Egyptian City Aligns with Sun on King's Birthday
The Egyptian city of Alexandria, home to one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, may have been built to align with the rising sun on the day of Alexander the Great's birth, a new study finds.
The Macedonian king, who commanded an empire that stretched from Greece to Egypt to the Indus River in what is now India, founded the city of Alexandria in 331 B.C. The town would later become hugely prosperous, home to Cleopatra, the magnificent Royal Library of Alexandria and the 450-foot-tall (140 meters) Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the wonders of the ancient world. Today, more than 4 million people live in modern Alexandria. |  |
Water on the moon? Maybe a lot more than we thought ... thanks to the sun
The moon's top layer of crushed rock and soil may hold far more water than previously estimated, according to a new study.
Most of that water can trace its origin to protons streaming from the sun, the researchers show, confirming in samples of lunar soil a mechanism for making lunar water that until now largely had been the province of theoretical models. The find "represents an unanticipated, abundant reservoir" of water on the moon, according to researchers from three US universities, who formally reported their results Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience. And it could help explain the presence of water on other airless planets and asteroids in the inner solar system. |  |
Supermarkets Find that Less Inventory Means More Money (and Less Waste)
We think we want more. We actually want less: less variety, less confusion, less options. This counterintuitive The Paradox Of Choice
(watch the TED talk by Swarthmore College psychologist Barry Schwartz to understand how this works) is driving a new movement by supermarkets, restaurants, and others to slash some of the billions of dollars in food waste every year, and save hundreds of millions of dollars, by doing something simple: offering less.
(watch the TED talk by Swarthmore College psychologist Barry Schwartz to understand how this works) is driving a new movement by supermarkets, restaurants, and others to slash some of the billions of dollars in food waste every year, and save hundreds of millions of dollars, by doing something simple: offering less.
In 2008, total food loss in the U.S. climbed to $165.6 billion (at retail prices), about one-third of it in the nation's supermarkets. Yet our waste stream keeps on growing: Today, up to 40% of the nation's food supply is tossed, up from 30% in 1974. While the national trend isn't reversing, companies armed with massive data sets about what sells and what doesn't have found ways to increase profits and cut waste.
Spectacular Art Heist Stuns Rotterdam Museum
In one of the largest art heists in recent years, thieves in the Dutch city of Rotterdam made off with seven works by renowned artists such as Matisse, Monet, Picasso and Gauguin. Experts say the paintings could be worth up to 100 million euros altogether.
The list of artists is impressive: Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso. But rather than originating from a museum brochure advertising a modern art exhibition, the name registry comes from the Rotterdam police website.
The list of artists is impressive: Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso. But rather than originating from a museum brochure advertising a modern art exhibition, the name registry comes from the Rotterdam police website.
German woman fails to prove atom-smasher will end world
A German woman who feared the Earth would be sucked into oblivion in a black hole failed Tuesday in her court bid to stop the work of the world's most powerful atom smasher.
The higher administrative court in Muenster, western Germany, rejected her claims, ruling there was no evidence the work of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) posed a danger to public safety.
"The plaintiff ... was worried that the experiments could produce so-called 'black holes' which could eventually lead to the destruction of all life on Earth," the court said.
The higher administrative court in Muenster, western Germany, rejected her claims, ruling there was no evidence the work of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) posed a danger to public safety.
"The plaintiff ... was worried that the experiments could produce so-called 'black holes' which could eventually lead to the destruction of all life on Earth," the court said.
Calling all psychics: a chance to prove your powers in a scientific test
For many, the question of whether it is possible to communicate with the dead is very much a settled issue.
On one side there are the passionate, unshakeable believers, for whom no amount of argument will convince them that their dear departed grandmother didn't get in touch to remind them of a man they used to know who was like a father figure, but who passed away due to a health problem in the head, chest or stomach region. For these people, it is an undeniable truth that psychics regularly contact the dead. |  |
Chimps attack people after habitat loss
Habitat loss may be to blame for an apparent spate of violent attacks by chimpanzees on humans in the war-torn eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
According to officials at Virunga National Park, located on the border between the DRC, Uganda and Rwanda, at least one person – a child – has been killed in recent months, in a chimpanzee attack just south of the park in the area around the city of Goma. |  |
Big Tobacco lawyers target food industry
The lawyers who took on the big US tobacco companies, and won, have now set their sights on the food industry. Newsnight's science editor, Susan Watts, asks one of them why he has chosen this particular fight.
Don Barrett likes his opponents powerful, and rich. He is the lawyer whose decade-long battle to force the tobacco companies to admit they knew cigarettes were addictive and pay the medical costs of victims was depicted in the film The Insider. |  |
Did Global Warming Really Stop in 1997?
Claims global warming stopped 15 years ago are based on "cherry-picked" data and don't account for natural fluctuations in climate, according to climate scientists responding to an article that appeared Saturday (Oct. 13) in the British newspaper, The Daily Mail.
