Newsdesk Archive

Britain's new science minister has made it clear that he thinks the country ought to have an astronaut.

The origins of life in our galaxy and the search for alien life outside our solar system will be at the forefront of discussions by experts in Edinburgh.

There was a time when the only interaction the general public had with space exploration was passively via the media. Consequently, many people felt indifferent to space missions as they just didn't connect with them on a personal level.That was pre-1996, and since then we have had the opportunity to actively participate in the exploration of space by sending our name toward the stars.

An unusual combination of economic and environmental forces have created a "perfect storm" that could help geothermal shed its back-seat status to its renewable cousins wind and solar energy, experts said at an international conference Monday.One after another, state and federal regulators, oil company executives, investor-owned utility officials and private developers recited the conditions in play to an overflow crowd of more than 1,000.

The fish were caught on camera

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have discovered a gene mutation linked to the most common cause of blindness in the developed world, holding out the prospect of better treatments and perhaps eventually a cure.British scientists said on Tuesday they had found six variants within the gene called Serping1 that were associated with age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Will NASA's flagship mission to Mars fly next year? The space agency could decide as early as Friday whether to cancel, delay or proceed with plans to launch a nuclear-powered, SUV-size rover to the red planet.

In geology as in cancer research, the silver bullet theory always gets the headlines and nearly always turns out to be wrong.For geologists who study mass extinctions, the silver bullet is a giant asteroid plunging to earth.But an asteroid is the prime suspect only in the most recent of five mass extinctions, said USC earth scientist David Bottjer. The cataclysm 65 million years ago wiped out the dinosaurs.

In the 1960s the space race created a fascination with science and great technological advances. To find alien life we need to take back up that mantle, says astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, and send people further into space.

MASSAC COUNTY - Mary H. Bremer of Metropolis had never visited Kincaid Mounds, but she felt a need to improve and preserve the historic site.Ten years ago, Bremer formed a committee of volunteers to begin restoration work at the site, which is about 15 miles from Metropolis on the Massac-Pope county line.

For the first time, astronomers have found an object on a certain collision course with Earth. Fortunately, it is so small it is not expected to cause any damage, burning up in the atmosphere somewhere above northern Sudan in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. It may, however, produce a brilliant 'shooting star'.The space rock, dubbed 2008 TC3, was first spotted on Monday in a survey by the Mt Lemmon Observatory near Tucson, Arizona.

The Army says it wants to build what could be the world's most powerful solar power plant, as part of a far-reaching effort to cut back on the service's dependence on fossil fuels. The question is whether the Army will actually make good on its green promises.

Greek temples honored specific gods and goddesses, and now new research suggests that even the dirt under such buildings held spiritual significance.The discovery could help explain why writers like Homer and Plato wrote of "divine soil" and soil that can affect a person's soul. It may also explain how the ancients selected locations for their sacred buildings."Temple sites were chosen to honor the personality and aspirations of gods and goddesses, which, in turn, were shaped by the economic basis for their cults," author Gregory Retallack told Discovery News.

BOSTON - Five Massachusetts men became the first divers to reach the wreck of a 19th-century steamship that sank in one of the most destructive storms in New England history, and say they saw an array of artifacts like dishes and mugs but no human remains.The Portland, known as the "Titanic of New England," sank off the Massachusetts coast Nov. 26, 1898, after it sailed from Boston, taking more than 190 people with it.

Researchers in Greece report design of a new material that almost meets the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) 2010 goals for hydrogen storage and could help eliminate a key roadblock to practical hydrogen-powered vehicles. Their study on a way of safely storing hydrogen, an explosive gas, is scheduled for the Oct. 8 issue of ACS' Nano Letters.

India will launch its first lunar mission on October 22 from southern India, a top official from the country's space agency said Monday.The announcement came a week after Asian rival China said it was setting its sights on a manned trip to the moon after completing a historic mission that included the country's first space walk.

