Newsdesk Archive

The fossil of a prehistoric sea monster that lived more than 144 million years ago has been found in a river on the edge of west Belfast. Colin Glen could become known as Northern Ireland's Jurassic Park after the backbone of a plesiosaur was uncovered. Such a find was a chance in a million said Paul Bennett, the educational ranger at the park. "The 7cm section of vertebrae was found at Colin River. It would have belonged to a creature know as a 'sea dragon' which was here in the Jurassic period when Ireland would have been down where the Sudan is and covered by seas," Mr Bennett said.The plesiosaur had a round short body, four flippers, a short tail and a very long neck and small head.

Before white settlers arrived, Australia's indigenous peoples lived in houses and villages, and used surprisingly sophisticated architecture and design methods to build their shelters, new research has found.Dwellings were constructed in various styles, depending on the climate. Most common were dome-like structures made of cane reeds with roofs thatched with palm leaves.Some of the houses were interconnected, allowing native people to interact during long periods spent indoors during the wet season.The findings, by the anthropologist and architect Dr Paul Memmot, of the University of Queensland, discredits a commonly held view in Australia that Aborigines were completely nomadic before the arrival of Europeans 200 years ago.

If the Earth is heading for a new ice age, Australia may not be as affected as countries in the Northern Hemisphere, according to new research from The Australian National University published in Science.Dr Timothy Barrows, a palaeoclimatologist at the ANU Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, says that a freak cooling at the end of the last ice age 12,900 years ago, was a phenomenon felt only in the north, not globally as previously thought.This rapid cooling, which brought on an ice age for 1400 years, is known as the Younger Dryas event.

A TAPESTRY of the Battle of Culloden has revealed a new mystery about the last battle fought on British soil.The historic work, which shows events at the 1746 conflict from the point of view of goveAmong the red-coated troops charging the Jacobite Army and a tartan-clad Bonnie Prince Charlie is a black figure who may have played a part in the battle.rnment troops, was bought at auction by the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) for about £4,000. It will play a central role in the new £10 million visitor centre at the battlefield near Inverness.

NAPLES (Reuters) - Want to walk in the footsteps of the early humans? Tourists in Italy can do almost just that starting this weekend, after footpaths believed to have been left up to 385,000 years ago were opened to the public. The fossilized footprints, which Italian scientists say are among the oldest anywhere, extend along six trails at the edge of the Roccamonfina volcano in southern Italy.There is also a handprint, made when one of the primitive humans slipped on the soft earth.The fossilized footpaths were known locally as the "Devil's Trails" for centuries because they were thought to be supernatural. Scientists first identified them properly in 2003, and had kept the area off-limits to the public until Saturday

After seven hot summers of digging, an Italian archaeological team believe they have discovered one of the most important sites of the ancient world.Fanum Voltumnae, a shrine, marketplace and Etruscan political centre, was situated in the upper part of the Tiber river valley.It lies at the foot of a huge outcrop of rock, upon which is perched the mediaeval city of Orvieto.A walled sanctuary area, 5m-wide (16ft) Etruscan roads, an altar, and the foundations of many Roman buildings that have laid buried for two millennia have been discovered.

A previously unknown indigenous group living in isolation has been found deep in Peru's Amazon jungle, a team of ecologists has said.The ecologists spotted the 21 Indians near the Brazilian border as they flew overhead looking for illegal loggers.Contact with outsiders can be fatal for isolated tribes people who have no immunity to many diseases.Some groups have fled deep into the jungle to avoid contact with loggers and oil and gas prospectors.

Jonathan Black will be guest Author Of the Month during November 2007 here at GHMB. An article by Jonathan which goes hand in hand with his new book can be found at Graham's Forum:The Secret History of the World ... by Jonathan Black

ROME (AFP) - Nearly 30 Italian groups representing farmers, consumers and environmentalists on Wednesday launched a nationwide signature campaign against genetically modified food. "The unprecedented initiative for a popular debate aims to collect at least three million signatures," said spokesman Mario Capanna, once the leader of Italian student protests in 1968 and today the head of the Foundation for Genetic Rights.The 29 associations claiming to represent some 11 million people have formed a coalition, Italy/Europe Free of GMO (genetically modified organisms), and plan to hold more than 1,600 events between now and November 15 to get their message across."Italy is known around the world for the quality of its natural food products," Capanna said. "It has a vast heritage of biological diversity that should not be threatened by GMO agriculture."

