Popular Science

Scientists Discovered the Egyptian Secret to Moving Huge Pyramid Stones

2014-05-02T03:30:00.002-07:00

Scientists Discovered the Egyptian Secret to Moving Huge Pyramid Stones - The question of just how an ancient civilization—without the help of modern technology—moved the 2.5 ton stones that made up their famed pyramids has long plagued Egyptologists and mechanical engineers alike. But now, a team from the University of Amsterdam believes they've figured it out, even though the solution was staring them in the face all along.

It all comes down to friction. See, the ancient Egyptians would transport their rocky cargo across the desert sands, from quarry to monument site with large sleds. Pretty basic sleds, basically just large slabs with upturned edges. Now, when you try to pull a large slab with upturned edges carrying a 2.5 ton load, it tends to dig into the sand ahead of it, building up a sand berm that must then be regularly cleared before it can become an even bigger obstacle.

Wet sand, however, doesn't do this. In sand with just the right amount of dampness, capillary bridges—essentially microdroplets of water that bind grains of sand to one another through capillary action—form across the grains, which doubles the material's relative stiffness. This prevents the sand from berming in front of the sled and cuts the force required to drag the sled in half. In half.

As a UvA press release explains,

The physicists placed a laboratory version of the Egyptian sledge in a tray of sand. They determined both the required pulling force and the stiffness of the sand as a function of the quantity of water in the sand. To determine the stiffness they used a rheometer, which shows how much force is needed to deform a certain volume of sand.

Experiments revealed that the required pulling force decreased proportional to the stiffness of the sand...A sledge glides far more easily over firm desert sand simply because the sand does not pile up in front of the sledge as it does in the case of dry sand.

These experiments served to confirm what the Egyptians clearly already knew, and what we probably already should have. Artwork within the tomb of Djehutihotep, which was discovered in the Victorian Era, depicts a scene of slaves hauling a colossal statue of the Middle Kingdom ruler and in it, a guy at the front of the sled is shown pouring liquid into the sand. You can see it in the image above, just to the right of the statue's foot.

We can now finally put this scientific snipe hunt to rest and focus on how the hell Stonehenge got that way. [ Gizmodo en Español ]

Mystery behind construction of ancient pyramids

2014-05-02T03:21:00.001-07:00

Mystery behind construction of ancient pyramids - Solved! How Ancient Egyptians Moved Massive Pyramid Stones - The ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids may have been able to move massive stone blocks across the desert by wetting the sand in front of a contraption built to pull the heavy objects, according to a new study.

Physicists at the University of Amsterdam investigated the forces needed to pull weighty objects on a giant sled over desert sand, and discovered that dampening the sand in front of the primitive device reduces friction on the sled, making it easier to operate. The findings help answer one of the most enduring historical mysteries: how the Egyptians were able to accomplish the seemingly impossible task of constructing the famous pyramids.

A man makes his camel sit at the historical site of the Giza Pyramids near Cairo, Egypt, on Friday, Dec. 13, 2013. Tourism in Egypt has dropped following unrest surrounding the July 3 popularly backed military coup that ousted President Mohammed Morsi. (AP Photo/Jon Gambrell)

A large pile of sand accumulates in front of the sled when it is pulled over dry sand (left). On the wet sand (right) this does not happen.

The ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids may have been able to move massive stone blocks across the desert by wetting the sand in front of a contraption built to pull the heavy objects, according to a new study.

To make their discovery, the researchers picked up on clues from the ancient Egyptians themselves. A wall painting discovered in the ancient tomb of Djehutihotep, which dates back to about 1900 B.C., depicts 172 men hauling an immense statue using ropes attached to a sledge. In the drawing, a person can be seen standing on the front of the sledge, pouring water over the sand, said study lead author Daniel Bonn, a physics professor at the University of Amsterdam.

"Egyptologists thought it was a purely ceremonial act," Bonn told Live Science. "The question was: Why did they do it?"

Bonn and his colleagues constructed miniature sleds and experimented with pulling heavy objects through trays of sand.

When the researchers dragged the sleds over dry sand, they noticed clumps would build up in front of the contraptions, requiring more force to pull them across.

Adding water to the sand, however, increased its stiffness, and the sleds were able to glide more easily across the surface. This is because droplets of water create bridges between the grains of sand, which helps them stick together, the scientists said. It is also the same reason why using wet sand to build a sandcastle is easier than using dry sand, Bonn said.

But, there is a delicate balance, the researchers found.

"If you use dry sand, it won't work as well, but if the sand is too wet, it won't work either," Bonn said. "There's an optimum stiffness."

The amount of water necessary depends on the type of sand, he added, but typically the optimal amount falls between 2 percent and 5 percent of the volume of sand.

"It turns out that wetting Egyptian deserts and can reduce the friction by quite a bit, which implies you need only half of the people to pull a sledge on wet sand, compared to dry sand," Bonn said.

The study, published April 29 in the journal Physical Review Letters, may explain how the ancient Egyptians constructed the pyramids, but the research also has modern-day applications, the scientists said. The findings could help researchers understand the behavior of other granular materials, such as asphalt, concrete or coal, which could lead to more efficient ways to transport these resources. ( Live Science )

Earliest Jesus Depiction May Have Been Discovered In Ancient Egyptian Tomb

2014-04-30T04:41:00.002-07:00

Earliest Jesus Depiction May Have Been Discovered In Ancient Egyptian Tomb - A team of Catalan archaeologists have discovered what they believe to be one of the earliest depictions of Jesus in an ancient tomb in Egypt.

The researchers uncovered an underground structure in a series of buried tombs that date to the 6th and 7th centuries. Among the Coptic, or early Christian, images painted on the walls was what lead researcher Josep Padró described as "the figure of a young man, with curly hair, dressed in a short tunic and with his hand raised as if giving a blessing."

"We could be dealing with a very early image of Jesus Christ," Padró told La Vanguardia.

Tombs in the Kidron Valley.

Synagogue excavated at Gamla.

The interior of a burial crypt at Dominus Flevit ("The Lord wept") on the Mount of Olives.

Archaeologists believe the tomb belonged to a well-known writer and a family of priests in the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, according to The Local.

The researchers removed 45 tons of rock to access the tombs, which are situated among several sites Padró has been excavating for the last 20 years.

The drawing is under lockdown while researchers begin to translate the inscriptions surrounding it.

In 2011, archaeologists working near the Sea of Galilee discovered a 2,000-year-old booklet with what was then thought to be one of the earliest depictions of Jesus. The booklet reportedly bore the inscription ‘Saviour of Israel’ and was found in a cave in Jordan among other ancient artifacts. ( huffingtonpost.com )

Fossil whales in desert mystery solved

2014-02-27T05:30:00.002-08:00

Fossil whales in desert mystery solved — Scientists investigating a graveyard of marine mammal fossils near Chile's northern coast say toxins generated by algae blooms most likely poisoned the animals millions of years ago.

The study by a team of Chilean and Smithsonian Institution scientists was published Wednesday in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The experts traveled to Chile's Atacama region in 2011 to unearth one of the world's best-preserved graveyards of prehistoric whales. Their findings help solve a mystery about how dozens of whales and other marine mammals congregating off South America's Pacific Coast died only to emerge again atop a desert hill over a half mile from the surf.

FILE - In this Aug. 24, 2010 FILE photo released by Chile's Paleontological Museum of Caldera, a prehistoric whale fossil lays in the Atacama desert near Copiapo, Chile. A team of Chilean and Smithsonian Institution scientists investigating the graveyard of marine mammal fossils say toxins generated by algae blooms most likely poisoned the animals millions of years ago. The study by a team of Chilean and Smithsonian Institution scientists was published Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2014 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. (AP Photo/Museo Paleontologico de Caldera, File)

"There are hundreds of whale skeletons yet to be found," said Nick Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. "This is a site on par with Dinosaur National Monument here in the United States, a whole hillside littered with dinosaur skeletons. We seem to have the same thing except with whales here in Chile."

The remains were first found by construction workers in 2010 during the widening of the Pan American Highway, or Route 5, which is Chile's main north-south road. Other unusual creatures found at the "Cerro Ballena," or Whale Hill, site include an extinct aquatic sloth and a walrus-like toothed whale.

Scientists say the skeletons show the animals were poisoned by toxins some 5 million to 11 million years ago and "died at sea, prior to burial on a tidal flat."

"Based on the orientation of the skeletons and other information, these whales likely died from harmful algae blooms, which we know in the modern world can be a killer," Pyenson said.

Algae blooms can create poisons that can be ingested or inhaled causing organ failure in marine mammals. Blooms are common along coasts and are enriched by nutrients like iron carried by rivers into the ocean. Scientists say that for more than 20 million years, runoff from the iron-rich Andes mountains has created ideal conditions for harmful algae blooms along South America's western coast.

"The key for us was its repetitive nature at Cerro Ballena," Pyenson said. "No other plausible explanation in the modern world would be recurring, except for toxic algae, which can recur if the conditions are right."

With funding from the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian team used sophisticated photography and laser scanners to create an online archive of 3-D images of the whales and they made life-size models before the site was covered by the highway. The fossils themselves were put in museums in Santiago and the northern Chilean city of Caldera. ( Associated Press )

Astronomy Teacher Finds Hubble Telescope's Hidden Treasure

2013-01-21T05:30:00.003-08:00

Astronomy Teacher Finds Hubble Telescope's Hidden Treasure - A Connecticut astronomy teacher has uncovered a dazzling view of a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way while exploring the "hidden treasures" of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The new Hubble photo, released Thursday (Jan. 17), shows an intriguing star nursery dotted with dark dust lanes in the Large Magellanic Cloud about 200,000 light-years from Earth. The Hubble observation used to create the image was discovered in the telescope's archives by Josh Lake, a high school astronomy teacher at Pomfret School in Pomfret, Conn., as part of the "Hubble Hidden Treasures" contest that challenged space fans to find unseen images from the observatory.

