>Habitable moons ‘could be spotted by 2014’

>

British astronomers have claimed that thousands of moons capable of supporting life, like those shown in the popular Star Wars’ flicks, could be scattered all over our galaxy, and are likely to be spotted by 2014.

A team at University College London hopes to track the habitable moons within the next five years, using a telescope launched by US space agency Nasa earlier this year to hunt out other planets.

According to lead astronomer Dr David Kipping, there are more than 12,500 stars within sight of Nasa’s Kepler Space Telescope that have the potential for moons orbiting in areas of space where conditions could be favourable to life.

In fact, they have devised a new method for detecting moons in other solar systems — known as exomoons.

“For the first time, we have demonstrated that potentially habitable moons up to hundreds of light years away may be detected with current instrumentation. As we ran the simulations, even we were surprised that moons as small as one-fifth of the Earth’s mass could be spotted. …

“It seems probable that many thousands, possibly millions, of habitable exomoons exist in the Galaxy and now we can start to look for them,” ‘The Daily Telegraph’ quoted Dr Kipping as saying.

via Habitable moons ‘could be spotted by 2014’.

Getting there is half the fun.

>Wreck of Civil War steamer found in Tampa river

>

Divers have discovered the remains of a Civil War steamship in the bottom of the Hillsborough River in Tampa.

A research team from the Florida Aquarium used advanced sonar technology to find the wreck of the Scottish Chief in 15 feet of murky water Tuesday. The vessel hadn’t been seen since Union troops burned and sank it in 1863.

The Scottish Chief is believed to be one of the dozen ships that kept Tampa afloat during the war, sailing through Union blockades to Cuba to trade cotton in exchange for medicine, liquor, food and other supplies.

The relic has been lodged underwater near an Interstate 275 overpass.

The find comes one year after the remains of another Civil War steamer, Kate Dale, were discovered in the same river.

via Wreck of Civil War steamer found in Tampa river.

>Lady Dai tomb among richest finds in China history

>

This image provided by the Hunan Provincial Museum shows figurines of musicians, from the Western Han dynasty. Wood with pigments, it was excavated in 1972 from Han Tomb 1 at Mawangdui, Hunan province of China.

Lady Dai was a Chinese nobleman’s wife in her mid-50s when she died of a heart attack. She was overweight, had diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, liver disease, gallstones and her arteries were almost totally clogged.

She didn’t live the healthiest life but she left behind one of the most perfectly preserved bodies in history. She was buried about 2,100 years ago. Her tomb was found in the early 1970s on Mawangdui, a hill in Changsha, near the capital of Hunan Province in China. More than 1,400 equally well-preserved artifacts found around her were designed to help her in the afterlife.

“The Han Dynasty is the foundation of Chinese culture,” Susan Tai, Curator of Asian Art for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, said. “We are looking at a tomb in Southern China from a very important cultural region that contributed some of the greatest literature and mythology and art to China.”

The museum will host “Noble Tombs at Mawangdui” from Sept. 19 to Dec. 13. The exhibition of Lady Dai artifacts from the Hunan Provincial Museum stopped in New York earlier this year, then headed to Santa Barbara, about 90 miles west of Los Angeles.

There are 68 items in the collection. Ninety percent of those came from Lady Dai’s tomb because it was in such good condition.

Mawangdui was actually home to three tombs. Lady Dai’s husband, Li Cang, was the prime minister of Changsha. He died in 186 B.C., 20 some years before his wife died.

“His tomb was looted repeatedly in antiquity. There were no remains. All the treasures were gone. However, several coin-sized seals were found in the pit. They identified the tomb to be Li’s. They also helped identity his wife’s tomb,” Tai said.

The third grave, tucked slightly under Lady Dai’s, is believed to be that of one of the couple’s two sons, although some believe it was Li’s brother. The man apparently died in his 30s. There were skeletal remains and many artifacts in his tomb, including a library of 50 books written on silk and bamboo slips.