Scientists have attempted to disprove Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity for the better part of a century. After testing and confirming Einstein's prediction in 2002 that gravity moves at the speed of light, a professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia has spent the past five years defending the result, as well as his own innovative experimental techniques for measuring the speed of propagation of the tiny ripples of space-time known as gravitational waves.Sergei Kopeikin, associate professor of physics and astronomy in the College of Arts and Science, believes that his latest article, "Gravimagnetism, causality, and aberration of gravity in the gravitational light-ray deflection experiments" published along with Edward Fomalont from the National Radio Astronomical Observatory, arrives at a consensus in the continuing debate that has divided the scientific community.An experiment conducted by Fomalont and Kopeikin five years ago found that the gravity force of Jupiter and light travel at the same speed, which validates Einstein's suggestion that gravity and electromagnetic field properties, are governed by the same principle of special relativity with a single fundamental speed. In observing the gravitational deflection of light caused by motion of Jupiter in space, Kopeikin concluded that mass currents cause non-stationary gravimagnetic fields to form in accordance with Einstein's point of view. The research paper that discusses the gravimagnetic field appears in the October edition of Journal of General Relativity and Gravitation.

MOSCOW - Russian and U.S. space chiefs signed agreements Wednesday to cooperate on unmanned missions that would search for potential water deposits beneath the surface of the moon and Mars. The agreements signed by NASA Administrator Michael Griffin and Russian Space Agency chief Anatoly Perminov deal with putting Russian instruments on board NASA probes that would be sent to the moon and Mars."These two projects demonstrate the commitment by our countries to continue to look for opportunities where it's mutually beneficial to cooperate," Griffin said. "When these opportunities happen it's our intent to work together to bring them to fruition."

NOAH'S ARK. The Ark of the Covenant. The Garden of Eden. Sodom and Gomorrah. The Exodus. The Lost Tomb of Jesus. All have been "found" in the last 10 years, including one within the past six months. The discoverers: a former SWAT team member; an investigator of ghosts, telepathy, and parapsychology; a filmmaker who calls himself "The Naked Archeologist"; and others, none of whom has any professional training in archeology.We are living in a time of exciting discoveries in biblical archeology. We are also living in a time of widespread biblical fraud, dubious science, and crackpot theorizing. Some of the highest-profile discoveries of the past several years are shadowed by accusations of forgery, such as the James Ossuary, which may or may not be the burial box of Jesus' brother, as well as other supposed Bible-era findings such as the Jehoash Tablet and a small ivory pomegranate said to be from the time of Solomon. Every year "scientific" expeditions embark to look for Noah's Ark, raising untold amounts of money from gullible believers who eagerly listen to tales spun by sincere amateurs or rapacious con men; it is not always easy to tell the two apart.

Hair samples from naturally preserved child mummies discovered at the world's highest archaeological site in the Andes have provided a startling insight into the lives of the children chosen for sacrifice. Researchers funded by the Wellcome Trust used DNA and stable isotope analysis to show how children as young as 6-years old were "fattened up" and taken on a pilgrimage to their death.A team of scientists led by Dr Andrew Wilson at the University of Bradford analysed hair samples taken from the heads and from small accompanying bags of four mummies found in the Andes. These included the 15-year old "Llullaillaco Maiden" and the 7-year old "Llullaillaco Boy" whose frozen remains were found in 1999 at a shrine 25m from the summit of Mount Llullaillaco, a 6,739m volcano on the border of Argentina and Chile. The Maiden, described as a "perfect mummy" went on display for the first time last month in Salta, northwest Argentina.

A NASA spacecraft dispatched to keep an eye on the wicked ways of the sun caught a solar storm chopping off a comet's tail.A mighty burst of electrically charged particles blasting from the sun's surface during an April storm squashed the 8-million mile plasma tail of Encke's comet, which caused the comet's own magnetic field lines to touch. The tail was severed in the rebound."It was pretty amazing," Angelos Vourlidas, a solar physicist with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C., told Discovery News.