The article cites combined global land and sea-temperature data compiled by British climate researchers, claiming that between August 1997 and August 2012, "there was no discernable rise in aggregate global temperatures.". |  |
Gulf Stream Diverted More Than 100 Miles North in 2011
Last fall, fishermen in the Northeast United States noticed stronger currents and higher water temperatures than usual, so they tapped scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts to help them find out what was going on.
A study by the scientists, published recently in the journal Scientific Reports, suggests the cause was a change in the direction of the Gulf Stream, the current that ferries warm water from the Gulf of Mexico northeast into the Atlantic and along the U.S. East Coast. The scientists found that the center, or core, of the Gulf Stream was diverted as much as 125 miles (200 kilometers) to the north of its average position, according to a WHOI statement. |  |
Brief reversal of the geomagnetic field, climate variability and a super volcano
41,000 years ago, a complete and rapid reversal of the geomagnetic field occured. Magnetic studies of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences on sediment cores from the Black Sea show that during this period, during the last ice age, a compass at the Black Sea would have pointed to the south instead of north. Moreover, data obtained by the research team formed around GFZ researchers Dr. Norbert Nowaczyk and Prof. Helge Arz, together with additional data from other studies in the North Atlantic, the South Pacific and Hawaii, prove that this polarity reversal was a global event. Their results are published in the latest issue of the scientific journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
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A Chemist Comes Very Close to a Midas Touch
In a lab in Princeton University’s ultra-sleek chemistry building, researchers toil in a modern-day hunt for an elusive power: alchemy.
Throughout the centuries, alchemists tried in vain to transform common metals like iron and lead into precious ones like gold or platinum. Today, Paul Chirik, a professor of chemistry at Princeton, has managed a new twist on the timeworn pursuit. |  |
Giant eyeball mystery solved: Experts say it belonged to swordfish (+video)
Wildlife officials in Florida are examining a lone blue eye the size of a softball that washed ashore on Pompano Beach this week. While test results are pending, some researchers have speculated that the mysterious eye belonged to a large swordfish.
Though some had also suggested it came from a deep-sea squid, experts contacted by LiveScience lean toward a swordfish as the likely eyeball owner. Marine scientist Heather Bracken-Grissom, of Florida International University in Miami, told LiveScience that the shape of the eyeball's lens and pupil is similar to that of a giant squid. |  |
Eye Movements Could ID Computer Users
The password is becoming passé. Every week it seems, someone is proposing a new method for authenticating computer users when they attempt to access email or a bank account. There are finger swipes, brain patterns, palm prints, and even butt-prints. Now we can add eye movements to the list.
Oleg Komogortsev, an assistant professor in the computer science department at Texas State University-San Marcos thinks that how a person's eyes focus when he looks at an object can be as individual as a fingerprint. |  |
Japanese 'sangaku' paintings reveal the sacred side of maths
This image is a stunning example of one of the most intriguing practices in the history of mathematics.
Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, the Japanese used to hang up pictures of maths theorems at their shrines. Called "sangaku", the pictures were both religious offerings and public announcements of the latest discoveries. It's a little like as if Isaac Newton had decided to hang up his monographs at the local church instead of publishing them in books. More than 700 sangaku are known to have survived, and the above shape is a detail from the oldest one that exists in its complete form. |  |
Planet with four suns discovered
Astronomers have found a planet whose skies are illuminated by four different suns - the first known of its type.
The distant world orbits one pair of stars and has a second stellar pair revolving around it. It remains a mystery how the Neptune-like world avoids being pulled apart by the gravitational forces generated its four stars. The find was made by volunteers using the Planethunters.org website along with a team from UK and US institutes. A scientific paper outlining the quadruple star system has been posted on the Arxiv pre-print server. |  |
Archeologists: Assyrian site in northern Iraq unearthed
Archeologists working in northern Iraq have discovered a new Assyrian site in the vicinity of the historic Arbil city center, the head of the antiquities office in the Kurdish Province of Arbil, Haydar Hassan, was quoted as saying in an Iraqi newspaper.
The Assyrian civilization flourished in northern Iraq between 1000-700 B.C., archeologists were led to discover the site when they exhumed a burial ground, complete with mud brick grave heads, Global Arab Network reports according to Iraq’s al-Zaman newspaper. |  |
Earth's Strongest, Most Massive Storm Ever
On Oct. 12, 1979, Super Typhoon Tip's central pressure dropped to 870 mb (25.69 inches Hg), the lowest sea-level pressure ever observed on Earth, according to NOAA. Peak wind gusts reached 190 mph (306 kph) while the storm churned over the western Pacific.
Besides having unsurpassed intensity, Super Typhoon Tip is also remembered for its massive size. Tip's diameter of circulation spanned approximately 1,380 miles (2,220 km), setting a record for the largest storm on Earth. The storm's huge diameter was exactly the same as the distance from New York City to Dallas. |  |
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