Humans Broke Off Neanderthal Sex After Discovering Eurasia
Neanderthals apparently last interbred with the ancestors of today's Europeans after modern humans with advanced stone tools expanded out of Africa, researchers say.
The last sex between Neanderthals and modern humans likely occurred as recently as 47,000 years ago, the researchers added. Modern humans once shared the globe with now-departed human lineages, including the Neanderthals, our closest known extinct relatives. Neanderthals had been around for about 30,000 years when modern humans appeared in the fossil record about 200,000 years ago. Neanderthals disappeared about 30,000 year ago. |  |
Are Those Spidery Black Things On Mars Dangerous? (Maybe)
You are 200 miles directly above the Martian surface — looking down. This image was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Jan. 27, 2010. (The color was added later.) What do we see? Well, sand, mostly. As you scroll down, there's a ridge crossing through the image, then a plain, then dunes, but keep looking. You will notice, when you get to the dunes, there are little black flecks dotting the ridges, mostly on the sunny side, like sunbathing spiders sitting in rows. Can you see them?
California battle over GM labels
Voters in California will decide on a proposal next month that would require the labelling of most foods made with genetically modified ingredients.
Proposition 37 is supported by the organic industry but many major food suppliers oppose it saying it will drive up prices. Around $40m is expected to be spent on campaigning with the majority coming from opponents. But a recent opinion poll shows a clear majority in favour of the proposal. Note: See Yes and No on 37. |  |
That Flawed Stanford Study
I tried to ignore the month-old “Stanford study.” I really did. It made so little sense that I thought it would have little impact.
That was dumb of me, and I’m sorry.
The study, which suggested — incredibly — that there is no “strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods,” caused as great an uproar as anything that has happened, food-wise, this year. (By comparison, the Alzheimer’s/diabetes link I wrote about last week was ignored.).
That was dumb of me, and I’m sorry.
The study, which suggested — incredibly — that there is no “strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods,” caused as great an uproar as anything that has happened, food-wise, this year. (By comparison, the Alzheimer’s/diabetes link I wrote about last week was ignored.).
Startling discovery debunked: bacteria can't survive on arsenic
Nearly two years ago, a team of biologists claimed to have discovered new bacteria that not only could survive in an environment rich in arsenic, it could fold the toxic element into the very heart of its biochemistry – substituting to small extent arsenic for phosphorus – and survive.
Some astrobiologists were tantalized, suggesting that the results held the potential to broaden the range of habitats for life in the cosmos. But the research also generated intense push-back from other biologists, who said the results flouted well-established recipes for biologically critical molecules. And, they said, they found serious flaws in the experiments that led the team to its conclusions. |  |
21st Century alchemy: The bug that turns common elements into 24K GOLD
It was the alchemical quest that was midwife to the birth of modern science: how to transform common elements into precious gold.
Now researchers have found a bacterium that could fit the bill as a modern day philosophers' stone, by turning a toxic chemical compound found in nature into solid, 24-carat gold. A team from Michigan State University discovered that the metal-tolerant bacteria Cupriavidus metallidurans can grow on massive concentrations of gold chloride, which is deadly to other creatures. They found that the tiny bugs can transform the toxic substance to produce gold nuggets. |  |
NASA Eyes Year-Long Missions on Space Station
With an eye toward preparing for eventual human missions to Mars, NASA is considering doubling an astronaut's stay aboard the International Space Station from six months to one year.
The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported this week that the Russian space agency and its space station partners had agreed to launch a cosmonaut and a NASA astronaut to the station in 2015 for a year-long experimental mission. NASA spokesman Rob Navias told Discovery News the U.S. space agency had been "exploring the idea," but that no agreements have been signed. |
At edge of black hole, a star Albert Einstein would have loved
Astronomers have found a star whipping around an enormous black hole at the center of the Milky Way once every 11.5 years, potentially providing them with a cosmic laboratory to test Albert Einstein's most famous theory and to learn more about how such huge black holes evolve.
No known star orbits a supermassive black hole faster. Though it is among a group of stars discovered at the galactic center, it is only the second with an orbital period of less than 20 years. The other orbits once every 16 years. |  |
British scientists to create 'black holes'
British scientists are to mimic black holes in the laboratory as part of a £2.35 million project looking at how matter and energy interact.
The team from Heriot-Watt University in Scotland will produce laser pulses whose energy is measured in trillions of watts.
They will be used to simulate conditions found around a black hole, a place where gravity is so strong that light cannot escape and the normal laws of physics break down.
The team from Heriot-Watt University in Scotland will produce laser pulses whose energy is measured in trillions of watts.
They will be used to simulate conditions found around a black hole, a place where gravity is so strong that light cannot escape and the normal laws of physics break down.
Ancient carbon resurfacing in lakes challenges models of long-term carbon storage
A new study reveals that a significant amount of carbon released into the atmosphere from lakes and rivers in Southern Québec, Canada, is very old -- approximately 1,000 to 3,000 years old -- challenging the current models of long-term carbon storage in lakes and rivers.