The Town Hall in Chiclana could decide to demolish the El Castillo state school if it proves necessary to archaeological excavations taking place on the site, where artefacts going back to Phoenician times have been discovered, possibly evidence of the first Phoenician settlement on the Iberian peninsula.Other finds on the site date from mediaeval times and from the Roman Empire in the 1st century AD.

PARIS (AFP) - European Neanderthals, modern man's ill-fated cousins who died out mysteriously some 28,000 years ago, migrated much further east than previously thought, according to a study released Sunday. Remains from the slope-browed hominid have previously been found over an area stretching from Spain to Uzbekistan, but the new study extends the eastern boundary of their wanderings another 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles) deep into southern Siberia, just above the western tip of what is today China.The fossils underpinning the study are not new, but the techniques used to analyse them are.

The most accurate catalogue of the distances to more than 100,000 stars has just been released. Cambridge astronomer Dr Floor van Leeuwen has spent the past 10 years checking and recalculating data gathered by the Hipparcos satellite. It collected the information in the 1990s, but questions were raised about apparent errors in the results. Dr van Leeuwen, who saw a flaw in the way Hipparcos worked, has now corrected the star distances. "It's been necessary to get more information out of the data than was published before," he told the BBC.

Parts of a temple dating to the reign of pharaoh Ramses II have been discovered inside a mosque in Luxor, Egypt, officials report.Experts restoring the historic mosque uncovered sections of columns, capitals, and elaborately inscribed reliefs from one of the ancient temple's courtyards built around 1250 B.C.The previously concealed architectural elements reveal well-preserved hieroglyphics and unique scenes depicting the powerful pharaoh. The discovery is likely to touch a nerve among religious leaders, because the newly exposed reliefs contain representations of humans and animals, which are forbidden inside mosques, the experts said.

BRONZE Age pits have been unearthed that shed fresh light on life on the banks of the Forth 4000 years ago. Archaeologists carrying out a routine inspection found pottery and eight small pits in a routine inspection of a site in South Queensferry.Melanie Johnson, project manager for archaeologists CFA, said the discovery off Echline Avenue came out of the blue.She said: "It didn't look too promising when we started out on this site. But we then found pottery which we could tell was around 4000 years old buried in small pits which were around half a metre deep."It was a surprise when we found this, and it helps fill in a lot of gaps and gives us an idea of what life was like here 4000 years ago."

Like hunter-gatherers in the jungle, modern humans are still experts at spotting predators and prey, despite the developed world's safe suburbs and indoor lifestyle, a new study suggests. The research, published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals that humans today are hard-wired to pay attention to other people and animals much more so than non-living things, even if inanimate objects are the primary hazards for modern, urbanized folks. The researchers say the finding supports the idea that natural selection molded mechanisms into our ancestors' brains that were specialized for paying attention to humans and other animals. These adaptive traits were then passed on to us.

Readers may like to start putting questions to Lloyd Pye who will join us this October on the Author of the Month message board to discuss his book, 'The Star Child Skull' An accompanying article The Starchild is out of this World can be read at our Forum.

Birds can travel the world without any of the gizmos that humans depend on, and a new study suggests how: Our feathered friends might "see" Earth's magnetic field.While other mechanisms are thought to help birds navigate, including magnetically sensitive cells within their beaks, their brain regions responsible for vision are in full gear during magnetic navigation, researchers said. "If you look into the brain of a bird during magnetic compass orientation, only the visual system is highly active," said study co-author Henrik Mouritsen, a biologist at the University of Oldenburg in Germany, noting that most migratory birds do so at night. "Other regions of the brain are not, so birds could use vision to 'see' Earth's magnetism and orient themselves." Mouritsen and his colleagues' findings are detailed online in a recent issue of the journal PLoS ONE.

