Science & Technology
ATHENS - Roadworks in southern Greece have unearthed a rare Mycenaean grave thought to be well over 3,000 years old and containing important burial offerings including a gold chalice, the culture ministry said on Monday.
VENTURA, Calif. - The spot where a pair of outhouses stood 130 years ago is proving to be a treasure trove for archaeologists who braved the lingering smell in the dirt to uncover some 19th Century artifacts _ and a mystery.
Through painstaking analysis of the structural properties of Stonehenge, Mr Bedlam has come up with a theory that the stones we now see standing alone on the site were once the foundation blocks of a giant wooden structure.
A puzzle expert believes he may have solved one of the greatest mysteries in the history of mankind by coming up with a computer programme showing how Stonehenge was built.
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| ©Bruce Bedlam, 2007 |
| Bruce Bedlam: Most people believe that Stonehenge is a free standing structure with alignment's to the sun, moon and stars. I think it was a building! I can not imagine the people who built Stonehenge standing in the rain! |
A puzzle expert believes he may have solved one of the greatest mysteries in the history of mankind by coming up with a computer programme showing how Stonehenge was built.
A settlement dating back to the time of the pyramid builders was discovered in Egypt's western desert, the first find of its kind there, Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA) said on Monday.
"A joint Egypt-Czech archaeological mission found a city dating to the Old Kingdom (2687-2191 BC) in the Garat al-Abyad region in Bahariya," SCA chief Zahi Hawass said, referring to an isolated oasis 400km south-west of Cairo.
"A joint Egypt-Czech archaeological mission found a city dating to the Old Kingdom (2687-2191 BC) in the Garat al-Abyad region in Bahariya," SCA chief Zahi Hawass said, referring to an isolated oasis 400km south-west of Cairo.
A Laurentian University geologist says he is intrigued, but skeptical of a report that rock from the meteorite that created the Sudbury basin has been found 700 kilometres away in the United States.
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| ©AP Photo/Petar Petrov |
| A Bulgarian archeologist holds up an ancient Thracian gold artifact at a Thracian tomb near the village of Topolchane |
SOFIA, Bulgaria - A 2,400-year-old golden mask that once belonged to a Thracian king was unearthed in a timber-lined tomb in southeastern Bulgaria, archaeologists said Monday.
The annual Perseid meteor shower is expected to put on a great show this year, peaking in mid-August with a display of dozens of shooting stars each hour.
The Moon will be out of the way, leaving dark skies for good viewing as Earth plunges through an ancient stream of comet debris. Little bits, most no larger than sand grains, will vaporize in Earth's atmosphere, creating sometimes-dramatic "shooting stars."
The Moon will be out of the way, leaving dark skies for good viewing as Earth plunges through an ancient stream of comet debris. Little bits, most no larger than sand grains, will vaporize in Earth's atmosphere, creating sometimes-dramatic "shooting stars."
A forest fire has led to a chance discovery of debris from the impact of a meteorite 1.85 billion years ago, more than 450 miles away at Sudbury, Ontario.
Geologists had scheduled a field trip in May along the Gunflint Trail in northeastern Minnesota, but most areas they wanted to explore were closed because of a wildfire that charred more than 118 square miles.
Geologist Mark Jirsa of the Minnesota Geological Survey went up the trail to scout new locations and, in a spot he had never visited before, stumbled across debris now linked to the Sudbury impact.
That impact created a crater more than 150 miles across, scattering rock and dust over nearly a million square miles.
"It's fairly dark rock,'' Jirsa said. "They look like concrete, but in this concrete you would throw pieces of rock of all sizes and shapes and in all possible orientations.''
Geologists had scheduled a field trip in May along the Gunflint Trail in northeastern Minnesota, but most areas they wanted to explore were closed because of a wildfire that charred more than 118 square miles.
Geologist Mark Jirsa of the Minnesota Geological Survey went up the trail to scout new locations and, in a spot he had never visited before, stumbled across debris now linked to the Sudbury impact.
That impact created a crater more than 150 miles across, scattering rock and dust over nearly a million square miles.
"It's fairly dark rock,'' Jirsa said. "They look like concrete, but in this concrete you would throw pieces of rock of all sizes and shapes and in all possible orientations.''
Geneticists are acquiring a taste for punctuation. Yesterday, for example, a study on "junk" DNA -- that is, stretches of it without known purposes -- in the journal Science was published to the accompaniment of a press release with comments from two of the authors. "Some of the 'junk' DNA might be considered 'punctuation marks,''' said Victoria Lunyak of the University of California at San Diego, "commas and periods that help make sense of the coding portion of the genome." Likewise, her colleague Michael Rosenfeld said, "Without boundary elements, the coding portion of the genome is like a long, run-on sequence of words without punctuation."
The study itself, "Developmentally Regulated Activation of a SINE B2 Repeat as a Domain Boundary in Organogenesis," speaks more cautiously of "establishment of functionally distinct chromatin domains" and "putative boundary elements." The idea is that DNA could not do its work-- building proteins, that is -- if it didn't get organized into functional domains that are like the groupings provided by syntax and expressed by punctuation marks.
The study itself, "Developmentally Regulated Activation of a SINE B2 Repeat as a Domain Boundary in Organogenesis," speaks more cautiously of "establishment of functionally distinct chromatin domains" and "putative boundary elements." The idea is that DNA could not do its work-- building proteins, that is -- if it didn't get organized into functional domains that are like the groupings provided by syntax and expressed by punctuation marks.
TENERIFE, Canary Islands - One of the world's largest and most powerful telescopes opened its shutters, turned its 34-foot wide mirror toward the skies and captured its first light at a mountaintop on one of Spain's Canary Islands on Saturday.
Comment: See also:
Perseids to Storm August 11?
Science and History of the Perseid Meteor Shower