The ancient art of water divining is being practised by an engineer with a utility company to find burst pipes.
Steve Robinson, 47, who works for United Utilities, generally uses radio waves to determine the location of a leak.
Science & Technology
On long, dark winter nights, the constellation of Orion the Hunter dominates the sky. Within the Hunter's sword, the Orion Nebula swaddles a cluster of newborn stars called the Trapezium. These stars are young but powerful, each one shining with the brilliance of 100,000 Suns. They are also massive, containing 15 to 30 times as much material as the Sun.
Where did the Trapezium stars come from? The question is not as simple as it seems. When it comes to the theory of how massive stars form, the devil is in the details.
We know the basics: a cloud of cosmic gas draws itself together, growing denser and hotter until nuclear fusion ignites. But how does massive star formation begin? What determines how many stars form from a single cloud? New data from the Submillimeter Array (SMA), a joint project of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, is helping to answer these questions.
Where did the Trapezium stars come from? The question is not as simple as it seems. When it comes to the theory of how massive stars form, the devil is in the details.
We know the basics: a cloud of cosmic gas draws itself together, growing denser and hotter until nuclear fusion ignites. But how does massive star formation begin? What determines how many stars form from a single cloud? New data from the Submillimeter Array (SMA), a joint project of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, is helping to answer these questions.
They are "Scotland's other Crown Jewels", a mysterious collection of wooden carvings which have baffled historians for years.
But the true meaning behind the Stirling Heads has been unveiled, thanks to a 500-year-old sketch of Julius Caesar.
Carved between 1530 and 1544 for the court of James V, the works depict the king, his wife, Mary of Guise, other important characters from his retinue and previous monarchs.
They were once a centrepiece of the Royal Palace at Stirling Castle, but those that have survived are being kept in storage in Edinburgh while replicas are made for inclusion in a £12m restoration of the palace.
But the true meaning behind the Stirling Heads has been unveiled, thanks to a 500-year-old sketch of Julius Caesar.
Carved between 1530 and 1544 for the court of James V, the works depict the king, his wife, Mary of Guise, other important characters from his retinue and previous monarchs.
They were once a centrepiece of the Royal Palace at Stirling Castle, but those that have survived are being kept in storage in Edinburgh while replicas are made for inclusion in a £12m restoration of the palace.
© News8Austin
Now there's proof that what many saw fly through the sky was a meteorite.
Now there's proof that what many saw fly through the sky was a meteorite.
Now there's actual physical proof that it was a meteor. Amateur astronomer Doug Dawn and his team say they were able to find meteorites. Dawn's team analyzed the video footage shot by News 8 photographer Eddie Garcia. Dawn said there was a lot of information available in the film and it helped with calculations of where the material was coming from.
Rob Matson is an expert in Los Angeles who helped narrow the likely location of the meteorite's landfall. Dawn and his team already had radar data and immediately made their way out to the countryside in the Waco area.
© Unknown
The remnants of a large volcanic eruption in the Faroe Islands. These eruptions can go on for millions of years.
The remnants of a large volcanic eruption in the Faroe Islands. These eruptions can go on for millions of years.
Around this time a giant meteorite struck the Gulf of Mexico. But the extinction also seems to coincide with massive and long-lasting volcanic eruptions in India known as the Deccan Traps. So which event was responsible? And are these phenomena linked?
New research now shows that this combination of meteorite impact and large-scale volcanic activity - known as flood basalt eruptions - is not unique.
An international team of researchers looked at a 30-million-year-old meteorite crater in Belarus called Logoisk. They found that this too coincided with volcanic eruptions further south which covered Yemen and Ethiopia with basalt rock.
The Supreme Council of Antiquities, part of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, has announced the discovery of an intact wooden and limestone sarcophagi housing dozens of mummies inside the Sixth-Dynasty tomb of Sennedjem in the Saqqara necropolis.
Members of the public were given the first glimpse of the latest discovery of ancient Egyptian treasure to be found in Saqqara on Wednesday.
SCA Secretary-General Zahi Hawass revealed that two weeks ago, during a routine excavation work at the mastaba of the Sixth-Dynasty lector-priest Sennedjem, their archaeologists stumbled upon a cache of mummies of the 26th Dynasty, Egypt''s last independent Kingdom before it was overrun by a succession of foreign conquerors.
Members of the public were given the first glimpse of the latest discovery of ancient Egyptian treasure to be found in Saqqara on Wednesday.