The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is like the solar system's cluttered old attic. The dusty, forgotten objects there are relics from a time long ago, each asteroid with its own story to tell.These are stories planetary scientists are eager to hear. Much is still unknown about our solar system's beginnings. We learn the basic story in school: A vast disc of gas and dust around the sun slowly gathered into larger and larger chunks, eventually forming the planets we know today. But how exactly did this happen, and why did it produce the kinds of worlds that it did, including a certain blue planet well-suited for life?To answer these questions, today (Sept. 27th) NASA launched a robotic probe named Dawn. Its mission: Fly to two giant asteroids, Ceres and Vesta, and explore them up close for the first time. Shortly after launch, Dawn signaled ground control to say that all is well: the spacecraft is oriented properly and receiving power from its massive solar arrays. "Dawn has risen, and the spacecraft is healthy," says the mission's project manager Keyur Patel of JPL.

A 1297 copy of Britain's Magna Carta, the first document to limit the monarchy and enshrine the rights of the people, is to be auctioned through Sotheby's in New York in December.The Perot Foundation, created by billionaire former U.S. presidential candidate Ross Perot to make philanthropic grants, is expected to earn up to $30 million US through sale of the document.The first Magna Carta, or Great Charter, was signed by King John in England in 1215. A group of rebellious barons forced him to sign the document, in which he agreed to renounce certain rights and accept that the king's will could be bound by the law.

Two of Britain's leading environmental thinkers say it is time to develop a quick technical fix for climate change.Writing in the journal Nature, Science Museum head Chris Rapley and Gaia theorist James Lovelock suggest looking at boosting ocean take-up of CO2.Their idea, already being investigated by a US firm, involves huge flotillas of vertical pipes in the tropical seas.The two scientists say they doubt that existing plans for curbing carbon emissions can work quickly enough.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- NASA took aim at the heart of the asteroid belt Thursday, launching a spacecraft on a nearly decade-long journey that will include two never-before-attempted close encounters.The scientific probe Dawn is on a 3 billion-mile course that will have it meeting up with an asteroid named Vesta in 2011 and a dwarf planet called Ceres in 2015.They are the biggest members of the crowded asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and scientists hope that by studying them up close, some of the secrets of the early solar system will be revealed.

Ice age Aboriginal Australians protected themselves from bitterly cold winds by flocking to caves in one of the most inhospitable parts of the continent, says an archaeologist. Ian Gilligan, a postgraduate researcher from the Australian National University, lays out his argument in the current issue of the journal Antiquity.Ice age Aboriginal Australians protected themselves from bitterly cold winds by flocking to caves in one of the most inhospitable parts of the continent, says an archaeologist.Ian Gilligan, a postgraduate researcher from the Australian National University, lays out his argument in the current issue of the journal Antiquity.Gilligan says parts of the island state of Tasmania are buffeted by high-speed winds, including the southwest quarter."It's more exposed to the prevailing southwesterly, the coldest wind," says Gilligan. "It's higher up, it's colder, it's further south."But Aboriginal people seem to have gone there during the last ice age to escape the worst of the cold."The only real evidence we have for Tasmanian Aboriginal people during the ice age is in that very coldest, windiest southwest corner and that's a paradox," he says.

Britain is preparing territorial claims on tens of thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean floor around the Falklands, Ascension Island and Rockall in the hope of annexing potentially lucrative gas, mineral and oil fields, the Guardian has learned.The UK claims, to be lodged at the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, exploit a novel legal approach that is transforming the international politics of underwater prospecting.Britain is accelerating its process of submitting applications to the UN - which is fraught with diplomatic sensitivities, not least with Argentina - before an international deadline for registering interests.Relying on detailed geological and geophysical surveys by scientists and hydrographers, any state can delineate a new "continental shelf outer limit" that can extend up to 350 miles from its shoreline. Data has been collected for most of Britain's submissions and Chris Carleton, head of the law of the sea division at the UK Hydrographic Office and an international expert on the process, said preliminary talks on Rockall are being held in Reykjavik, Iceland, next week.Mr Carleton believes the Falklands claim has the most potential for acrimonious political fallout. Britain and Argentina fought over the islands 25 years ago, and the value of the oil under the sea in the region is understood to be immense: seismic tests suggest there could be up to 60m barrels under the ocean floor.