The volumes focused on the military and medicine, including sexual health. The items show women loved beauty and men attached importance to martial arts.

When Lady Dai’s tomb was first opened, there were gasps because there was no decay, Tai said. Oxygen took an immediate toll, but even today, her body is well preserved at the Hunan Provincial Museum.

Modern day scientists are still working on ways to preserve bodies as well as Lady Dai’s, but they’ve found several reasons why it remained in such good shape. Her family wrapped her in 22 dresses of silk and hemp, bound her with nine silk ribbons and covered her face with a mask. All the clothes filled the coffin and it was perfectly sealed, keeping air out. There were inner and outer tombs, like nesting boxes.

Nearly 20 gallons of an unknown liquid were found inside the coffin. A thick layer of white pastelike soil was put on the floor and the tomb was nearly 50 feet below the surface. She was surrounded by massive amounts of food, wine, lacquered dinnerware and drinking vessels, 46 bolts of silk, more clothes, books, makeup and other symbols of wealth. …

via Lady Dai tomb among richest finds in China history – Yahoo! News.

>Cops investigate rock-chucking elephant

>

Authorities in South Korea are investigating a heinous crime, in which an elephant in a zoo is alleged to have thrown a stone at a woman’s head.

The woman, identified only has having the surname Kim, was visiting the Children’s Grand Park zoo in Seoul when, she told police, she saw the elephant picking up a stone with its trunk.

She then turned away from the elephant – only to be hit on the back of the head by a large stone.

She alerted the authorities to the alleged rock-flinging animal, a 35-year-old named Taesani, but upon investigating they found that the scene of the crime was not in range of the zoo’s CCTV cameras.

‘Though Ms Kim believes the elephant threw a stone at her, it’s hard to conclude that the elephant attacked her since there are neither witnesses nor evidence,’ a police source told the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper.

It’s not entirely clear what action would have been taken if the police had been able to prove the elephant did throw the stone.

he alerted the authorities to the alleged rock-flinging animal, a 35-year-old named Taesani, but upon investigating they found that the scene of the crime was not in range of the zoo’s CCTV camera

via Cops investigate rock-chucking elephant | Metro.co.uk.

>Collins Responds to Hawass debunking of ‘Giza Caves’

>

This morning Dr Zahi Hawass revealed the location of the entrance to the so-called ‘Giza Caves’. – flickr

—

The information offered by Dr Hawass to the effect that American Egyptologist George Reisner used the Tomb of the Birds as a storeroom during his excavations at Giza in the 1910s to 1920s is intriguing, and we look forward to learning more.

Dr Hawass’s statement that we have simply become confused by the maze-like layout of the tomb, and in doing so have labelled it a cave complex is simply not correct. Firstly, the tomb itself is relatively basic in its construction. After entry via a massive, deep-cut façade, you come upon a double lobed anteroom, with two worn, square-cut pillars. This leads you into a north-south corridor, at the rear of which is a raised area cut out of the living rock, with an east-west altar or bed-like platform carved out of the back wall. On the left before you reach the raised area is a large room, as described by Dr Hawass, and on the right is a small opening in the rock into a large cave chamber, which Dr Hawass refers to as “leading to a descending passage.” Although entirely natural, the room has been partially hewn to give it a more rectilinear appearance. A large natural cave compartment can be found in its northwest corner, while a small hole on the south side of this enormous compartment leads into a cave tunnel that we travelled for some considerable distance. It is here that Salt and Caviglia, and arguably even Vyse and Perring, came in the early nineteenth century. There is no confusion here, we entered a natural cave system that permeates the limestone bedrock of the plateau’s Moqattam formation.

Dr Hawass states that the tomb and, by virtue of this, the caves have “recently been re-explored by my office, the Supreme Council of Antiquities.” If this is correct, and certainly our own interest in the tomb in March-April 2008 prompted a newfound interest in them by SCA officials, then we await further news of their findings on this fascinating subject.

via Hawass Debunks Collins’ ‘Giza Caves’.

There was a video on YouTube but it is now removed.