The first NASA spacecraft to image and map the dynamic interactions taking place where the hot solar wind slams into the cold expanse of space is ready for launch Oct. 19. The two-year mission will begin from the Kwajalein Atoll, a part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Abraham Lincoln's emotions ran high during portions of the Civil War, suggests a newly documented letter, written by the former U.S. president, in which he harshly chastises a couple for disloyalty, at one point even suggesting their line of reasoning is insane.

David Kreamer's vision is to return old ships to the seas where they belong. But he'd like to see them fulfill a new purpose: turning seawater into drinking water through desalination facilities installed aboard.According to Kreamer, a geoscientist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, hundreds of mothballed military and private ships could be well adapted as mobile desalination plants.

Astronomers peering out into our cosmic backyard have long understood that the Milky Way's galactic neighbors only seem similar on the surface. Now a detailed survey from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the diversity of those galaxies as they evolve over time.

When roboticist David Hanson thinks of the future, he fears that man will accidentally create a super-sentient artificial intelligence that is heartless and clinically insane.So to save the world, he formed Hanson Robotics and built Zeno, a 17-inch robot boy, who smiles, laughs, recognizes your face and remembers your name.

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli scientists said on Monday they have discovered a way to genetically enhance the scent of flowers, a development that could also be used to breed extra-tasty fruits and vegetables."Recent developments will help to create flowers with an increased scent as well as producing new scent components," Alexander Vainstein, the head of a team of scientists at Hebrew University, said in a statement.

Can machines think? That was the question posed by the great mathematician Alan Turing. Half a century later six computers are about to converse with human interrogators in an experiment that will attempt to prove that the answer is yes.

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli archaeologists on Monday announced the discovery of a stone sarcophagus fragment with Hebrew script that was apparently taken from the original burial grounds and used for a Muslim building near Jerusalem.The discovery was made along the West Bank separation barrier north of Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement.

GENEVA - A bad electrical connection likely caused the malfunction that sidelined the world's largest atom smasher days after it was launched with great fanfare, a senior scientist said Monday.The fault was probably a poor soldering job on one of the particle collider's 10,000 connections, said Lyn Evans, project leader of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Nuclear Research Organization.

Picture this: you're sat down for the Football World Cup final, or a long-awaited sequel to the "Sex and the City" movie and you're watching all the action unfold in 3-D on your coffee table.It sounds a lot like a wacky dream, but don't be surprised if within our lifetime you find yourself discarding your plasma and LCD sets in exchange for a holographic 3-D television that can put Cristiano Ronaldo in your living room or bring you face-to-face with life-sized versions of your gaming heroes.

It may have taken Michelangelo four long years to paint his fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but his earliest predecessors spent considerably longer perfecting their own masterpieces.Scientists have discovered that prehistoric cave paintings took up to 20,000 years to complete.Rather than being created in one session, as archaeologists previously thought, many of the works discovered across Europe were produced over hundreds of generations who added to, refreshed and painted over the original pieces of art.

Astronomers have sighted a very dense planet-sized object that orbits its parent star in just four days and six hours.The object, COROT-exo-3b, fits into the category of a failed star known as a brown dwarf, but the team that made the discovery has not ruled out the possibility that it is a planet. Brown dwarfs are failed stars. They burn lithium but are not massive enough to generate the thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen and helium that powers real stars. Planets do none of that.

Armed Predator and Reaper drones have become the primary weapons in the fight against Pakistani militants. But they can be pricey; the Reapers come in at around a hundred million dollars each. Which is why the Air Force is working on a cheaper option: killer zombies.

MOSCOW (AFP) - The orbital path of the International Space Station (ISS) was successfully adjusted Saturday to accommodate the landing of the world's sixth space tourist in eight days time, Interfax reported citing Russian space programme officials."The maneouvre was conducted automatically," said an official from the Russian space control centre (TSOUP).

During the worst apocalypse the planet has ever known, somehow, life found a way to survive. But how? Scientists now think they have an answer: a nurturing refuge in the shallow continental shelf waters of northwestern Pangea.During the end of the Permian era 250 million years ago, global warming ran rampant on Earth, extinguishing 95 percent of life in the ocean, and 70 percent of life on land.