MONTERREY, Mexico, Sept 24 (Reuters Life!) - Ancient Mexicans and Egyptians who never met and lived centuries and thousands of miles apart both worshiped feathered-serpent deities, built pyramids and developed a 365-day calendar, a new exhibition shows.Billed as the world's largest temporary archeological showcase, Mexican archeologists have brought treasures from ancient Egypt to display alongside the great indigenous civilizations of Mexico for the first time.The exhibition, which boasts a five-tonne, 3,000-year-old sculpture of Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II and stone carvings from Mexican pyramid Chichen Itza, aims to show many of the similarities of two complex worlds both conquered by Europeans in invasions 1,500 years apart."There are huge cultural parallels between ancient Egypt and Mexico in religion, astronomy, architecture and the arts. They deserve to be appreciated together," said exhibition organizer Gina Ulloa, who spent almost three years preparing the 35,520 square-feet (3,300 meter-square) display.The exhibition, which opened at the weekend in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, shows how Mexican civilizations worshiped the feathered snake god Quetzalcoatl from about 1,200 BC to 1521, when the Spanish conquered the Aztecs.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Archaeologists have found an ancient quarry where King Herod's workers may have chiselled the giant stones used to rebuild the second Jewish temple in Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago. The Israel Antiquities Authority said on Sunday experts believe stones as long as 8 meters (24 feet) were extracted from the quarry and then dragged by oxen to building sites in Jerusalem for major projects such as the temple."This construction most likely included the walls of the Temple Mount and other monumental buildings," the authority said in a statement.Some of the blocks discovered at the site resemble stones used in the lower parts of the Temple Mount compound, the site of two biblical Jewish temples, the statement said.

NASA's next-generation lunar explorers may live in mobile habitats and drive mini-RVs that can tool around for a week or more at a time.The rovers would be about the same size as the electric dune buggies driven during the last three Apollo moon landings in 1971 and 1972. But the new vehicles would be enclosed and pressurized so that astronauts would be better protected from radiation, extreme temperatures and other hazards.They also would be more comfortably dressed in regular clothes, not bulky spacesuits like the Apollo astronauts had to wear when driving their rovers. For off-vehicle excursions, the new cars would have spacesuits fully assembled and attached to the rover so that astronauts could slip into them by opening a hatch and climbing inside.

Arctic sea ice shrank to the smallest area on record this year, US scientists have confirmed.The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said the minimum extent of 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles) was reached on 16 September.The figure shatters all previous satellite surveys, including the previous record low of 5.32 million sq km measured in 2005.

The UK has built up a stockpile of 100 tonnes of plutonium - enough to make 17,000 nuclear bombs, according to the country's national academy of science. The Royal Society says the plutonium mainly comes from reprocessed spent uranium fuel from nuclear power plants.The society warns that it could be made into "a crude nuclear bomb" by a terror group, and is calling for a strategy for its long-term use or disposal. The government said stocks were protected against the risk of attack. The society says it first highlighted the problem nine years ago.

The extensive forests of South America's Amazon are turning out to be tougher than expected when it comes to withstanding the onslaughts of a changing climate. A team of U.S. and Brazilian scientists using the insightful eyes of two NASA satellites has shown that one of the worst droughts in decades could not stop the undisturbed regions of the Amazon forest from "greening up." The Amazon drought of 2005 reached its peak just as the region's annual dry season was beginning, from July through September. Although the double whammy of the parched conditions might be expected to slow the growth of the forest's leafy canopy, in much of the drought-stricken areas the canopy became significantly greener -- an indication of increased photosynthetic activity.

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has discovered entrances to seven possible caves on the slopes of a Martian volcano. The find is fueling interest in potential underground habitats and sparking searches for caverns elsewhere on the Red Planet.

