Fly to the moon for £100m
Excalibur Almaz, a British space company based on the Isle of Man, has announced plans to make the first trip to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission of 1972.
The company has acquired a fleet of former Soviet shuttles and space stations and is planning the mission in three years time. The flight, which would last four months and fly past the moon at a distance of 1000km, is open to anyone who can finance it including government-sponsored researchers, space agency scientists or even billionaires with money to burn. |  |
The descent of music
Musicians, take note: An artistic mind isn’t required to create appealing music. Starting with short sound sequences more grating than Muzak, scientists created pleasing tunes simply by letting them evolve through a Pandora-like process of voting thumbs up or thumbs down on each sequence.
Oldest firmly dated rock art painting in Australia
A team of archaeologists have uncovered the oldest rock art to have been discovered in Australia in a remote Northern Territory shelter.
Professor Bryce Barker, who was working with University of Southern Queensland (USQ) researcher Dr Lara Lamb, found the charcoal drawn fragment dated at 28,000 years after excavating a small part of a massive rock shelter site named Narwala Gabarnmang.
Professor Barker and Dr Lamb (USQ), along with Professor Jean-Michel Geneste (Universite de Bordeaux) and Jean-Jacque Delannoy (Universite de Savoie) are partners in a major archaeological project ‘Connecting Country’ led by Dr Bruno David of Monash University in south western Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.
Professor Bryce Barker, who was working with University of Southern Queensland (USQ) researcher Dr Lara Lamb, found the charcoal drawn fragment dated at 28,000 years after excavating a small part of a massive rock shelter site named Narwala Gabarnmang.
Professor Barker and Dr Lamb (USQ), along with Professor Jean-Michel Geneste (Universite de Bordeaux) and Jean-Jacque Delannoy (Universite de Savoie) are partners in a major archaeological project ‘Connecting Country’ led by Dr Bruno David of Monash University in south western Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.
Virus “Fossils” Reveal Neanderthals’ Kin
Humans and Neanderthals are close cousins. So close, in fact, that some researchers argue the two hominids might actually be members of the same species. But a few years ago, anthropologists discovered a mysterious new type of hominid that shook up the family tree. Known only from a finger fragment, a molar tooth and the DNA derived from both, the Denisovans lived in Asia and were contemporaries of Neanderthals and modern humans. And they might have been Neanderthals’ closest relatives. A recent study of virus “fossils” provides new evidence of this relationship.
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Published research should be free and open to all, says academic panel
Access to Britain's published scientific research should be open and free of charge to all, an influential academic panel recommends to the Government today.
The present, centuries-old system, whereby would-be readers or users of the research have to subscribe to the scientific journals where it appears, should be ended, according to the panel chaired by Dame Janet Finch, Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester.
The present, centuries-old system, whereby would-be readers or users of the research have to subscribe to the scientific journals where it appears, should be ended, according to the panel chaired by Dame Janet Finch, Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester.
Are Echoes of the Big Bang Misinterpreted?
Seeing is believing, except when you don't believe what you see.
This is according to veteran radio astronomer Gerrit Verschuur, of the University of Memphis, who has an outrageously unorthodox theory that if true, would turn modern cosmology upside down. He proposes that at least some of the fine structure seen in the all-sky plot of the universe's cosmic microwave background is really the imprint of our local interstellar neighborhood. It has nothing to do with how the universe looked 380,000 years after the Big Bang, but how nearby clouds of cold hydrogen looked a few hundred years ago. |  |
Solar Flares Fire Double Sun Storm at Earth
An active sunspot is amping up the sun's activity, and has already unleashed two strong solar flares that triggered weekend geomagnetic storms on Earth, NASA officials say.
The M-class solar flares set off two coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that erupted from the sun on last Wednesday and Thursday (June 13 and June 14). The first flare peaked Wednesday at 9:17 a.m. EDT (1317 GMT), and lasted for three hours, NASA scientists said. The resulting CME was hurled into space directly toward Earth, but was not expected to carry serious effects for the planet because it was traveling at a relatively slow speed. |  |