Science & Technology

What killed Dr Granville's mummy?

Stephanie Pain
New Scientist
Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:37 UTC

Augustus Granville unpacked his props: he had bandages, bottles of chemicals, a bundle of candles and various bits of an Egyptian mummy. Mummy-mania was in full swing and public unrolling all the rage. But this wasn't going to be a shilling-a-ticket spectacle: Granville was giving a scientific lecture. He had spent weeks unwrapping and dissecting a mummy, meticulously measuring, recording and experimenting as he sought to unravel the mysteries of the embalmer's art. Yet even he couldn't resist one small theatrical flourish. To transport his audience back to the time when his mummy was so perfectly prepared for life after death, he lit the room with candles made from the very wax he believed had preserved her.

When Egyptologist John Taylor joined the British Museum in the late 1980s, he found storerooms piled high with boxes. During the second world war, the museum's collections had been moved out for safety. Although returned soon afterwards, some had not been touched since. Exploring one such storeroom, Taylor came across a large wooden chest. "I had no idea what was in it and no one seemed to know anything about it." He opened the chest. Inside were two trays, each divided into compartments, and each compartment contained a piece of an Egyptian mummy. Taylor had rediscovered what was left of Augustus Granville's once-famous mummy.

Stellar Meteor Shower January 3

Joe Rao
Live Science
Wed, 31 Dec 2008 20:31 UTC

For meteor observers, the presence of an almost-full Moon cast a bright pall on this month's performance of the Geminid Meteor Shower, normally one of the best meteor displays of the year. But for a wild card, another very good meteor shower may be right around corner. And for this one, the Moon will not play a factor at all.

So, get out your 2009 calendar and put a big circle around Saturday morning, Jan. 3.

That's the expected peak date for the Quadrantids, a notoriously unpredictable meteor display. In 2009, peak activity is due to occur in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 3 and will strongly favor western North America. If the "Quads" reach their full potential, observers blessed with clear, dark skies could be averaging one or two meteor sightings per minute in the hour or two prior to the break of dawn.

The Quadrantid (pronounced KWA-dran-tid) meteors provides one of the most intense annual meteor displays, with a brief, sharp maximum lasting but a few hours. Adolphe Quetelet of Brussels Observatory discovered the shower in the 1830's, and shortly afterward it was noted by several other astronomers in Europe and America.

Celestial Show Set for New Year's Eve

Robert Roy Britt
Live Science
Wed, 31 Dec 2008 20:23 UTC

A delightful display of planets and the moon will occur on New Year's Eve for anyone wishing to step outside and look up just after sunset.

Venus, brighter than all other planets and stars, will dangle just below the thin crescent moon in the southwestern sky. It'll be visible -- impossible to miss, in fact -- just as the sun goes down, assuming skies are cloud-free.

Soon thereafter, Mercury and Jupiter will show up hugging the south-southwestern horizon (just above where the sun went down) and extremely close to each other. Jupiter is very bright and easy to spot; Mercury is faint and harder to see, but it'll be apparent by its location just to the left of Jupiter.

Jupiter and Mercury will set less than an hour after the sun, so timing your viewing just after sunset is crucial. You'll also need a location with a clear view of the western horizon, unobstructed by buildings, trees or mountains.

Scientists: Early Earth 'was covered in water'

The Press Association
Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:36 UTC

A new model of the early Earth suggests that until around 2.5 billion years ago oceans covered almost the whole of the planet. Just 2% to 3% of the Earth's surface would have been dry land, compared with 28% today.

The Earth at that time may have resembled the way it looked in Waterworld, the 1995 post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie starring Kevin Costner. In the film, humanity struggles to survive after the ice caps melt and inundate the planet with water.

However, unlike in the movie, the oceans 2.5 billion years ago would have been devoid of fish, which had not yet evolved. Back then life consisted of nothing more complex than algae and bacteria.

Weapons technology: Top 10 from 2008

Paul Marks
New Scientist
Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:05 UTC

© Ben Curtis/PA Archive/PA
A soldier fires a laser-based version of a light anti-armour weapon during an exercise in Canada.

It's the stuff of science fiction: robots that can hunt down and kill humans, powerful lasers that can destroy targets without leaving a trace, and a weapon that can supposedly knock you down without even touching you - all of these, and more, came one step closer to reality in 2008.

The developers of these technologies say that they will help to ensure that modern warfare is as efficient and humane as possible. Their critics say the weapons are just the latest in a long line of lethal inventions that have increased man's brutality to man - successors to the Maxim automatic machine gun, the flame thrower, and mustard gas. Whichever view you take, they introduce new ethical and practical questions.

In this review, we have gathered the 10 most important stories that New Scientist published on this subject this year, so you can make up your own mind.