Irish UFOs blast into the light after 37 years in twilight zone .....If the Americans can have The X Files, then so can we. A dossier on unidentified flying objects (UFOs), kept by the Irish Defence Forces for 37 years, has finally emerged.But anyone hoping to confirm the existence of little green men will be disappointed. The best the file comes up with are flying saucers, objects shaped like fried eggs and flashing coloured lights - some of the sightings logged in documents dating back to 1947.The file - released to the Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act - includes press cuttings about reported sightings of UFOs, along with classified memos and other correspondence.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin says he believes China will return to the moon with human explorers before the U.S. accomplishes that goal with its Constellation Program, as the economic competition fueled by spaceflight activities intensifies.Delivering the first of a planned series of lectures commemorating NASA's 50th anniversary, Griffin told a Washington audience Sept. 17 that there is a lack of public appreciation in the U.S. for the spacefaring skills of Russia, China, and India, as well as of NASA's traditional spaceflight partners in Europe and Japan."It lacks only the decision to do it for those nations or societies to do exciting and prominent things," Griffin said. "I personally believe that China will be back on the moon before we are."Elaborating on his remarks via e-mail later, Griffin said he was specifically referring to a human return to the moon by China, without development of a new Saturn V-class launch vehicle like the Ares V planned under NASA's space exploration vision.

Japan's imperial household agency is to open the doors to some of the country's mysterious imperial tombs early next year after decades of pressure from archaeologists, in a move expected to anger ultra-conservatives.Experts have long been denied access to the hundreds of imperial mausoleums and tombs, which the agency regards as not so much cultural relics as sacred religious sites.Some historians, however, put the agency's reticence down to fears that close inspection of the burial mounds could unearth evidence that shatters commonly accepted theories about the origins of the Japanese imperial family.

AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL dig to try to uncover the secret surrounding the "Stonehenge of the North" got under way in Cadeby this week.Entitled the "Cadeby Henge Project", history enthusiasts hope that the excavation will uncover evidence of an ancient stone circle that dates back to 2000 BC.It is thought there could be as many as 20 stones, ranging from 15 to 20ft high, buried just underneath the surface.When the stone circle was visible it would have looked something similar to Stonehenge, and like the famous monument it is believed to have been used as a site for religious worship.It is said to have existed in Bronze Age times and was sited near the former Cadeby Colliery site.

LUCKNOW: Archaeologists have discovered a copper hoard believed to be nearly 4,000-years-old near a village in Uttar Pradesh's Auraiya district, raising hopes of its radiocarbon dating and understanding the culture and chronology of that period. "The hoard, weighing about 25 kilograms and consisting of various types of artifacts, including a barbed spearhead, an anthropomorphic figure, flat shouldered axes, chisels and rings, was discovered quite accidentally," director, UP Directorate of Archeology, Rakesh Tewari, told the media.He said the hoard, which was accidentally discovered by a villager in the fields on August 31 last, was hidden in a house in Udaipurwa village for melting.The local police, however, came to know of the discovery and raided the house and recovered the hoard, Tewari said.

Careful study of the "Hobbit" fossil's wrist bones supports the idea that the creature was a distinct species and not a diseased modern human, it is claimed. Matthew Tocheri and colleagues tell Science magazine that the bones look nothing like those of Homo sapiens; they look ape-like.The announcement in 2004 detailing the discovery of Homo floresiensis caused a sensation. Some researchers, though, have doubted the interpretation of the find.

A team of scientists working in Georgia has unearthed the remains of four human-like creatures dating to 1.8 million years ago.In the journal Nature, the researchers outline details of the partial skeletons uncovered in a Medieval town.The bones reveal a mixture of primitive and advanced features, team leader David Lordkipanidze explained.These early hominids may have been among the first to leave Africa to colonise the rest of the world.

PLANETQUEST) -- A NASA-funded astronomer has discovered a world where the sun sets over the horizon, followed by a second sun and then a third. The new planet, called HD 188753 Ab, is the first known to reside in a classic triple-star system. "The sky view from this planet would be spectacular, with an occasional triple sunset," said Dr. Maciej Konacki of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., who found the planet using the Keck I telescope atop Mauna Kea mountain in Hawaii. "Before now, we had no clues about whether planets could form in such gravitationally complex systems." The finding, reported in this week's issue of Nature, suggests that planets are more robust than previously believed.

