Science & TechnologyS


Sherlock

Incas Practiced Ritual Decapitation of Enemies, Archaeologists Say


Inside Costa Rica/EFE
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:00 UTC
Peruvian archaeologists have reached the conclusion that the Incas decapitated their enemies to use their heads as offerings after finding three skulls in a ceremonial vessel in the southeastern city of Cuzco.

The director of Sacsayhuaman Archaeological Park, Washington Camacho, told EFE Friday that the heads found this week on Qowicarana ridge, an ancient ceremonial center north of Cuzco, could have been those of ancient chiefs or leaders of peoples who were enemies of the Incas.

For the archaeologist, the "trophy heads" could have been cut off "during a battle or in some other place after the capture of these "curacas" (chiefs of enemy peoples).

It is believed, Camacho said, that the offering of heads belonged to "the last phase of the Inca Empire," in other words around 1500, probably "when Huayna Capac reigned."
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Sherlock

Japanese Subs Found Off Hawaii Could Have Changed World War II

Peter N. Spotts
The Christian Science Monitor
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:00 UTC
The two Japanese submarines - which were commandeered and scuttled by the US after World War II - were much larger, faster, and stealthier than US subs of the day. One included a float-plane that could attack New York.

Marine researchers have found a pair of Imperial Japanese Navy submarines on the sea floor off Hawaii's Oahu Island - vessels so advanced for their day they would provide plenty of fodder for a fresh novel by Tom Clancy.

Known by their vessel numbers, the I-14 was a 375-foot submarine aircraft carrier - its crew capable of assembling and launching two float-plane bombers in roughly 20 minutes. The other craft, the I-201, was an attack submarine, twice as fast as any in the US fleet and faster than subs in any other Navy during World War II.

"This is one of the most significant marine-heritage findings in recent years," according to Hans Van Tilburg, a marine archaeologist who is the maritime-heritage coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Sanctuaries in the Pacific. The find was announced Thursday.
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Sun

Lightning Strike in Africa Helps Take Pulse of Sun


ScienceDaily
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 04:00 UTC
Sunspots
© NASASunspots, which rotate around the sun's surface, tell us a great deal about our own planet.
Sunspots, which rotate around the sun's surface, tell us a great deal about our own planet. Scientists rely on them, for instance, to measure the sun's rotation or to prepare long-range forecasts of Earth's health.

But there are some years, like this one, where it's not possible to see sunspots clearly. When we're at this "solar minimum," very few, if any, sunspots are visible from Earth. That poses a problem for scientists in a new scientific field called "Space Weather," which studies the interaction between the sun and Earth's environment.

Thanks to a serendipitous discovery by Tel Aviv University's Prof. Colin Price, head of TAU's Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science, and his graduate student Yuval Reuveni, science now has a more definitive and reliable tool for measuring the sun's rotation when sunspots aren't visible -- and even when they are. The research, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research -- Space Physics, could have important implications for understanding the interactions between the sun and Earth. Best of all, it's based on observations of common, garden-variety lightning strikes here on Earth.
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Cloud Lightning

Splash! NASA Moon Crash Struck Lots of Water

Alicia Chang
The Associated Press
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:28 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/NASAThe ejecta plume created by the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket about 20 seconds after after impact
The lunar dud for space enthusiasts has become a watershed event for NASA.

Spacecraft that crashed into the moon last month kicked up a relatively small plume. But scientists have confirmed the debris contained water - 25 gallons of it - making lunar exploration exciting again.

Experts have long suspected there was water on the moon. So the thrilling discovery announced Friday sent a ripple of hope for a future astronaut outpost in a place that has always seemed barren and inhospitable.
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Better Earth

Comet Hunter's Last Look at Earth is Haunting

Alexis Madrigal
Wired Science
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:51 UTC
Image
© ESAHigh-resolution image of planet Earth from Rosetta.
This gorgeous image of a blue arc of the Earth against the blackness of space was captured by the Rosetta spacecraft as it swung by our planet.

The European Space Agency mission is on its way to intercept the comet, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The ship will deploy a lander onto the comet's surface, the first such attempt to be made.

Click HERE to read the rest of this article on wired.com.
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Info

£4.9 Million to Develop Metamaterials for 'Invisibility Cloaks' and 'Perfect Lenses'

Danielle Reeves
Medical News Today
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:00 UTC
Research into designing and building unique 'metamaterials' has received a £4.9 million funding boost from The Leverhulme Trust. Metamaterials can be used for invisibility 'cloaking' devices, sensitive security sensors that can detect tiny quantities of dangerous substances, and flat lenses that can be used to image tiny objects much smaller than the wavelength of light.