Nearly 200 000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, floats in space, in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. As the Milky Way’s gravity gently tugs on its neighbour’s gas clouds, they coll

Hubble officials also released an eye-popping video tour of the Large Magellanic Cloud, which zooms in on the region highlighted in Lake's photo.

Lake won first prize in the Hubble photo contest with an image of the LHA 120-N11 (N11) region of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Hubble officials combined Lake's image with more observations of the N11 region in blue, green and near-infrared light wavelengths to create the new view.

"In the center of this image, a dark finger of dust blots out much of the light," Hubble officials said in an image description. "While nebulae are mostly made of hydrogen, the simplest and most plentiful element in the universe, dust clouds are home to heavier and more complex elements, which go on to form rocky planets like the Earth."

The interstellar dust in N11 is extremely fine, much more so than household dust on Earth. It is more similar to smoke, researchers explained.

The Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, is one of two small satellite galaxies of the Milky Way (the other is the smaller, aptly named Small Magellanic Cloud). Because of its relatively close proximity, the Large Magellanic Cloud has long been used as a sort of cosmic laboratory to study how stars form in other galaxies.

"It lies in a fortuitous location in the sky, far enough from the plane of the Milky Way that it is neither outshone by too many nearby stars, nor obscured by the dust in the Milky Way’s center," Hubble officials said in a statement. "It is also close enough to study in detail … and lies almost face-on, giving us a bird’s eye view."

In addition to the N11 region, the Large Magellanic Cloud is also home to the spectacular Tarantula nebula, the brightest nearby star nursery, Hubble officials said.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been snapping spectacular photos of the universe since 1994 and is a joint project by NASA and the European Space Agency. This month, NASA officials said the long-lived space observatory could potentially last through 2018. ( space.com )

Scientists explore the illusion of memory

2013-01-19T22:27:00.004-08:00

Scientists explore the illusion of memory - Every time someone recalls a memory, it's a chance to change it. A memory might seem like a permanent, precious essence carved deep into the circuits of the brain. But it is not. Instead, scientists are discovering that a memory changes every time you think about it.

"Every time you recall a memory, it becomes sensitive to disruption. Often that is used to incorporate new information into it." That's the blunt assessment from one of the world's leading experts on memory, Dr. Eric Kandel from Columbia University.

And that means our memories are not abstract snapshots stored forever in a bulging file in our mind, but rather, they're a collection of brain cells — neurons that undergo chemical changes every time they're engaged.

So when we think about something from the past, the memory is called up like a computer file, reviewed and revised in subtle ways, and then sent back to the brain's archives, now modified slightly, updated, and changed.

As scientists increasingly understand the biological process of memory, they are also learning how to interrupt it, and that means they might one day be able to ease the pain of past trauma, or alter destructive habits and addictions, as though shaking an Etch A Sketch, erasing the scribbles on the mind, and starting fresh.

In his McGill University lab, researcher Karim Nader routinely erases the memory of his laboratory rats. But first he has to give them a memory and he does that by putting them in an isolation cubicle, playing a tone, and then delivering a small electrical shock to their feet.

Experiments to erase memory

"So that's the traumatic memory," he says. For the rat, the sound of the tone equals an unpleasant experience. The next time the animal hears the tone, it is afraid, even though it doesn't get the foot shock.

How do you tell that the rat remembers pain? It freezes.

"If you are in the dark, and you're scared. You freeze. It's the same as a rat, the same brain mechanism that controls our fear response controls the rat's fear response," Nader said.

The next step in erasing the memory is to put the animal back in the conditioning chamber and play the tone, so the memory is freshly recalled in the rat's brain. Then Nader experiments with drug that blocks the chemical process needed to restore the memory. The old memory of the tone followed by a foot shock is replaced by a new memory of a tone followed by nothing at all.

Nader puts the rat back into the isolation cubicle, plays the tone and watches what happens. The previously shocked rat no longer freezes in fear when it hears the tone. Instead, it moves around the box calmly exploring the environment, the bad memory of tone-plus-shock apparently erased, as though the whole unpleasant foot-shocking business never happened.

The point of this research? If you can erase a memory in a rat brain, you should also be able to erase a memory in a human brain.

"The memories can become unstored and have to be restored. And when they're being restored, it's an opportunity to either strengthen them, change their content to possible false memories, or weaken them," Nader said. "And if you weaken them, essentially it's the same as erasing memories."

"The old view of memory processing was that our memories got stored in the brain and once they're stored, you can't touch them," Nader said. But scientists now realize that memories are evolving all the time. "Every time someone recalls a memory, it's a chance to change it," Nader added.

That's because the memory has to be restored using a biochemical pathway that is very similar to the original storage. And there are ways to interfere with this memory "reconsolidation" using a drug. "You have to change the strength of the connection between neurons. It's almost like you've unwired the memory," Nader said.

For some, the idea that memories are unstable is an unsettling concept. But Eric Kandel says understanding the biology of memory doesn't dehumanize it.

"This does not take the magic out of it," Kandel said. "You know that your heart is a muscular pump that pushes blood around the circulation, but that doesn't mean you can't lose your heart to somebody. The metaphorical meaning is not in any way altered, but there is a biological underpinning to what the brain actually does."

"The modern view is that everything you and I do, from the most simple reflex act of hitting a racket in tennis to the most creative flights of ideas, comes from the brain," Kandel said. He won the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his research on the biological basis of memory. "You are who you are and I am who I am because of what we learn and what we remember and these are all biological processes," he said.

It was a controversial concept when Karim Nader published his first scientific paper about interfering with memory, more than a decade ago. Back then, he faced many skeptics and he was surprised at the hostile the reaction.

"Definitely," he said. "There was a huge shock and backlash. After years of scientific rigour and argument, I did manage to inspire a lot of the younger generation to at least test it. So very quickly after that it had been shown across species, across tasks, using different kinds of tools, so at that point it became impossible for anyone to say, 'this can't be real.' I mean it has to real, they find it in snails, they find it in humans, they find it in dogs."

Understanding memory could lead to treatments

Understanding the neurochemical process of memory opens up possibilities for therapy in situations where memory is causing pain.

"People think that post-traumatic stress disorder might be susceptible to treatments of this kind. No one has shown this in a convincing way. But this is certainly an interesting avenue of investigation," Kandel said.

"There are many disorders of memory. Obviously, age-related memory loss, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, working memory loss, PTSD which is a hyperactivity of memory if you will," he explained.

Nader believes memory disruption could be helpful in a wide range of psychiatric disorders. He is collaborating with other researchers on drug addiction, and others are investigating the implications for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

"So if you imagine OCD, what happens over time is somebody becomes more and more obsessive in a certain compulsion, then the neurons that contribute and maintain that behavior, they're going to undergo a reconsolidation process," Nader says.

"So every time they have another episode, that circuit controlling the compulsion is going to have to be hypothetically unstored and then restored. And so if you had a tool just to block that restorage process, then, in theory, what should happen is you should be able to make somebody better and go from their compulsive behavior to something relatively more normal."

Early research on post traumatic stress disorder has been encouraging, Nader said. In studies, subjects have been asked to remember the trauma, and then take a drug that has been shown to block memory reconsolidation, and that seems to reduce the strength of the traumatic memory to non-PTSD levels.

Researchers finding other ways to change memory

Other research has suggested that it might even be possible to block the memory reconsolidation without drugs, by asking a person to remember something and then, in those moments of remembering, replace the old memory with new information.

"The memory becomes unstored and during that time you just tell them a different kind of information is correct and you allow time for that other information to be restored. It's almost as if the new information, can, in some cases, replace the old information," Nader said.

"It's great theoretically, because you don't have to give anyone any kind of a drug," he said. "Every time you remember something, it's an opportunity to change the content of it, that's just the way the brain is."

Sitting in his McGill University lab, watching his rats calmly exploring the chamber they once feared, Karim Nader agrees that memory is much more transient than most people think.

"Yes, but that's not to say it's bad," he said. "The fact that memory turns out to be far from permanent is a positive thing for human survival. Evolution thinks it's the best way for it to work. Therefore, it's not a bad way. If it was a bad way, then we would have been extinct a while ago." ( cbc.ca )

Metal-on-metal hip implant risks 'unique'

2013-01-19T22:00:00.003-08:00

Metal-on-metal hip implant risks 'unique' - FDA gives recommendations on how often implants patients should receive clinical exams

Metal-on-metal hip implants can cause soft-tissue damage that may lead to pain and the need for more surgeries, a U.S. regulator said in updating information for patients and surgeons.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended that patients be informed of the benefits and risks of metal-on-metal hip implants, including that the implant may need to be replaced.

When the metal ball and metal cup in the implants can rub against each during walking or running, metal can be released from the parts that may cause damage to the bone and soft tissue surrounding the implant and joint, the FDA said.

"Metal-on-metal hip implants have unique risks in addition to the general risks of all hip implants," the FDA said on its website.

Authorities in Canada, the U.S. and the UK have warned full metal-on-metal hip implants may be more likely to fail and can cause tissue damage around the joint compared with the traditional metal-and-plastic type of implants.

On Thursday, the FDA issued new recommendations on how often all implants patients should receive clinical exams and when to consider soft tissue imaging and metal ion tests for those showing symptoms.