>Bermuda Triangle plane mystery ‘solved’

>

Two of the so-called Bermuda Triangle’s most mysterious disappearances in the late 1940s may have been solved.

Scores of ships and planes are said to have vanished without trace over the decades in a vast triangular area of ocean with imaginary points in Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico.

But journalist Tom Mangold’s new examination for the BBC provides plausible explanations for the disappearance of two British commercial planes in the area, with the loss of 51 passengers and crew.

One plane probably suffered from catastrophic technical failure as a result of poor design, while the other is likely to have run out of fuel.

Sixty years ago, commercial flights from London to Bermuda were new and perilous. It would require a refuelling stop on the Azores before the 2,000-mile flight to Bermuda, which at that time was the longest non-stop commercial overseas flight in the world.

The planes would have been operating at the limit of their range. Today planes arriving at the tiny Atlantic island have sufficient reserve fuel to divert to the US East Coast 700 miles away, in case of emergency.

And the planes of the post-war era were far less reliable than today’s airliners.

British South American Airways (BSAA), which operated the route, had a grim safety record. In three years it had had 11 serious accidents and lost five planes with 73 passengers and 22 crew members killed.

via BBC NEWS | UK | Bermuda Triangle plane mystery ‘solved’.

Ran out of gas? Possibly, but methane bubbles seem more likely to me.

Methane is a gas lighter than air. When the ocean creates methane bubbles, the bubbles, which can be larger that the ship, changes the water density so it cannot support the ship. The ship can sink in a matter of seconds. Methane bubbles can also be hazardous to airplanes. The methane can rise from the sea to the air, displacing the oxygen around the airplane. The altimeter depends on the density of the air outside of the airplane. Since methane is less dense that oxygen, the altitude tells the pilot they are climbing. If the sky is cloudy or it is night, it’s hard to see the ocean outside to determine altitude. The pilot dives, thinking they are going too high, and crashes into the water. – thinkquest

Here is another description from a different site and some evidence.

Ships float nicely in water, but if you try to make them float in a mix of water and bubbles, they sink like a set of car keys. There’s an area of the ocean called Witch Ground, about 150 kilometres north east of Aberdeen in Scotland. We know that methane bubbles up from time to time, leaving pock marks in the ocean floor. Witchs Hole is a large pock mark on the ocean floor, in Witch’s Ground, about 100 metres across. And recently, a trawler has been discovered sitting underwater, perfectly upright, in the middle of this small 100-metre wide methane production hole (or pockmark). It’s a steel-built vessel around 25 metres long, built somewhen between 1890 and 1930. We’re guessing, but if a large burst of methane bubbles rose up, the trawler would lose all flotation, and just sink, perfectly level, until it bottomed out on the ocean floor.

And if some really large bubbles of methane gas were to rise in the atmosphere and then get sucked into the engines of a jet, they could make a nasty explosion.

This Methane Bubbling Effect, which happens in the Bermuda Triangle, could also explain some of the strange disappearances. – abc.net.au

Another interesting point:

Large methane bubbles can also act like lenses (look up “gradient-index lenses”) that can make distant ships seem to appear and disappear, like mirages in the desert. – physorg

>Tooth helps restore desperate woman’s sight

>

Nine years of blindness almost drove Sharron “Kay” Thornton to suicide.In the end, it was one of her teeth and a procedure surgeons said was never before done in the United States that restored her sight.

“It was very embarrassing and humiliating for my daughter to take care of me, and it wasn’t supposed to be that way. I’m supposed to take care of her,” the 60-year-old woman told CNN on Wednesday.

“I thought about suicide, but then I thought, if I did it, I probably wouldn’t do it right,” she said. Instead, “I just asked God to help me. I couldn’t do it by myself. He taught me patience, and I never gave up.

“Her hopes were raised when she qualified at the University of Miami Bascom Palmer Eye Institute for a months-long procedure in which an eye tooth also called canine or cuspid was implanted in one eye as a base to hold a prosthetic lens. Her bandages were removed over the Labor Day weekend.

