http://www.sott.net Signs of the Times, featuring news and commentary on world events. Never wavering in our unending search for the light of truth in a pathocracy driven world! en-us Original content Copyright 2009 by Signs of the Times. For other content, see our Fair Use Policy at www.sott.net Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:41:25 -0500 http://www.sott.net/images/sottlogo_rss.jpg SOTT.net http://www.sott.net http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197408-Climate-Sceptics-Claim-Leaked-Emails-are-Evidence-of-Collusion-Among-Scientists Hundreds of emails and documents exchanged between world's leading climate scientists stolen by hackers and leaked online Hundreds of private emails and documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world's leading climate scientists during the past 13 years have been stolen by hackers and leaked online, it emerged today. The computer files were apparently accessed earlier this week from servers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, a world-renowned centre focused on the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change. Climate change sceptics who have studied the emails allege they provide "smoking gun" evidence that some of the climatologists colluded in manipulating data to support the widely held view that climate change is real, and is being largely caused by the actions of mankind. The veracity of the emails has not been confirmed and the scientists involved have declined to comment on the story, which broke on a blog called The Air Vent. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197408-Climate-Sceptics-Claim-Leaked-Emails-are-Evidence-of-Collusion-Among-Scientists Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:39:51 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197403-Deep-Hole-Spotted-on-Moon New revelations of a big hole in the moon don't revive the notion that our cosmic companion is made of Swiss cheese. Instead, scientists say, the unusually proportioned feature is most likely a portal into an underground cavern that once held flowing lava. Analyses of high-resolution images taken by a moon-orbiting probe suggest that the 65-meter-wide, nearly circular feature is between 80 and 88 meters deep, says Carolyn H. van der Bogert, a planetary geologist at Westphalian Wilhelm's University Münster in Germany. Typical impact craters of this size, she notes, are less than 15 meters deep. Although the hole is located in a lunar province once home to widespread volcanic activity, a dearth of hardened lava around the hole indicates that it isn't a volcanic crater, she and her colleagues report in the Nov. 16 Geophysical Research Letters. The geology of the region also suggests that the hole isn't associated with a fault zone. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197403-Deep-Hole-Spotted-on-Moon Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:50:26 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197378-Early-Humans-May-Have-Been-Hobbits-Scientists-Say In a strange case of science imitating art, one hobbit has again become the center of a heated and ongoing conflict. Since its 2003 discovery on the Indonesian island of Flores, the Homo floresiensis (nicknamed hobbit because it only grew to be about three feet tall) has caused scientists across the world to debate whether the find is a new species or simply a variation of the modern human. The difference could signal a major paradigm shift in the study of primitive humans. Although several partial H. floresiensis skeletons have been identified, the majority of the attention has been given to a specimen called LB1 (the first to be discovered) because it is the most complete skeleton and the only one that has an entire cranium. The earliest known hobbit lived approximately 18,000 years ago, although archaeological records of ancient tools suggest that hobbits may have been alive as early as 12,000 years ago. Until the discovery of LB1, scientists had widely believed that the last non-modern humans were the Neanderthals, which became extinct around 24,000 years ago. If hobbits are indeed a new species, they will replace Neanderthals as the most recent non-modern humans. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197378-Early-Humans-May-Have-Been-Hobbits-Scientists-Say Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:16:07 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197365-On-Your-Last-Nerve-Researchers-Advance-Understanding-of-Stem-Cells Researchers from North Carolina State University have identified a gene that tells embryonic stem cells in the brain when to stop producing nerve cells called neurons. The research is a significant advance in understanding the development of the nervous system, which is essential to addressing conditions such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and other neurological disorders. The bulk of neuron production in the central nervous system takes place before birth, and comes to a halt by birth. But scientists have identified specific regions in the core of the brain that retain stem cells into adulthood and continue to produce new neurons. NC State researchers, investigating the subventricular zone, one of the regions that retains stem cells, have identified a gene that acts as a switch -- transforming some embryonic stem cells into adult cells that can no longer produce new neurons. The research was done using mice. These cells form a layer of cells that support adult stem cells. The gene, called FoxJ1, increases its activity near the time of birth, when neural development slows down. However, the FoxJ1 gene is not activated in most of the stem cells in the subventricular zone -- where new neurons continue to be produced into adulthood. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197365-On-Your-Last-Nerve-Researchers-Advance-Understanding-of-Stem-Cells Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:12:05 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197364-Watching-a-Cannibal-Galaxy-Dine A new technique using near-infrared images, obtained with ESO's 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT), allows astronomers to see through the opaque dust lanes of the giant cannibal galaxy Centaurus A, unveiling its "last meal" in unprecedented detail -- a smaller spiral galaxy, currently twisted and warped. This amazing image also shows thousands of star clusters, strewn like glittering gems, churning inside Centaurus A. Centaurus A (NGC 5128) is the nearest giant, elliptical galaxy, at a distance of about 11 million light-years. One of the most studied objects in the southern sky, by 1847 the unique appearance of this galaxy had already caught the attention of the famous British astronomer John Herschel, who catalogued the southern skies and made a comprehensive list of nebulae. Herschel could not know, however, that this beautiful and spectacular appearance is due to an opaque dust lane that covers the central part of the galaxy. This dust is thought to be the remains of a cosmic merger between a giant elliptical galaxy and a smaller spiral galaxy full of dust. Between 200 and 700 million years ago, this galaxy is indeed believed to have consumed a smaller spiral, gas-rich galaxy -- the contents of which appear to be churning inside Centaurus A's core, likely triggering new generations of stars. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197364-Watching-a-Cannibal-Galaxy-Dine Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:09:20 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197348-Geologists-uncover-the-truth-about-the-origin-of-valuable-mineral A recent study has revealed that "earthly" minerals such as rhodium and platinum did not originate from our beloved blue planet. University of Toronto geology professor James Brenan collaborated with William McDonough at the University of Maryland to outline a new theory explaining the existence of certain metals in the Earth's crust. Brenan and McDonough simulated the extreme temperature conditions that occurred during the Earth's formation. This allowed them to measure the proportion of metals that would have remained after the Earth's temperature cooled. Through their intensive research, they demonstrated that metals such as platinum, rhodium, and iridium (from the platinum metal group) should have been completely eliminated from the Earth's outermost layer as a result of high temperatures. