4-year survey of Stonehenge landscape reveals hidden monuments

4-year survey of Stonehenge landscape reveals hidden monuments

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There are many mysteries surrounding the ancient monuments at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England. Researchers in Britain, working with experts at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in Austria have...on.aol.com

Meredith DannerNews Examiner

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September 10, 2014

It may sound a bit cliche, but in this case it’s true. Following a multi-year survey of the landscape around Stonehenge, one of Britain’s most famous (and mysterious) monuments, scientists have discovered that there’s much more than meets the eye sitting below the surface of Salisbury Plain.

The survey, the results of which were revealed at the BritishScience Festival this week after a study spanning four years, was done by a team from the UK’s University of Birmingham and Austria’s Ludwig Boltzmann Institute as part of The StonehengeHidden Landscapes Project. Using non-invasive techniques such as ground-penetrating radar that don’t affect the 10-square kilometer site’s physical landscape, the archaeologists have found that Stonehenge was actually part of a large complex of Neolithic shrines and monuments.

17 new underground shrines were “uncovered” in the survey, including several burial mounds. Inside one burial monument known as a long barrow is what looks like a timber structure, which is suspected to have been used for the ritual of removing flesh and organs, leaving only bones (known as “defleshing”), and burying the dead. Researchers also studied the Stonehenge Cursus, a nearby large enclosure thought to date back to about 3500 B.C., and found a large pit on either end. Project leader Vincent Gaffney says each pit lines up with a particular spot at Stonehenge and that the paths created each line up with the sunrise or sunset during the mid-summer solstice.

Over at the Durrington Walls site, meanwhile, the radar detected about 60 holes set roughly two meters (about six and a half feet) apart that appear to have held stone or timber pillars. Since the holes are set in a large circle, the team is calling the previously-unseen structure a “super henge.” A few of the stones are still buried and look as though they’ve been pushed over, which Gaffney says may support evidence that people in some ancient cultures sometimes pushed over or rearranged monuments.

“It’s extraordinary to think that there have been so many investigations of this landscape and of the land that we’re standing on now and nobody before has previously suspected all of these pits,” Dr. Nicola Snashall of the National Trust told BBC News.

From here, the team will process all of the information it collected, which could reportedly take about a year to sift through. LiveScience notes Wednesday that the governmental body English Heritage will likely then decide what parts of the complex should be excavated. The findings will also be featured in the TV special "Operation Stonehenge: What Lies Beneath," scheduled to air Thursday on Britain’s BBC Two.

SolarStorm to hit Earth this weekend

SolarStorm to hit Earth this weekend

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Bob KnudsenNews Examiner

September 11, 2014

There’s a storm coming and battening down the hatches is not going to do much. That’s because this particular storm is a massive solar flare that will strike the Earth sometime tomorrow or Saturday. The sun let off an X class flare, the most powerful type, yesterday and it looks like it could be a doozy.

Solar flares are caused when a large mass of charged particles build up on the surface of the sun and are then released all at once. This particular flare was caused by a massive storm on the sun and is actually the second large flare released this week. The first wason Tuesday. This particular flare is traveling toward us at about 2.5 million miles per hour, which sounds fast but it’s only really at a medium pace in space terms.

But what does it mean for us earthbound folks? Well, probably not much other than some possible interruptions of a few high frequency radio transmissions. No end of the world as we know it, no precursor civilization having to reawaken 80,000 year old technology to save us, no questionable fruit drinks harnessing its power to be unleashed later.

Women in Space!

Women in Space!

Only 10% of astronauts are female, and in space engineering that number seems even worse. This blog is dedicated to put the Women in Space in the spotlight to educate and inspire a new generation. 

Previously known as F Yeah! Female Astronauts.

“Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. […] Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know.”

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Jeremy Knowles, discussing the complete lack of recognition Cecilia Payne gets, even today, for her revolutionary discovery. (via alliterate) OH WAIT LEMME TELL YOU ABOUT CECILIA PAYNE. Cecilia Payne’s mother refused to spend money on her college education, so she won a scholarship to Cambridge. Cecilia Payne completed her studies, but Cambridge wouldn’t give her a degree because she was a woman, so she said fuck that and moved to the United States to work at Harvard. Cecilia Payne was the first person ever to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College, with what Otto Strauve called “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.” Not only did Cecilia Payne discover what the universe is made of, she also discovered what the sun is made of (Henry Norris Russell, a fellow astronomer, is usually given credit for discovering that the sun’s composition is different from the Earth’s, but he came to his conclusions four years later than Payne—after telling her not to publish). Cecilia Payne is the reason we know basically anything about variable stars (stars whose brightness as seen from earth fluctuates). Literally every other study on variable stars is based on her work. Cecilia Payne was the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within Harvard, and is often credited with breaking the glass ceiling for women in the Harvard science department and in astronomy, as well as inspiring entire generations of women to take up science. Cecilia Payne is awesome and everyone should know her. (via bansheewhale)

