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End of the Earth Postponed

Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience
Tue, 19 Oct 2010 18:35 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Victor Ruiz
The Kukulkan pyramid stands at the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula July 7, 2007. Chichen Itza is one of the contenders of the new seven Wonders of the World.
It's a good news/bad news situation for believers in the 2012 Mayan apocalypse. The good news is that the Mayan "Long Count" calendar may not end on Dec. 21, 2012 (and, by extension, the world may not end along with it). The bad news for prophecy believers? If the calendar doesn't end in December 2012, no one knows when it actually will - or if it has already.

A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World (Oxbow Books, 2010), argues that the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar may be off by as much as 50 or 100 years. That would throw the supposed and over-hyped 2012 apocalypse off by decades and cast into doubt the dates of historical Mayan events. (The doomsday worries are based on the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, much as our year ends on Dec. 31.)
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Meteor

Time To See Comet Hartley 2


Space Weather
Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:13 UTC
For backyard stargazers, now is the best time to see green Comet 103P/Hartley 2 as it approaches Earth for an 11-million-mile close encounter on Oct. 20th. Set your alarm for the dark hours before dawn, go outside, and look straight up. You will find Hartley 2 not far from the bright star Capella: sky map. Although the comet is barely visible to the unaided eye, it is easy to find in binoculars and looks great through a backyard telescope.

Rolando Ligustri has been observing the comet nightly using a robotic 4-inch telescope in New Mexico.

Image
© Rolando Ligustri
Many readers have asked, why is the comet green? Answer: Hartley 2's green color comes from the gases that make up its Jupiter-sized atmosphere. Jets spewing from the comet's nucleus contain cyanogen (CN: a poisonous gas found in many comets) and diatomic carbon (C2). Both substances glow green when illuminated by sunlight in the near-vacuum of space.
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Sherlock

Swiss archaeologists find 5,000-year-old door


PhysOrg
Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:07 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Hochbaudepartment Zurich
This undated photo provided by the Hochbaudepartment Zurich shows a 5,000-year old door that archaeologists in the Swiss city of Zurich have found and may be the oldest ever found in Europe. Chief archaeologist Niels Bleicher says the ancient poplar wood door is "solid and elegant" with well-preserved hinges and a "remarkable" design for holding the boards together. Bleicher said Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010 the door has been dated to around 3,100-years B.C.
The ancient poplar wood door is "solid and elegant" with well-preserved hinges and a "remarkable" design for holding the boards together, chief archaeologist Niels Bleicher said Wednesday.

Using tree rings to determine its age, Bleicher believes the door could have been made in the year 3,063 B.C. - around the time that construction on Britain's world famous Stonehenge monument began.

"The door is very remarkable because of the way the planks were held together," Bleicher told The Associated Press.

Harsh climatic conditions at the time meant people had to build solid houses that would keep out much of the cold wind that blew across Lake Zurich, and the door would have helped, he said. "It's a clever design that even looks good."

The door was part of a settlement of so-called "stilt houses" frequently found near lakes about a thousand years after agriculture and animal husbandry were first introduced to the pre-Alpine region.
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Arrow Down

Complex societies rise and fall sequentially

Tamera Jones
Planet Earth Online
Tue, 19 Oct 2010 04:54 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Easter Island figures
This means that societies developed in incremental steps: small family groups would have developed into tribes, then chiefdoms, then more complex chiefdoms, and so on, until finally reaching the complex societies most of us live in today.

Until now, many anthropologists making do with incomplete archaeological data, have simply assumed that societies grow step by step, from simple tribe to chiefdom, to complex state.

But others have questioned the simplicity of this argument, saying that social systems are far too varied to have evolved in such a sequential way.

So researchers led by Thomas Currie from University College London came up with a neat new approach. Rather than relying entirely on archaeological evidence, they looked at how the languages of 84 societies in Southeast Asia and the Pacific are related and combined this with information about the different cultures.

The researchers built family trees showing how the languages are related, then superimposed information about the structure of each society.
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Meteor

NASA advisory council recommends establishment of new agency to protect planet from cometary bombardment


United Press International
Tue, 19 Oct 2010 04:44 UTC
Image
© darkgovernment.com
Technologically feasible? Or wishful thinking?
Washington - NASA should establish a Planetary Defense Coordination Office to lead efforts should the Earth be threatened by asteroids and comets, a U.S. report says.

The report, by the Ad-Hoc Task Force on Planetary Defense of the NASA Advisory Council, offers suggestions on how the agency should prepare to lead national and international plans for defending Earth from collisions from near-Earth objects, SPACE.com reported Tuesday.

"This was a very important step in the process of the United States government defining its role in protection of life from this occasional, but devastating natural hazard," former astronaut Russell Schweickart, co-chairman of the task force, said.

"Happily, in the instance of asteroid impacts, this is a natural disaster which can be prevented ... only, however, if we properly prepare and work together with other nations around the world."
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Life Preserver

Ice Age Megaflood Shaped Bahamas


News Maker
Wed, 20 Oct 2010 04:26 UTC
Image
© Sheffield University, England
Collapse of Giant Ice Age Glacial Lake responsible for carving out the Bahamas.