The south pole isn't where you'd ordinarily think of going for your summer holidays, but that is because you are from Earth, not Neptune.Neptunians looking to catch a little heat are all heading south, where according to new images from the European Southern Observatory, temperatures are anything up to 10 degrees higher than anywhere else on the planet.This makes sense when you consider that Neptune's southern hemisphere is currently basking in sunshine, as it has been for the last 40 years. A Neptunian year lasts roughly 165 Earth years, so summer is distinctly longer.Holidaymakers venturing to Neptune's south pole will also be able to bask in balmy breezes filled with gaseous methane. Elsewhere on the planet the organic molecule is frozen out.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese heritage officials are scrambling to save thousands of cultural relics dating back 3,000 years and threatened by a $25 billion project to pump water from the country's southern rivers to its arid north.The 1,300-km (800-mile) central route of the south-to-north water transfer project, scheduled to pump water from a major tributary of the Yangtze river to Beijing by 2010, cuts across the Yellow river plain -- the so-called "cradle of Chinese civilisation" dotted with ancient sites.With only three years left to complete the project, heritage workers had finished less than a third of their task, the Beijing News said."Looking at it from our current excavations, whether in terms of quantity or quality, the relics along the (route) are far, far more valuable than those along the Three Gorges dam," Monday's Beijing News quoted Li Taoyuan, a senior archaeologist from central Hebei province, as saying.

A 10-year-old boy has recovered from a life-threatening illness, only to emerge with a new accent.William McCartney-Moore of York was struck down with viral meningitis last March and needed brain surgery after doctors found he had a rare strain called empyaema. "He lost everything," said his mother, Ruth. "He couldn't read or write, he couldn't recognise things, he had no recollection of places he'd been to and things he'd done and he'd lost all his social skills. He went from being such a bright, lovely, wonderful eight-year-old who was totally confident and socially aware, to being a two-year-old who followed me everywhere like a toddler."William surprised doctors by making a good recovery after the surgery but his mother was more baffled to hear that William's Yorkshire twang had been replaced with a far more posh-sounding accent: "He went in with a York accent and came out all posh. He no longer had short 'a' and 'u' vowel sounds, they were all long." He has returned to school and is near to a full recovery from his illness.

A slow, lethal combination of external pressures including warfare, rather than a lack of natural resources, led to the demise of the Cherokee Indians, two new studies suggest.The date of the Cherokee society's collapse is often cited as 1785, when several tribes signed the Treaty of Hopewell and came under the jurisdiction of the new United States of America. Resource scarcity was the major factor in the dissolution, many historians have thought, based on an eyewitness narrative of sparse settlement patterns. But the Cherokee of the Southeastern United States actually had plenty of land, crops and animals to go around, the new land-usage research indicates. The collapse was more likely instigated by a series of events that occurred over a period of a few decades, said University of Georgia anthropologist Ted Gragson."We can't talk about the collapse as something that just happens," said Gragson, who co-authored the studies. "We talk about Indians as if they're timeless and anything bad that happened was instantaneous with the influx of Europeans , but this is not the case." One of the studies is detailed in the journal.

We all make mistakes and, if you believe medical scholar John Ioannidis, scientists make more than their fair share. By his calculations, most published research findings are wrong.Dr. Ioannidis is an epidemiologist who studies research methods at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece and Tufts University in Medford, Mass. In a series of influential analytical reports, he has documented how, in thousands of peer-reviewed research papers published every year, there may be so much less than meets the eye.

Some 600 people in Peru have required treatment after an object from space - said to be a meteorite - plummeted to Earth in a remote area, officials say.They say the object left a deep crater after crashing down over the weekend near the town of Carancas in the Andes.People who have visited scene have been complaining of headaches, vomiting and nausea after inhaling gases.

In 1911 the discovery that the world was billions of years old changed our view of the world for ever.Imagine trying to understand history without any dates. You know, for example, that the First World War came before the Second World War, but how long before? Was it tens, hundreds or even thousands of years before? In certain situations, before radiometric dating, there was no way of knowing.By the end of the 19th century, many geologists still believed the age of the Earth to be a few thousand years old, as indicated by the Bible, while others considered it to be around 100 million years old, in line with calculations made by Lord Kelvin, the most prestigious physicist of his day.Dr Cherry Lewis, University of Bristol, UK, said: "The age of the Earth was hugely important for people like Darwin who needed enormous amounts of time in which evolution could occur. As Thomas Huxley, Darwin's chief advocate said: 'Biology takes its time from Geology'."