Reports of adverse events include pain, change in position of a component of the implant, allergy and dislocation.

Last year, data from the U.K. and other countries suggested metal-on-metal implants are are more likely to deteriorate, exposing patients to higher levels of cobalt, chromium and other metals. ( cbc.ca )

Large pet reptile found guarding Calif. pot stash

2013-01-11T05:23:00.002-08:00

Large pet reptile found guarding Calif. pot stash — Authorities in Northern California made a snappy discovery during a routine probation check: An alligator-like reptile named "Mr. Teeth," who was apparently protecting a stash of marijuana.

When Alameda County Sheriff's deputies entered the Castro Valley home on Tuesday, they not only found 34 pounds of marijuana valued at an estimated $100,000, but also the 5-foot-long caiman inside a Plexiglas tank guarding it in a bedroom.

Associated Press/Alameda County Sheriffs - In this photo released by the Alameda County Sheriffs office, an alligator named "Mr. Teeth" is seen after it was discovered in a home in Castro Valley, Calif., on Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2013. Authorities say the alligator, apparently used to protect a stash of marijuana inside the home, has been taken to a zoo. When deputies entered Assif Mayar's home on Wednesday for a probation check, they found 34 pounds of marijuana and the five-foot alligator in a tank in the bedroom. (AP Photo/Alameda County Sheriffs)

Caimans are usually found in the wetland regions of Central and South America. They're considered close relatives of alligators.

"We get guard dogs all the time when we search for grow houses and people stashing away all types of dope. But alligators? You just don't see that every day," Sgt. J.D. Nelson said Thursday.

The reptile's owner, Assif Mayar, was arrested Tuesday and later charged with one count of possessing marijuana for sale. Mayar, 32, did not enter a plea during his arraignment in Alameda County Superior Court. He is being held in jail on $20,000 bail and is due back in court on Jan. 15.

He could also face citations from the California Fish and Game Commission, including possession of an exotic animal without a permit.

Mayar told deputies he got the creature to commemorate rapper Tupac Shakur's 1996 death.

"We have come across alligators before, but nobody can remember one this big and situated in such close proximity to act sort of as a sentry to the marijuana," Nelson said.

Officials at the Oakland Zoo said Mr. Teeth died Wednesday, a day after it was seized by county animal control officers.

The caiman was very sick when it arrived at the zoo's veterinary hospital, zoo spokesman Nicky Mora said Thursday.

"The veterinarian said he came in with a poor prognosis and was unresponsive when he arrived here. He passed away overnight," Mora said. ( Associated Press )

Blood of guillotined French king 'authentic'

2013-01-02T05:57:00.001-08:00

Blood of guillotined French king 'authentic' - Scientists have authenticated that a rag believed to have been dipped in the blood of France’s monarch Louis XVI is the genuine article.

The discovery also proves the authenticity of a mummified head which was believed to be that of 16th century French king Henri IV – which was used to make the DNA comparison.

Louis XVI was executed by guillotine on January 21, 1793, the first victim of the “Reign of Terror” that followed France’s infamous revolutionary uprising.

As was the habit at the executions of French aristocrats, spectators dipped their handkerchiefs in the gore of the decapitated victim as a morbid keepsake.

One such rag found its way into a calabash – a form of squash that is dried and used as a bottle – on which was inscribed: “On January 21, Maximilien Bourdaloue dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his decapitation.”

The artefact has been owned by an Italian family for more than a century – but the absolute authenticity has not been proved until now.

In 2010 DNA samples taken from the rag showed a good match between someone of Louis’ description, including his blue eyes.

'No doubt'

But analysts were unable to prove the blood’s authenticity beyond doubt because there was no DNA from any of his relatives - until they examined the supposed head of 16th century king Henri IV which had been stolen from the royal chapel at Saint Denis near Paris by revolutionaries.

Henri IV, one of France’s most popular monarchs who was able briefly to reconcile the country’s Protestant and Catholic communities, was assassinated by a Catholic fanatic in 1610 at the age of 57.

After the mummified head was stolen during the revolution, it changed hands several times, was sold at auction and kept in private collections.

In 2010 Henri’s DNA was tested and, as in Louis’ case, scientists said they believed it was authentic because the genetic material was consistent with descriptions of the 16th century king.

But in the latest study, conducted by French and Italian experts, both sets of remains were authenticated after the team found a rare genetic signature shared by the two men, despite being separated by seven generations.

"This study shows that [the remains] share a genetic heritage passed on through the paternal line,” forensic pathologist Philippe Charlier told AFP. “They have a direct link to one another through their fathers. One could say that there is absolutely no doubt any more.”

“It is about 250 times more likely that [Henri’s] head and [Louis’] blood are paternally related, than unrelated," co-author Carles Lalueza-Fox of the Institut de Biologia Evolutiva in Barcelona told the agency.

It would be "extremely surprising" if the remains did not belong to the two assassinated monarchs, he added. ( france24.com )

Is NASA Lost in Space or Aimed at Asteroid?

2012-12-31T23:54:00.003-08:00

Is NASA Lost in Space or Aimed at Asteroid? - A report this month from the National Research Council (NRC) has called NASA’s overall trajectory into question. It pointed out the national disagreement over the U.S. space agency’s goals and objectives, a disparity detrimental to the organization’s planning and budgeting efforts.

The 12-person blue-ribbon study group observed that the White House should take the lead in forging "a new consensus" on NASA's future in order to more closely align the agency’s budget and objectives and remove restrictions impeding NASA's efficient operations.

Twin Space Exploration Vehicles approach an asteroid with the Multi-Person Crew Vehicle docked to a habitat in the background.

For one, the NRC study team took aim at a lofty directive to NASA by President Barack Obama when he spoke at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in April 2010:

"Early in the next decade, a set of crewed flights will test and prove the systems required for exploration beyond low-Earth orbit. And by 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the moon into deep space. So we’ll start…we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it."

Dubious destination

While the NRC study team did not undertake a technical assessment of the feasibility of an asteroid mission, it was informed by several briefers and sources that the current planned asteroid mission has significant shortcomings.

"A current stated interim goal of NASA's human spaceflight program is to visit an asteroid by 2025," said Albert Carnesale, chancellor emeritus and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who chaired the NRC committee that wrote the report.

"However, we've seen limited evidence that this has been widely accepted as a compelling destination by NASA's own work force, by the nation as a whole, or by the international community. The lack of national consensus on NASA’s most publicly visible human spaceflight goal along with budget uncertainty has undermined the agency's ability to guide program planning and allocate funding."

The NRC report added that there appears to be continued enthusiasm for a mission to the moon but not for an asteroid mission, although there is both U.S. and international interest in robotic missions to asteroids.

But the view that a manned flight to a near-Earth object (NEO) is a dubious destination doesn’t settle well in some quarters.

Bring the asteroid to the astronauts

"I agree with the findings in the NRC report that NASA has a long way to go to fulfill the Obama goal of an asteroid mission by 2025," said former astronaut Tom Jones, author of the upcoming book, "Mission: Asteroid."

Jones told SPACE.com that NASA has not taken any major steps, starting with a search for near-Earth asteroid (NEA) targets, necessary to achieve that goal. The agency has so little money that it can’t afford its own asteroid search program, relying instead on a private asteroid-hunting telescope commissioned by the B612 Foundation. NASA's Orion deep-space vehicle and large booster programs won't fly with a crew until after 2020, given current budgets and schedules, he said.

"The best way for NASA to reach both its asteroid goal and to launch humans into translunarspace — beyond the moon — is to use a robot spacecraft to retrieve and return to a safe lunar orbit a small, 500-ton asteroid," Jones said. "Near the Earth-moon L2 point, astronauts and robot probes can explore and dissect this asteroid for science and commercial-scale resources … water being the most valuable."

Bringing the asteroid to the astronauts, Jones said — as described by the Keck Institute for Space Studies team in 2012 — "could jump-start an entire industry between the Earth and the moon, using the energy and raw materials of space to enable everything from robotic probes to the planets, to eventual moon and Mars surface exploration," he said.

Foundation of self-sustainability

"U.S. strategic goals for human space activity need to be long-term. We should have continuous operational reach in near-Earth space, regular access to the surface of the moon, and regular access to Mars," said Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz. He is also the chair of NASA’s Small Bodies Assessment Group.

"All of this requires building space-based infrastructure on a foundation of self-sustainability. Accessing and utilizing resources available on near-Earth objects, particularly water for fuel, life-support and shielding, is the cornerstone and is critical to achieving any of these goals," Sykes told SPACE.com.

Sykes said it would make sense to send a piloted mission to oversee the automated emplacement and startup of a resource recovery facility on a near-Earth object.

"This could help guarantee the successful deployment of many untended facilities to other targets in the future by bringing what humans do best: dealing with the unexpected and improvisation," Sykes said. "In the meantime, great science could also be achieved, but this is strictly bonus…not a rationale."

This could be done on the timescale envisioned by President Obama, Sykes said, with some initiative and little additional cost, and far less total cost than any other option.

Live off the (space) land

Existing Discovery mission proposals are on the table to fly a Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer-class spacecraft that would identify many NEO resource targets in orbits that would afford low-energy, short-duration missions, Sykes said.

Additionally, resource recovery experiments could be undertaken on the International Space Station using meteorite samples and other analog materials, Sykes said.

"Apollo taught us that doing something once or even a few times is no guarantee that it will ever be done again. If we want a permanent American presence in space, we need to learn to live off the land," Sykes said.

"Near-Earth objects are our best opportunity to accomplish this cost-effectively," he concluded.

