Science & TechnologyS


Meteor

DR Congo ring may be giant 'impact crater'

Paul Rincon
BBC News
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:26 UTC
Image
© Terrametric, IncA survey in the area is now required to stand up some of the ideas
Deforestation has revealed what could be a giant impact crater in Central Africa, scientists say.

The 36-46km-wide feature, identified in DR Congo, may be one of the largest such structures discovered in the last decade.

Italian researchers considered other origins for the ring, but say these are unlikely.

They presented their findings at the recent Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas, US.

The ring shape is clearly visible in the satellite image by TerraMetrics Inc reproduced on this page.
Read More...
Info

Ancient Norse colonies hit bad climate times

Alexandra WItze
ScienceNews
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:08 UTC
New research reveals just how bad an idea it was to colonize Greenland and Iceland more than a millennium ago: average temperatures in Iceland plummeted nearly 6°Celsius in the century that followed the island's Norse settlement in about A.D. 870, a climate record gleaned from mollusk shells shows.

The record is the most precise year-by-year chronology yet of temperatures experienced by the northern Norse colonies, says William Patterson, an isotope geochemist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, who led the new work. The study will appear online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We're aware from written documents of the kinds of things that people faced in the North Atlantic over the last 1,000 years," he says. "This is a way to quantify the experiences they had."
Read More...
Saturn

Most extreme white dwarf binary system found with orbit of just 5 minutes


Warwick News
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:57 UTC
Image
© Unknown
An international team of astronomers, including Professor Tom Marsh and Dr Danny Steeghs from the University of Warwick, have shown that the two stars in the binary HM Cancri definitely revolve around each other in a mere 5.4 minutes. This makes HM Cancri the binary star with by far the shortest known orbital period. It is also the smallest known binary. The binary system is no larger than 8 times the diameter of the Earth which is the equivalent of no more than a quarter of the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

The binary system consists of two white dwarfs. These are the burnt- out cinders of stars such as our Sun, and contain a highly condensed form of helium, carbon and oxygen. The two white dwarfs in HM Cancri are so close together that mass is flowing from one star to the other. HM Cancri was first noticed as an X-ray source in 1999 showing a 5.4 minutes periodicity but for a long time it has remained unclear whether this period also indicated the actual orbital period of the system. It was so short that astronomers were reluctant to accept the possibility without solid proof.
Read More...
Magnify

All of Life's Ingredients Found in Orion Nebula (Life as We Know It)

Aleis Madrigal
Wired
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:16 UTC
Image
© ESA, HEXOS, HIFI Consortium
The ingredients for life as we know it have been found in the Orion Nebula.

By finely separating the spectrum of incoming light, astronomers are able to detect the chemical fingerprints of molecules like water and methanol. The spectrograph that their work produces can be seen in the image above. The peaks represent the presence of the molecule indicated.

The new data was collected by the Herschel Telescope, launched into space last year by the European Space Agency. Herschel's HiFi instrument uses a new technique to do more-sensitive spectroscopy. It will enable scientists to better understand the chemistry of space.
Read More...
Sherlock

Gas pipeline probe uncovers 1000-year-old shipwrecks in Baltic Sea


Agence France-Presse
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:12 UTC
Image
© AFP/Patrice DereMap of northern Europe showing the route of the planned Nord Stream gas pipeline.
A dozen previously unknown shipwrecks, some of them believed to be up to 1,000 years old, were discovered in the Baltic Sea during a probe of the sea bed to prepare for the installation of a large gas pipeline, the Swedish National Heritage Board said Monday.

"We have manage to identify 12 shipwrecks, and nine of them are considered to be fairly old," Peter Norman, a senior advisor with the heritage board, told AFP.

"We think many of the ships are from the 17th and 18th centuries and we think some could even be from the Middle Ages," he said, stressing that "this discovery offers enormous culture-historical value.

The shipwrecks were discovered during a probe by the Russian-led Nord Stream consortium of the sea bed route its planned gas pipeline from Russia to the European Union will take through the Baltic.

"They used sonar equipment first and discovered some unevenness along the sea bottom ... so they filmed some of the uneven areas, and we could see the wrecks," Norman explained.

The discovery was made outside Sweden's territorial waters, but within its economic zone, he said.
Read More...
Info

Why and How Did Native Americans Build Mounds?

