It sure is nice to be in such fine company here. Thanks, guys.
- Ibex is first animal to be resurrected from extinction by cloning frozen tissue.
- Silbury Hill mystery soon to be solved.
- How the ancient Greeks chose temple locations.
- Master criminals are plundering the world’s priceless manuscripts.
- Egypt finds second pier used by ancient Egyptians to access the Karnak temple complex.
- The British Museum’s new display of ancient Egyptian wall paintings within an ancient burial complex has Lara Croft elements. More on the new Egyptian gallery.
- Digs may help decide if ‘King Solomon’s mines’ was a misnomer.
- Otzi the Iceman was attacked twice in his final days.
- Deep-sea explorers find renowned British man-of-war which sank in the English Channel 264 years ago.
- A chemical preservative used 300 years ago to deter woodworms is the secret of Stradivarius violins’ pristine tonal quality — and their price today of more than £3.5million each.
- Divers are plundering Greece’s sunken treasure troves.
- Google maps seafloor mysteries.
- Apocalypse in 2012? Mayan date spawns theories, books, and a film scheduled for release this fall.
- UK poll reveals one in three believe God created the world within the past 10,000 years, and more than half doubt Darwin’s theory of evolution.
- Planetary hot potato is a world too hot to handle.
- From 400 miles up, satellite images transform Earth into abstract art. (30 images on one page, so may be slow to load; but if an image strikes your fancy, you can click for the wallpaper size.)
- Turritopsis nutricula, the world’s only known immortal creature, is silently invading oceans, swarm by swarm.
- Pole-to-pole flight finds CO2 piling up over Arctic.
- 18-million-year-old reptile fossil rekindles debate about whether New Zealand was underwater for millions of years.
- Japanese discover that their sewage yields more gold than world’s top mines.
- Scientists write sub-atomic-scale letters 1/3 of a billionth of a meter in size. Not sure what font size that translates to, but at this scale, the entire contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica will fit on the head of a pin.
- Physicists design fusion-fission hybrid which is to burn nuclear waste as fuel.
- UK public learns nuclear power station near London has been leaking radioactive material for 14 years.
- Cows with names produce more milk.
- Filleting with a flipper, dolphins are calamari chefs of the deep.
- Stem cells used to reverse multiple sclerosis.
- US researchers tested 20 typical food products containing high-fuctose corn syrup, and found traces of mercury in 9.
- Brighter, greener, cheaper, and lasting 60 years, new LEDs may end the battle of the bulbs. Alas, tihz_ho’s comment offers an excellent explanation of why this article is rubbish.
- US retrieves MP3 player containing sensitive military files from NZ man. In William Gibson’s novel Spook Country (Amazon US & UK) old spies trade secrets using iPods.
- Rubik’s revenge: 21st century version of iconic puzzle to be launched this week.
- Sorry, Tom, the eye-patch just isn’t working for us, so we’re turning to that other famous Scientology promoter — Bart Simpson. Err, make that Nancy Cartwright, using her Bart Simpson voice for robo-calls.
- Fraudulent 911 callers are creating havoc.
- Pfft – what a surprise: Facebook sells out users.
- As details emerge, ‘heartwarming tale’ of US octuplets turns out to be seedy story of self-indulgence.
- Our Alien Origins: 21 panspermia tales in sci-fi.
- Richard Branson offers Hudson river miracle pilot ‘double the pay’ to defect to Virgin… and the chance to visit space.
- Ashes of Majel and Gene Roddenberry to be launched into deep space in 2012. Follow the link to submit messages that will accompany them.
Thanks to one and all for a big bunch o’ news — passed on by Turner Young.
Quote of the Day:
There’s going to be a whole generation of people who, when they think of the Maya, think of 2012, and to me that’s just criminal. There is no serious scholar who puts any stock in the idea that the Maya said anything meaningful about 2012. The whole year leading up to it is going to be just crazy, I’m sorry to say.
David Stuart, director, Mesoamerica Center, University of Texas at Austin.