Child's dream to see the stars:1st Russian female cosmonaut in 17 yrs ready to lift-off

Child's dream to see the stars:1st Russian female cosmonaut in 17 yrs ready to lift-off

Published time: September 12, 2014 16:40
Edited time: September 12, 2014 19:04

Russian Federal Space Agency Cosmonaut Yelena Serova (RIA Novosti/Grigoriy Sisoev)

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The first 21st-century Russian female cosmonaut is heading to the ISS in September. Ahead of her space journey, she told RT about her extreme survival training and how her scientific research at the station will be of great help for the future.

The space odyssey of 38-year-old Elena Serova “started right with my birth,” she said. Her father, a serviceman in the Air Force, and her schoolteacher told her stories about the Earth, space and stars.

“So later I fell in love with astronomy,” she told RT. “I would go out at night to watch the stars, and each of these small steps brought me closer to my cherished dream.”

However the life of a cosmonaut is not only fame and zero gravity. It’s hard work, and you have to prove your skills every day.

Survival training is an inseparable part of a cosmonaut’s life. For Elena, extreme situations are enjoyable, not a burden.

“We once had a survival mission in a desert where we lost 5 kilos in just two days – just imagine 5 liters of water simply evaporated,” said Elena. “It was great, and an invaluable experience for me, too, because one day it could save my life.”

RIA Novosti/Roman Sokolov

During this kind of training, the cosmonauts learn to survive in any harsh kind of environment, as you never know where you are going to land. And you have only a parachute and a survival kit.

“It’s not just about your physical abilities, you need to identify where you are and quickly figure out what kind of environment and climate you are in, what kind of fauna is found in that area. You need to know how to get water, how to build a makeshift shelter,” she said.

Elena told RT that when she heard that she was actually going into space, she was happy, but she also realized it was “a great responsibility.”

“After all the sweat and hard work, naturally, the news made me happy, but I also realize it’s a lot of responsibility. Your body and mind automatically brace for a new mission,” she said.

Elena is planning to write a blog during her space mission and describe all the experiences she faces in space.

“The way it is done here, cosmonauts keep their blogs at the Roskosmos website. So I think that is where my own blog will be hosted, too,” she said adding that she is going to add photos to make the blog interesting and to write it from a professional, not a personal, point of view.

Serova is the fourth Russian female cosmonaut to head into space and the first since 1997.

The first woman in space was Valentina Tereshkova in 1963. Almost 20 years later, in 1982, Svetlana Savitskaya matched Tereshkova’s achievement. The third Russian woman in space was Yelena Kondakova, who in 1997 stayed over 178 days in space.

In fact, Elena even doesn’t like the term “woman cosmonaut,” as she strongly believes that there is no difference between a man or a woman in space.

“The profession of a cosmonaut can be further broken down into test engineers, researchers, not men or women. The gender doesn’t matter here – it’s all about a specific set of skills and the right personality type.”

Olympic flag-bearer

Earlier, Elena told the journalists how she plans to wash her hair in conditions of zero gravity, as she doesn’t want to cut her hair short.

“This process [of washing my hair] will be recorded when we are on board ISS, and you will have the opportunity to see this procedure,” she said.

She added that on her space mission, she will take an Olympic bear, which was given to her by her daughter. Serova was one of five cosmonauts who raised the Russian flag at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics opening ceremony.

However, hair will not be Elena’s main problem during her flight, as her mission will be the research and experiments she performs on board the spaceship.

“For example, they’ve been studying how a human body reacts to microgravity,” she said. “That is something humanity will need in the future, once our descendants get around to exploring other planets – which I’m sure they will.”

RIA Novosti/Roman Sokolov

Elena will also testing Vizir, a device capable of locating space objects we observe with a very high level of precision.

“This is a brand new system that has been installed at the ISS, and I will be the one testing it,” she said with pride. 