Thanks to a genetic breakthrough, a large portion of Earth's now-inhospitable soil could be used to grow crops -- potentially alleviating one of the most pressing problems facing the planet's rapidly growing population.Scientists at the University of California, Riverside made plants tolerant of poisonous aluminum by tweaking a single gene. This may allow crops to thrive in the 40 to 50 percent of Earth's soils currently rendered toxic by the metal.

The laboratory which invented genetic fingerprinting believes the same technique could be refined to reveal the surnames of men.A study of more than 2,500 men bearing over five hundred different surnames found those with the same family name are highly likely to be genetically linked.

The time capsule labyrinth lies deep below the Normandy city of Caen, which was all but destroyed by British guns around D-Day, June 6th 1944.Largely undisturbed since, the makeshift bunkers still contain numerous reminders of a terrified population whose only thought at the time was survival.

Early awakenings are seldom more pleasant for scientists than when they are brought about by a telephone call from Stockholm.Some of the most eminent names in science will tumble out of bed this week with news that they've been awarded a Nobel Prize, the summit of scientific prestige. And not a bad haul of cash besides at 10 million Swedish Kronor. That's a lot of kronor even for the best-funded researcher, about $1.4 million at today's exchange rates. Plus you get a medal and a diploma, a sweet deal all around.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. researchers have found a way to make efficient silicon-based solar cells that are flexible enough to be rolled around a pencil and transparent enough to be used to tint windows on buildings or cars.The finding, reported on Sunday in the journal Nature Materials, offers a new way to process conventional silicon by slicing the brittle wafers into ultrathin bits and carefully transferring them onto a flexible surface.

The fossilized trail of an aquatic creature suggests that animals walked using legs at least 30 million years earlier than had been thought. The tracks -- two parallel rows of small dots, each about 2 millimeters in diameter -- date back some 570 million years, to the Ediacaran period.The Ediacaran preceded the Cambrian period, the time when most major groups of animals first evolved.Scientists once thought that it was primarily microbes and simple multicellular animals that existed prior to the Cambrian, but that notion is changing, explained Loren Babcock, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University.

Nearly a quarter of the world's land mammal species are at risk of extinction, and many others may vanish before they are even known to science, according to a major annual survey of global wildlife.At least 1,141 of the 5,487 known species of mammal are threatened, with 188 listed in the highest risk "critically endangered" category. One in three marine mammals are also threatened, according to the five year review.

A Mycenaean warrior who died in western Greece over 3,000 years ago was the proud owner of a rare gold-wired sword imported from the Italian peninsula, a senior archaeologist said. "This is a very rare discovery, particularly because of the gold wire wrapped around the hilt," archaeologist Maria Gatsi said. "To my knowledge, no such sword has ever been found in Greece," added Gatsi, head of the regional archaeological department of Aetoloakarnania prefecture.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Bad news for American writers hoping for a Nobel Prize next week: the top member of the award jury believes the United States is too insular and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing.Counters the head of the U.S. National Book Foundation: "Put him in touch with me, and I'll send him a reading list."As the Swedish Academy enters final deliberations for this year's award, permanent secretary Horace Engdahl said it's no coincidence that most winners are European.

Just as the humble torch broke humankind's inability to see through night, new technology based on acoustics and video imaging is giving scientists unprecedented glimpses of a whale's life.Even elusive, reclusive creatures such as beaked whales are giving up data in previously unthinkable detail.El Hierro, the southernmost point of the Canary Islands, is one of the best places ever found for studying the animals. But even so, they come to the surface apparently randomly and for only brief periods of time.

JERUSALEM - Pages from an Israeli astronaut's diary that survived the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia and a 37-mile fall to earth are going on display this weekend for the first time in Jerusalem.The diary belonged to Ilan Ramon, Israel's first astronaut and one of seven crew members killed when Columbia disintegrated upon re-entering the atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003. Part of the restored diary will be displayed at the Israel Museum beginning Sunday.