Asteroids within reach

There's no lack of asteroids to focus upon, said Lindley Johnson, NEO Observations Program Executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Johnson noted that he doesn’t speak for NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) and not in a position to be able to say anything about the priorities for piloted/human spaceflight missions.

"I just know HEOMD has a great challenge to be able to build the basic capabilities needed for future human spaceflight with the budget prospects they’ve been given," Johnson told SPACE.com.

"But we also know there are a lot of near-Earth asteroids out there between here and Mars and we still see them on the horizon for the future of exploration. Maybe somewhat beyond this next hill we must climb, but they are still out there for us to reach for," Johnson said. ( space.com )

A Year of Weather Extremes : 2012

2012-12-25T02:28:00.001-08:00

A Year of Weather Extremes - From unprecedented drought to killer cold, 2012 was a year of weather extremes.

In 2012, the United States suffered 11 weather-related events that cost $1 billion apiece, according to a preliminary list released Thursday (Dec. 20) by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Economic losses for Hurricane Sandy and the yearlong drought are still being calculated, but NOAA estimates 2012 will surpass 2011 in terms of aggregate costs for disasters (exceeding $60 billion).

Severe weather disasters hit beyond the United States, too, as super typhoons slammed into Asia and a cold snap froze Europe's rivers. Globally, countries battled heat waves and droughts.

This GOES-13 satellite image was captured on Oct. 31 at 1240 UTC as Sandy's circulation was winding down over Pennsylvania. Sandy had been downgraded a remnant low pressure area.

The World Meteorological Organization projects 2012 to be the warmest year on record since 1850, even with the cooling effects of La Niña in the early months. And 2013 could be even hotter, the WMO estimates.

Cold lows and hot highs

Winter's extremes included January's record snowfall in Alaska, which hit as the rest of the country sauntered around in T-shirts. In February, Europe suffered through a cold snap that killed hundreds of people and froze the continent's rivers and canals, interrupting commerce.

An early, April start to tornado season raised fears of another devastating series of twisters, as happened in 2011. But this year, the funnels fizzled out. In the end, 2012 may go down as the year with the fewest tornadoes on record.

The combination of an ongoing drought and a crippling heat wave throughout the summer had lethal effects on people, animals and crops. Nebraska experienced its driest year since record keeping started more than a century ago, according to NOAA. Colorado suffered its worst fire season in more than a decade, with western wildfires charring 9.15 million acres (37,000 square kilometers) as of November, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Super storms

But 2012 may ultimately stand out in the history books mostly due to its continent-sized storms, which relentlessly pounded coastlines in the Atlantic and the Pacific.

In Asia, super typhoons swept across Korea, China and Japan like cars on a train, one after another, causing record flooding. Even into December, Super Typhoon Bopha destroyed homes in the Philippines, claiming more than 1,000 lives.

The Atlantic hurricane season produced 19 named storms, well above the yearly average of 12, according to a statement from NOAA. Two tropical storms, Alberto and Beryl, developed in Maybefore the season even officially began.

However, 2012 was the seventh consecutive year that no major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5) hit the United States. But Hurricane Sandy showed it doesn't take a big hurricane to make a major impact.

Sandy, which was a post-tropical cyclone when it made landfall, will go down in the record books as the second-costliest storm in U.S. history. Its tremendous storm surge, coupled with a high tide, wreaked havoc along the New Jersey and New York coastlines. Sandy registered the lowest barometric pressure in the history of the Northeast.

A higher number of named storms and hurricanes than predicted hit the Atlantic basin, in large part because El Niño, which likely would have suppressed overall storm activity, never materialized as anticipated by many climate models, NOAA said in a statement.

Yet several storms this year went largely unnoticed because they stayed out over the Atlantic. A persistent jet stream pattern over the eastern portion of the country helped steer many of this season's storms away from the United States, according to NOAA.

Outlook for 2013

Instead of El Niño, NOAA predicts that the neutral phase of the El Niño/ La Niña Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index will prevail through spring. Jokingly called "La Nada," it is the middle ground between El Niño and La Niña (the pattern associated with cool water in the equatorial Pacific).

The lack of a reliable weather pattern to hang a prediction on makes forecasting harder. The temperature outlook through March indicates above-normal temperatures for the southern half of the continental United States, except for coastal southern California, Florida and part of the southeast coast, according to the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center.

The center also predicts colder-than-normal temperatures in the northern Rocky Mountains, northern Great Plains and southern Alaska. ( LiveScience.com )

Gecko Tails Rip Off Along 'Dotted' Line

2012-12-25T02:17:00.002-08:00

Gecko Tails Rip Off Along 'Dotted' Line - Like a pair of Velcro stripper pants, gecko tails come off easy. The lizards have pre-formed score lines in their tail that allow them to quickly rip off their tails when a predator has grabbed it, according to a new study.

The gecko tails, which were described Wednesday (Dec. 19) in the journal PLoS One, essentially stick to the body of the animals with adhesive forces.

"The tail contains 'score lines' at distinct horizontal fracture planes where the tail may be released as a response to predation," the authors wrote in the article. "These scores penetrate all the way through the tissue where the structural integrity is maintained by adhesion forces."

When the gecko sheds its tail, it leaves zig-zagged extensions at the stump

While scientists have long known that geckos and other amphibians shed their tails to evade predators (and then regenerate them later), exactly how has been steeped in mystery. One possibility was that the lizards had special fast-acting chemicals that essentially broke down connective tissue that held the tail on. But it wasn't clear how chemicals could do that so quickly.

To find out how the lizards lose their tails, the team used several types of microscopes to visualize the lizard tail's structure and also observed the appendage shedding in euthanized geckos.

They found the gecko tail had zigzag lines that separated segments of the tail, forming a "precut" line. When the geckos shed their tail, they left behind a pointy, crown-shaped stump. At the stump, the team was able to see bizarre, mushroom-shaped structures. Those structures, the team hypothesizes, form to reduce the adhesive, or sticky, forces and allow the gecko tail to rip off.

The team also conducted a chemical analysis and found the lizards don't use enzymes to cut off their tails.

Instead, the gecko tail probably sticks on using adhesive forces, or the stickiness that occurs between two unlike molecules. That chemical "glue" would allow the lizards to quickly shed their tail without causing permanent damage. Because geckos can regenerate their tails, it's a good strategy to evade a predator. Geckos already use mysterious adhesives for their sticky feet, so it's not all that surprising that sticky forces would play a role in other parts of their body, the authors wrote.

"The segmentation permits the release in an orchestrated manner, a design that facilitates the lizard's ability to shed its tail easy and quickly without employing a slow protease-based degradation of connective tissue," the researchers wrote. ( LiveScience.com )

After Mayan Apocalypse Failure, Believers May Suffer

2012-12-25T02:06:00.000-08:00

After Mayan Apocalypse Failure, Believers May Suffer - You might expect the world not ending to be a cause for celebration. But for believers in doomsdays like yesterday's supposed Mayan apocalypse, the continued existence of the planet can be quite traumatic.

Yesterday (Dec. 21) was widely rumored online to be the end of the world, a misunderstanding of a calendar used by the ancient Maya people. Although the Maya made no doomsday predictions, some modern individuals and groups claimed they had foretold the end on Dec. 21, 2012.

This silkscreen shows dates in the Maya Long Count Calendar and a sacred calendar called the Tzolk'in. The silkscreen is based on carvings found in Quirigua, Guatemala.

Because the doomsday predictions were largely grassroots and spread online, the fallout from their failure is likely to be more varied than in doomsdays past, said Stephen Kent, a University of Alberta sociologist. Most of the time, doomsday predictions are made by charismatic leaders, often in cultlike settings.

"It appears that believers in the Mayan calendar apocalypse range from troubled individuals to groups following charismatic leaders," Kent told LiveScience. "Consequently, the fallout could be very complicated."

When the world won't end

After a failed doomsday, believers respond with a range of reactions, from disavowing their former apocalyptic beliefs to, surprisingly, believing more than ever. One classic reaction is the one made by Harold Camping, a radio preacher who first predicted Judgment Day in 1994. When that date didn't pan out, Camping made a common claim among doomsday prophets — the math had been wrong, but the ultimate prophecy would still prove true. He then predicted a widely publicized Judgment Day in May 2011, which also failed to occur. After that failure, Camping claimed the Judgment Day had been "spiritual" in nature and that the world would still end in a few short months.

When that claim also failed, Camping finally admitted his error. Rationalizing and attempting to explain away failure is common among failed doomsday groups, said Lorenzo DiTommaso, a professor of religion at Concordia University in Montreal. In some cases, groups even claim that their prayers saved the world.

The Mayan apocalypse is likely to be different, if only because the Internet is bursting with dozens of contradictory prophecies about the day, DiTommaso told LiveScience.

"There are so many different predictions ridered onto the 2012 phenomenon, everyone's going to have a different response," DiTommaso said. "And because it's not a leader or a church or a doctrine or Karl Marx forecasting what the future is going to be like, there's not going to be a leader against whom you can forecast your dissatisfaction."

Facing mortality

Doomsday believers tend to pick up and get on with their lives more successfully if they have strong networks of family and friends, Kent said. The grassroots nature of the Mayan apocalypse predictions is therefore troubling, he said.

"The isolated individuals who encounter these predictions on the Internet may be terribly alone," he said. Some may be "really quite lost" in the wake of the uneventful day.

"It's not just the usual suspects," said DiTommaso of the 2012 apocalypse believers. "Lots of people can buy into 2012 for different reasons."

