A Greek flag waves by the statue of the goddess Athina, in Athens, Friday, June 22, 2012. In Greek mythology, King Sisyphus pushed a boulder up a hill, over and over, forever, in a futile exercise that a few commentators have compared to international efforts to revive Greece's dire finances. Homer's Odyssey, whose protagonist endures years of peril on his way home after the Trojan War, is seen as another metaphor for the ordeal of a nation in its fifth year of recession.
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June 24 2012
Mission to Mars: The Radiation Problem
Would you go on a mission to Mars? The Dutch startup company Mars One is planning to establish the first Mars colony in 2023, starting with four individuals and adding more people every two years, funded by turning the whole endeavor into a reality TV show.
It’s just the latest plan to colonize the Red Planet, but I’m doubtful it will happen. There’s the expense, for sure, and the trials of trying to convince anyone to go on a one-way journey with just a few other strangers (what if you don’t get along? It’s not like you can leave). And then there’s the radiation problem. |  |
June 24 2012
Scientists Discover That Mars is Full of Water
Despite claims in the 1890s that Mars with filled with canals teeming with water, research over the past several decades has suggest that in fact, Mars has only a tiny amount of water, mostly near its surface.Then, during the 1970s, as part of NASA’s Mariner space orbiter program, dry river beds and canyons on Mars were discovered—the first indications that surface water may have once existed there. The Viking program subsequently found enormous river valleys on the planet, and in 2003 it was announced that the Mars Odyssey spacecraft had actually detected minute quantities of liquid water on and just below the surface, which was later confirmed by the Phoenix lander.
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June 24 2012
Warming Oceans Will Follow Laws of Physics
You can't hold back the tide. Or sea level rise. There’s melting ice, of course. But H2O that’s already liquid expands as it warms—and the oceans are warming from climate change.
That sea level rise isn't the same everywhere. The moon's pull, oceanic currents, the Earth's rotation—these all play a role in what ocean water is where. Turns out the U.S. East Coast is experiencing sea level rise three to four times higher than the global average, according to a study from the U.S. Geological Survey in the journal Nature Climate Change.
That sea level rise isn't the same everywhere. The moon's pull, oceanic currents, the Earth's rotation—these all play a role in what ocean water is where. Turns out the U.S. East Coast is experiencing sea level rise three to four times higher than the global average, according to a study from the U.S. Geological Survey in the journal Nature Climate Change.
June 24 2012
The vanishing north
There are benefits in the melting of the Arctic, but the risks are much greater
NOW that summer is here, the Arctic is crowded with life. Phytoplankton are blooming in its chilly seas. Fish, birds and whales are gorging on them. Millions of migratory geese are in their northern breeding grounds. And the area is teeming with scientists, performing a new Arctic ritual. |  |
June 24 2012
Laser beam may one day replace X-rays
Researchers at the University of Colorado have made a breakthrough that may one day help doctors detect disease earlier and with more accuracy.
Based on the hypothosesis of Dr. Tenio Popmintchev, researchers have created a laser beam by adding 5,000 photons together. Previously, two photons were typically used to create laser beams. This is the first time so many photons have been successfully added together. The result is a more efficient and easier to set up X-ray, according to Dr. Margaret Murnane. |  |
June 24 2012
S.Africa's 'father of paleontology' Phillip Tobias dies
South African paleontologist Phillip Tobias, an internationally respected scientist associated with some of the world's most famous hominid fossil finds, died Thursday aged 86.
Tobias, also an anti-apartheid activist, was renowned for his "dedication to a better understanding of the origin, behaviour and survival of humanity," said the University of Witwatersrand, where he was professor emeritus. |  |
(Ab)use of World Heritage Site causes rifts in Bosnia and Herzegovina
What happens when a theatre of war is elevated to a World Heritage Site while the wounds are still raw? In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the World Heritage Sites have become podiums from which various groups proclaim wrongs done to them in the war. This is shown in a thesis by ethnologist Dragan Nikolić at Lund University, Sweden.
Dragan Nikolić has studied how sites that are included on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites – the old bridge in Mostar, the bridge over the Drina in ViĊĦegrad, and the nomination of the old town in Jajce – have gained a partly different meaning for the local people than that intended by national politicians and the international community.
Dragan Nikolić has studied how sites that are included on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites – the old bridge in Mostar, the bridge over the Drina in ViĊĦegrad, and the nomination of the old town in Jajce – have gained a partly different meaning for the local people than that intended by national politicians and the international community.
Antiquity awards prizes for standing stones and seafarers
Ancient standing stones, seafarers and community center studies have won scholars awards from the journal, Antiquity.
The awards recognize the journal's most striking recent reports of scholarship on the ancient world. Most striking visually is the photo award made to Chris Ceaser for a sunrise view of the Castlerigg Stone Circle in northwestern England, a Stone Age ceremonial center perhaps 3,300 years old. Another prize winner was a report on what looks like the earliest recorded Stone Age temple, or at least a feasting hall, dating to 11,600 years, found at a site in southern Jordan. It was reported by a team led by Stephen Mithen of the United Kingdom's University of Reading. |  |
How to hack a snail to create a living battery
You may not expect much from a garden snail. Some clever hacking can turn it into a living battery, though. Evgeny Katz and his team from Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, have successfully implanted a biofuel cell in a snail for the first time, allowing it to generate electricity for the remaining months of its life.