A new space race is officially under way, and this one should have the sci-fi geeks salivating.The project is a "space elevator," and some experts now believe that the concept is well within the bounds of possibility -- maybe even within our lifetimes.A conference discussing developments in space elevator concepts is being held in Japan in November, and hundreds of engineers and scientists from Asia, Europe and the Americas are working to design the only lift that will take you directly to the one hundred-thousandth floor.

MEXICO CITY -- Thousands of Mexicans marched across their nation's capital Thursday to demand justice for victims of a 1968 massacre of students by government troops -- contemporary Mexico's most traumatic atrocity and one that remains unresolved.Survivors of that bloody night 40 years ago and Mexicans who had not been born then joined forces, chanting "Dos de octubre! No se olvide!" (Oct. 2! Don't forget!) as they converged on the downtown Zocalo plaza.

A new remote sensing technology has peeled away layers of mud and rock near Peru's Cahuachi desert to reveal an ancient adobe pyramid, Italian researchers announced on Friday at a satellite imagery conference in Rome.Nicola Masini and Rosa Lasaponara of Italy's National Research Council (CNR) discovered the pyramid by analyzing images from the satellite Quickbird, which they used to penetrate the Peruvian soil.The researchers investigated a test area along the river Nazca. Covered by plants and grass, it was about a mile away from Cahuachi's archaeological site, which contains the remains of what is believed to be the world's biggest mud city.

To figure out how ancient humans adapted to their environment and constructed civilizations, you need to know the environment in which they lived -- including climate change over thousands of years.

When a treasure hunt comes up empty-handed, the hunters are understandably disappointed. But when astronomers don't find what they are looking for, the defeat can provide as much information as a successful search.

In light of the most recent glitch on the Hubble Space Telescope, a serious equipment failure that means the observatory is unable to send data back to Earth, some are beginning to wonder, is Hubble still worth saving?The answer, according to many scientists, is yes.The failure of a device called the Side A Science Data Formatter, used to send images and other data from Hubble back to Earth, is a problem, but likely one that can be fixed. The glitch was announced Monday by NASA. Engineers now plan to switch the observatory over to a spare "Side B" part currently on board, and perhaps send up a replacement device on the next space shuttle servicing mission, which had been scheduled for October but now has been delayed to early next year.

LONDON (Reuters) - A scientist who helped prove the existence of dark matter and a researcher who used the power of jellyfish to glow green in experiments may win Nobel prizes, Thomson Reuters said on Wednesday.The analysis makes use of the way scientists credit one another for their work to find out who has done the most influential basic research in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine and economics.

GENEVA - CERN, the world's biggest particle physics laboratory and creator of the Worldwide Web, on Friday unveiled a new computer network allowing thousands of scientists around the world to crunch data on its huge experiments.Some 7,000 scientists in 33 countries are now linked through the computing network at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to analyze data from its particle-smashing test probing the nature of matter that began last month.

Although anthropologists and evolutionary biologists are still debating this question, a new study, published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, supports the view that the first egalitarian societies may have appeared tens of thousands of years before the French Revolution, Marx, and Lenin. These societies emerged rapidly through intense power struggle and their origin had dramatic implications for humanity. In many mammals living in groups, including hyenas, meerkats, and dolphins, group members form coalitions and alliances that allow them to increase their dominance status and their access to mates and other resources. Alliances are especially common in great apes, some of whom have very intense social life, where they are constantly engaged in a political maneuvering as vividly described in Frans de Waal's "Chimpanzee politics".

The best view of a newly discovered archaeological site in Kent is from the trains thundering past a few feet away. Passengers heading towards the Ramsgate ferry ports glance incuriously out at what was a jungle of brambles and nettles a few weeks ago, not realising that they are seeing almost 2,000 years of history rewritten.

ANKARA, October 2 (RIA Novosti) - Turkish archaeologists have found artifacts showing that Istanbul, earlier believed to be founded 2,700 years ago by the Greeks as Byzantium, is 8,500 years old, local media said.The Al-Watan newspaper said the excavations in Istanbul, which have gone on for four years, have uncovered four skeletons, as well as wooden and ceramic pieces, shedding new light on the history of the Turkish city.

