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Archaeologists find 'mini-Pompeii'


Views and News from Norway
Mon, 04 Oct 2010 07:43 UTC
The most well-preserved pottery from the Stone Age ever found in Norway has turned up in an unspoiled dwelling site not far from Kristiansand. The find is considered an archaeological sensation.

The discovery of a "sealed" Stone Age house site from 3500 BC has stirred great excitement among archaeologists from Norway's Museum of Cultural History at the University in Oslo. The settlement site at Hamresanden, close to Kristiansand's airport at Kjevik in Southern Norway, looks like it was covered by a sandstorm, possibly in the course of a few hours.
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Book

First Class Passenger's Account of Titanic Disaster Published


The Telegraph, UK
Fri, 01 Oct 2010 04:24 UTC
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© BNPSLaura Francatelli (second in from right) wrote of hearing an 'awful rumbling' as the famous liner went down and 'then came screams and cries' from 1,500 drowning passengers
A first class passenger's account of the sinking of the Titanic has been published for the first time nearly 100 years after the disaster.

Laura Francatelli wrote of hearing an 'awful rumbling' as the famous liner went down and 'then came screams and cries' from 1,500 drowning passengers.

Miss Francatelli worked as a secretary for baronet Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon and his wife Lady Lucy Christiana and travelled with them on Titanic.

The employee told of how the three of them boarded one of the last lifeboats containing just five passengers and seven crew - and admitted they didn't consider going back for survivors.

Wealthy baronet Sir Cosmo later paid the crew members £5 each - about £300 in today's money - and some say this was blood money for saving their lives.

She wrote her account in a signed affidavit which was presented to the official British enquiry into the 1912 disaster.
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Sherlock

Ancient Giant Penguin Unearthed in Peru

Katia Moskvitch
BBC News
Thu, 30 Sep 2010 08:41 UTC
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© N Adam SmithThe team excavated the fossil in Reserva Nacional de Paracas in Peru
The fossil of a giant penguin that lived 36 million years ago has been discovered in Peru.

Scientists say the find shows that key features of the plumage were present quite early on in penguin evolution.

The team told Science magazine that the animal's feathers were brown and grey, distinct from the black "tuxedo" look of modern penguins.

It was about 1.5m (5ft) tall and nearly twice as heavy as an Emperor Penguin, the largest living species.

The bird, named Inkayacu paracasensis, or Water King, waddled the Earth during the late Eocene period.

It had a long, straight beak, much longer than that of its modern relatives.
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Sherlock

3,000-Year-Old Double Statue of Pharaoh Amenhotep III Discovered at His Funerary Temple in Luxor

Ann Wuyts
Heritage Key
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 14:17 UTC
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© SCADouble statue of Amenhotep III and Amun in situ at his funerary temple at Kom el-Hittan near Luxor.
A 3,000-year-old double limestone statue of pharaoh Amenhotep III is discovered near Luxor, Egypt.

The statue was found at Kom el-Hittan, at the northern entrance of the funerary temple of Amenhotep III - once one of the largest temples on the west bank of the Nile.

Egypt's Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni, said that the statue depicts Amenhotep III seated on a throne accompanied by the - now headless - Theban god, Amun.

The 18th Dynasty pharaoh - who ruled from about 1410 to 1372 BC - wears the double crown of Egypt, which is decorated with a uraeus.

Mr. Abdel Ghaffar, director of the excavations, said that the newly discovered statue of Amenhotep III is 130 cm tall and 95 cm wide.
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Sherlock

Russia: Workers Discover Ancient Tombs in Downtown Moscow


RIA Novosti
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 14:15 UTC
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© flickr.com/rhurtubiaWorkers find ancient tombs in downtown Moscow
Workers uncovered ancient tombs with human remains in the basement of the building of the Rosstat state statistics service in downtown Moscow on Saturday, a spokesman for the Moscow's police said.

"Workers called out policemen and said that they have found ancient tombs with bones," Anatoly Lastovetsky said.

Archeologists will probe the find within the next week.
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Sun

Far Side Solar Activity


Space Weather
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 12:38 UTC
On October 1st a bright coronal mass ejection blasted away from the far side of the sun (SOHO movie). The source appears to be a magnetic active region that formed just a few days ago, invisible from Earth because it is so far over the sun's western limb. However, NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft has a good view of the area.