Part of the reason that failed doomsdays can be so traumatic, Kent said, is that they appear to be a way that people grapple with their mortality. Believers usually think they'll survive the end, whether by being one of God's chosen people, by building an underground bunker, or by hitching a ride on a friendly UFO. If you survive the end of the world, Kent said, you never have to face your own death.

"The believers always predict that their special knowledge will allow them to survive, that they will escape the mortality that all of us face," Kent said. "And so far, everyone's been proven wrong on that fact."

However, hope springs eternal. Matching the dates of the Mayan calendar to our modern calendar is not an exact science, offering doomsday believers a "we got the math wrong" rationalization for the failed prediction.

Already, "there's a bit of chatter for 2015," DiTommaso said. ( LiveScience.com )

A Memorable Year for Weather : 2012

2012-12-25T01:58:00.003-08:00

A Memorable Year for Weather - Drought, wildfire, hurricanes, a deadly typhoon and cold snap — this year had a lot to offer in terms of weather news.

Weather historian Christopher C. Burt, who blogs for the meteorological website Weather Underground, has been keeping tabs on events this year, and the headliner is clear, he said: Unusually warm temperatures, most notably across the continental United States.

We take a look back at the most significant weather of 2012:

A striking image of Verrazano Bridge in Brooklyn as Hurricane Sandy approaches on Oct. 29, 2012.

Record-breaking warmth:

The data for the last of the year isn't in yet, but this year looks "virtually certain" take the title of warmest year on record for the lower 48 states, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Burt follows temperature observations for 300 evenly disbursed U.S. cities or sites with records going back into the 19th century. Of these, 22 reached their all-time highs this year, most during the heat wave that hit much of the country in late June and early July. Only the Pacific Northwest did not share in this year's exceptional warmth, Burt said.

It was also a warm year for the planet, though not to quite the same degree. As of November, 2012 ranked as the eighth warmest for global average temperature, NOAA reported on Thursday (Dec. 20).

Burt also tracks temperatures for countries, and he noted all-time high records in July and August for five countries, three in Europe, one in Asia and one in Africa.

Summer in March:

One notable heat wave this year hit the Great Lakes, Midwest, northern New England, New Brunswick and Novia Scotia in March, bringing scores of record-breaking temperatures for this time of year. In "The Nation's Icebox," International Falls, Mich., the low temperature during this heat wave — which bottomed out at 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15.6 degrees Celsius) on March 20 — tied the previous high for that date, according to the Weather Underground.

Hottest month on record in the U.S.: Until this year, July 1936, during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, held the record for hottest month on record in the lower 48 states going back to 1895, but this July's heat surpassed even that record, surprising Burt, who told LiveScience in July, "1936 is probably unassailable frankly."

Drought:

The unusually warm weather contributed to drought across much of the country this year, in some places, such as Texas, for the second consecutive year. While devastating, particularly to agriculture, this year's drought has not been unprecedented. It is the most extensive since the 1930s, affecting over half of the country for a majority of the year, NOAA reported on Dec. 20.

A fiery year:

In turn, drought and heat this year contributed to the third worst wildfire season for the western United States, where more than 9 million acres (3.6 million hectares) burned. Colorado and Oregon saw some of the worst fires.

Big storms:

Hurricane Isaac made landfall at the end of August in southeastern Louisiana, seven years after Hurricane Katrina's arrival, which flooded New Orleans. This time, however, the city, with its fortified protection system, was spared the devastation. Later in the year, Superstorm Sandy, a hybrid hurricane and winter storm, pummeled the East Coast, bringing an unprecedented storm tide to The Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan. A sustained cluster of violent thunderstorms, called a derecho event, over central, eastern and northeastern states also made NOAA's list of billion-dollar-plus disasters; 28 people died as a result of these storms in late June and early July.

Biggest killers:

The deadliest weather event of the year goes to Typhoon Bopha, which struck the Philippines in early December. The death toll has surpassed 1,000, with hundreds more missing, including fishermen who were out to sea when the typhoon — a tropical cyclone in the western Pacific or Indian Oceans — struck, according to media reports. But by comparison, the deadliest recorded tropical cyclone hit Bangladesh in November 1970, killing half-a-million people, Burt said. The cold wave that hit central and eastern Europe early in the year ranked as the second deadliest event of 2012, killing 824 people, Burt said.

Cold, but not unprecedented:

In spite of its severity, this cold wave failed to set records. In fact, Burt said he is not aware of any significant cold records that were set during 2012. However, the coldest temperature for the year worldwide was recorded on Sept. 16 at Vostok, Antarctica, at minus 119.6 degrees F (minus 84.2 degrees C), according to Burt.

A slow year for tornados:

After the devastation caused by tornados in 2011, this year has been relatively quiet. In fact, 2012 is on track to have the lowest tornado death count in a couple of decades, Burt said.

Fossil of Long-Extinct Whale Found on Seafloor

2012-12-25T01:52:00.000-08:00

Fossil of Long-Extinct Whale Found on Seafloor - Researchers diving off the coast of Georgia may have found the remains of an Atlantic gray whale, a relic of a population that was hunted to extinction by the 18th century.

But this particular specimen died long before whalers became a threat. Carbon dating showed that the fossil, a left jawbone, is about 36,000 years old.

The big bone was first discovered along with two badly eroded vertebrae near Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary about 20 miles (32 kilometers) off southeast Georgia in 2008. It took the researchers two years to pull out all of the pieces of the fossil, which was embedded in layers of shell and sand 70 feet (21 meters) below the surface. The jawbone was recovered in sections and measures 5 feet (1.5 m) in length.

Scientists from UGA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration discovered and fully recovered a large fossilized whalebone near Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary approximately 20 miles off the Georgia coast in 2008

The researchers say the bone is clearly from a baleen whale — or whales that use baleen plates in their mouths to filter meals of tiny organisms out of seawater — and looks very similar to that of the gray whale, Eschrichtius robustus. This species is only locally extinct. Gray whales can be found today in quite strong numbers, but only in the Pacific Ocean, and even these had once teetered on the brink of extinction during eras when the whaling industry reigned.

Scientists previously believed that the Atlantic gray whale had been a distinct species. But recent research has shown these vanished whales and the living ones in the Pacific are actually one in the same.

"The California grays looked exactly like the bones that were dug up in Scandinavia back in the 19th century," Ervan Garrison, a geoarchaeology professor at the University of Georgia, said in a statement, describing it as "one of the first instances where a living species was named based on the fossil evidence."

The new specimen's age of approximately 36,570 years old makes it one of the oldest fossil finds in the western Atlantic basin, the researchers say. And if the find indeed represents a Pleistocene-age gray whale, its oldest counterpart is a specimen found on the southern North Sea dating to 42,800 years ago. ( LiveScience.com )

Brain-Removal Tool Left in Mummy's Skull

2012-12-16T08:57:00.002-08:00

Brain-Removal Tool Left in Mummy's Skull - A brain-removal tool used by ancient Egyptian embalmers has been discovered lodged in the skull of a female mummy that dates back around 2,400 years.

Removal of the brain was an Egyptian mummification procedure that became popular around 3,500 years ago and remained in use in later periods.

Identifying the ancient tools embalmers used for brain removal is difficult, and researchers note this is only the second time that such a tool has been reported within a mummy's skull.

CT scans of a 2,400-year-old female mummy revealed a tubular object embedded in its skull between the brain's left parietal bone and the resin filled back of the skull. It would turn out to be a tool

The discovery

Located between the left parietal bone and the back of the skull, which had been filled with resin, the object was discovered in 2008 through a series of CT scans. Researchers then inserted an endoscope (a thin tube often used for noninvasive medical procedures) into the mummy to get a closer look and ultimately detach it from resin to which it had gotten stuck.

"We cut it with a clamp through the endoscope and then removed it from the skull," said lead researcher Dr. Mislav ?avka, of the University Hospital Dubrava in Zagreb Croatia, in an interview with LiveScience.

They found themselves peering at an object more than 3 inches (8 centimeters) long that would have been used for liquefying and removing the brain. "It almost definitely would have been used in excerebration [brain removal] of the mummy," ?avka said.

The instrument would have been inserted through a hole punched into the ethmoid bone near the nose. "Some parts [of the brain] would be wrapped around this stick and pulled out, and the other parts would be liquefied," ?avka said.

The Egyptian mummy could then be put on its abdomen and the liquid drained through the nose hole. "It is an error that [the] embalmers left this stick in the skull," said ?avka, adding the tool may have broken apart during the procedure.

This embalming accident, unfortunate for the ancient mummy, has provided researchers with a very rare artifact. ?avka's team point out in a paper they published recently in the journal RSNA RadioGraphics the only other brain-removal stick found inside a mummy's skull dates back 2,200 years.

"Probably in museums in Egypt there are many other evidences, but they were not found inside the skull," making it tricky to identify such artifacts as brain-removal tools, said ?avka.

The mummy is currently in the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb Croatia and is that of a woman who died around the age of 40. Brought to Croatia in the 19th century without a coffin, it's not known where she was found in Egypt. Radiocarbon dating and CT scans of the mummy determined its date to be around 2,400 years. Her cause of death is unknown.

New insights

The stick is quite brittle and the team could not do as thorough of an analysis as they'd hoped. Looking at it under a microscope, botanical experts determined the tool is made from plants in the group Monocotyledon, which includes forms of palm and bamboo.

The most curious find came when the researchers compared their discovery with an ancient account of brain removal made by the Greek writer Herodotus in the fifth century B.C. A visitor to Egypt, he had this to say about how Egyptian brain removal worked (as translated by A. D. Godley, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1920, through Perseus Digital Library):

"Having agreed on a price, the bearers go away, and the workmen, left alone in their place, embalm the body. If they do this in the most perfect way, they first draw out part of the brain through the nostrils with an iron hook, and inject certain drugs into the rest."