New methods developed at the University of Arkansas will make decades-old satellite imagery readily available to archeologists and others who need to know what a landscape looked like before the spread of cities and agriculture. For the first time, archeologists can see three-dimensional views of the landscape of the Middle East from 40 years ago.

Reporting in Biology Letters, Steve Brusatte, Professor Michael Benton, and colleagues at the University of Bristol show that dinosaurs did not proliferate immediately after they originated, but that their rise was a slow and complicated event, and driven by two mass extinctions.

Cultural anthropologists study living cultures -- from tribes that live in remote areas to ethnic groups that live in the world's largest cities.Archaeologists study artifacts. By comparing artifacts, as well as architecture, food remains, burial practices and other aspects of daily life that leave traces in the ground, they define "archaeological cultures" based on similarities and differences across space and through time.

New methods developed at the University of Arkansas will make decades-old satellite imagery readily available to archeologists and others who need to know what a landscape looked like before the spread of cities and agriculture. For the first time, archeologists can see three-dimensional views of the landscape of the Middle East from 40 years ago.

Virgin Galactic is to look at carrying scientific instruments on board one of its space tourism vehicles to gather data on climate change.The company will join up with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) for the venture.

GLASGOW, Scotland - NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin defended his agency's determination to establish a lunar colony before embarking on a manned Mars mission Sept. 30, arguing that those who prefer to focus only on Mars are overestimating what is known about the moon and underestimating the difficulties of going to Mars.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Failure to curb global warming would "haunt humanity" forever, Australia's top climate adviser said Tuesday as he urged the country to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60 percent by 2050.Ross Garnaut, presenting his long-awaited report on climate change, said Australia was more vulnerable to rising temperatures than any other developed country because of its hot, dry climate and faced environmental destruction and a major decline in farming in nothing was done.

LONDON (Reuters) - Wind turbines do not drive birds from surrounding areas, British researchers said on Wednesday, in findings which could make it easier to build more wind farms.Conservation groups have raised fears that large birds could get caught in the turbines and that the structures could disturb other species.

Where should scientists hunt for evidence of Martian life? On Earth, at least, they should scout for white-coloured meteorites made of sedimentary rock, a new study suggests.Two rocks dropped from orbit by the European Space Agency have shown that such meteorites can carry and protect traces of life from the heat of atmospheric re-entry and the shock of impact with the surface.Sedimentary rocks and clays have long been thought to be the most promising place to look for life on Mars. They often form in water, from layers of slowly deposited material that can entrap and preserve microorganisms.

With a successful Falcon 1 launch under their belt, SpaceX has set its sights on hauling cargo for NASA with the larger Falcon 9 rocket, transporting crews to the International Space Station in its Dragon capsule, and landing on the Moon with a modified Falcon 1 rocket.The Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to be shipped to Cape Canaveral, Florida late this year to prep for its NASA cargo flights. Falcon 9 has nine Merlin rocket engines to Falcon 1's one, and is capable of taking cargo, and eventually crew, to and from the International Space Station. The maiden voyage of the Falcon 9 is scheduled for the first quarter of 2009 from the larger launch pad SpaceX is currently refurbishing at the Cape.

A plot of land on the campus of Auburn University shows that 110 years of sustainable farming practices can produce similar cotton crops to those using other methods.In 1896, Professor J.F. Duggar at the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama (now Auburn University) started an experiment to test his theories that sustainable cotton production was possible on Alabama soils if growers would use crop rotation and include winter legumes (clovers and/or vetch) to protect the soil from winter erosion.

It's the place we call home, but there is much about planet Earth that remains frustratingly unknown. How did it form from a cloud of dust? How did it manage to nurture life? And just what is going on deep within its core? New Scientist investigates these and other fundamental questions about our beautiful, enigmatic world.

Atypical farm burns vast quantities of fossil fuels to plow fields, sow seeds, reap harvests and truck products many miles to population centers. It spreads heaps of petroleum-based fertilizers, which then run off into streams and watersheds. It also consumes rivers of freshwater and casts pesticides across the countryside. Raising chickens and pigs further insults the earth with unhygienic filth.

