Best news I’ve heard lately: After keeping us waiting for a century, Mark Twain is about to reveal all.
- 57 tombs with mummies found in Egypt.
- Imagine another Egypt, with a marked black African component. This is Meroe, in present-day Sudan. In the last three years, dozens of objects beggaring belief have shown that the Meroitic Kingdom was in contact with most northern and eastern Mediterranean lands.
- Newly-discovered pyramid in Peru linked to ancient copper industry.
- Homo gautengensis, a toothy, plant-chomping, literal tree swinger was just named the earliest recognized species of human.
- Cow-crocodillos? Fossil skeletons suggest what aetosaurs looked like.
- Nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in disgrace in an unmarked grave, Nicolaus Copernicus has been reburied in the cathedral where he once served as a church canon and doctor.
- The face of a medieval knight who was killed 700 years ago has been revealed through state-of-the-art forensic techniques. Looks like Shrek to me.
- Further discoveries about the Lewis and Clark expedition. Historian David L Nicandri’s new book River of Promise: Lewis and Clark on the Columbia is available at Amazon US & UK.
- British Library to digitise 40 million pages from newspaper archives dating back to the early 1700s, and post them online.
- Extinction of mammoths, camels, giant sloths and other large mammals in the New World triggered onset of the ‘Younger Dryas’ global cooling period that began 12,800 years ago.
- Vast asteroid crater found in Timor Sea.
- Unfrozen planet: How the ice ages ended.
- White-light solar flares finally explained.
- Levitating glass bead proves Einstein wrong.
- Brown pelicans, hatchlings, eggs, and nests now coated in oil at two major rookeries.
- Gooey oil in Gulf Coast wetlands could prove impossible to remove, leaving a toxic stew lethal to plants, fish and wildlife.
- Mighty Mississippi River outlets, which drain half the country, and every creek and stream and seep from the Rockies to the Appalachians, have been opened, in battle to push back the spill. The oil is winning.
- Oil spill brings death in the ocean from top to bottom.
- Hair booms are out, Kevin Costner’s drum-shaped ‘vacuum cleaners’ and La. Gov. Bobby Jindal’s sand berms are in.
- Millions of litres of radioactive water from the Ranger uranium mine have flowed into world heritage-listed wetlands in Kakadu National Park.
- UK beaches are polluted by thousands of raw sewage spills. 2.8m cases of illness a year are caused by swimming in the filthy water.
- Young coral threatened by noise pollution.
- Writing in the journal Science, researchers say up to 26 million tonnes of fish, worth an estimated $23bn (£16bn), are landed illegally each year.
- UN’s top environment official renews warning that ocean fisheries could collapse within 50 years. Let Them Eat…Jellyfish.
- First results from human microbiome project yield nearly 30,000 new genes.
- Adhesive used in supermarket food packaging poses a particularly severe risk to health (i.e., organ failure and death) because it contains a toxic chemical in the same class as mercury, asbestos and hydrochloric acid which can seep through and contaminate food.
- Karpov and Kasparov attempt to oust chess chief who recently said aliens in yellow spacesuits had given him a tour of their spacecraft. Chess power struggle turns violent.
- Swimming elephant takes man for a dip. Now there’s a photo for Kathrinn’s collection. 😉
- Every minute spent on the internet sends a message about the user. Now several websites are collecting all that information and more, and making it available to almost anyone.
- A commercial quantum encryption system has been fully hacked for the first time.
- Most browsers silently expose intimate viewing habits.
- Google launches encrypted search.
- Google-funded hot water drill to reduce the cost of geothermal energy.
- DARPA’s self-learning software will know who you are.
- Texas cops mistake actual weed for marijuana, spend hours laboring to tag and remove up to 400 plants from a city park.
- Bigfoot: Alive and Living in Greater Minnesota?
- Formerly the home of the US government’s infamous animal disease lab, Plum Island is now up for sale.
Thanks, Red Pill Junkie.
Quote of the Day:
In the month that has passed since the Deepwater Horizon sank, after an explosion that killed 11 people, we have all become aware of the cracked pipes and the valves that failed; of underwater robots and ineffectual oil capturing domes. Much like those struggling seabirds, such things are easier to comprehend than the enormous, opaque reality that exists at the coalface of an undersea environmental catastrophe.
The reality is a grim picture of fish swimming in poison, feeding on organisms fed on poison, while poison gushes from below and is sprayed from above. The Gulf of Mexico is one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. This is not just a sad tale of valves and scenery. This is awful.