The recent discovery suggests an organic stick, not an "iron hook," was used in at least some of these procedures, possibly for economic reasons. Researchers note that the tool found in the skull of the other mummy, dating from 2,200 years ago, was also made of an organic material.

"It is known that mummification was widely practiced throughout ancient Egyptian civilization, but it was a time-consuming and costly practice. Thus, not everyone could afford to perform the same mummification procedure," write the researchers in their journal article. ( LiveScience.com )

Hot or Not? US Heat Wave Mapped from Space

2012-12-15T21:18:00.005-08:00

Hot or Not? US Heat Wave Mapped from Space - Suffering in the summer heat? You're not alone. In a new map made using data compiled by a NASA satellite, a heat wave can be seen spreading across the country, hitting the Great Plains particularly hard.

In the past week, 1,011 records have been broken around the country, including 251 new daily high temperature records on Tuesday (June 26), according to the Associated Press. The week before that, 77 record-high temperatures were tied or beaten. What's more, 26 states and Washington, D.C., are under some kind of heat advisory today (June 29).

This map shows the heat wave currently sweeping across the United States with temperatures taken by a NASA satellite on June 26, 2012.

The extreme heat, combined with a dry winter and spring, has helped spawn a number of wildfires raging across the West. Many states with the highest temperatures have had more blazes. Colorado experienced the brunt of the heat wave earlier this week and had eight large wildfires burning as of today. Wyoming and Utah — other states that have seen unusually hot weather — together had nine wildfires burning.

The map was made using surface temperatures nationwide from June 17-24, which were measured by NASA's Aqua satellite. These temperatures were then compared with the average over the same eight days from 2000-2011. Areas with warmer-than-average temperatures are shown in red, near-normal temperatures are white, and cooler conditions are blue.

So what's with the extreme heat? This heat wave, like all major weather events, has its direct cause in a complex set of atmospheric conditions that produce short-term weather. However, weather occurs within the broader context of the climate, and many scientists agree that global warming has made it more likely that heat waves of this magnitude will occur.

This year has been extreme in terms of heat and dryness, as was 2002 (a record-breaking year for fires in Colorado). So far, 2012's weather looks very similar to the weather of 1910. That year, spring was warm and dry, which fed into a hellish fire season. Among the blazes was the Great Fire of 1910, also known as "the Big Burn," which destroyed 3 million acres of forest in Washington, Idaho and Montana. ( LiveScience.com )

Oldest Mayan calendar found, and it goes way beyond Dec. 12, 2012 (+video)

2012-12-12T06:54:00.000-08:00

Oldest Mayan calendar found, and it goes way beyond Dec. 12, 2012 (+video) - A Mayan calendar was found deep in the Guatemalan rainforest. But this ancient Mayan calender refutes claims that the world will end Dec. 21, 2012

The oldest-known version of the ancient Maya calendar has been discovered adorning a lavishly painted wall in the ruins of a city deep in the Guatemalan rainforest.

The hieroglyphs, painted in black and red, along with a colorful mural of a king and his mysterious attendants, seem to have been a sort of handy reference chart for court scribes in A.D. 800 — the astronomers and mathematicians of their day. Contrary to popular myth, this calendar isn't a countdown to the end of the world in December 2012, the study researchers said.

Four long numbers on the north wall of a ruined Mayan house relatin to the Maya calendar and computations about the moon, sun and possibly Venus and Mars are shown. The dates may stretch some 7,000 years into the future. REUTERS/William Saturno and David Stuart/National Geographic

"The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future," said archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas, who worked to decipher the glyphs. "Numbers we can't even wrap our heads around."

The newly discovered calendar is complex indeed, featuring stacked bars and dots representing fives and ones and recording lunar cycles in six-month chunks of time. But it wasn't these mathematical notations that first caught the archeologists' eye. William Saturno, an archaeologist from Boston University, was mapping the ancient Maya city of Xultun in northeast Guatemala in 2010 when one of his undergraduate students peered into an old trench dug by looters and reported seeing traces of ancient paint.

The discovery was "certainly nothing to write home about," Saturno told reporters on Thursday (May 10), in advance of releasing details of the murals in this week's issue of the journal Science. Paint doesn't preserve well in the rain forest climate of Guatemala, and Saturno figured that the faint red and black lines his student had found weren't going to yield much information. But he felt he had a responsibility to excavate the room the looters had tried to reach, if only to be able to report the size of the structure along with the paint finding.

As Saturno continued along the old trench to the back wall, he was shocked to run into a brilliantly painted portrait: a Mayan king, sitting on his throne, wearing a red crown with blue feathers flowing out behind him. Another figure peeks out from behind him. On an adjoining wall, three loincloth-clad figures sit, wearing feathered headdresses. One is captioned "Older Brother Obsidian," or "Senior Obsidian," a still-mysterious title. Next to the king, a man painted in brilliant orange wearing jade bracelets reaches out with a stylus, likely identifying him as a scribe. He is labeled as "Younger Brother Obsidian," or perhaps "Junior Obsidian."

It's not the end of the world

These paintings — covering the west and north walls of the small, 6-foot-by-6-foot room — weren't the only surprise Xultun had to offer. On the east wall, someone had painted a series of small, complex hieroglyphics. This, the researchers soon realized, was a calendar.

The calendar seemed to have been added after the murals were completed, as some of the numbers cover up painted figures on the wall. It's almost as if an ancient scribe got sick of flipping through a document to find his timekeeping chart and decided to put it on the wall for at-a-glance reference, Stuart said.

"It's kind of like having a whiteboard in your office where you're writing down formulas that you want to remember," he said.

The Maya recorded time in a series of cycles, including 400-year chunks called baktuns. It's these baktuns that have led to rumors of an end-of-the-world catastrophe on Dec. 21, 2012 — on that date, a cycle of 13 baktuns will be complete. But the idea that this means the end of the world is a misconception, Stuart said. In fact, Maya experts have known for a long time that the calendar doesn't end after the 13th baktun. It simply begins a new cycle. And the calendar encompasses much larger units than the baktun.

"There were 24 units of time they actually could have incorporated into their calendar," Stuart said. "Here, we're only seeing five units and they're still really big."

In one column, the ancient scribe even worked out a cycle of time recording 17 baktuns, the researchers found. In another spot, someone etched a "ring number" into the wall. These notations were used to record time in a previous cycle, thousands of years into the past. The calendar also appears to note the cycles of Mars and Venus, the researchers said. Symbols of gods head the top of each lunar cycle, suggesting that each cycle had its own patron deity.

"There was a lot more to the Maya calendar than just 13 baktuns," Stuart said.

Scratching the surface

This ancient "wall calendar" is a major find, because the first known calendar and astronomical tables before this time came from the Dresden Codex, a book that dates to the 11th or 12th centuries. Most likely, Saturno said, the wall calendar and the Dresden Codex both arose from earlier books that long ago rotted away.

The mural room gives an unprecedented glimpse into the work lives of Mayan scientists, Stuart said. The mural room is in a compound with several other rooms, which were collapsed and built over in later years. The murals only survived, because, instead of collapsing the room, Mayan engineers filled it with rubble and then built on top of it.

"This is clearly a space where someone important was living, this important household of the noble class, and here you also have a mathematician working in that space," Stuart said. "It's a great illustration of how closely those roles were connected in Mayan society."

Kings would have been extremely interested in timekeeping, Stuart said, because part of their job was to conduct rituals of renewal at certain times. Unfortunately, the name of the king pictured in the mural room has been lost.

Although Xultun was first discovered in 1915, less than 0.1 percent has been explored, Saturno said. Looters damaged much of the ancient city in the 1970s, meaning much of historical significance has been lost. But archaeologists still don't even know how far the boundaries of the town extend.

"[That] investigations can begin and in a house like this we can find something we've never seen before only speaks to the great wealth of scientific material that remains in Guatemala in the Maya area for us to discover," Saturno said. ( LiveScience.com )

Doomsday Clock shows signs for hope, need for progress

2012-12-12T06:44:00.002-08:00

Doomsday Clock shows signs for hope, need for progress - The group behind the Doomsday Clock rolled back its hands to six minutes until midnight and warned that there's still much to be done.

The hands of the Doomsday Clock ticked backward today – giving humanity an extra minute before proverbial midnight.

The Doomsday Clock now reads six minutes until midnight.

The symbolic clock, a fixture of the Cold War still ticking 60 years later, measures the threat of man-made catastrophe through nuclear war or global warming. Today's new reading represents progress by world leaders to curb weapons proliferation and cap climate change, said the group behind the Clock during its event today in New York City.

At 10 a.m. Thursday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset the Doomsday Clock to six minutes until midnight. The timepiece has changed 19 times since its creation in 1947. Only five of those were closer to midnight than today's reading – 1949 (Russia's first atomic weapons tests), 1953 (Cold War ramps up), 1981 (conflicts in Afghanistan, South Africa, and Poland), 1984 (Cold War escalates further), and 2007 (North Korea and Iran pursue nuclear weapons, global warming becomes evident).

But the Bulletin said today that the memory of mushroom clouds and warnings of greenhouse gases now come with silver linings.

"By shifting the hand back from midnight by only one additional minute, we emphasize how much needs to be accomplished, while at the same time recognizing signs of collaboration among the United States, Russia, the European Union, India, China, Brazil, and others on nuclear security and on climate stabilization," said the official announcement.