Even as its mission winds down, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has spotted snow falling from the Martian sky.Phoenix's camera and meteorological equipment have shown clouds and fog forming during the night as the air gets colder."This is now occurring every night," said Jim Whiteway of York University in Toronto and lead scientist for Phoenix's Meteorological Station.

CHICAGO - Scientists have unearthed the remains of a large meat-eating dinosaur with a breathing apparatus much like a modern bird, fortifying the link between birds and dinosaurs and helping to explain the evolution of birds' unique system of breathing.Pulled from 85-million-year-old rock along the banks of Rio Colorado in Argentina's Mendoza Province, this 33-foot-long, two-legged predator weighed as much as an elephant and likely had feathers, the scientists said.

Sept. 29, 2008 -- Remains of rotten fish entrails have helped establish the precise dating of Pompeii's destruction, according to Italian researchers who have analyzed the town's last batch of garum, a pungent, fish-based seasoning.Frozen in time by the catastrophic eruption that covered Pompeii and nearby towns nearly 2,000 years ago with nine to 20 feet of hot ash and pumice, the desiccated remains were found at the bottom of seven jars.

As a rule, physics rarely makes news, but it did this past week after equipment malfunctions delayed for several months the start up of one of the biggest science experiments in history. We are talking about the Large Hadron Collider, a massive, multibillion dollar project designed to unlock the secrets of the universe.For several years now, thousands of the world's most accomplished scientists have been gathering in Europe, not to explore the heavens but the frontiers of inner space. They are hoping to discover subatomic particles so tiny that they have never been detected. They think these particles will help explain why the universe has organized itself into so many different things - planets and stars, tables and chairs, flesh and blood.

Delegates are discussing the future of lunar and planetary exploration. Esa's director of science, David Southwood, is on the panel; as is one of the agency's chief scientists, Bernard Foing. They are joined by John Connolly, from the US space agency's Solar System science division.

Mojave National Preserve has 1,600 documented archaeological sites, some dating to 10,000 B.C. Many of them have been stripped of their pottery, baskets, stone tools and metates, arrowheads and other artifacts."What surprises me is how much material used to be there," said David Nichols, the preserve's full-time archaeologist, who compared his findings with old field surveys. "At most of these sites, I'd say 70 percent of the visible cultural material is gone."

The faded papers hint at stark details in the lives of Nazi concentration camp inmates.Letters secretly carried by children through the sewers of Warsaw, Poland, during the 1944 uprising. A 1933 card from a Dachau camp commander outlining strict rules for prisoner mail. A 1943 letter from a young man, who spent time in Auschwitz, to his parents.The more than 250 World War II postal documents -- cards, letters and stamps -- have been acquired by an Illinois foundation from a private collector and will soon be on permanent display in a museum in suburban Chicago.

LOS ANGELES - An Internet entrepreneur's latest effort to make space launch more affordable paid off Sunday when his commercial rocket, carrying a dummy payload, was lofted into orbit from the South Pacific.It was the fourth attempt by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to launch its two-stage Falcon 1 rocket into orbit."Fourth time's a charm," said Elon Musk, the multimillionaire who started up SpaceX after making his fortune as the co-founder of PayPal Inc., the electronic payment system.The rocket carried a 364-pound dummy payload designed and built by SpaceX for the launch.

Chinese astronauts returned to earth and emerged triumphant from their capsule Sunday after successfully completing the country's first-ever spacewalk mission.State broadcaster CCTV showed their Shenzhou 7 spaceship landing under clear skies in the grasslands of China's northern Inner Mongolia region at 5:37 p.m. local time. Premier Wen Jiabao applauded at mission control in Beijing."The astronauts feel very good," mission commander Zhai Zhigang said as the vessel floated down to earth on a red-and-white-striped giant parachute.

An ancient belt buckle with a design of a sleeping two-hump camel has been unearthed in a 3,000-year-old cemetery in northern Iran.Archeologists began a detailed study of the ancient buckle and its two-hump camel design soon after its discovery in the country's northern province of Mazandaran.