Nearly two weeks later, her visual acuity is 20/70 without corrective lenses in the treated eye, said Dr. Victor Perez, associate professor of ophthalmology, and a cornea specialist at the institute.

– via CNN.com

>Crazy Ants Invade and Start to Distroy Christmas Island

>

At some point in the first half of the 20th century, a couple of ants hitched a ride on a boat and ended up on Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. And so began the rampage of the “yellow crazy ants,” creatures that have been named one of the top 100 most invasive species in the world. On Christmas Island, scientists have now declared an “invasional meltdown” of the original ecosystem [Science News].The latest evidence: The ants are so plentiful and bothersome that they’re preventing birds from feeding on berries, and the birds are therefore failing to disperse seeds around the island.

Researcher Dennis O’Dowd explains that the long-legged yellowish ants earned the named “crazy” because when they are disturbed they run around frenetically. O’Dowd says crazy ants form large super-colonies and cover ground and vegetation in densities of around 1000 ants per square metre. “These ants are three-dimensional foragers,” he says [ABC Science]. The ants can thickly cover the forest floor and swarm up vines and plants.

In ant-dense zones, O’Dowd sees birds stomp and ruffle their feathers as if maddened by crawling ants [Science News]. So for his study, published in Biology Letters, he tested whether the ants’ presence was interfering with native birds’ feeding habits. His team made fake berries out of non-toxic modeling clay and secured them next to real berries; later they looked at the impressions on the fake berries made by the birds’ pecking beaks. They found that in ant-free areas, the fake fruit received twice as many pecks as the fruit in areas swarming with ants. Placing ant traps around the base of a plant also increased the number of pecks. – discovermag

Comment at the end:

1.   jerry Says:
September 16th, 2009 at 8:06 pm

use anteaters …

Wikipedia says:

Anteaters are the four mammal species of the suborder Vermilingua^[1] commonly known for eating ants and termites.^[2] Together with the sloths, they compose the order Pilosa. …  Anteaters are one of the surviving families of mammals that occupied South America while it was geographically isolated from an invasion of animals from North America. At one time, it was assumed that anteaters were related to aardvarks and pangolins because of their physical similarities to those animals, but it has since been determed that these similarites are not a sign of a common ancestor, but of convergent evolution. That is to say, they had all developed powerful digging forearms and long, toothless tube-like snouts and tounges in order to make a living by raiding termite mounds. This similarity is the reason aardvarks are also commonly called “anteaters”; the pangolin has been called the “scaly anteater”; and the word “antbear” is a common term for both the aardvark and the giant anteater.

National Zoo SI says:

The largest of four anteater species, the giant anteater may be five to seven feet long, from nose to tail, and weigh 40 to 100 pounds. It has a narrow head, long nose, small eyes, and round ears. Its coarse hair may be gray or brown, with a white-banded black stripe running along the body to mid-torso, and a long, bushy tail, which can be two to three feet long. Its front feet have large claws, which are curled under when it walks. It has poor vision but a keen sense of smell.

The giant anteater detects termite mounds and anthills with its keen sense of smell and tears them open with its strong claws. What we call an anteater’s nose is actually an elongated jaw with a small, black, moist nose, like a dog’s nose. Giant anteaters have a two-foot-long tongue and huge salivary glands that produce copious amounts of sticky saliva when they feed. Termites, ants, and their eggs stick to the tongue as it flicks in and out and the insects are scraped off by the flexing of the lower jaw and swallowed. Anteaters have a very muscular stomach that grinds up the insects and powerful digestive juices to break down their prey. They may eat as many as 30,000 ants in a day. They will also eat ripe fruit if they find it on the ground.

>FBI searches home of Colorado man in terror probe

>

Federal agents on Wednesday searched the home of a suburban Denver man identified by law enforcement as having a possible link to al-Qaida, carting away several boxes of evidence.

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force went through the home of Najibullah Zazi, as well as the nearby residence of his aunt, Rabia Zazi, FBI special agent Kathleen Wright said Wednesday.