Previous studies have suggested that there is a tight coupling between the terrestrial and aquatic environment such that aquatic bacteria rapidly consume modern carbon. The new findings of the respiration of old carbon in aquatic systems suggests there may be significant lags in the coupling between these systems and further represents an additional, unaccounted for source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. |  |
Vegetarian Dinosaurs Were Champion Chompers
Giant plant-eating dinosaurs may have been champion chewers up there with the likes of mammals such as horses, bison or elephants, researchers say.
The finding could help explain why these behemoths dominated the plains of Europe, Asia and North America during the last part of the age of dinosaurs, scientists added. Duck-billed herbivores called hadrosaurids thundered across the world during the Late Cretaceous period, dating about 65 million to 100 million years ago. They grazed on horsetails, ferns and primitive flowering plantson the ground, and browsed on Earth's conifers. |  |
Uncovered: Secrets of Ilkley Moor’s rock art
IT is a 4,000-year-old mystery just waiting to be solved.
Archaeologists and amateurs have been puzzling for decades over the origin of hundreds of examples of ‘rock art’ which the dot the Yorkshire landscape. Are they way markers, religious symbols, star charts or just ‘doodles’ done by early farmers with a bit of time on their hands? Questions about their meaning continue to be debated in academic circles but now the public is being invited to the debate with the launch of a new guide to the rocks, some of which are on remote, windswept moorland and are notoriously hard to find. |  |
Ceramic Fragments Point to Artistry in the Ice Age
We know them best for their stone tools and intrepid mammoth hunting. But new discoveries in Croatia suggest that ice age humans made evocative ceramic art far more regularly than once believed.
Thirty-six fragments of fired clay, excavated in the Vela Spila cave on an island off the Adriatic coast, make up the second-largest collection found so far of the earliest human experiments with ceramic art. They are 15,000 to 17,500 years old — the first European evidence of ceramic art after the ice sheets stopped spreading. |  |
Space 'harpoon' tested in search for answer to junk in orbit
With tens of thousands of pieces of "space junk" in orbit, officials and experts from the world's space agencies are meeting to discuss how to clean it up.
The risk is that old spacecraft - dead satellites and used-up rockets - could collide with satellites needed for navigation, communications and weather forecasting.
The risk is that old spacecraft - dead satellites and used-up rockets - could collide with satellites needed for navigation, communications and weather forecasting.
Why We Need a Supercomputer on the Moon
Should we build a supercomputer on the moon?
It would be a mammoth technical undertaking, but a University of Southern California graduate student thinks there’s a very good reason for doing this: It would help alleviate a coming deep-space network traffic jam that’s had NASA scientists worried for several years now. Ouliang Chang floated his lunar supercomputer idea a few weeks ago at a space conference in Pasadena, California. The plan is to bury a massive machine in a deep dark crater, on the side of the moon that’s facing away from Earth and all of its electromagnetic chatter. Nuclear-powered, it would process data for space missions and slingshot Earth’s Deep Space Network into a brand new moon-centric era. |  |
Solar Geoengineering: Using Space Tech To Avert Climate Armageddon
After a summer without end, some climate researchers are again looking off-world for a way to geoengineer our way out of global warming.
Unlike geoengineering efforts to remove carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from earth itself, space-based Solar Radiation Management (SRM) would seek to literally deflect a small portion of the sun’s luminosity before it hits our atmosphere. Ideas run the gamut — from placing permanent solar shields between the earth and sun; to creating a Saturn-like earth-orbiting ring of asteroidal dust that could act as a solar filter. |  |
Solar and wind energy may stabilise the power grid
Renewable energies such as wind, sun and biogas are set to become increasingly important in generating electricity. If increasing numbers of wind turbines and photovoltaic systems feed electrical energy into the grid, it becomes denser – and more distributed. Therefore, instead of a small number of large power plants, it links a larger number of small, decentralized power plants with the washing machines, computers and industrial machinery of consumers. Such a dense power grid, however may not be as vulnerable to power outages as some experts fear. One might assume that it is much harder to synchronize the many generators and machines of consumers, that is, to align them into one shared grid frequency, just as a conductor guides the musicians of an orchestra into synchronous harmony.
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The Race to Bring Quantum Teleportation to Your World
There is an international quantum teleportation space race heating up. Around the world, countries are investing time and millions of dollars into the technology, which uses satellites to beam bits of quantum information down from the sky and and could profoundly change worldwide communication.
This is not a maybe-sort-of-one-day quantum technology. Quantum teleportation has been proven experimentally many times over and researchers are now eyeing the heavens as their next big leap forward. Most of what remains are the nuts and bolts engineering challenges (and some more money) before it becomes a thing of the present.
This is not a maybe-sort-of-one-day quantum technology. Quantum teleportation has been proven experimentally many times over and researchers are now eyeing the heavens as their next big leap forward. Most of what remains are the nuts and bolts engineering challenges (and some more money) before it becomes a thing of the present.
Quantum measurements leave Schrödinger's cat alive
Schrödinger's cat, the enduring icon of quantum mechanics, has been defied. By making constant but weak measurements of a quantum system, physicists have managed to probe a delicate quantum state without destroying it – the equivalent of taking a peek at Schrodinger's metaphorical cat without killing it. The result should make it easier to handle systems such as quantum computers that exploit the exotic properties of the quantum world.
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