SCA Secretary-General Zahi Hawass revealed that two weeks ago, during a routine excavation work at the mastaba of the Sixth-Dynasty lector-priest Sennedjem, their archaeologists stumbled upon a cache of mummies of the 26th Dynasty, Egypt''s last independent Kingdom before it was overrun by a succession of foreign conquerors.
Largest near-Earth objects are already well characterized, but smaller ones could surprise
In 1998, the year Deep Impact and Armageddon dueled for the attentions of apocalypse-from-the-heavens moviegoers, Congress tapped NASA to prevent such a cosmic cataclysm from becoming reality. The space agency was charged with cataloguing over the next decade the vast majority of nearby space objects larger than 0.62 mile (one kilometer) in size - those asteroids, and more rarely comets, capable of inflicting catastrophic damage to Earth.
Eleven years later - just behind schedule - the task appears to be nearly complete. Congress had requested that 90 percent of these large near-Earth objects (NEOs) be catalogued, and around 800 of them, roughly 80 to 85 percent of the entire population, have been tallied. (Astronomers can estimate how much of the lot has been surveyed by studying the gradual drop-off in discovery rates.) According to NASA's impact-threat catalogue, only two of the kilometer-size NEOs so far identified pose a very slim risk in the next century; the more threatening of the two has a one in 116,000,000 chance of colliding with Earth. (That object, known as 2009 CR2, was just discovered last week; with further observation it may prove not to be a threat at all.)
© NASA
BIG BUT RARE: Luckily for us, meteorite impacts such as the one that formed 45-mile-wide Manicouagan Crater in Canada are quite infrequent.
BIG BUT RARE: Luckily for us, meteorite impacts such as the one that formed 45-mile-wide Manicouagan Crater in Canada are quite infrequent.
Eleven years later - just behind schedule - the task appears to be nearly complete. Congress had requested that 90 percent of these large near-Earth objects (NEOs) be catalogued, and around 800 of them, roughly 80 to 85 percent of the entire population, have been tallied. (Astronomers can estimate how much of the lot has been surveyed by studying the gradual drop-off in discovery rates.) According to NASA's impact-threat catalogue, only two of the kilometer-size NEOs so far identified pose a very slim risk in the next century; the more threatening of the two has a one in 116,000,000 chance of colliding with Earth. (That object, known as 2009 CR2, was just discovered last week; with further observation it may prove not to be a threat at all.)
New high-speed video cameras are helping reveal the structure of lightning, allowing scientists to study these deadly bolts of electricity in much greater detail than ever before.
The cameras are showing images of lightning that have otherwise been invisible to the naked eye and have never been captured on traditional film or video cameras.
Just as photography first revealed how horses' legs actually function while at a full gallop, so too does this new technology allow us to see how lightning strikes actually work.
The cameras are showing images of lightning that have otherwise been invisible to the naked eye and have never been captured on traditional film or video cameras.
Just as photography first revealed how horses' legs actually function while at a full gallop, so too does this new technology allow us to see how lightning strikes actually work.
© Tom Warner, ZT Research
A bolt of lightning captured with a digital still camera ...
A bolt of lightning captured with a digital still camera ...
© Tom Warner
... and the same bolt recorded on a high-speed video camera. In the high-speed image, the fingers of the bolt as it hunts for the most efficient way to reach the ground can be seen.
... and the same bolt recorded on a high-speed video camera. In the high-speed image, the fingers of the bolt as it hunts for the most efficient way to reach the ground can be seen.
© Unknown
University of Arizona's planetary scientist and impact specialist H. Jay Melosh is this year's recipient of the Eugene Shoemaker Memorial Award presented by the BEYOND Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University.
As part of the honor, Melosh will deliver the annual Shoemaker Memorial lecture at 7:30 p.m. March 4 in Armstrong Hall's Great Hall on ASU's Tempe campus. The title of his talk is "Our Catastrophic Solar System: Impacts and the Latest Revolution in Earth Science."
"From the impact-scarred faces of the moon and Mars, to the death of the dinosaurs, impacts have set the course of planetary evolution," says Melosh. "We now believe that the moon itself was born in a planetary scale impact between the Earth and a Mars-size protoplanet about 4.5 billion years ago."
© SOHO - NASA
Solar Storm, Stage Left: February 20, 2009
Solar Storm, Stage Left: February 20, 2009
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