Zazi denies that he’s a central figure in a terrorism investigation that fed fears of a possible bomb plot and led to several police raids in New York City on Monday.

Zazi, 24, was being interviewed at FBI headquarters in Denver late Wednesday but was not under arrest, according to his attorney, Arthur Folsom. Zazi provided authorities a DNA sample, a fingerprint, handwriting samples and information about his travel history, Folsom said.

“My client is not involved in any terror plot,” Folsom declared. “He answered every question they had.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver said it had no immediate comment.

One agent wearing protective clothing escorted a dog belonging to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives into Zazi’s apartment. FBI agents left Zazi’s apartment with at least six boxes. One box was labeled “swabs,” and others were marked “fragile” and “glass.”

Agents also escorted three women and a man from the apartment. Two of the women covered their faces with headscarves, and the third used a canvas chair to shield her face. All were driven away in an SUV.

The searches came a day after two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that a joint FBI-New York Police Department task force had put Zazi under surveillance because of suspected links to al-Qaida.

The task force also feared Zazi may be involved in a potential plot involving homemade hydrogen peroxide-based explosives like those cited in an intelligence warning issued Monday, said the officials, who spoke on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the investigation.

After Zazi traveled to New York City over the weekend, FBI agents and police officers armed with search warrants seeking bomb materials searched three apartments and questioned residents in a predominantly Asian neighborhood in Queens.

Naiz Khan, an Afghan immigrant who grew up with Zazi in New York City, said the FBI questioned him for about two hours about Zazi, whom he said stayed at his apartment last week.

No arrests were announced, and the FBI and NYPD have refused to discuss the case.

via FBI searches home of Colorado man in terror probe – Yahoo! News.

>Found: Firm place to stand outside solar system

>

This image provided by the European Southern Observatory Wednesday Sept. 16, 2009 shows an artist rendition of the first rocky extrasolar planet called Corot-7b. European astronomers confirmed the first rocky extrasolar planet Wednesday.

Astronomers have finally found a place outside our solar system where there’s a firm place to stand — if only it weren’t so broiling hot.

As scientists search the skies for life elsewhere, they have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system. But they all have been gas balls or can’t be proven to be solid. Now a team of European astronomers has confirmed the first rocky extrasolar planet.

Scientists have long figured that if life begins on a planet, it needs a solid surface to rest on, so finding one elsewhere is a big deal.

“We basically live on a rock ourselves,” said co-discoverer Artie Hatzes, director of the Thuringer observatory in Germany. “It’s as close to something like the Earth that we’ve found so far. It’s just a little too close to its sun.”

So close that its surface temperature is more than 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, too toasty to sustain life. It circles its star in just 20 hours, zipping around at 466,000 mph. By comparison, Mercury, the planet nearest our sun, completes its solar orbit in 88 days.

“It’s hot, they’re calling it the lava planet,” Hatzes said.

This is a major discovery in the field of trying to find life elsewhere in the universe, said outside expert Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution. It was the buzz of a conference on finding an Earth-like planet outside our solar system, held in Barcelona, Spain, where the discovery was presented Wednesday morning. The find is also being published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The planet is called Corot-7b. It was first discovered earlier this year. European scientists then watched it dozens of times to measure its density to prove that it is rocky like Earth. It’s in our general neighborhood, circling a star in the winter sky about 500 light-years away. Each light-year is about 6 trillion miles.

Four planets in our solar system are rocky: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

In addition, the planet is about as close to Earth in size as any other planet found outside our solar system. Its radius is only one-and-a-half times bigger than Earth’s and it has a mass about five times the Earth’s.

Now that another rocky planet has been found so close to its own star, it gives scientists more confidence that they’ll find more Earth-like planets farther away, where the conditions could be more favorable to life, Boss said.

“The evidence is becoming overwhelming that we live in a crowded universe,” Boss said.

via Found: Firm place to stand outside solar system – Yahoo! News.