Richard Thornton
Examiner
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:34 UTC
Image
© Richard Thornton, ArchitectThe Great Temple Mound at Ocmulgee & acropolis dominated a 12 mile long cluster of villages.
When English and Scottish settlers first arrived in what was to become the United States, they encountered literally thousands of abandoned earthen and shell mounds that seemed not to be associated with occupied Indian villages. Typically, the new arrivals assumed that the "savages" were intellectually incapable of carrying out major public works. Therefore, they speculated that Europeans or advanced societies from the Middle East had once lived in the New World until they were exterminated by the Indians. It would not be for another 200 years that the public would become generally aware that about 90-95% of the societies who built those mounds had died of diseases or had been enslaved in the decades following Spanish exploration of the region.

Some tribes in the Lower Mississippi Valley were still occupying mounds when French settlers arrived, so there was no French speculation about the origin of abandoned mounds. The best known of these last mound builders were the Natchez. They also stopped building mounds after the 1720s.
Read More...
Info

A Mayan mural shows how the other half lived

Stéphan Reebs
Natural History Magazine
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:41 UTC
Image
© Calakmul Archaeological Project1,300-year-old mural portrays a Mayan porter carrying a large vessel.
Very old artworks provide a fascinating glimpse of ancient life, but not without limitations: they typically portray the lifestyles of the rich and famous (rulers, royals, generals, and priests), abandoning the masses to the mists of history. That's why the recent discovery of a 1,300-year-old mural at Calakmul, Mexico, is so significant. It is the only known pre-Columbian artwork depicting ordinary Maya engaged in everyday activities, rather than serving the wealthy.
Read More...
People

Vast Majority of People Feel Internet Access is a Right

Tony Bradley
PC World
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:49 UTC
A recent survey conducted by the BBC found that the vast majority of users around the world consider access to the Internet to be a right. The speed at which Internet access has gone from a privilege, to a luxury, and now to a right is a testament to how transformative it has been--shaping politics, news, entertainment, research, and more.

While individual users have come to view Internet and Web access as a right, it seems almost ludicrous to consider it anything other than a complete necessity for businesses today. Part of the reason that the current initiatives of the United States FCC are so important is that an open Internet is a requirement for keeping the business playing field level, and access to reasonable broadband speeds is essential for conducting business efficiently and effectively.
Read More...
Telescope

Lava Likely Made River-Like Channel on Mars


ScienceDaily
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:00 UTC
Image
© Jacob BleacherDetails from the Ascraeus channel (red), meandering across the surface of Mars. The insets in the black boxes show close-ups of some of the structures that lava can form: (left) branched channels, (middle) a snaking channel and (right) rootless vents; the rootless vents are also marked by yellow spots on the main image.
Flowing lava can carve or build paths very much like the riverbeds and canyons etched by water, and this probably explains at least one of the meandering channels on the surface of Mars. These results were presented on March 4, 2010 at the 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by Jacob Bleacher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Whether channels on Mars were formed by water or by lava has been debated for years, and the outcome is thought to influence the likelihood of finding life there.

"To understand if life, as we know it, ever existed on Mars, we need to understand where water is or was," says Bleacher. Geologists think that the water currently on the surface of Mars is either held in the soil or takes the form of ice at the planet's north and south poles. But some researchers contend that water flowed or pooled on the surface sometime in the past; water in this form is thought to increase the chance of some form of past or present life.

One of the lines of support for the idea that water once flowed on Mars comes from images that reveal details resembling the erosion of soil by water: terracing of channel walls, formation of small islands in a channel, hanging channels that dead-end and braided channels that branch off and then reconnect to the main branch. "These are thought to be clear evidence of fluvial [water-based] erosion on Mars," Bleacher says.
Read More...
Sherlock

Archaeologists Amend Written History of China's First Emperor


ScienceDaily
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© Linda M. NicholasRemnants of the massive rammed-earth platform on the lower eastern slopes of Langya Mountain. This platform was built just above the sea.
The exploits of China's first emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, are richly documented in 2,000-year-old records of his conquests across eastern China. His reign was indeed noteworthy -- he is responsible for initiating construction of the Great Wall, and the discovery of life-size terracotta soldiers that guard his tomb in central China has generated worldwide attention.

But as the saying goes, history is written by the winners. Ancient texts can contain inaccuracies favorable to a strong ruler's legacy. That's why two Field Museum scientists and their Chinese collaborator have integrated textual information with archaeological research in order to further understand the impact of Shihauangdi's reign.

The scientists are Gary Feinman and Linda Nicholas -- husband and wife anthropologists who, since 1996, have spent four to six weeks each year walking across fields in rural China looking for pottery sherds and other artifacts with colleagues including Fang Hui of the School of History and Culture at Shandong University. They compared ancient written records to archaeological evidence and the result of their work is a more holistic view of China's first emperor and his influence on the eastern province of Shandong.
Read More...