, and covering no less that 40 square miles, is something I wanted to look at first.
The largest ever found, the fossil forest covers an area of about 40 square miles, or nearly the size of San Francisco. This ancient assemblage of flora is thought to be one of the first rainforests on Earth, emerging during the Upper Carboniferous, or Pennsylvanian, time period that extended from about 310 million to 290 million years ago.
A reconstruction of the ancient forest showed that like today’s rainforests, it had a layered structure with a mix of plants now extinct: Abundant club mosses stood more than 130-feet high, towering over a sub-canopy of tree ferns and an assortment of shrubs and tree-sized horsetails that looked like giant asparagus.
It's preservation is thought to have been caused by a strong earthquake, which subsumed the forest under a layer of mud, more or less in the twinkling of an eye.
See also: Geologists Discover World's Largest Fossil Forest In The Ceiling Of An Illinois Coal Mine
and Mystery Fossil Turns Out To Be Giant Fungus
Doggerland is the name we give to the sunken Mesolithic landscape that once connected Britain with Denmark, until rising post-glacial sea-levels inundated it until (presumably) the next Ice Age, when sea levels could well fall by hundreds of metres.
University of Birmingham researchers are heralding "stunning" findings as they map the "best-preserved prehistoric landscape in Europe".
This large plain disappeared below the water more than 8,000 years ago.
The Birmingham researchers have been using oil exploration technology to build a map of the once-inhabited area that now lies below the North Sea - stretching from the east coast of Britain up to the Shetland Islands and across to Scandinavia.
The landscape they are trying to re-create disappeared slowly at first, as the great northern American ice sheets slowly emptied their contents into the sea, with the result that after about 9,500 bp, sea levels rose annually between an estimated 20mm and 40mm, an increment that hardly sounds spectacular, but over the course of time proved disastrous for the inhabitants of this lost land. Here's a description of what went under, by Steven Mithen...
"At 7,500 BC the coast of northern Europe ran directly from eastern England to Denmark. It was deeply incised with estuaries that led into narrow-sided valleys that in turn wound their way between gently rolling hills. Doggerland - the region now submerged beneath the North Sea - had a coastline of lagoons, marshes, mud-flats and beaches. It was probably the richest hunting, fowling and fishing grounds in the whole of Europe. Graham Clark, the excavator of Star Carr, believed that Doggerland had been the heartland of the Mesolithic culture."
But although the preceding centuries had seen a gradual erosion of the northern coastline, an Atlantean-type apocalypse lay waiting in the Arctic Ocean, and one fine day in about 9,000 bp, a series of 8-metre high waves, triggered by an undersea event called the Storrega slide, devastated vast stretches of coastline, with 17,000 cubic kilometres of sediment being dumped across the eastern coast of Scotland alone.
It's quite likely that below the waves there still exist a great many artifacts and other traces of Mesolithic and even earlier lives, still lie waiting to be found, but one of the current priorities is to see what can be done to protect the drowned landscape as far as possible from activities such as pipe-laying and other commercial activities - and over the coming years, who knows what further discoveries may yet be hauled up from the murky depths.
Palaeolandscapes is run out of the University of Birmingham, where it is also announced that one of the key investigators, Dr. 
Although I'm not greatly surprised at this news, I think NASA could be missing out on an opportunity to maintain momentum in their own long-term ambitions to establish a permanent presence on the Moon.