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197348-Geologists-uncover-the-truth-about-the-origin-of-valuable-mineral Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:01:38 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197335-Boeing-Laser-Systems-Destroys-Unmanned-Aerial-Vehicles The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] in May demonstrated the ability of mobile laser weapon systems to perform a unique mission: track and destroy small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). During the U.S. Air Force-sponsored tests at the Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, Calif., the Mobile Active Targeting Resource for Integrated experiments (MATRIX), which was developed by Boeing under contract to the Air Force Research Laboratory, used a single, high-brightness laser beam to shoot down five UAVs at various ranges. Laser Avenger, a Boeing-funded initiative, also shot down a UAV. Representatives of the Air Force and Army observed the tests. "The Air Force and Boeing achieved a directed-energy breakthrough with these tests," said Gary Fitzmire, vice president and program director of Boeing Missile Defense Systems' Directed Energy Systems unit. "MATRIX's performance is especially noteworthy because it demonstrated unprecedented, ultra-precise and lethal acquisition, pointing and tracking at long ranges using relatively low laser power." http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197335-Boeing-Laser-Systems-Destroys-Unmanned-Aerial-Vehicles Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:49:51 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197331-The-Giant-Steps-Back-on-Two-GMO-s-Why- Monsanto has abandoned its ambitious plans for two types of a so-called "second generation GM crop" rather than accede to a request from European regulators for additional research and safety data. Monsanto has informed the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) that it no longer wishes to pursue its application for approval of GM maize LY038 and the stacked variety LY038 x MON810. Both of these varieties were designed to accelerate the growth rate of animals. Two letters were sent to EFSA from the Monsanto subsidiary company Renessen at the end of April this year confirming the withdrawal of its applications originally submitted in 2005 and 2006. The letters cite "decreased commercial value worldwide" and state that the high-lysene varieties "will no longer be a part of the Renessen business strategy in the near future." There has been no announcement of these decisions on the Monsanto web site, and there are no mentions on EFSA or European Commission web sites either. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197331-The-Giant-Steps-Back-on-Two-GMO-s-Why- Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:53:30 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197321-Twitter-urges-Murdoch-to-be-open Newspapers should become "radically open" if they want to make money in the online world, the co-founder of social networking site Twitter has said. Biz Stone said that he would "love to see what happens" if newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch went ahead with plans to block Google from his websites. "The future is in openness not [being] closed," he told the BBC. Mr Murdoch recently said that search engines could not legally use material such as headlines in search results. Earlier this year, he said his News Corp business would start charging customers for access to its websites. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197321-Twitter-urges-Murdoch-to-be-open Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:01:17 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197304-Archaeologists-to-Recover-Pieces-of-USS-Westfield The resting place of the USS Westfield is being disturbed to retrieve what's left of the Civil War-era vessel from a Texas ship channel. Archaeologists seek to recover the remains to allow deepening of the Texas City channel by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Experts say a cannon is believed to be the largest remnant of the USS Westfield, a Union ship scuttled by the crew to avoid capture during the 1863 Battle of Galveston. The cannon search began Wednesday as part of the $71 million ship channel upgrade. The artifacts will go to the Texas A&M Conservation Research Laboratory, in an effort that could land some items at museums. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197304-Archaeologists-to-Recover-Pieces-of-USS-Westfield Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:15:21 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197303-New-Fossils-Reveal-a-World-Full-of-Crocodiles New fossils unearthed in what is now the Sahara desert reveal a once-swampy world divided up among a half-dozen species of unusual and perhaps intelligent crocodiles, researchers reported Thursday. They have given some of the new species snappy names -- BoarCroc, RatCroc, DogCroc, DuckCroc and PancakeCroc -- but say their findings help build an understanding of how crocodilians were and remain such a successful life form. They lived during the Cretaceous period 145 million to 65 million years ago, when the continents were closer together and the world warmer and wetter than it is now. "We were surprised to find so many species from the same time in the same place," said paleontologist Hans Larsson of McGill University in Montreal who worked on the study. "Each of the crocs apparently had different diets, different behaviors. It appears they had divided up the ecosystem, each species taking advantage of it in its own way." http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197303-New-Fossils-Reveal-a-World-Full-of-Crocodiles Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:11:02 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197300-IBM-Reports-Progress-in-Creating-Brain-Like-Computer International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) on Wednesday announced that its researchers have made significant progress toward creating a computer system that simulates the way the brain works. Reporting their results at a supercomputing conference being held in Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon, IBM researchers said they have achieved a simulation with 1 billion neurons and 10 billion synapses using a supercomputer that has 147,456 processors. Neurons are the key functional elements of the brain and synapses are the connections between them. The advancement represents the first near real-time simulation of the brain that exceeds the scale of a cat's cerebral cortex, a structure within the brain that plays a key role in memory, attention and thought. The results indicate the feasibility of building a cognitive computing chip, Dharmendra Modha, one of the researchers, wrote in a blog posting. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197300-IBM-Reports-Progress-in-Creating-Brain-Like-Computer Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:03:00 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197260-Venezuelan-government-to-seed-clouds-with-rain Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez says he will join a team of Cuban scientists on flights to "bomb clouds" to create rain amid a severe drought that has aroused public anger due to water and electricity rationing. Chavez, who has asked Venezuelans to take three-minute showers to save water, said the Cubans had arrived in Venezuela and were preparing to fly specially equipped aircraft above the Orinoco river. "I'm going in a plane; any cloud that crosses me, I'll zap it so that it rains," Chavez said at a ceremony late on Saturday with family members of five Cubans convicted of spying in the United States. Many countries have programs aimed at altering weather patterns, commonly known as cloud seeding, although the effectiveness of such techniques is disputed. Firing silver iodine at clouds is one common method. China uses rockets loaded with the chemical to spur rainfall in arid regions. Chavez did not say what technology the Cubans will use. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197260-Venezuelan-government-to-seed-clouds-with-rain Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:34:14 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197236-Taking-A-Bite-Of-Antarctic-Ice Scientists with NASA's IceBite project are heading this week for University Valley, a hanging valley perched more than 1600 meters (more than 1 mile) above sea level in Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys. Their objective: to test a set of ice-penetrating drills and select one for use on a future mission to the martian polar north, the same region of the planet that NASA's Phoenix lander investigated in 2008. The northern polar region on Mars is of particular interest to scientists because it once may have provided a habitable environment for life. Due to variations over time in Mars' orbit and the angle at which it tilts toward the Sun, Mars' north pole received much more sunlight several million years ago than it does today -- enough sunlight to produce liquid water, enough liquid water to support life. Indeed NASA's Phoenix lander found evidence in martian Arctic soil that liquid water had been present there in the past. That makes the martian northern plains a favored place for a future mission to Mars targeted at the search for life. And it makes analogue sites on Earth, locations that mimic the conditions encountered by Phoenix, a good place to prepare for a Phoenix follow-up mission. University Valley, where IceBite researchers will conduct their field work, is just such a site. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197236-Taking-A-Bite-Of-Antarctic-Ice Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:23:05 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197233-Valley-in-Jordan-inhabited-and-irrigated-for-13-000-years You can make major discoveries by walking across a field and picking up every loose item you find. Dutch researcher Eva Kaptijn succeeded in discovering - based on 100,000 finds - that the Zerqa Valley in Jordan had been successively inhabited and irrigated for more than 13,000 years. But it was not just communities that built irrigation systems: the irrigation systems also built communities. Archaeologist Eva Kaptijn has given up digging in favour of gathering. With her colleagues, she has been applying an intensive field exploration technique: 15 metres apart, the researchers would walk forward for 50 metres. On the outward leg, they'd pick up all the earthenware and, on the way back, all of the other material. This resulted in more than 100,000 finds, varying from about 13,000 years to just a few decades old. Based on further research on the finds and where they were located, Kaptijn succeeded in working out the extent of habitation in the Zerqa Valley in Jordan over the past millennia. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197233-Valley-in-Jordan-inhabited-and-irrigated-for-13-000-years Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:51:11 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197232-New-on-off-switch-triggers-and-reverses-paralysis-in-animals-with-a-beam-of-light In an advance with overtones of Star Trek phasers and other sci-fi ray guns, scientists in Canada are reporting development of an internal on-off "switch" that paralyzes animals when exposed to a beam of ultraviolet light. The animals stay paralyzed even when the light is turned off. When exposed to ordinary light, the animals become unparalyzed and wake up. Their study appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS). It reports the first demonstration of such a light-activated switch in animals. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197232-New-on-off-switch-triggers-and-reverses-paralysis-in-animals-with-a-beam-of-light Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:43:16 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197170-Heart-Disease-Found-in-Egyptian-Mummies Hardening of the arteries has been detected in Egyptian mummies, some as old as 3,500 years, suggesting that the factors causing heart attack and stroke are not only modern ones; they afflicted ancient people, too. Study results are appearing in the Nov. 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and are being presented Nov. 17 at the Scientific Session of the American Heart Association at Orlando, Fla. "Atherosclerosis is ubiquitous among modern day humans and, despite differences in ancient and modern lifestyles, we found that it was rather common in ancient Egyptians of high socioeconomic status living as much as three millennia ago," says UC Irvine clinical professor of cardiology Dr. Gregory Thomas, a co-principal investigator on the study. "The findings suggest that we may have to look beyond modern risk factors to fully understand the disease." http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197170-Heart-Disease-Found-in-Egyptian-Mummies Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:27:28 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197145-The-Vanished-Army-Solving-an-Ancient-Egyptian-Mystery In 525 B.C., the Persian Emperor Cambyses dispatched 50,000 of his soldiers to lay waste to an oasis temple in the Sahara because its oracle had spoken ill of his plans for world domination. The punitive expedition proved to be one of antiquity's most dramatic episodes of imperial overreach. One morning, while the army was having breakfast, writes the ancient historian Herodotus in The Histories, it was set upon by "a violent southern wind, bringing with it piles of sand, which buried them." The Greek continues, "Thus it was that they utterly disappeared." For centuries, this little anecdote - like many others in Herodotus's famous text - seemed to be a myth. The Histories is lined with rumors and fantastical hearsay of ants that dig for gold, rings that make their bearers invisible and winged serpents that patrol remote mountain passes. But recent excavations in western Egypt by a team of Italian archaeologists may have unearthed traces of this long-lost army, entombed in the desert for some 2,500 years. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197145-The-Vanished-Army-Solving-an-Ancient-Egyptian-Mystery Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:04:59 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197139-Indus-Valley-s-Bronze-Age-Civilisation-Had-First-Sophisticated-Financial-Exchange-System- The Indus Valley's Bronze Age civilisation may have developed the world's first sophisticated system of wage labour, financial exchange and measurement, a Canadian mathematician has discovered. According to a new study of clay pots and ceramic tablets discovered almost 70 years ago in Harappa, now in Pakistan, the people of the Indus Valley had a detailed system of commodity value, weights and measures. Dr Bryan Wells, a researcher based at India's Institute of Mathematical Sciences, told The Daily Telegraph he had begun work on his thesis ten years ago when he first saw photographs of the clay pots with markings which appeared to be in proportion to their relative size. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197139-Indus-Valley-s-Bronze-Age-Civilisation-Had-First-Sophisticated-Financial-Exchange-System- Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:26:46 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197134-Counterfeit-euros-are-detected-with-an-optical-mouse The sensor of some optical mice can be used to easily and cheaply detect counterfeit euros, according to a study published by researchers of the University of Lleida (UdL) in the scientific journal Sensors. Almost 80% of counterfeit coins discovered in Europe in 2008 were two-euro coins. The sensor, incorporated in optical computer mice, is usually used to guide cursor movement, but can also be used as a counterfeit coin detector. This has been demonstrated by a prototype developed by computer engineers from the UdL, whose details can be consulted openly and for free in the scientific journal Sensors. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197134-Counterfeit-euros-are-detected-with-an-optical-mouse Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:12:50 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197133-Spotting-evidence-of-directed-percolation A team of physicists has, for the first time, seen convincing experimental evidence for directed percolation, a phenomenon that turns up in computer models of the ways diseases spread through a population or how water soaks through loose soil. Their observation strengthens the case for directed percolation's relevance to real systems, and lends new vigor to long-standing theories about how it works. Their experiment is reported in Physical Review E and highlighted with a Viewpoint in the November 16 issue of Physics (http://physics.aps.org). http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197133-Spotting-evidence-of-directed-percolation Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:03:40 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197098-Apple-Wouldn-t-Risk-Its-Cool-Over-a-Gimmick-Would-It- "Some of the best-loved technology on the planet" is how Apple describes its products when recruiting new employees. It's a fair description. But the love that consumers send Apple's way could flag if the company puts into place new advertising technology it has developed. In an application filed last year and made public last month by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Apple is seeking a patent for technology that displays advertising on almost anything that has a screen of some kind: computers, phones, televisions, media players, game devices and other consumer electronics. Filing a patent application, of course, doesn't necessarily mean that the company plans to use the technology. But the application shows, at the least, that Apple has invested in research to develop what it calls an "enforcement routine" that makes people watch ads they may not want to watch. Its distinctive feature is a design that doesn't simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad - it also compels attention. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message. Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197098-Apple-Wouldn-t-Risk-Its-Cool-Over-a-Gimmick-Would-It- Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:03:52 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197074-Mystery-dark-flow-extends-towards-edge-of-universe Something big is out there beyond the visible edge of our universe. That's the conclusion of the largest analysis to date of over 1000 galaxy clusters streaming in one direction at blistering speeds. Some researchers say this so-called "dark flow" is a sign that other universes nestle next door. Last year, Sasha Kashlinsky of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and colleagues identified an unusual pattern in the motion of around 800 galaxy clusters. They studied the clusters' motion in the "afterglow" of the big bang, as measured by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). The photons of this afterglow collide with electrons in galaxy clusters as they travel across space to the Earth, and this subtly changes the afterglow's temperature. The team combined the WMAP data with X-ray observations and found the clusters were streaming at up to 1000 kilometres per second towards one particular part of the cosmos (The Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol 686, p L49). Many researchers argued the dark flow would not turn up in later observations, but now the team claim to have confirmed its existence. Their latest analysis reveals 1400 clusters are part of the flow, and that it continues to around 3 billion light years from Earth, a sizeable fraction of the distance to the edge of the observable universe. This is twice as far as seen in the previous study. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197074-Mystery-dark-flow-extends-towards-edge-of-universe Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:13:13 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197072-Scientists-Create-Bacteria-that-Lights-Up-Around-Landmines A stunning 87 countries around the world are still littered with undetonated landmines, and their impact is devastating. Tens of thousands of people are killed or injured by mines every year, and they pose a grave threat to ecosystems and wildlife. But an unexpected solution may be on the way--scientists have developed a special kind of bacteria that actually begins to glow in the presence of landmines. It seems like something straight out of a science fiction film, but this new bacteria is very real. According to the BBC, the "scientists produced the bacteria using a new technique called BioBricking, which manipulates packages of DNA." The bacteria is then mixed into a colorless solution, "which forms green patches when sprayed onto ground where mines are buried." The bacterial stew can also be dropped via airplane in extremely sensitive areas. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197072-Scientists-Create-Bacteria-that-Lights-Up-Around-Landmines Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:04:24 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197070-Accidental-discovery-produces-durable-new-blue-pigment-for-multiple-applications An accidental discovery in a laboratory at Oregon State University has apparently solved a quest that over thousands of years has absorbed the energies of ancient Egyptians, the Han dynasty in China, Mayan cultures and more - the creation of a near-perfect blue pigment. Through much of recorded human history, people around the world have sought inorganic compounds that could be used to paint things blue, often with limited success. Most had environmental or durability issues. Cobalt blue, developed in France in the early 1800s, can be carcinogenic. Prussian blue can release cyanide. Other blue pigments are not stable when exposed to heat or acidic conditions. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197070-Accidental-discovery-produces-durable-new-blue-pigment-for-multiple-applications Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:37:45 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197069-Nanoparticles-used-in-common-household-items-caused-genetic-damage-in-mice Titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles, found in everything from cosmetics to sunscreen to paint to vitamins, caused systemic genetic damage in mice, according to a comprehensive study conducted by researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. The TiO2 nanoparticles induced single- and double-strand DNA breaks and also caused chromosomal damage as well as inflammation, all of which increase the risk for cancer. The UCLA study is the first to show that the nanoparticles had such an effect, said Robert Schiestl, a professor of pathology, radiation oncology and environmental health sciences, a Jonsson Cancer Center scientist and the study's senior author. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197069-Nanoparticles-used-in-common-household-items-caused-genetic-damage-in-mice Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:33:32 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197028-Freezing-A-Phenomenon-That-Jumps- The freezing of suspensions of particles is not always a uniform phenomenon; in certain conditions it leads to a modification of the redistribution of particles and the growth of crystals. These results have been obtained by researchers at the Laboratoire de Synthèse et Fonctionnalisation des Céramiques (CNRS/Saint Gobain) and the Laboratoire Matériaux, Ingénierie et Sciences (CNRS/INSA Lyon) by observing, through X-ray imaging at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), the movement of particles while they are being frozen. Their work could make it easier not just to develop porous materials with specific properties but also to understand better the mechanisms of soils freezing in winter, which can have a considerable impact on plants, roads and thoroughfares. These results were published online in the journal Nature Materials on 8 November 2009. What is the connection between sea ice formation at the poles, frozen soils in winter, cryopreservation of cells, ice-cream and composite material synthesis? All of these situations involve the propagation of a solidification interface and its encounter with particles, microorganisms or bubbles in suspension in a liquid. Although the phenomenon can be described in just a few words, its mechanism and control remain however extremely complex and still far from being fully understood. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197028-Freezing-A-Phenomenon-That-Jumps- Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:21:06 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197027-Right-Handed-Chimpanzees-Provide-Clues-to-the-Origin-of-Human-Language Most of the linguistic functions in humans are controlled by the left cerebral hemisphere. A study of captive chimpanzees at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center (Atlanta, Georgia), reported in the January 2010 issue of Elsevier's Cortex, suggests that this "hemispheric lateralization" for language may have its evolutionary roots in the gestural communication of our common ancestors. A large majority of the chimpanzees in the study showed a significant bias towards right-handed gestures when communicating, which may reflect a similar dominance of the left hemisphere for communication in chimpanzees as that seen for language functions in humans. A team of researchers, supervised by Prof. William D. Hopkins of Agnes Scott College (Decatur, Georgia), studied hand-use in 70 captive chimpanzees over a period of 10 months, recording a variety of communicative gestures specific to chimpanzees. These included 'arm threat', 'extend arm' or 'hand-slap' gestures produced in different social contexts, such as attention-getting interactions, shared excitation, threat, aggression, greeting, reconciliation or invitations for grooming or for play. The gestures were directed at the human observers, as well as toward other chimpanzees. "The degree of predominance of the right hand for gestures is one of the most pronounced we have ever found in chimpanzees in comparison to other non-communicative manual actions. We already found such manual biases in this species for pointing gestures exclusively directed to humans. These additional data clearly showed that right-handedness for gestures is not specifically associated to interactions with humans, but generalizes to intraspecific communication," notes Prof. Hopkins. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197027-Right-Handed-Chimpanzees-Provide-Clues-to-the-Origin-of-Human-Language Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:18:47 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197024-Ancient-Weapons-Dug-Up-by-Archaeologists-in-England Staff at the University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) have been excited by the results from a recently excavated major Prehistoric site at Asfordby, near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. The Mesolithic site may date from as early as 9000BC, by which time hunter-gatherers had reoccupied the region after the last ice age. These hunters crossed the land bridge from the continental mainland -- 'Britain' was only to become an island several thousand years later. The site was excavated during 2009 by ULAS in advance of a residential development for Jelson Homes Ltd. Initial trenching work identified several worked flint blades of characteristic Mesolithic type, and clearly in an unworn and undisturbed state. Further work confirmed that these rare flint finds were preserved in a Mesolithic soil, buried by a much later ploughsoil. Because this early soil had survived intact, it was thought possible that original features such as hearths and structures might still remain, and activities linked to the flint scatter could also be found. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/197024-Ancient-Weapons-Dug-Up-by-Archaeologists-in-England Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:08:27 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196994-Scientists-find-key-to-creating-clean-fuel-from-coal-and-waste 'Gasification' process enhanced to save millions of tonnes of carbon and provide energy Millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide could be prevented from entering the atmosphere following the discovery of a way to turn coal, grass or municipal waste more efficiently into clean fuels. Scientists have adapted a process called "gasification" which is already used to clean up dirty materials before they are used to generate electricity or to make renewable fuels. The technique involves heating organic matter to produce a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, called syngas. However gasification is very energy-intensive, requiring high-temperature air, steam or oxygen to react with the organic material. Heating this up leads to the release of large amounts of carbon dioxide. In addition, gasification is often inefficient, leaving behind significant amounts of solid waste at the end of the process. To find out how to make the process more efficient, researchers led by Marco Castaldi, at the department of earth and environmental engineering at Columbia University, tried varying the atmosphere in the gasifier. They found that, by adding CO2 into the steam atmosphere of a gasifier, significantly more of the biomass or coal was turned into useful syngas. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196994-Scientists-find-key-to-creating-clean-fuel-from-coal-and-waste Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:58:20 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196976-Solar-Prominence Yesterday, Alan Friedman of Buffalo, New York, trained his telescope on the sun and waited for sunspot 1029 to reappear. But that wasn't going to happen. It was shaping up to be a dull observing session when something completely different popped into view. "This magnificent looping prominence stole the show from the corpse of sunspot 1029," says Friedman. "It was the most dramatic prominence I have seen in many months." The same prominence was putting on a show this morning, Nov. 15th, when the sun rose over the Philippines. "I was elated when I was able to see it clearly visible in the field of my eyepiece!" reports James Kevin Ty from Manila. "I quickly set up my PST (Personal Solar Telescope) and was able to monitor the prominence for more than 2 hours." http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196976-Solar-Prominence Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:34:19 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196969-Ireland-County-Clare-lake-shows-ice-age-came-quickly It wasn't quite The Day After Tomorrow but it's closer than we thought. An analysis of mud from Lough Monreagh, a lake in Co Clare, has revealed that Europe was struck by a sudden mini ice age 12,800 years ago, suggesting the kind of rapid climate change previously seen only in Hollywood disaster movies. It was believed that the "Big Freeze" took about a decade to set in. Based on an analysis of Greenland's ice cores, scientists have estimated that the Younger Dryas, as the event is also named, occurred gradually. However, after analysing mud deposits from Lough Monreagh, William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, has found that the freeze took only months to take hold. Using a very precise robotic scalpel, Patterson and his colleagues shaved 0.5mm layers from the lake bed, each representing up to three months of sediment. Carbon isotopes in the samples recorded changes to biological activity in the lake, while oxygen isotopes revealed temperature and rainfall patterns. The tiny mud deposits showed for the first time that temperatures in Ireland dropped suddenly in the space of several months at the time of the Big Freeze. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196969-Ireland-County-Clare-lake-shows-ice-age-came-quickly Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:10:12 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196941-A-Physics-Paradox-Holes-That-Block-Light The way light moves, with its fixed speed and its ability to act like either a wave or a particle, often leads to some of the most curious paradoxes of physics. A new one has just been found: Make holes in a film of gold so thin that it's already semitransparent, and less light gets through. Because of its wave nature, light generally can't squeeze through a hole whose width is smaller than the wavelength of the light. In 1998, however, researchers discovered that light could zip through certain patterns of such holes punched into thin metal plates. Physicists figured out that the light created waves in the metal's electrons--called plasmons--that move across the material's surface in much the same way that ripples move through water. The plasmons, which have wavelengths much shorter than light, couple with each other across the tiny holes and pull the light along for the ride. One possible application is to use plasmons to build better light-based integrated circuits that would be as fast as fiber optics but less bulky. Toward this end, researchers from the University of Stuttgart in Germany laid very thin films of gold onto pieces of glass and then used ion beams to etch the film with holes arranged in a regular, square array. These holes were smaller than the wavelength of light and, despite being so tiny, are just the kind of openings that have been shown to let light through the thicker, opaque film used in the 1998 experiment. But in the new experiment, the gold film was so thin--only 20 nanometers--that light could already shine through it. And surprisingly, less light went through the holey gold than through the original semitransparent film. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196941-A-Physics-Paradox-Holes-That-Block-Light Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:05:29 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196879-University-of-Alberta-Physicist-Solves-Mystery-of-Supernova-11-000-Years-Ago It took a decade, but two scientists have solved the mystery behind a chunk of radioactive rock the size of a small city that has been floating in space. It turns out the material, discovered by astronomers in 1999, is the core of a supernova, or exploding star, that occurred 11,000 years ago, but only became visible 330 years ago. Craig Heinke, a physics professor at the University of Alberta, along with Wynn Ho of Southampton University in the United Kingdom, finally figured it out. "I'm pretty pumped. It's been absolutely great," said Heinke in an interview with The Canadian Press. The duo's findings are being published in the Nov. 5 edition of Nature. "This one has been a real puzzle for about 10 years since other astronomers detected this object first. We have been able to figure out what it is. We are able to show conclusively that this is a neutron star, something that was not entirely clear before," Heinke explained. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196879-University-of-Alberta-Physicist-Solves-Mystery-of-Supernova-11-000-Years-Ago Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:20:46 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196873-The-Puzzle-of-the-Half-Comet-Half-Asteroid A mysterious object that ejects dust like a comet but orbits like an asteroid could be a new class of object in the solar system. In 1996, astronomers identified an extraordinary object orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter in a region best known for its asteroids. And yet this body, called 133P, defied description: it had the orbit of an asteroid yet emitted dust like a comet. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196873-The-Puzzle-of-the-Half-Comet-Half-Asteroid Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:05:00 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196860-Incas-Practiced-Ritual-Decapitation-of-Enemies-Archaeologists-Say Peruvian archaeologists have reached the conclusion that the Incas decapitated their enemies to use their heads as offerings after finding three skulls in a ceremonial vessel in the southeastern city of Cuzco. The director of Sacsayhuaman Archaeological Park, Washington Camacho, told EFE Friday that the heads found this week on Qowicarana ridge, an ancient ceremonial center north of Cuzco, could have been those of ancient chiefs or leaders of peoples who were enemies of the Incas. For the archaeologist, the "trophy heads" could have been cut off "during a battle or in some other place after the capture of these "curacas" (chiefs of enemy peoples). It is believed, Camacho said, that the offering of heads belonged to "the last phase of the Inca Empire," in other words around 1500, probably "when Huayna Capac reigned." http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196860-Incas-Practiced-Ritual-Decapitation-of-Enemies-Archaeologists-Say Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:13:33 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196859-Japanese-Subs-Found-Off-Hawaii-Could-Have-Changed-World-War-II The two Japanese submarines - which were commandeered and scuttled by the US after World War II - were much larger, faster, and stealthier than US subs of the day. One included a float-plane that could attack New York. Marine researchers have found a pair of Imperial Japanese Navy submarines on the sea floor off Hawaii's Oahu Island - vessels so advanced for their day they would provide plenty of fodder for a fresh novel by Tom Clancy. Known by their vessel numbers, the I-14 was a 375-foot submarine aircraft carrier - its crew capable of assembling and launching two float-plane bombers in roughly 20 minutes. The other craft, the I-201, was an attack submarine, twice as fast as any in the US fleet and faster than subs in any other Navy during World War II. "This is one of the most significant marine-heritage findings in recent years," according to Hans Van Tilburg, a marine archaeologist who is the maritime-heritage coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Sanctuaries in the Pacific. The find was announced Thursday. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196859-Japanese-Subs-Found-Off-Hawaii-Could-Have-Changed-World-War-II Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:09:25 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196849-Lightning-Strike-in-Africa-Helps-Take-Pulse-of-Sun Sunspots, which rotate around the sun's surface, tell us a great deal about our own planet. Scientists rely on them, for instance, to measure the sun's rotation or to prepare long-range forecasts of Earth's health. But there are some years, like this one, where it's not possible to see sunspots clearly. When we're at this "solar minimum," very few, if any, sunspots are visible from Earth. That poses a problem for scientists in a new scientific field called "Space Weather," which studies the interaction between the sun and Earth's environment. Thanks to a serendipitous discovery by Tel Aviv University's Prof. Colin Price, head of TAU's Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science, and his graduate student Yuval Reuveni, science now has a more definitive and reliable tool for measuring the sun's rotation when sunspots aren't visible -- and even when they are. The research, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research -- Space Physics, could have important implications for understanding the interactions between the sun and Earth. Best of all, it's based on observations of common, garden-variety lightning strikes here on Earth. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196849-Lightning-Strike-in-Africa-Helps-Take-Pulse-of-Sun Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:31:28 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196846-Splash-NASA-Moon-Crash-Struck-Lots-of-Water The lunar dud for space enthusiasts has become a watershed event for NASA. Spacecraft that crashed into the moon last month kicked up a relatively small plume. But scientists have confirmed the debris contained water - 25 gallons of it - making lunar exploration exciting again. Experts have long suspected there was water on the moon. So the thrilling discovery announced Friday sent a ripple of hope for a future astronaut outpost in a place that has always seemed barren and inhospitable. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196846-Splash-NASA-Moon-Crash-Struck-Lots-of-Water Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:00:09 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196817-Comet-Hunter-s-Last-Look-at-Earth-is-Haunting This gorgeous image of a blue arc of the Earth against the blackness of space was captured by the Rosetta spacecraft as it swung by our planet. The European Space Agency mission is on its way to intercept the comet, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The ship will deploy a lander onto the comet's surface, the first such attempt to be made. Click HERE to read the rest of this article on wired.com. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196817-Comet-Hunter-s-Last-Look-at-Earth-is-Haunting Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:43:14 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196792-4-9-Million-to-Develop-Metamaterials-for-Invisibility-Cloaks-and-Perfect-Lenses- Research into designing and building unique 'metamaterials' has received a £4.9 million funding boost from The Leverhulme Trust. Metamaterials can be used for invisibility 'cloaking' devices, sensitive security sensors that can detect tiny quantities of dangerous substances, and flat lenses that can be used to image tiny objects much smaller than the wavelength of light. The new grant has been made to a team of Imperial College London scientists and engineers, who, in collaboration with scientists at the University of Southampton, will develop new applications for metamaterials that can bend, control and manipulate light and other kinds of electromagnetic waves. Metamaterials is a new, emerging field of science lying at the borders of physics and materials science. The concept relies not on clever chemistry, which is normally used to create new materials, but instead on creating clever patterns on the surface of existing materials, particularly metals. The new grant is one of two The Leverhulme Trust is awarding for 'embedding emerging disciplines'. The project team is led by two of Imperial College London's Professors: Sir John Pendry, a world-leading physicist and pioneer in the field, who first proposed that metamaterials could be used to build an invisibility 'cloak' in 2006, and Professor Stefan Maier who is a leading experimentalist in the field of plasmonics. Also collaborating in the Project is Professor Nikolay Zheludev's team at the University of Southampton. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196792-4-9-Million-to-Develop-Metamaterials-for-Invisibility-Cloaks-and-Perfect-Lenses- Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:59:07 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196789-Attack-of-the-Hyperdimensional-Juggernaut-Men-Something-May-Come-Through-Dimensional-Doors-at-LHC A top boffin at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) says that the titanic machine may possibly create or discover previously unimagined scientific phenomena, or "unknown unknowns" - for instance "an extra dimension". "Out of this door might come something, or we might send something through it," said Sergio Bertolucci, who is Director for Research and Scientific Computing at CERN, briefing reporters including the Reg at CERN HQ earlier this week. The LHC, built inside a 27-km circular subterranean tunnel deep beneath the Franco-Swiss border outside Geneva, functions like a sort of orbital motorway for extremely high-speed hadrons - typically either protons or lead ions. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196789-Attack-of-the-Hyperdimensional-Juggernaut-Men-Something-May-Come-Through-Dimensional-Doors-at-LHC Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:56:26 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196761-New-Nanowires-may-Contribute-to-Highly-Efficient-Solar-Cells Danish nanophysicists have developed a new method for manufacturing the cornerstone of nanotechnology research -- nanowires. The discovery has great potential for the development of nanoelectronics and highly efficient solar cells. It is PhD student Peter Krogstrup, Nano-Science Center, the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, who developed the method during his dissertation. "We have changed the recipe for producing nanowires. This means that we can produce nanowires that contain two different semiconductors, namely gallium indium arsenide and indium arsenide. It is a big breakthrough, because for first time on a nanoscale, we can combine the good characteristics of the two materials, thus gaining new possibilities for the electronics of the future," explains Peter Krogstrup. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196761-New-Nanowires-may-Contribute-to-Highly-Efficient-Solar-Cells Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:12:12 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196707-Archaeologists-Three-Byzantine-tombs-discovered-in-Wadi-al-Zahab-in-Syria Homs (central Syria) Museums and Antiquities Department recently discovered a cave in Wadi al-Zahab that includes a cemetery of three tombs which are not completed because no one was buried in them. The cemetery dates back to the Byzantine era. Head of the Department Farid Jabbour said the cemetery was discovered during the excavations carried out by the General Establishment for Water studies to keep off floods. Moreover, The Syrian-Lebanese-Spanish joint expedition concluded archeological surveys which began in mid September in the villages of Qazhal, al-Rabiyeh, al-Mashahdeh, al-Rabieaa and Khurbat Ghazi north of the city of Homs. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196707-Archaeologists-Three-Byzantine-tombs-discovered-in-Wadi-al-Zahab-in-Syria Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:43:18 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196678-DARPA-Inventing-this-side-of-the-impossible On 6 December 1957 a hollow aluminium sphere the size of a small melon burst from a blazing fireball, rose a mere metre or so above Florida before landing with a thump. The US was in trouble. A month earlier, the Soviet Union had sent a 500-kilogram capsule bearing a dog called Laika into space. But here was the US unable to even notch up its first foray into orbit. President Dwight Eisenhower responded by creating a new research agency tasked with ensuring such "technological surprises" like Sputnik would never be sprung on the US again. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), conceived in February 1958 not only still exists, it has consistently made the US military the most advanced on Earth and unleashed life-changing technologies such as the internet, GPS and the computer mouse along the way. Under the control of the Pentagon, DARPA has always maintained a low profile, but now journalist Michael Belfiore has written the first book about the agency. He spent time with the engineers charged with realising some very far-fetched ideas, which, if past performance is anything to go by, may also create society-changing spin-offs. He also gained unprecedented access to the agency's director, Tony Tether (now retired). The current projects that Belfiore visits have typically ambitious goals - ones which dedicated New Scientist readers will be familiar with. He talks with two groups working to make prosthetic arms as nimble and light as the real thing, watches driverless cars work their way through real traffic in a bid to win a $2-million prize, and meets the creators of a portable robotic emergency room intended to keep injured soldiers alive long enough to reach hospital. He also learns about efforts to build scramjets able to race around the world in just a few hours. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196678-DARPA-Inventing-this-side-of-the-impossible Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:55:00 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196676-Backward-star-ain-t-from-around-here Here's an apple that landed far from the tree. A dim star just 13 light years from Earth was born in a cluster 17,000 light years away. Discovered in 1897, Kapteyn's Star is the 25th nearest star system to our sun, but it is no local, says Elizabeth Wylie-de Boer of Mount Stromlo Observatory in Canberra. The cool star's composition is tricky to study, but astronomers can look at 16 other stars in the same "moving group", all of which orbit the galaxy backwards and are very old. The odd motion marks them as members of the Milky Way's ancient population of halo stars. Of the stars, 14 had the same abundance of elements - such as sodium, magnesium, zirconium, barium - as Omega Centauri, the galaxy's most luminous globular cluster. The cluster emits a million times more light than the sun. "It's long been thought that Omega Centauri is the left-over nucleus of a dwarf galaxy that merged with the Milky Way," says Wylie-de Boer, whose paper will appear in the Astronomical Journal. "During the merger, the outer regions of this dwarf galaxy were stripped." http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196676-Backward-star-ain-t-from-around-here Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:06:04 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196675-In-SUSY-we-trust-What-the-Large-Hadron-Collider-is-really-looking-for As damp squibs go, it was quite a spectacular one. Amid great pomp and ceremony - not to mention dark offstage rumblings that the end of the world was nigh - the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's mightiest particle smasher, fired up in September last year. Nine days later a short circuit and a catastrophic leak of liquid helium ignominiously shut the machine down. Now for take two. Any day now, if all goes to plan, proton beams will start racing all the way round the ring deep beneath CERN, the LHC's home on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland. Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg is worried. It's not that he thinks the LHC will create a black hole that will engulf the planet, or even that the restart will end in a technical debacle like last year's. No: he's actually worried that the LHC will find what some call the "God particle", the popular and embarrassingly grandiose moniker for the hitherto undetected Higgs boson. "I'm terrified," he says. "Discovering just the Higgs would really be a crisis." Why so? Evidence for the Higgs would be the capstone of an edifice that particle physicists have been building for half a century - the phenomenally successful theory known simply as the standard model. It describes all known particles, as well as three of the four forces that act on them: electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces. It is also manifestly incomplete. We know from what the theory doesn't explain that it must be just part of something much bigger. So if the LHC finds the Higgs and nothing but the Higgs, the standard model will be sewn up. But then particle physics will be at a dead end, with no clues where to turn next. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196675-In-SUSY-we-trust-What-the-Large-Hadron-Collider-is-really-looking-for Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:01:53 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196654-Did-a-Time-Traveling-Bird-Sabotage-the-Collider- Sometime on Nov. 3, the supercooled magnets in sector 81 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), outside Geneva, began to dangerously overheat. Scientists rushed to diagnose the problem, since the particle accelerator has to maintain a temperature colder than deep space in order to work. The culprit? "A bit of baguette," says Mike Lamont of the control center of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which built and maintains the LHC. Apparently, a passing bird may have dropped the chunk of bread on an electrical substation above the accelerator, causing a power cut. The baguette was removed, power to the cryogenic system was restored and within a few days the magnets returned to their supercool temperatures. While most scientists would write off the event as a freak accident, two esteemed physicists have formulated a theory that suggests an alternative explanation: perhaps a time-traveling bird was sent from the future to sabotage the experiment. Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, have published several papers over the past year arguing that the CERN experiment may be the latest in a series of physics research projects whose purposes are so unacceptable to the universe that they are doomed to fail, subverted by the future. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196654-Did-a-Time-Traveling-Bird-Sabotage-the-Collider- Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:04:33 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196643-Solar-Chariot-3600-Years-Old-Unearthed-in-Saratov-Region The ancient find is a psalium, an element of harness. Experts state that it is just 200 years younger than the first chariot, invented in that very part of the continent, according to research. The psalium is made of a bull's hipbone. Amazing is the craftsmanship of the master who made this artifact, as well as the ideal state in which it has come down to us. The swastika was once a symbol of the solar chariot. It is corroborated by archeological finds unearthed not far from the Nizhnyaya Krasavka Settlement of the Saratov Region. The site of the ancient settlement of the Arians has been examined by students and professors for three years already. Within this period the expedition acquired around 20,000 artifacts of various value. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196643-Solar-Chariot-3600-Years-Old-Unearthed-in-Saratov-Region Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:32:57 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196641-Spaniards-discover-forgotten-Euphrates-city Madrid - They have renamed it the city recovered from the Euphrates and it is found in the Syrian enclave of Tall Qabr on the banks of the river that, with the Tigris, was the centre of the birth of civilisation in Mesopotamia. It is a circularly planned city, dating back to 2,600 years before Christ. Galician archaeologists from an expedition from the University of Coruna made the discovery, led by Jean Luis Montero, who identified two layers dating back to from the IV to first millennium before Christ. Since 2008 the multidisciplinary expedition, made up of 20 people, has been working in the area known as the Hill of the Tomb in the Euphrates Valley on an excavation campaign in collaboration with the Syrian government in which various universities are participating with Spain's Superior Centre for Scientific Research (CSIC) and the Syrian Ministry of Culture. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196641-Spaniards-discover-forgotten-Euphrates-city Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:27:51 -0500