During the space mission, she will also be studying lightning and the properties of plasma.

“This might enable humanity in the future to forecast natural disasters, such as earthquakes.”

According to Elena, the results of this research may not be so obvious today, but in the future the“benefits of these experiments would turn out to be much more valuable than anything done here on Earth.”

“So our future will heavily rely on the operation of the ISS… We have to leverage this rich experience that we’ve gained over these years in terms of engineering, equipment, and materials. There’s so much you can learn from decades of research.”

“I like to think of humankind as a big family of cosmonauts – we all live on planet Earth, which is like a huge mothership traversing the vast expanses of the Universe. This is the metaphor that always comes to my mind,” she said.

As for her own family, Serova’s husband and daughter will wait for her. It was passion for the stars that brought her together with her husband, whom she met at the Moscow Aviation Institute.

“Our shared interest grew into a romance and then a relationship. Together, we went on to work at the Energia space corporation. I love my husband, I love the time we spend together, and I think we are a happy family,” she said.

'Telepathy'experiment sends 1st mental message

'Telepathy'experiment sends 1st mental message

September 5, 2014 12:22 PMRelaxnews

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'Telepathy' experiment sends 1st mental message

For the first time, scientists have been able to send a simple mental message from one person to another without any contact between the two, thousands of miles apart in India and France.

Research led by experts at Harvard University shows technology can be used to transmit information from one person's brain to another's even, as in this case, if they are thousands of miles away.

"It is kind of technological realization of the dream of telepathy, but it is definitely not magical," Giulio Ruffini, a theoretical physicist and co-author of the research, told AFP by phone from Barcelona.

"We are using technology to interact electromagnetically with the brain."

For the experiment, one person wearing a wireless, Internet-linked electroencephalogram or EEG would think a simple greeting, like "hola," or "ciao."

A computer translated the words into digital binary code, presented by a series of 1s or 0s.

Then, this message was emailed from India to France, and delivered via robot to the receiver, who through non-invasive brain stimulation could see flashes of light in their peripheral vision.

The subjects receiving the message did not hear or see the words themselves, but were correctly able to report the flashes of light that corresponded to the message.

"We wanted to find out if one could communicate directly between two people by reading out the brain activity from one person and injecting brain activity into the second person, and do so across great physical distances by leveraging existing communication pathways," said co-author Alvaro Pascual-Leone, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.

"One such pathway is, of course, the Internet, so our question became, 'Could we develop an experiment that would bypass the talking or typing part of Internet and establish direct brain-to-brain communication between subjects located far away from each other in India and France?'"

Ruffini added that extra care was taken to make sure no sensory information got in the way that could have influenced the interpretation of the message.

Researchers have been attempting to send a message from person to person this way for about a decade, and the proof of principle that was reported in the journal PLOS ONE is still rudimentary, he told AFP.

"We hope that in the longer term this could radically change the way we communicate with each other," said Ruffini.

Mystery island’ on Saturnmoon’s methane sea puzzles scientists

Mystery island’ on Saturn moon’s methane sea puzzles scientists

Published time: June 23, 2014 11:50

Ligeia Mare, shown here in a false-color image from NASA's Cassini mission, is the second largest known body of liquid on Saturn's moon Titan (Image from nasa.gov)

A strange object, dubbed a “mystery island,” has appeared briefly on images of a methane sea on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Studying the images, taken by the spacecraft Cassini, astronomers came up with four possible explanations.

The unusual discovery was made on Ligeia Mare, the second-largest of Titan’s three bodies of liquid big enough to be considered seas. A bright white object was spotted off the rocky southern coast of the sea when Cassini flew by it on July 10, 2013. Neither earlier pictures taken by the spacecraft’s radar nor the one taken on July 26 have the object, which means the scientists spotted a big transient process on the usually calm body.

Massive 'ocean' discovered towards Earth's core

Massive 'ocean' discovered towards Earth's core

• 19:00 12 June 2014 by Andy Coghlan

Blue lagoon: this crystal of blue ringwoodite is being crushed in a lab experiment. The orange circles are regions that have had their water squeezed out of them (Image: Steve Jacobsen/Northwestern University)

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A reservoir of water three times the volume of all the oceans has been discovered deep beneath the Earth's surface. The finding could help explain where Earth's seas came from.

The water is hidden inside a blue rock called ringwoodite that lies 700 kilometres underground in the mantle, the layer of hot rock between Earth's surface and its core.