A team of researchers have uncovered evidence that a Mega-Flood, or series of megafloods, from beneath the Ice Age Laurentide Ice Sheet shaped the Bahama Islands. These Mega-Floods traveled down the Mississippi River Valley and into the gulf of Mexico.

These Megafloods entered the Gulf, rapidly raising the water level and forcing the overflow out through the much smaller Florida/Cuba Straits. This Glacial overflow then spread across the lower lying area known as the Bahama Mega-Bank. 12,000yrs. ago, (with sea levels at least 300 ft. lower than today) the Bahama Mega-Bank was an exposed land mass larger than present day Florida.

The megafloods originated from Glacial Lake Agassiz. Lake Agassiz was an Ice Age Lake formed by receding Glaciers.and covered an area of roughly 365,000 square miles. It was the largest lake in the world. The megafloods from Lake Agassiz traveled down the 120 mile wide, 600 mile long Mississippi River Valley. The Mississippi Valley covers an area of 35,000 sq. miles and was itself cut out by this same Ice Age flooding. The Ice Age melt water through this valley fed into the Gulf of Mexico.
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Laptop

NSA's Newest Recruiters: Cartoon-Leopard Twins

Spencer Ackerman
Wired.com
Tue, 19 Oct 2010 03:22 UTC
Image
© NSA
Dudes and dudettes: You know what's totally radical? Reading your neighbors' e-mail! So don't you wanna be a junior National Security Agency deputy?

If so, the surveillance and cryptology crew at NSA has the right online companions for you: Cy and Cyndi, a pair of anthropomorphic snow leopards now kickin' it with the CryptoKids, the Puzzle Palace's team of cartoon animal hackers. Known as the CyberTwins and unveiled by NSA yesterday, Cy and Cyndi wear gaming headgear, talk into their hands-free mobile devices, and teach youths about proper online hygiene, all on the NSA website's kids page, which actually exists.

Arriving in time for (the second half of) National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the CyberTwins have a backstory to appeal to military kids: Their mom is a government engineer, their dad is an Army computer scientist, and they "love to talk with other kids who love computers and cyber space as much as they do."

That fits them right in with the other CryptoKids - a goateed turtle named T-Top whose uncle works for a computer manufacturer, Sergeant Sam the eagle who joined the military out of high school - who guide real-live youth through online crypto-themed puzzles and brainteasers. (Only one thing's missing from the CryptoTwins' rollout: cybersecurity tips for the underage.)
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Meteor

Newly Discovered Sundiving Comet


SpaceWeather.com
Wed, 20 Oct 2010 00:11 UTC
A newly-discovered comet is diving toward the sun. Chinese comet hunter Bo Zhou found it on Oct. 19th in SOHO coronagraph images. The comet is faint now, but it should brighten in the hours ahead as it heats up. To see it, first check the finder chart, then play the movie. That tadpole is a doomed comet. Updates will be posted as the view improves.
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Meteor

Planetary Defense Coordination Office Proposed to Fight Asteroids

Leonard David
SPACE.com
Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:58 UTC
Impact
© Space.com
A new report calls on NASA to establish a Planetary Defense Coordination Office to lead national and international efforts in protecting Earth against impacts by asteroids and comets.

The final report of the Ad-Hoc Task Force on Planetary Defense of the NASA Advisory Council was delivered to the Council this month, proposing five recommendations that suggest how the space agency should organize, acquire, investigate, prepare, and lead national and international efforts in planetary defense against near-Earth objects.

"This was a very important step in the process of the United States Government defining its role in protection of life from this occasional, but devastating natural hazard," former astronaut Russell Schweickart told SPACE.com. "Happily, in the instance of asteroid impacts, this is a natural disaster which can be prevented...only, however, if we properly prepare and work together with other nations around the world."

Schweickart, who served as co-chair of the task force, said the new report and its recommendations to NASA combined new information with previous studies from the past decade.

The task force met in July to discuss the need for a planetary defense office at NASA. Their final report was submitted to the space agency on Oct. 6.

"With the support of the Administration and the Congress, the U.S. will be in the position of being able to work with and provide leadership in protecting life on Earth from these preventable cosmic disasters," he said.
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Question

Incoming Cosmic Rays Hit Record High

Lisa Grossman
Wired.com
Tue, 19 Oct 2010 12:11 UTC
Heliosphere
© NASA
Heliosphere

The Earth was pummeled with record-setting levels of cosmic rays in 2009. Measurements from NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) and other spacecraft found that more high-energy particles from galactic space penetrated the inner solar system in the last few years than at any other time since the beginning of the space age.

The spike is almost certainly due to several weird aspects of the most recent solar minimum, and could be the start of a new normal for cosmic ray levels.

"It's sort of like everything's working in the same direction right now, to allow cosmic rays greater access to the inner solar system," said space scientist Richard Mewaldt of Caltech. Mewaldt and colleagues published their findings Oct. 7 in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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