Ancient pieces of continental crust that are falling to the bottom of the Earth's mantle could explain mysterious dents in our planet's gravitational field.
Sail towards the centre of the Indian Ocean and you will find yourself losing weight because the Earth's gravitational field is weaker in this region. Similar dents in field strength are found in the north-east Pacific Ocean and the Ross Sea.
These weaknesses are believed to be created by "slab graveyards" - ancient pieces of crust and sediment that were pushed down into the Earth when plates collided and are now falling through the mantle. The slabs are denser than the surrounding mantle, so they have a stronger gravitational pull. As they fall, however, their effect on the gravitational field at the Earth's surface decreases.
Science & Technology
© Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne
The X-51 will be dropped from beneath the wing of a B-52 bomber
The X-51 will be dropped from beneath the wing of a B-52 bomber
The 4-metre-long prototype will drop from beneath the wing of a bomber and attempt to become the first scramjet to punch through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds for minutes, not seconds.
Like an airliner's jet engines, supersonic combustion ramjets - or scramjets - work by compressing air enough to ignite fuel which drives air out of the back of the engine to provide thrust. It is designed to work at hypersonic speeds - above about 5 times the speed of sound.
A handful of experimental scramjets have flown successfully, reaching speeds as high as Mach 10, but not for long. "No one has successfully flown a vehicle of this nature for more than a few seconds," says Joe Vogel, X-51 programme manager at Boeing. "Our goal is about 300 seconds of powered flight."
The project is a collaboration between several US military agencies and private firms like Boeing that have ideas about how to solve the problems with heat and manoeuvrability that have limited previous scramjet flights.
© Allan Baxter / The Image Bank / Getty
Entanglement poses a serious challenge to our view of the world
Entanglement poses a serious challenge to our view of the world
This "spooky action at a distance", in Einstein's words, is a serious blow to our conception of how the world works. In 1964, physicist John Bell of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, showed just how serious. He calculated a mathematical inequality that encapsulated the maximum correlation between the states of remote particles in experiments in which three "reasonable" conditions hold: that experimenters have free will in setting things up as they want; that the particle properties being measured are real and pre-existing, not just popping up at the time of measurement; and that no influence travels faster than the speed of light, the cosmic speed limit.
St Petersburg, Florida -- With the disaster in the Gulf keeping everyone on edge looking for a solution, the answer might lay in material manufactured by a Columbian company with an office in Florida.
The company, Global Environmental Technology, has a product that is 100 percent organic and was invented in 1998 by its president, Carlos Forero. He won science competitions in Switzerland and Austria for the product, which encapsulates oil and cleans the material up.
Not only does the product clean up the oil, it can also be recycled for use afterwards. In addition, if birds are contaminated, the product can used for them as well.
You would think that with the disaster in the Gulf, and oil spilling out and heading to the beaches, the Coast Guard would be interested in the product. However, the company says all they are getting is red tape and getting nowhere.
The magnetic fields of sunspot 1069 are in a state of considerable agitation today. Click here to launch a 16-hour time-lapse movie from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
The magnetic turmoil you just observed is giving rise to repeated explosions. The sunspot is literally crackling with C-class solar flares. Because of the sunspot's location near the sun's western limb, these explosions are not directed toward Earth. It's just a good show. Readers with backyard solar telescopes are encouraged to monitor the action.
© SOHO Extreme UV Telescope; May 8, 0000 - 1600 UT
The finding has surprised many experts, as previous genetic evidence suggested the Neanderthals made little or no contribution to our inheritance.
The result comes from analysis of the Neanderthal genome - the "instruction manual" describing how these ancient humans were put together.
Between 1% and 4% of the Eurasian human genome seems to come from Neanderthals.
But the study confirms living humans overwhelmingly trace their ancestry to a small population of Africans who later spread out across the world.
The most widely-accepted theory of modern human origins - known as Out of Africa - holds that the ancestors of living humans (Homo sapiens) originated in Africa some 200,000 years ago.
© Middle East Online
A first in Khemisset
A first in Khemisset
Khemisset - Archaeologists in Morocco uncovered an ancient burial ground in a cave east of the capital Rabat, digging up human skeletons dating back 5000 years, they said Friday.
It is the first time that human skeletons dating from the end of the Neolithic period to the Bronze Age have been discovered in Morocco, Youssef Bokbot said, leading the team carrying out the digs.
"Seven skeletons and four graves will allow us to identify very precisely the funeral rites of the Beaker culture, a first", Bokbot said of the discovery in a cave near Khemisset, 80 kilometres (50 miles) from Rabat.
"The copper objects that we found confirmed humanity's evolution, the passage from stone to metal, a real transformation", the archaeologist added.
The digs, which began in 2006, were in a cave 18 kilometres (11 miles) from Khemisset.
© www.dahe.cn
There are more than 500 small craters of different sizes on the surface of the stone and several relatively larger craters that are 13 to 20 centimeters in diameter and three to seven centimeters in depth.
There are more than 500 small craters of different sizes on the surface of the stone and several relatively larger craters that are 13 to 20 centimeters in diameter and three to seven centimeters in depth.
Ma went to Yangce with his students for an archaeological investigation on the eve of the May Day holiday. They spent over a week there and have found approximately 1,000 rock paintings of various types within an area of 5 square kilometers in villages such as Chenzhou, Tangligou, Xuzhuang, Leigutai, Anzhai, and Guogang.
Ma told reporters that he was deeply impressed by a large cambered stone which is 8 meters long and 3.7 meters wide. There are more than 500 small craters of different sizes on the surface of the stone and several relatively larger craters that are 13 to 20 centimeters in diameter and three to seven centimeters in depth. These craters are connected by various lines, forming a very large ancient diagram (as shown in the above picture).
"It is quite incredible that a large stone goat carries 'Hetu and Luoshu' (map of the Yellow River and the book of the Luo River) on its back," Ma said.
Halley Comet
Halley's Comet was last seen passing near the earth 24 years ago. The Comet passes through our inner solar system every 76 years. As most of us having an interest in astronomy know that the Halley's Comet is a huge piece of rock orbiting our sun at a very high speed. The reason that the Halley's Comet is called a Comet and not a planet is that it travels at speeds much greater than planets. Planets travel at a relatively slow speed whereas comets travel at extremely fast speeds leaving behind a trail of meteors and meteorites that are usually called the comet's cosmic dust.
There is still a long time before the Halley's Comet can be seen again, but nowadays the comet is at such a position (far away from the earth obviously) that its cosmic dust can be seen in form of some meteor showers near the earth. The shower is expected to become visible 3 to 4 days before and after May 6th.
Pontius Pilate: Washed his hands after condemning Jesus in the Bible
A study has revealed that hand washing, long associated with absolving the mind of guilt, can also erase any doubts about everyday choices.
The latest research, reported in the journal Science, looked at whether the phenomenon extends to decisions with little or no moral implications by asking a set of volunteers to pick between two CDs or two jams.
Scientists found the 40 volunteers were less likely to try to justify their choice if they washed their hands just after making it.