Airborne Laser lets rip on first target

Laser dogfights in the sky may not be such a long way off, after a megawatt laser weapon was fired from an aircraft for the first time. The plan is to target "rogue" missiles - but it could also be used against other planes or targets on the ground.

US boasts of laser weapon's 'plausible deniability'

3-D Moon Imaging Inaugurated With NASA Instrument Aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 Spacecraft

Science Daily
Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:58 UTC

© NASA/JPL/Brown
The left figure is a color composite of processed data that accentuates compositional differences in the moon's Orientale region. The image on the right contains significant thermal emission in the signal and is particularly sensitive to small variations in local morphology.

Different wavelengths of light provide new information about the Orientale Basin region of the moon in a new composite image taken by NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, a guest instrument aboard the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper is the first instrument to provide highly uniform imaging of the lunar surface. Along with the length and width dimensions across a typical image, the instrument analyzes a third dimension - color.

A two-image figure, and other data from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper Instrument, can be found HERE.

The composite image consists of a subset of Moon Mineralogy Mapper data for the Orientale region. The image strip on the left is a color composite of data from 28 separate wavelengths of light reflected from the moon. The blue to red tones reveal changes in rock and mineral composition, and the green color is an indication of the abundance of iron-bearing minerals such as pyroxene. The image strip on the right is from a single wavelength of light that contains thermal emission, providing a new level of detail on the form and structure of the region's surface.

Solar wind makes Earth's atmosphere fluctuate

Sid Perkins
Science News
Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:46 UTC

Analyses of satellite data reveal that Earth's atmosphere expands and contracts in response to short-term variations in the solar wind. Understanding this previously unrecognized phenomenon and how it affects objects traveling in low-Earth orbits will enable scientists to better track satellites, and to track the space junk that threatens them.

Besides the more than 800 satellites in low-Earth orbit, more than 17,000 pieces of space junk also circle the planet, reported Jeffrey P. Thayer, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, December 15 at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Researchers have long known that variations in the amount of certain wavelengths of ultraviolet light emitted by the sun cause the planet's atmosphere to swell and shrink. The higher the amount of incoming UV radiation, the warmer the upper atmosphere becomes and the more it expands toward space, Thayer says.

Massive Volcanic Eruptions Could Have Killed Off the Dinosaurs

Betsy Mason
Wired
Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:27 UTC

Huge volcanic eruptions that belched sulfur into the air for around 10,000 years could have killed the dinosaurs, according to new evidence unearthed by geologists.

Evidence is accumulating that it wasn't an asteroid that did the beasts in, but volcanoes -- the first real challenge the extinction theory has met in three decades.

A combination of studies on dinosaur fossils, magnetic signatures in rocks and the timing of the disappearance of different species suggest it was volcanoes, not an asteroid, that caused the dinosaurs' extinction.

Italian Sets Comet Sighting Record

Ansa.it
Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:20 UTC

Astronomer Boattini spots seven in one year

Italian astronomer Andrea Boattini broke the record for the number of new comets sighted in one year when he spotted his seventh at Christmas.

The previous record had been held for some 150 years by Italian astronomers Francesco De Vito and Giovanni Battista Donati who in the mid-1800s sighted six comets in one year.

The new comet has the technical tag C/2008 Y1 but like the others has also been given its discoverer's name.

Did A Comet Cause The Carolina Bays?

Liza Roberts
Raleigh Metro Magazine
Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:36 UTC

George Howard is many things. He is the president of the Raleigh-based Restoration Systems mitigation bank and a conservationist; he is a history buff, a science geek, a cartographer. The 42-year-old family man is a talented amateur artist, a dedicated if unprolific fisherman and a politico whose office photos show him chummy with folks including Jesse Helms, Newt Gingrich, Lauch Faircloth and both George Bushes.

Ehret an idiot beyond belief

smertzasmert

.. .. are wheel barrel sales are up too?

Jibrish

I doubt any pureblood would object to the "vaccinated" being masked, but if they (the "vaccinated") still feel unsafe then maybe their problem is...

HashAttack2

I said this would happen...now they are looking to mandate companies with less that 100 employees...shits getting real, people[Link]

Bezel Bub

it's all a lie ! :O

cracker

Science & Technology

What killed Dr Granville's mummy?

Stellar Meteor Shower January 3

Celestial Show Set for New Year's Eve

Scientists: Early Earth 'was covered in water'

Weapons technology: Top 10 from 2008

3-D Moon Imaging Inaugurated With NASA Instrument Aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 Spacecraft

Solar wind makes Earth's atmosphere fluctuate

Massive Volcanic Eruptions Could Have Killed Off the Dinosaurs

Italian Sets Comet Sighting Record

Did A Comet Cause The Carolina Bays?

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