Science & TechnologyS


Sherlock

Ancient Voyager's Tomb Found in East China


People's Daily
Sat, 26 Jun 2010 23:59 UTC
Image
© Yangtse Evening NewsA worker clean soil at the entrance to the tomb.
A recently excavated tomb in Nanjing has been confirmed to be the grave of Zheng He, a eunuch from the early Ming Dynasty who led historic voyages to Southeast Asia and eastern Africa. The tomb was discovered accidentally on June 18th by workers at a construction site near Zutang Mountain that also holds the tombs of many other Ming Dynasty eunuchs, the Yangtse Evening News reported.

The tomb was 8.5 meters long and 4 meters wide and was built with blue bricks, which archaeologists said were only used in structures belonging to dignitaries during the time of Zheng He.

But experts believed his remains were not placed in the tomb because of the long distance between Nanjing and India, where he died during a visit in 1433.
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Info

Ancient Mars More Favorable to Life than First Thought

Charles Cooper
CBS News
Fri, 25 Jun 2010 12:35 UTC
Lyot Crater
© NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech/JHU-APL/IASLyot Crater, pictured here, is one of at least nine craters in the northern lowlands of Mars where hydrated minerals was detected from orbit.

A couple of Mars orbiters have found evidence suggesting that water prevailed throughout the Red Planet's early history. That's significant because scientists until now believed that wet conditions only prevailed in the southern reaches of Mars.

The discovery of lay minerals point to the existence of a wet environment "at thousands of sites" in the southern region of Mars, an area where rocks date back approximately four billion years old, according to a report from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. The discovery was first reported this week in the journal Science.

"We can now say that the planet was altered on a global scale by liquid water about four billion years ago," said John Carter of the University of Paris, the report's lead author.
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Info

Hubble Finds Smallest Kuiper Belt Object Ever Seen

Ehud Rattner
The Future Of Things (TFOT)
Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:24 UTC
KBO
© NASA, ESA, and G. BaconNASA's Hubble Space Telescope recorded this brief event and allowed astronomers to determine that the KBO was only one-half of a mile across, setting a new record for the smallest object ever seen in the Kuiper Belt.
The tiny object - sized at roughly 3,200 feet - is much smaller than the previous object titled as the "smallest object ever seen", having dimensions some 50 times smaller. Its importance is that it's the first observational evidence for similar sized objects in Kuiper Belt; scientists estimate that these are being ground down through collisions. Therefore, they conclude that Kuiper Belt has been evolving and modifying for over more than 4.5 billion years.

Hilke Schlichting of the California Institute of Technology and her collaborators have reported the detection of this object in the December 17th issue of the journal Nature. According to their paper, their achievement was accomplished using indirect imaging. This feat is amazing since NASA's Hubble Space Telescope usually sees objects only 100 times brighter, and even then it is done via direct observation; the newly detected object is so faint that it's ranked at 35th magnitude.

The Kuiper Belt is a region of the Solar System beyond the planets extending from the orbit of Neptune. It is similar to the known asteroid belt, although it is far larger - 20 times as wide and 20 - 200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies, or remnants from the solar system's formation. While the asteroid belt is composed primarily of rock and metal, the Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles (termed "ices"), such as methane, ammonia, and water.
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Sherlock

UK: Romans "Killed Babies at Brothel"


The Telegraph
Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:43 UTC
Image
© The Telegraph/ArchiveYewden Villa at Hambleden
Dozens of unwanted babies born during Roman times were murdered and buried on the site of a Roman brothel in Buckinghamshire, archaeologists suspect.

An extensive study of a mass burial at a Roman villa in the Thames Valley suggests that the 97 children all died at 40 weeks gestation, or very soon after birth.

The archaeologists believe that locals may have been killing and burying unwanted babies on the site in Hambleden, Buckinghamshire.

Unwanted pregnancies were common in Roman brothels due to little contraception and Romans also considered infanticide less shocking than it is today.

Infants were not considered to be human beings until about the age of two and were not buried in cemeteries if they were younger than that.
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Cell Phone

Mobile Phone Masts Not Such a Menace

Bill Ray
The Register
Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:48 UTC
Unlikely to hurt babies unless they actually fall on 'em

A study of children born near mobile phone masts has concluded that having excellent mobile coverage does not increase the risk of cancer in unborn children.

The study, published by the British Medical Journal, used statistical analysis of 7000 children to establish that being exposed to the radiation from a mobile phone mast during pregnancy doesn't increase the risk of the child developing cancer in the first five years of life.