NEARLY 3,000 YEARS after the death of the Greek poet Homer, his epic tales of the war for Troy and its aftermath remain deeply woven into the fabric of our culture. These stories of pride and rage, massacre and homecoming have been translated and republished over millennia. Even people who have never read a word of "The Iliad" or "The Odyssey" know the phrases they have bequeathed to us - the Trojan horse, the Achilles heel, the face that launched a thousand ships.

Oristano, September 25 - Archaeologists in Sardinia said Thursday they have found the port of the Phoenician city of Tharros, held by some to be the ancient people's most important colony in the Mediterranean after Carthage.Researchers from the University of Cagliari and Sassari found the submerged port in the Mistras Lagoon, several kilometres from the city ruins.Excavations have long been going on at the site of the city itself, on a peninsula overlooking the Bay of Oristano in western Sardinia, but this is the first time its waterfront has been located despite almost two centuries of hunting.

A team of scientists led by renowned French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio recently announced that they have found a bowl, dating to between the late 2nd century B.C. and the early 1st century A.D., that is engraved with what they believe could be the world's first known reference to Christ.If the word "Christ" refers to the Biblical Jesus Christ, as is speculated, then the discovery may provide evidence that Christianity and paganism at times intertwined in the ancient world.

A Chinese astronaut has become the first in his country's history to take a walk in space.In an operation broadcast live on national TV, fighter pilot Zhai Zhigang emerged from the capsule orbiting the Earth to wave a Chinese flag.Mr Zhai, 42, stayed outside the capsule for 15 minutes while his two fellow astronauts stayed in the spacecraft.

The long-dreaded day has finally arrived: Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, revealed the first UK identity card last week.I have to admit that it didn't look particularly threatening. It was just an ordinary piece of plastic, the size of a credit card, with the holder's name, date of birth, immigration status, and a chip that holds fingerprints and a digital facial image.As civil libertarians like to remind us, one of Hitler's first acts as chancellor was to impose compulsory ID cards on every German citizen. If the smiling Ms Smith's ID card was the beginning of the totalitarian state in Britain, it came not with a bang but a simper.

Archeological studies in the city of Bam have led to the discovery of a metal production center in Iran's southeastern Kerman Province.Excavations in the Darestan region, located some 22 kilometers to the east of the city of Bam showed that the area was once a rich metal production center.

For several decades, archaeologists in Greece have been painstakingly attempting to reconstruct wall paintings that hold valuable clues to the ancient culture of Thera, an island civilization that was buried under volcanic ash more than 3,500 years ago.

Scientists have found a new huge and well-preserved fossil of a goose and duck relative that swam around what is now England 50 million years ago flashing sharp, toothy smiles.The skull, discovered on the Isle of Sheppey off the southeast coast of England in the Thames Estuary, belonged to a huge ancient bird in the extinct genus Dasornis, which had a whopping 16-foot wingspan.

A novel experiment has dealt a setback to a theory that life on Earth was kickstarted by bacteria that hitched a ride on space rocks.The "pan-spermia" hypothesis is that cells were transported to the infant Earth on rocks that were bumped off other planets or even came from another star system.The theory gained a boost in 1996 when a group of US scientists proposed that a famous meteorite found in Antarctica may have held traces of fossilised bacteria that once lived on Mars.

Jan Zalasiewicz, a lecturer in geology at the University of Leicester, has published a new study looking at the lasting impression made by mankind -100 million years hence. He takes the perspective of alien explorers arriving on earth - their geologists study the layers of rock, using the many clues to piece together its history over several billion years.

FUTURE colonisers of Mars needn't worry about lugging materials from Earth to build their bases - the most widely used building material on Earth, steel, could be manufactured on the Red Planet.The rover Opportunity has found elemental iron - a key ingredient of steel - peppered across the Martian surface as a result of collisions with iron-rich meteorites. The dry conditions and lack of atmospheric oxygen mean that the stuff has not rusted, says Geoffrey Landis of NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

An international team of researchers has identified a novel place to look for life: on planets that orbit the Sun's stellar siblings.Most of the stars in the Milky Way got their start in clouds of dust and gas that eventually formed clusters of stars. If our Sun started life in such a scenario, the cluster would most likely have drifted apart after a few hundred million of years.But that might have been enough time for life to travel between the rocky debris surrounding each nascent star, according to a study led by astronomer Mauri Valtonen at the Turku University in Finland.