Much like the committee that awarded Barack Obama a Nobel Peace Prize last year, the Bulletin was hopeful about the new American president – even if his rhetoric has led to few real accomplishments.

"With a more pragmatic, problem-solving approach, not only has Obama initiated new arms reduction talks with Russia, he has started negotiations with Iran to close its nuclear enrichment program, and directed the U.S. government to lead a global effort to secure loose fissile material in four years," said today's statement. ( csmonitor.com )

'Doomsday Clock' moved forward. What has scientists worried?

2012-12-12T06:29:00.002-08:00

'Doomsday Clock' moved forward. What has scientists worried? - Scientists say they moved the 'Doomsday Clock' a minute closer to midnight because nations are failing to sufficiently address nuclear proliferation, climate change, and other global threats.

Citing “inaction” on renewed nuclear proliferation, climate change, and the urgent need to find sustainable sources of energy, a group of scientists has moved the “Doomsday Clock” a minute closer to midnight, saying nations are “failing to change business as usual.”

It was a back-to-the-future moment for the “Doomsday Clock,” which just two years ago had been shifted backward to indicate global catastrophe was a bit less imminent.

Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, a group originally composed of University of Chicago scientists involved in the Manhattan Project, created the clock in 1947 to use the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) to convey the peril of nuclear weapons proliferation. Through the cold war it tolled, reminding nations of the silent danger.

Over the years, the hands of the clock have moved around a lot. In 1949, the clock was moved to three minutes to midnight when President Harry Truman told the American public that the Soviets had tested their first nuclear device – starting the arms race. By 1991, with the cold war officially over and the US and Russia slashing their nuclear arsenals, the clock retreated to 17 minutes to midnight.

Terrorism, tensions between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, renewed friction between the US and Russia, North Korea's nuclear push, and other tensions had pushed the clock to five minutes to midnight by 2007.

But movement on nuclear arms talks, climate change, and other threats so buoyed the scientists two years ago that they ordered the so-called Doomsday Clock's minute hand to be pushed backward to six minutes before midnight.

Now, despite the Arab Spring and other pro-democracy movements around the world, including in Russia, lowering clouds have rolled back in for these scientists. So much so that on Tuesday the BAS directors announced they were moving the minute hand of the clock back to the 2007 position – 11:55.

“Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face,” the BAS directors said in a statement. “In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed.”

“Inaction on key issues including climate change, and rising international tensions motivate the movement of the clock,” the group said in its statement. “As we see it, the major challenge at the heart of humanity’s survival in the 21st century is how to meet energy needs for economic growth in developing and industrial countries without further damaging the climate, exposing people to loss of health and community, and without risking further spread of nuclear weapons.”

But in a year in which the Mayan calendar and other doomsday prophesies are getting more than their share of attention, how seriously, really should the public take this obviously subjective – and critics might argue meaningless – relic of the cold war?

“Is this ridiculous thing still around?” Darrin Cothran, a commenter on a Los Angeles Times web page noting the clock's shift moaned. “Time to tell these elderly gentlemen that it's time to retire.”

“They're just trying to stay relevant,” piped up an anonymous commentator on Slashdot. “We all forgot about them when the Cold War ended, and they crave attention again.”

Others, however, argue in favor of at least some type of global warning clock – as a simple indicator for society that unseen looming problems exist and need public attention.

Daniel Abbasi, a former senior adviser at the Environmental Protection Agency, has argued that the world needs a Global Climate Change Index akin to the Dow Jones Industrial Average to chart humanity's gains – and reversals. It needs to be simple enough to keep public eyes from glazing over and still hold policymakers’ feet to the fire on really lowering greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

Bulletin scientists argue that the need for their clock remains strong. Key recommendations for a safer world that they say have not been taken up include:

Ratification by the US and China of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
Implementing multinational management of the civilian nuclear energy fuel cycle with strict standards for safety, security, and nonproliferation of nuclear weapons
Strengthening the International Atomic Energy Agency's capacity to oversee nuclear materials and technology development
Adopting climate change agreements to reduce carbon dioxide emissions
Transforming the coal power sector of the world economy to retire older plants and require new plants to capture and store carbon dioxide they produce
Increasing public and private investments in alternatives to carbon-emitting energy sources, such as solar and wind, and technologies for energy storage

“Whether meeting the challenges of nuclear power, or mitigating the suffering from human-caused global warming, or preventing catastrophic nuclear conflict in a volatile world, the power of people is essential,” Kennette Benedict, executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said in a statement.

“For this reason, we ask other scientists and experts to join us in engaging ordinary citizens,” she said. “Together, we can present the most significant questions to policymakers and industry leaders. Most importantly, we can demand answers and action.” ( csmonitor.com )

Earliest known dinosaur discovered in London museum

2012-12-09T04:38:00.003-08:00

Earliest known dinosaur discovered in London museum - A fossil in the museum's collection has been identified as a dinosaur that lived 245 million years ago, 10 to 15 million years earlier than previously thought. - Researchers have found what could be the earliest known dinosaur to walk the Earth lurking in the corridors of London's Natural History Museum.

A mysterious fossil specimen that has been in the museum's collection for decades has now been identified as most likely coming from a dinosaur that lived about 245 million years ago - 10 to 15 million years earlier than any previously discovered examples.

The creature was about the size of a Labrador dog and has been named Nyasasaurus parringtoni after southern Africa's Lake Nyasa, today called Lake Malawi, and Cambridge University's Rex Parrington, who collected the specimen at a site near the lake in the 1930s.

"It was a case of looking at the material with a fresh pair of eyes," Paul Barrett from the Natural History Museum, who worked on the study, told Reuters. "This closes a gap in the fossil record and pushes back the existence of dinosaurs."

The London fossil was studied by researchers in the 1950s but no conclusion was reached and nothing was published, said Barrett. "It was a mystery what it was ... It just became this mythical animal."

Two features of the London fossil, together with a similar sample subsequently spotted at the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town, are strong evidence that the animal belongs with the dinosaurs, the researchers said.

The bone tissues in the upper arm show marks of rapid growth, common in dinosaurs, and they also have a feature known as an elongated deltopectoral crest that anchored the upper arm muscles, a feature unique to dinosaurs.

"Although we only know Nyasasaurus from fossil fragments, the anatomy of its upper arm bone and hips have features that are unique to dinosaurs, making us confident that we're dealing with an animal very close to dinosaur origin," said Barrett.

The researchers believe Nyasasaurus probably stood upright, was a meter tall at the hip, 2-3 meters long from head to tail, and weighed 20-60 kg.

When it was alive, the world's continents were joined in a vast landmass called Pangaea, and the area of Tanzania where the fossils were found would have been part of the southern Pangaea that included Africa, South America, Antarctica and Australia.

Theorists have long argued there should have been dinosaurs walking the Earth in the Middle Triassic period, which ended about 237 million years ago, but until now the evidence has been ambiguous, said Sterling Nesbitt at the University of Washington in Seattle who led the study, published in the journal Biology Letters.

"If the newly named Nyasasaurus parringtoni is not the earliest dinosaur, then it is the closest relative found so far," said Nesbitt.

"What's really neat about this specimen is that it has a lot of history. Found in the '30s, first described in the 1950s ... Now 80 years later, we're putting it all together."

The researchers plan further field work in Tanzania to find more fossils and build a better picture of the animal's anatomy. ( msn.com )

Secret files on aliens

2012-12-09T04:28:00.001-08:00

Secret files on aliens - Russian PM Dimitry Medvedev, may have set conspiracy theorists in a rut of excitement two weeks to the Mayan Apocalypse when he said in a footage recorded after a TV interview that Russian presidents get to see secret files about aliens living among us.

According to The Telegraph, as he was finishing an interview with a Ren TV journalist, the former Russian president, presumed to have been unaware that the microphone was still turned on, said every new Russian president is given two folders of information about extraterrestrials who are permanently resident on earth. According to The Telegraph, he was responding to a question whether Russian presidents receive secret files on aliens. He said:

"Along with the briefcase with nuclear codes, the president of the country is given a special 'top secret' folder. This folder in its entirety contains information about aliens who visited our planet. Along with this, you are given a report of the absolutely secret special service that exercises control over aliens on the territory of our country..."

And just in case the journalist could not picture the scenario he was trying to communicate about "absolutely secret special service that exercises control over aliens on the territory of our country," he advised him to see the film "Men in Black," saying, "more detailed information on this topic you can get from a well-known movie called 'Men In Black...'"

Medvedev told the journalist that he was not allowed to say "how many of them are among us because it may cause panic," implying there may be hordes of them, maybe even enough to take over the world.

According to The Telegraph, none of the TV stations that interviewed Medvedev broadcast his tongue-in-cheek comments, but they were delivered to Reuters and some were shown on YouTube.

While the media have been quick to say that Medvedev was joking, the former president of Russia from 2008 to 2012 must realize that was an expensive joke coming from a former president of a country that is a major military power, in a world of conspiracy theorists who already assume the scenario independent of presidential endorsement, especially at less than two weeks to the prophesied Mayan "end of the world," scheduled for December 21.

His statement will be seen by fringe Alien and UFO conspiracy theorists as significant given that Russia boasts some of the most spectacular claims of UFO sightings and alien encounters. According to IB Times, some of the bizarre stories include an alleged incidence in Minsk in 1984: "a green beam appeared from an aircraft. The beam was said to have swung rapidly from side to side while illuminating the cabin of an aircraft nearby. Two pilots who reported seeing the events first-hand were later diagnosed with cancer from electromagnetic radiation and severe brain damage, respectively."