Image
© SOHO
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Cloud Lightning

Gigantic Jet Captured Near Kennedy Space Center


Space Weather
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 12:35 UTC
You know what comes out of the bottom of a thunder storm--lightning. But do you know what comes out of the top? On Sept. 28th at 7:01 am EDT, Joel Gonzalez photographed a gigantic jet shooting up from a storm near NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Click on the image to watch the action--and turn up the volume for a crackling soundtrack:

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Telescope

Passing Through Cassiopeia, Comet Hartley 2 Dazzles October 20


Space Weather
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 12:26 UTC
Green comet 103P/Hartley 2 is approaching Earth for a close encounter on Oct. 20th. At that time, the comet will be only 11 million miles from Earth and should be dimly visible to the naked eye from dark sky sites. It already looks great through backyard telescopes:

Image
© Rolando Ligustri
Amateur astronomer Rolando Ligustri took this picture on Oct. 1st using a 14-inch Global Rent-a-Scope in New Mexico. It shows Comet Hartley beside the spectacular Pacman Nebula (NGC 281), a star-forming cloud some ten thousand light years from Earth. "This is a very nice comet for telescopes and binoculars," says Martin Gembec who took a similar picture from his backyard observatory in the Czech Republic last night. "It has a [green atmosphere] almost 0.5 degrees wide and shines like a 7th magnitude star."

Two weeks after Comet Hartley has its close encounter with Earth, NASA will have a close encounter with the comet. The EPOXI spacecraft (formerly known as Deep Impact) is hurtling toward Comet Hartley now, and on Nov. 4th it will fly 435 miles from the comet's active icy nucleus. The encounter will mark only the fifth time in history that a spacecraft has been close enough to image a comet's core.
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Family

Social sensitivity trumps IQ in group intelligence

Miriam Frankel
New Scientist
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 12:19 UTC
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© WestEnd61/Rex FeaturesGreater than the sum of its parts
If you're a headhunter looking for someone to work in a group, you might want to stop chasing down the most intelligent candidates. Group intelligence depends less on how smart individuals are and more on their social sensitivity, ability to take turns speaking, and the number of women in the group.

So says Anita Woolley from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and colleagues, having measured group intelligence and the influences that individuals have on it.

To measure group intelligence, Woolley placed 699 people into teams of two to five and asked them to carry out simple tasks including brainstorming, moral reasoning, puzzle-solving, typing and negotiating. The groups were evaluated on how well they did, and given an overall score for group intelligence.

Individual intelligence as measured by IQ tests relies on the premise that people who are good at one task are generally good at several, which suggests that an underlying "general intelligence" exists. Although somewhat controversial, such tests can be used to predict how well a person will do in more complex tests. Woolley's team found a similar general intelligence in groups, and it was also a successful predictor of how well that group would perform at subsequent, more complex tasks.
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Sun

Sun's Heliopause: A Moving Target

Kelly Beatty
Sky & Telescope
Fri, 01 Oct 2010 14:37 UTC
IBEX
© NASA / Goddard Space Flight CenterArtist concept of the IBEX satellite.
Isn't it counter-intuitive to name a spacecraft the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, knowing full well that it'll never venture more than about 200,000 miles (300,000 km) from its home planet?

That thought crossed my mind a couple of years ago, when NASA launched IBEX into a looping orbit that stretches halfway to the Moon but no farther. But within a year the spacecraft had amazed its science team. Its first all-sky map revealed, for the first time, the nature of the region 8 to 10 billion miles away where the Sun's magnetic bubble, the heliosphere, meets interstellar space.

How, you might ask, is that possible?

When the outward-racing solar wind reaches the heliosphere's edge, the heliopause, it mingles with atoms in the interstellar medium. That's where energetic solar-wind protons can steal electrons from the slower-moving atoms of interstellar hydrogen atoms. This charge exchange turns the protons into electrically neutral hydrogen atoms. No longer controlled by the solar wind's magnetic field, and still moving fast, they zip away from the interstellar boundary in all directions.
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