Synthetic cells used to bioengineer new forms of silica
Scientists do not fully understand how nature uses proteins to develop new materials and minerals, but learning more about the natural processes could lead to bioengineering methods such as the biological synthesis of solid-state materials for electronics applications. Now researchers in the US have designed a synthetic biological platform to facilitate the study of these processes and genetically engineer new materials.
The scientists, led by Professor Emeritus Daniel E. Morse of the University of California, Santa Barbara, created synthetic cells containing a polystyrene micro-bead as a nucleus. They then created DNA segments containing genes from two related silicateins along with random mutations and attached a piece of this DNA to each plastic bead. They soaked each bead in a mixture of bacterial proteins required by the synthetic cells to manufacture silicateins, and surrounded the beads with oil to act as the cell membrane. |  |
Researchers take big step to develop nuclear fusion power
Imagine a world without man-made climate change, energy crunches or reliance on foreign oil. It may sound like a dream world, but University of Tennessee, Knoxville, engineers have made a giant step toward making this scenario a reality.
UT researchers have successfully developed a key technology in developing an experimental reactor that can demonstrate the feasibility of fusion energy for the power grid. Nuclear fusion promises to supply more energy than the nuclear fission used today but with far fewer risks. |  |
There's Gold in That Thar Whale Poop
Sperm whales, it is not widely known, have the largest heads in the animal kingdom. (At around six meters, (20 feet) long, a sperm whale's head constitutes roughly one-third of its entire length from tip to tail.) Sperm whales are also the deepest divers in the mammalian world, able to descend in excess of 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) in search of giant squid, subjecting themselves to pressures that would crush a human.
And, perhaps most unexpectedly of all, sperm whales also produce extraordinarily valuable poop. Not all sperm whales produce this poop. And at least some - and perhaps most or even all - of those that do, die in the process. But the result is, to humans, little short of golden. |  |
Only Two Cosmic Doomsdays Are Certain
The sardonic proverb "nothing is certain but death and taxes," can now be recast for the cosmos.
Last week's announcement of the inevitable collision of the Andromeda galaxy with the Milky Way is one of only two apocalyptic astronomical predictions that we can be absolutely certain of. The other is the death of our sun. Purely deterministic processes drive both. The eventual galaxy smashup is the result of the inexorable pull of gravity between two heavyweight "island universes" each weighing over 1 trillion times the mass of our sun. |  |
Maya calendar workshop documents time beyond 2012
Archaeologists have found a stunning array of 1,200-year-old Maya paintings in a room that appears to have been a workshop for calendar scribes and priests, with numerical markings on the wall that denote intervals of time well beyond the controversial cycle that runs out this December.
For years, prophets of doom have been saying that we're in for an apocalypse on Dec. 21, 2012, because that marks the end of the Maya "Long Count" calendar, which was based on a cycle of 13 intervals known as "baktuns," each lasting 144,000 days. But the researchers behind the latest find, detailed in the journal Science and an upcoming issue of National Geographic, say the writing on the wall runs counter to that bogus belief. |  |
Mysterious structure found on ancient lake — so what is it?
Archaeologists have unearthed the foundation of what appears to have been a massive, ancient structure, possibly a bridge leading to an artificial island, in what is now southeast Wales. The strange ruin, its discoverers say, is unlike anything found before in the United Kingdom and possibly all of Europe.
"It's a real mystery," said Steve Clarke, chairman and founding member of the Monmouth Archaeological Society, who discovered the structural remains earlier this month in Monmouth, Wales — a town known for its rich archaeological features. "Whatever it is, there's nothing else like it. It may well be unique. |  |
Easter Island Mystery Solved? New Theory Says Giant Statues Rocked
For centuries, scientists have tried to solve the mystery of how the colossal stone statues of Easter Island moved. Now there's a new theory—and it rocks.
The multiton behemoths traveled up to 11 miles (18 kilometers) from the quarry where most of them were carved, without the benefit of wheels, cranes, or even large animals. Scientists have tested many ideas in the past, figuring that the islanders must have used a combination of log rollers, ropes, and wooden sledges. Now a pair of archaeologists have come up with a new theory: Perhaps the statues, known as moai, were "engineered to move" upright in a rocking motion, using only manpower and rope. |  |
Roswell, Other Famous UFO Claims Get a Fresh Look
Did a UFO really crash near Roswell, N.M., in 1947? What was that mysterious triangle of lights that hundreds of people spotted over Phoenix, Ariz., last fall? Are alleged alien abductees telling the truth? For a new series on the National Geographic Channel called "Chasing UFOs," a team of investigators visited UFO hotspots around the world and interviewed witnesses in an attempt to address some of history's most famous purported evidence that aliens have visited Earth.
We caught up with Ben McGee, a geoscientist and the lead field researcher on the UFO-chasing team, as well as its only skeptic, to get a taste of what he and his team discovered. |  |