Science & TechnologyS


Question

Mystery of the Prehistoric Stone Balls

Eleanor Lothrop
Natural History, September 1955
Sun, 09 Sep 2007 22:56 UTC
As the unscientific wife of a scientist, who for years has tagged along on archaeological expeditions, I have witnessed many seemingly unexplainable discoveries, but none has provided a greater challenge or teased my imagination more acutely than the unbelievable stone balls found in Central America. The riddles they pose would threaten the deductive powers of a Sherlock Holmes.

©Eleanor Lothrop and Paul Allen
The author and her husband resting by one of the spheres. But for a revolution, they might never have investigated them.

Why should hundreds of these perfectly shaped spheres, ranging in diameter from a few inches to eight feet, be scattered through the jungles southwestern Costa Rica? How could prehistoric people have shaped them with only the crudest of tools? And how could they have moved them over hill and dale from the distant sources of stone? No other stone balls of like size have been found anywhere else in the world, except for a few in the highlands of Guatemala and in Vera Cruz. The smooth, beautiful and almost perfectly rounded spheres give mute testimony to the artistic powers of an ancient people and tax modern man's ingenuity in explaining their workmanship and significance.
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Dig

Ancient escape hatch found in Israel

Amy Teibel
Associated Press
Sun, 09 Sep 2007 20:53 UTC


AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti
An Israeli archeologist walks along a drainage channel recently discovered in the City of David next to Jerusalem's Old City.

Jerusalem - Under threat from Romans ransacking Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, many of the city's Jewish residents crowded into an underground drainage channel to hide and later flee the chaos through Jerusalem's southern end unnoticed.
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Ambulance

When plants cry for help...

Chad Skelton
Vancouver Sun
Sat, 08 Sep 2007 14:15 UTC
A University of British Columbia researcher has discovered a new way to fight pests in vegetable crops: By listening for the plants' own distress call.
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Info

Asteroid explorer's kitlist includes a ribbon

Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent
Telegraph
Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:20 UTC
Some have proposed blasting them with a nuclear warhead. Others have drawn up plans for robotic tugs to alter their course.

Of all the plans to save mankind from the threat of extinction caused by a collision with an asteroid, tying a yellow ribbon around one must be the least violent and complex of all.
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Bulb

Russian Satellites: Smaller, Lighter, Cheaper

Yury Zaitsev
RIA Novosti
Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:44 UTC
Mini-satellites are all the rage these days. None of the Russian space firms attending the MAKS-2007 air show failed to exhibit one. Modern technologies enable spacecraft weighing a few hundred kilograms to perform tasks once the preserve of satellites of several tons. Satellites are getting ever lighter and smaller: there are already micro-satellites with a weight of between 10 and 100 kg, and nano-satellites, between 1 and 10 kg. Designers have even conceived of pico-satellites, weighing less than one kilogram, but they are still a long way off.
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Telescope

Cosmic Cockroaches

Dr. Tony Phillips
SPX
Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:28 UTC


©Achim Tappe and colleagues.
Supernova remnant N132D. Contours trace hot gas observed by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Colors denote IR radiation mapped by the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Starved. Stomped. Radiated. Poisoned. It's all in a day's work for the common household cockroach. The abuse these creatures can withstand is amazing. But astronomers have found something even tougher-"polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons," says Achim Tappe of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics. "They can survive a supernova."
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Telescope

Thermometer Camera Reveals New Frontiers


SPX
Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:05 UTC


©Space Daily
Large Bolometer Camera (LABOCA) array wiring side.

Space is a vast expanse which hides deep within its depths the secrets behind how the first galaxies emerged from the Big Bang. Now thanks to the world's largest bolometer camera constructed and operated by a collaborative European consortium, these secrets will slowly begin revealing themselves to scientists worldwide.
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Video

Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes find 'Lego-block' galaxies in early universe


ESA/Hubble Information Centre
Fri, 07 Sep 2007 10:33 UTC
The conventional model for galaxy evolution predicts that small galaxies in the early Universe evolved into the massive galaxies of today by coalescing. Nine Lego-like "building block" galaxies initially detected by Hubble likely contributed to the construction of the Universe as we know it. "These are among the lowest mass galaxies ever directly observed in the early Universe" says Nor Pirzkal of the European Space Agency/STScI.

Pirzkal was surprised to find that the galaxies' estimated masses were so small. Hubble's cousin observatory, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope was called upon to make precise determinations of their masses. The Spitzer observations confirmed that these galaxies are some of the smallest building blocks of the Universe.
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Bulb

Race for 'next big thing' in Silicon Valley

Richard Waters
The Financial Times
Wed, 05 Sep 2007 20:15 UTC
Silicon Valley's annual coming-out season for tech start-ups is about to turn into a stampede.

In the next few weeks, the wraps will be removed from some 150 new companies and products at a handful of events in California competing to identify the tech industry's Next Big Thing.
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Telescope

UK plan to track asteroid threat


BBC News
Fri, 31 Aug 2007 17:59 UTC
UK space scientists and engineers have designed a mission to investigate a potentially hazardous asteroid.

The 300m-wide (980ft) rock, known as Apophis, will fly past Earth in April 2029 at a distance that is closer than many communications satellites.

Astrium, based in Stevenage, Herts, wants a probe to track the asteroid so its orbit can be better understood.

©Astrium
Under the proposal Apex would rendezvous with Apophis in January 2014 and spend three years sending data back to scientists and engineers on Earth. From the data, orbit modelling would enable an accurate prediction of the risk of collision with our planet.
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