Using modern techniques - and some rocks - a US astronomer has traced the origin of a set of ancient clay tablets to a precise date and place. The tablets show constellations thought to be precursors of the present-day zodiac.
The tablets, known collectively as MUL.APIN, contain nearly 200 astronomical observations, including measurements related to several constellations. They are written in cuneiform, a Middle-Eastern script that is one of the oldest known forms of writing, and were made in Babylon around 687 BC.
But most archaeologists believe that the tablets are transcriptions of much earlier observations made by Assyrian astronomers. Just how much older has been disputed - the estimates go back to 2,300 BC.
Science & Technology
University of Utah physicists developed small devices that turn heat into sound and then into electricity. The technology holds promise for changing waste heat into electricity, harnessing solar energy and cooling computers and radars.
"We are converting waste heat to electricity in an efficient, simple way by using sound," says Orest Symko, a University of Utah physics professor who leads the effort. "It is a new source of renewable energy from waste heat."
Five of Symko's doctoral students recently devised methods to improve the efficiency of acoustic heat-engine devices to turn heat into electricity. They will present their findings on Friday, June 8 during the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center hotel.
Symko plans to test the devices within a year to produce electricity from waste heat at a military radar facility and at the university's hot-water-generating plant.
"We are converting waste heat to electricity in an efficient, simple way by using sound," says Orest Symko, a University of Utah physics professor who leads the effort. "It is a new source of renewable energy from waste heat."
Five of Symko's doctoral students recently devised methods to improve the efficiency of acoustic heat-engine devices to turn heat into electricity. They will present their findings on Friday, June 8 during the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center hotel.
Symko plans to test the devices within a year to produce electricity from waste heat at a military radar facility and at the university's hot-water-generating plant.
Russian cosmonauts successfully completed a six-hour spacewalk to build up the meteorite defences of the International Space Station (ISS) and repair a navigation antennae, officials said on Thursday.
Forget the 'brightest stellar explosion' of supernova SN 2006gy captured by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory last month. Here's the mother of all spatial explosions in the making - a hypernova called Eta Carinae.
A controversial new idea suggests that a large space rock exploded over North America 13,000 years ago.
The blast may have wiped out one of America's first Stone Age cultures as well as the continent's big mammals such as the mammoth and the mastodon.
The blast, from a comet or asteroid, caused a major bout of climatic cooling which may also have affected human cultures emerging in Europe and Asia.
The blast may have wiped out one of America's first Stone Age cultures as well as the continent's big mammals such as the mammoth and the mastodon.
The blast, from a comet or asteroid, caused a major bout of climatic cooling which may also have affected human cultures emerging in Europe and Asia.
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| ©unk |
| A space rock may have exploded in the air over North America |
Two University of Oregon researchers are on a multi-institutional 26-member team proposing a startling new theory: that an extraterrestrial impact, possibly a comet, set off a 1,000-year-long cold spell and wiped out or fragmented the prehistoric Clovis culture and a variety of animal genera across North America almost 13,000 years ago.
Astronomers now have a new "eye" for determining the distance to certain mysterious bodies in and around our Milky Way galaxy. By taking advantage of the unique position of NASA's Spitzer's Space Telescope millions of miles from Earth, and a depth-perceiving trick called parallax, they were able to pin down the most probable location of one such object. The findings will ultimately help astronomers better understand the different components of our galaxy.
A robotic vehicle designed for underwater exploration plunged repeatedly into the depths of Mexico's mysterious El Zacatón sinkhole in late May, finding its previously undiscovered bottom 318 meters below the surface and generating a sonar map of its inner dimensions. The vehicle employed autonomous navigation and mapping systems developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute.
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| ©Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer (DEPTHX) Project |
| The DEPTHX vehicle, 2.5 meters in diameter, included 56 sonars. |
"There is also an undoubted tendency of physicists (read "scientists") to work within a so-called paradigm (the American Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn's famous expression) and pay at best fleeting attention to ideas that do not fit within the established patterns of thought"
- quoted from Julian Barbour's book "The End of Time - The Next Revolution in Physics"
"All is geometry"
- Albert Einstein
"...we have learned that the eye must have a fantastic mechanism for finding a balance point within a band of wave-lengths"
- Edwin Land
- quoted from Julian Barbour's book "The End of Time - The Next Revolution in Physics"
"All is geometry"
- Albert Einstein
"...we have learned that the eye must have a fantastic mechanism for finding a balance point within a band of wave-lengths"
- Edwin Land
A Belgian mathematician hopes to use the science of chaos, the butterfly effect and strange attractors to help build a complete model of climate and resources that will lead to a new approach to sustainable development.
Jacques Nihoul of the department of Model Environment at the University of Liège, in Belgium, writing in the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Computing Science and Mathematics published by Inderscience, explains how a new approach to sustainable development and climate change could emerge from his research.
Sustainable development is high on the socio-political and scientific agenda. However, while it has become the focus of major attention in international from national and international organisations across the globe there is currently no all-encompassing approach to understanding what is needed to achieve it in developed and developing countries.
Jacques Nihoul of the department of Model Environment at the University of Liège, in Belgium, writing in the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Computing Science and Mathematics published by Inderscience, explains how a new approach to sustainable development and climate change could emerge from his research.
Sustainable development is high on the socio-political and scientific agenda. However, while it has become the focus of major attention in international from national and international organisations across the globe there is currently no all-encompassing approach to understanding what is needed to achieve it in developed and developing countries.
Comment: And if it happened once, there's no reason why it couldn't happen again. Particularly if these type of events turn out to be cyclic, as the evidence suggests.