As IB Times points out, dryly, with such stories coming from Russia, "Perhaps Medvedev was not joking after all."

But the former president expressed belief in other unlikely phenomena that may suggest he was in a jocular off-air mood. He spoke about Santa Claus:

"I believe in Father Frost. But not too deeply. But anyway, you know, I'm not one of those people who are able to tell the kids that Father Frost does not exist.”

However, when he was asked whether he believed the world would end on Dec. 21, he said no. ( digitaljournal.com )

Super-Giant Black Hole Baffles Scientists

2012-12-02T03:50:00.000-08:00

Super-Giant Black Hole Baffles Scientists - You would probably not enjoy the galaxy NGC 1277. Never mind that it's far - 220 million light-years away in the constellation Perseus. The problem is that at its center is a giant, giant black hole, 17 billion times as massive as our sun, so big that scientists calculate it makes up 59 percent of the mass of the galaxy's disc.

Astrophysicists have long believed that there's a black hole at the center of our Milky Way, but it probably accounts for something like 0.1 percent of the galaxy's center. The one in NGC 1277, scientists report in today's edition of the journal Nature, is the second largest they've ever observed, and it upends what they thought about how galaxies form.

ABC News - Super-Giant Black Hole Baffles Scientists (ABC News)

Black holes, as you'll recall, are objects in space so massive that their gravity consumes everything around them - stars, planets, matter, energy, even light. Earthly scientists can only observe their effect on the space around them, not see them directly. Be grateful we're not close to one. They're actually useful to astrophysicists in explaining the nice spiral shape of many galaxies - you need something massive in the middle for the stars to circle - but NGC 1277 is an extreme.

"This is a really oddball galaxy," said Karl Gebhardt of the University of Texas at Austin, a member of the team that made the find. "It's almost all black hole. This could be the first object in a new class of galaxy-black hole systems." Gebhardt and colleagues at the McDonald Observatory have been calculating the mass of different black holes - no small task considering their powerful gravity.

The researchers put together an animation of how stars in that distant galaxy would behave, whipping around the center to avoid falling in.

What would you see if you lived on a habitable planet in that far-away galaxy and could look toward the center? Probably nothing that makes sense to human eyes. Black holes have such powerful gravity that they distort the space around them. ( ABC News )

Spain shipwreck treasure shown for the first time

2012-12-01T05:54:00.002-08:00

Spain shipwreck treasure shown for the first time — Spanish cultural officials allowed a first peek Friday at some of the 16 tons (14.5 metric tons) of shipwreck treasure worth an estimated $500 million that a U.S. salvage company gave up this year after a five-year ownership dispute.

Only a tiny portion of the haul from the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, a galleon that sank off Portugal's Atlantic coast near the straits of Gibraltar in 1804, was shown to the media: 12 individual silver coins, a block of encrusted silver coins stuck together after centuries underwater, two gold tobacco boxes and a bronze pulley.

A worker of the ministry holds up for photographers a silver coin from the shipwreck of a 1804 galleon, on its first display to the media at a ministry building, in Madrid, Friday, Nov. 30, 2012. Spanish cultural officials have allowed the first peep at 16 tons (14.5 metric tons) of the shipwreck, 'Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes' a treasure worth an estimated $500 million that a U.S. salvage company gave up after a five-year international

Authorities who have been inventorying the treasure since it was flown from Florida to Spain in February said it will be transferred later this year from Madrid to the National Museum of Underwater Archaeology in the Mediterranean city of Cartagena. Displays are expected to start next year, with some items put on rotating temporary displays at museums across the country.

Though previous estimates have put the value of the treasure at $500 million, Spanish officials said they weren't trying to determine an amount because the haul is part of the nation's cultural heritage and can never be sold under Spanish law.

"It's invaluable," said Elisa de Cabo, the Culture Ministry's deputy director of national heritage. "How would you put a price on the Mona Lisa?"

Spain took possession of the treasure after courts rejected arguments that Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration was entitled to all or most of the treasure. De Cabo said Spanish authorities are still trying to convince a judge in Tampa that the American company should also be forced to pay Spain's legal costs.

Officials said Friday that the weight of the treasure was not the 17 tons reported during the legal fight because that included a ton of sea water used to help preserve many of the silver coins in storage containers.

The inventory counted 574,553 silver coins and 212 gold coins.

Odyssey had argued that the wreck was never positively identified as the Mercedes. And if it was that vessel, the company contended, then the ship was on a commercial trade trip — not a sovereign mission — at the time it sank, meaning Spain would have no firm claim to the cargo. International treaties generally hold that warships sunk in battle are protected from treasure seekers.

Odyssey lost every round in federal courts as the Spanish government painted the company as modern-day pirates. The company has said in earnings statements that it has spent $2.6 million salvaging, transporting, storing and conserving the treasure.

The metals were mined and the coins minted in the Andes, from places that are now in Bolivia, Chile and Peru.

Spain overcame a last-minute effort by the Peruvian government to block the transfer of the treasure back to Spain. Peru did not gain its independence until 1824, but the country's lawyers argued it was more than a simple colony at the time because it was the local seat of the Spanish crown when the ship sank.

Spain's Queen Sofia promised in a visit to Bolivia several months ago that some of the treasure would be loaned to the country for display in museums. ( Associated Press )

400-Year-Old Playing Cards Reveal Royal Secret

2012-12-01T04:34:00.000-08:00

400-Year-Old Playing Cards Reveal Royal Secret - Call it a card player's dream. A complete set of 52 silver playing cards gilded in gold and dating back 400 years has been discovered.

Created in Germany around 1616, the cards were engraved by a man named Michael Frömmer, who created at least one other set of silver cards.

According to a story, backed up by a 19th-century brass plate, the cards were at one point owned by a Portuguese princess who fled the country, cards in hand, after Napoleon's armies invaded in 1807.

At the time they were created in 1616 no standardized cards existed; different parts of Europe had their own card styles. This particular set uses a suit seen in Italy, with swords, coins, batons and cups in values from ace to 10. Each of these suits has three face cards — king, knight (also known as cavalier) and knave. There are no jokers.

In 2010, the playing cards were first put on auction by an anonymous family at Christie's auction house in New York. Purchased by entrepreneur Selim Zilkha, the cards were recently described by Timothy Schroder, a historian with expertise in gold and silver decorative arts, in his book "Renaissance and Baroque Silver, Mounted Porcelain and Ruby Glass from the Zilkha Collection"(Paul Holberton Publishing, 2012).

"Silver cards were exceptional," Schroder writes. "They were not made for playing with but as works of art for the collector's cabinet, or Kunstkammer." Today, few survive. "[O]nly five sets of silver cards are known today and of these only one — the Zilkha set — is complete."

On the cards, two of the kings are depicted wearing ancient Roman clothing while one is depicted as a Holy Roman Emperor and another is dressed up as a Sultan, with clothing seen in the Middle East. . The knights and knaves are depicted in different poses wearing (then-contemporary) Renaissance military or courtly costumes. Each card is about 3.4 inches by 2 inches (8.6 centimeters by 5 centimeters) in size and blank on the back.

Gilding with mercury

Creating the card set would have been a hazardous job. For the gilding, its designers used mercury, a poisonous substance that can potentially kill.

"You ground up gold into kind of a dust, and you mix it with mercury, and you painted that onto the surface where you wished the gilding to appear," Schroder told LiveScience in an interview. The mercury gets burned off in a kiln, a process "that would leave the gold chemically bonded to the silver."

The process is illegal today, he noted, and even in Renaissance times, it was known to be hazardous. "I don't think they quite understood why it was dangerous, but they did appreciate the dangers of it," Schroder said.

A gift from a princess?

The owner of the 17th-century card set is not known. However, according to a tradition detailed by the anonymous family who sold it, in the early 19thcentury, the cards were in the possession of Infanta Carlota Joaquina, a daughter of a Spanish king, who was married to a prince in Portugal. She fled to Brazil when Napoleon's armies marched into Iberia in 1807, apparently taking the silver cards with her.

After Napoleon forced her brother, Ferdinand VII, to abdicate the throne of Spain, she made several attempts to take over the Spanish crown and control the country's holdings in the New World. According to the family tradition, she gave the card set to the wife of Felipe Contucci, a man who helped in her efforts.

While this story cannot be proven, Schroder said he has "very little reason to doubt it." He added that "when the cards were acquired by Mr. Zilkha, they came in an early 19th-century leather box which had a brass plate in them, which also appeared to date from the early or middle of the 19th century, with this provenance engraved on it."

Contucci's plot

Spain still controlled a vast empire in the New World at the time of Napoleon's invasion. Among its territories was the viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, a large swath of land centred in Buenos Aires (in modern-day Argentina).

In November 1808, Contucci was in contact with leaders in Buenos Aires, according to a conference paper presented last February by Anthony McFarlane, a professor at the University of Warwick. Contucci told the princess they had made her an offer that would see her gain control of a new kingdom in South America.

McFarlane writes that "Contucci raised her hopes by informing in mid-November 1808 that 124 leading men were ready to support a military intervention by a military force led by the Infante Pedro Carlos [a relative of the princess] and supported by Admiral Smith [of Britain], to install her (as) the constitutional monarch of an independent kingdom."

However, this plan was foiled when government officials from Portugal, Spain and Britain all objected to it.

Then, in August 1809, the Spanish ambassador arrived in Rio with instructions from the Junta Central (the Spanish government not controlled by Napoleon), "to prevent Carlota from entering Spanish territory and to deflect her ambitions to become Regent," writes McFarlane.

Carlota's dream of becoming a ruling queen was simply not in the cards. ( LiveScience.com )