Comment: One wonders, who sponsors these so-called researchers. Many studies dispute the conclusions reached above:

Cell Phones and Brain Cancer: The Real Story
Study Shows: Long Conversations on Mobile Phones Can Increase Risk of Cancer
The BioInitiative Report - The Dangerous Health Impacts of Microwave Radiation

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Rocket

US energy-weapon project going well

Lewis Page
The Register
Thu, 24 Jun 2010 07:19 UTC
Raygun only inflicts 2x as much harm on self as on enemy

A US military tech project aimed at developing portable, functional battlefield energy weapons has successfully achieved initial goals and is now moving on towards "weapons-class performance levels".

The project in question is the optimistically-named Revolution In Fiber Lasers (RIFL), ultimately intended to deliver war-grade 100 kilowatt beams from equipment weighing less than 5kg per kilowatt.
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Sherlock

Amelia Earhart May Have Survived Months as Castaway

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:53 UTC
Image
© Getty Images/Hulton ArchiveFish, turtle and bird bones found in fire pits on a remote Pacific island may be signs of Amelia Earhart's last efforts to survive.
The famous pilot and her navigator may have eaten turtles, fish and bird to survive on a remote island after making an emergency landing.

Amelia Earhart, the legendary pilot who disappeared 73 years ago while flying over the Pacific Ocean in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator, may have survived several weeks, or even months as a castaway on a remote South Pacific island, according to preliminary results of a two-week expedition on the tiny coral atoll believed to be her final resting place.

"There is evidence on the island suggesting that a castaway was there for weeks and possibly months," Ric Gillespie, executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), told Discovery News.

Gillespie has just returned from an expedition on Nikumaroro, the uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati where Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan are believed to have landed when running out of fuel.

"We noticed that the forest can be an excellent source of water for a castaway in an island where there is no fresh water. After heavy rain, you can easily collect water from the bowl-shaped hollows in the buka trees. We also found a campsite and nine fire features containing thousands of fish, turtle and bird bones. This might suggest that many meals took place there," Gillespie said.
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Sherlock

World's Largest Dinosaur Graveyard Found

Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
Tue, 22 Jun 2010 11:07 UTC
Image
© Nobu TamuraCentrosaurus
The world's largest dinosaur graveyard has been discovered in Alberta, Canada, according to David Eberth of the Royal Tyrrell Museum and other scientists working on the project.

The Vancouver Sun reports that the massive dinosaur bonebed is 1.43-square miles in size. Eberth says it contains thousands of bones belonging to the dinosaur Centrosaurus, which once lived near what is now the Saskatchewan border.

Centrosaurus was a plant-eating, cow-sized dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous, around 75 million years ago. It cut quite a figure back then, with its top-of-the-head frills and rhino-like nose horn. There is some evidence that it engaged in horn to horn combat among its own species, probably males fighting over mates.

The impressive jaw muscles of Centrosaurus allowed it to sheer through extremely tough foliage with ease.
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Sherlock

Vermont, US: Artifacts Dating Back to 5000 B.C. Found in Rutland Town

Patricia Minichiello
Rutland Herald
Fri, 25 Jun 2010 06:00 UTC
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© Northeast Archaeology Research Center16 projectiles dating back to 5000 B.C. found on land near Post Road in Rutland Town owned by Orin Thomas and Sons.
Ancient artifacts dating back roughly 7,000 years ago to 5000 B.C., were found by state archeologists on land near Thomas Dairy in Rutland Town recently.

John Thomas, one of the landowners, said the pointed projectiles looked like arrowheads and were discovered in at least two different locations on his property.

"One was close to Carey's Auto and another abuts the development on Blue Ridge acres," Thomas said Tuesday.

The discovery occurred as a part of an archeological dig - a standard procedure prior to subdivision - by the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation.

Scott Dillon, a survey archeologist with the division, said 16 projectiles were found at one location and appeared to be intentionally buried together in a pit. He said the relics studied by experts from the Northeast Archaeology Research Center Inc. were from the Native American era.
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Sherlock

Archeologists Find Evidence of St Peter's Prison in Italy

Nick Squires
The Telegraph
Fri, 25 Jun 2010 06:00 UTC
Image
© AlamyThe Crucifixion of St Peter by Michelangelo
Archaeologists have discovered evidence to support the theory that St Peter was imprisoned in an underground dungeon by the Emperor Nero before being crucified.

The Mamertine Prison, a dingy complex of cells which now lies beneath a Renaissance church, has long been venerated as the place where the apostle was shackled before he was killed on the spot on which the Vatican now stands.

It been a place of Christian worship since medieval times, but after months of excavations, Italian archaeologists have found frescoes and other evidence which indicate that it was associated with St Peter as early as the 7th century.

Dr Patrizia Fortini, of Rome's department of archaeology for Rome, said: "It was converted from being a prison into a focus of cult-like worship of St Peter by the 7th century at the latest, maybe earlier.
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