The Army has given a team of University of California researchers a $4 million grant to study the foundations of "synthetic telepathy." But unlike old-school mind-melds, this seemingly psychic communication would be computer-mediated. The University of California, Irvine explains:The brain-computer interface would use a noninvasive brain imaging technology like electroencephalography to let people communicate thoughts to each other. For example, a soldier would "think" a message to be transmitted and a computer-based speech recognition system would decode the EEG signals. The decoded thoughts, in essence translated brain waves, are transmitted using a system that points in the direction of the intended target.

HAIFA, Israel (Reuters) - paralyzed for the past 20 years, former Israeli paratrooper Radi Kaiof now walks down the street with a dim mechanical hum.That is the sound of an electronic exoskeleton moving the 41-year-old's legs and propelling him forward -- with a proud expression on his face -- as passersby stare in surprise.

A study of Google Earth satellite images has revealed that herds of cattle tend to face in the north-south direction of Earth's magnetic lines.Staring at cows may not equal the thrill of spotting celebrities in public or rubbernecking at car accidents, but the researchers found nonetheless that our bovine friends display this strange sixth sense for direction.

As the world's scientists try to unzip mysteries about the universe, Japan is set to open its largest atomic science park to study the world at its smallest level.The Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC Center) -- a 150 billion yen (1.36 billion dollar) project almost entirely funded by the government -- will open in December as one of the world's three hubs of atomic science.The gigantic complex in the nuclear research hub in Tokai, 100 kilometres (60 miles) northeast of Tokyo, is designed to help researchers study any object on Earth beneath the level of the atom.

We are sorry to announce that due to staff absence over the next week (until 16th November), newsdesk updates could be limited. Apologies. In the meantime, please sign up to the mailing list to receive our weekly news updates.-GrahamHancock.com staff

With the high cost of gasoline and diesel fuel impacting costs for automobiles, trucks, buses and the overall economy, a Temple University physics professor has developed a simple device which could dramatically improve fuel efficiency as much as 20 percent.

So much attention has been paid to the similarities and differences between Earth and Mars that we often look to the ancient red planet for signposts in our own planet's future. A U of T physicist, whose work is published this week in the prestigious international journal Science, may have explained some key differences in the magnetic fields of the two planets.

While almost everybody knows how Einstein revolutionized physics with his theories of relativity, many people may not know that the great scientist had a domestic side, too. Well, sort of - in 1930, Einstein and his former student Leo Szilard designed a refrigerator that required no electricity and had no moving parts. However, as refrigerator technology became more efficient, Einstein's design was nearly forgotten.

Solutions to environmental problems ranging from global warming to peak oil--and how the environment is playing a role in this year's elections.

Greg Wyler worked in Rwanda from 2004 to 2006, trying to stitch together a modern Internet infrastructure for the African country, finally putting itself back together after a devastating civil war.But no matter how hard he tried, Mr. Wyler realized there was a problem beyond his control: At some point, he had to connect his in-country network to the outside world. Satellite links were far too expensive and designed for one-way television broadcasting, not two-way Web traffic. And land lines were far, far away.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Mankind's very survival depends on the future exploration of space, said NASA chiMichael Griffin in an interview with AFP marking the 50th anniversary of the US space agency.This journey, said the veteran physicist and aerospace engineer, is full of unknowns and has only just begun."Does the survival of human kind depend upon it? I think so," he said.Griffin compared the first walk on the Moon with Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas."He travelled for months and spent a few weeks in the Americas and returned home. He could hardly have said to have explored the New World.

In 50 years, NASA has earned itself an unparalleled reputation as an engineering, technological and scientific pioneer by pushing science to the limit."Because our mission is flight in all its forms, in space and in the air, we think and work in our engineering and our science at the extremes -- and that's where the greatest discoveries are made," NASA administrator Michael Griffin said in a speech last year.