The new grant has been made to a team of Imperial College London scientists and engineers, who, in collaboration with scientists at the University of Southampton, will develop new applications for metamaterials that can bend, control and manipulate light and other kinds of electromagnetic waves. Metamaterials is a new, emerging field of science lying at the borders of physics and materials science. The concept relies not on clever chemistry, which is normally used to create new materials, but instead on creating clever patterns on the surface of existing materials, particularly metals.

The new grant is one of two The Leverhulme Trust is awarding for 'embedding emerging disciplines'. The project team is led by two of Imperial College London's Professors: Sir John Pendry, a world-leading physicist and pioneer in the field, who first proposed that metamaterials could be used to build an invisibility 'cloak' in 2006, and Professor Stefan Maier who is a leading experimentalist in the field of plasmonics. Also collaborating in the Project is Professor Nikolay Zheludev's team at the University of Southampton.
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Grey Alien

Attack of the Hyperdimensional Juggernaut-Men: "Something May Come Through" Dimensional "Doors" at LHC

Lewis Page
The Register
Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:02 UTC
A top boffin at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) says that the titanic machine may possibly create or discover previously unimagined scientific phenomena, or "unknown unknowns" - for instance "an extra dimension".

"Out of this door might come something, or we might send something through it," said Sergio Bertolucci, who is Director for Research and Scientific Computing at CERN, briefing reporters including the Reg at CERN HQ earlier this week.

The LHC, built inside a 27-km circular subterranean tunnel deep beneath the Franco-Swiss border outside Geneva, functions like a sort of orbital motorway for extremely high-speed hadrons - typically either protons or lead ions.
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Magnify

New Nanowires may Contribute to Highly Efficient Solar Cells


ScienceDaily
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:00 UTC
Image
© University of CopenhagenA nanowire made of the two semi- conductors (GaInAs and InAs) with gold (Au) as a catalyst.
Danish nanophysicists have developed a new method for manufacturing the cornerstone of nanotechnology research -- nanowires. The discovery has great potential for the development of nanoelectronics and highly efficient solar cells.

It is PhD student Peter Krogstrup, Nano-Science Center, the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, who developed the method during his dissertation.

"We have changed the recipe for producing nanowires. This means that we can produce nanowires that contain two different semiconductors, namely gallium indium arsenide and indium arsenide. It is a big breakthrough, because for first time on a nanoscale, we can combine the good characteristics of the two materials, thus gaining new possibilities for the electronics of the future," explains Peter Krogstrup.
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Magnify

Archaeologists: Three Byzantine tombs discovered in Wadi al-Zahab in Syria

Fadi Allafi Ghossoun
Archaeology News
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:38 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Homs (central Syria) Museums and Antiquities Department recently discovered a cave in Wadi al-Zahab that includes a cemetery of three tombs which are not completed because no one was buried in them. The cemetery dates back to the Byzantine era.

Head of the Department Farid Jabbour said the cemetery was discovered during the excavations carried out by the General Establishment for Water studies to keep off floods.

Moreover, The Syrian-Lebanese-Spanish joint expedition concluded archeological surveys which began in mid September in the villages of Qazhal, al-Rabiyeh, al-Mashahdeh, al-Rabieaa and Khurbat Ghazi north of the city of Homs.
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Blackbox

DARPA: Inventing this side of the impossible

Tom Simonite
New Scientist
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:31 UTC
Image
© DARPAThe A160 hummingbird, just one of many DARPA project that have found military or commercial use
On 6 December 1957 a hollow aluminium sphere the size of a small melon burst from a blazing fireball, rose a mere metre or so above Florida before landing with a thump. The US was in trouble. A month earlier, the Soviet Union had sent a 500-kilogram capsule bearing a dog called Laika into space. But here was the US unable to even notch up its first foray into orbit.

President Dwight Eisenhower responded by creating a new research agency tasked with ensuring such "technological surprises" like Sputnik would never be sprung on the US again. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), conceived in February 1958 not only still exists, it has consistently made the US military the most advanced on Earth and unleashed life-changing technologies such as the internet, GPS and the computer mouse along the way.

Under the control of the Pentagon, DARPA has always maintained a low profile, but now journalist Michael Belfiore has written the first book about the agency. He spent time with the engineers charged with realising some very far-fetched ideas, which, if past performance is anything to go by, may also create society-changing spin-offs. He also gained unprecedented access to the agency's director, Tony Tether (now retired).

The current projects that Belfiore visits have typically ambitious goals - ones which dedicated New Scientist readers will be familiar with. He talks with two groups working to make prosthetic arms as nimble and light as the real thing, watches driverless cars work their way through real traffic in a bid to win a $2-million prize, and meets the creators of a portable robotic emergency room intended to keep injured soldiers alive long enough to reach hospital. He also learns about efforts to build scramjets able to race around the world in just a few hours.
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