Architecture 2030, in a partnership with Google Maps, determined how American coastal cities would be affected by predicted sea level rise. New York (pictured) would experience a 3-meter rise.New York (pictured) would experience a 3-meter rise.Read this interesting report ....

BEIJING (AFP) - A television reporter claims to have discovered China's answer to the Loch Ness monster, state press reported Sunday. Local journalist Zhuo Yongsheng shot footage of six "seal-like" creatures in the northeastern Tianchi lake, which local legend has long said is home to Loch Ness-style monsters."They could swim as fast as yachts and at times they would all disappear in the water," the Xinhua news agency quoted Zhuo as saying. "Their fins, or maybe wings, were longer than their bodies."Legend says that China's own version of Scotland's legendary monster has dwelled in the murky bottom of the volcanic lake for over a century.

Two reptile-like animals living 290 million years ago are the oldest creatures to have their footprints positively identified after a fortuitous discovery allowed scientists to match fossils to preserved trackways. Fossils of Diadectes absitus and Orobates pabsti were recently found in the Tambach Formation in central Germany. Nearby and in the same sediment layer, scientists found well-preserved footprints made by creatures that plodded through the region's soft sediments long ago. The footprints turned out to be a match for the fossil animals. The work, detailed in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, marks the first footprints of the Paleozoic Era, a time before the dinosaurs that lasted from 540 to 240 million years ago, to be associated with the animals that made them. It could also force scientists to rethink how the ancient creatures moved.

A new study by an academic says that "girl power" was alive and kicking around 600 years ago. Dr Sue Niebrzydowski at Bangor university said medieval women enjoyed a golden era with a greater life expectancy than men. "We found women running priories, commissioning books, taking early package tours to visit the Holy Land," she said. She added women were also defending their property and property rights. Dr Niebrzydowski's research involving middle aged women in the middle ages will be discussed at a conference at the university on Wednesday.

The pilot of a WWII plane was killed when his aircraft crashed during an airshow display in West Sussex. A spokesman for Shoreham Airshow in West Sussex confirmed that one person died when the Hurricane went down in countryside at 1520 BST.He said no-one else was hurt or injured during the accident which took place north of the A27 on Saturday afternoon.

Wobbles in the rotation of Mars swung the planet into about 40 extreme ice ages in the past 5 million years and allowed thick ice layers to remain far away from the poles, an astronomer says.Various spacecraft have revealed evidence for ice ages on Mars. Around 4 million to 5 million years ago, precipitation events sent piles of snow and ice that accumulated around the ice caps. Nowadays, the only visible ice on Mars is the pair of polar caps. But in recent years, orbiting probes have found solid evidence for vast sheets of underground ice near the red planet's equator, at what scientists call mid-latitudes.How ice ended up so far from the poles has remained a mystery.

Archaeologists have discovered what they believe to be the first Viking ship ever discovered in Britain, buried beneath a pub car park.The vessel - thought to be a 1,000-year-old relic from the Norse occupation of the Wirral peninsular - was detected using state-of-the-art ground radar technology.At 30ft long by 5ft wide, it would have been able to transport dozens of Viking warriors, as well as their goods and cattle.

Stocky and well-suited for the cold, Neanderthals once dotted the plains of Europe and western Asia before vanishing from Earth more than 20,000 years ago.The mystery of what caused their demise has baffled scientists for decades, with one theory stating our hominid cousins failed to survive a big ice age that Homo sapiens apparently endured. New research rejects that thinking.A study published in the Sept. 13 issue of the journal Nature suggests abrupt global cooling was not the final calamity that wiped out Neanderthals. The study does not, however, offer any direct clues about what did finally kill off the Neanderthals.

The hidden content in ancient works could be illuminated by a light source 10 billion times brighter than the Sun.The technique employs Britain's new facility, the Diamond synchrotron, and could be used on works such as the Dead Sea Scrolls or musical scores by Bach.Intense light beams will enable scientists to uncover the text in scrolls and books without having to open - and potentially damage - them.The research was presented at the British Association science festival.

An analysis of the World Trade Center collapse has challenged a conspiracy theory surrounding the 9/11 attacks.The study by a Cambridge University engineer demonstrates that once the collapse of the twin towers began, it was destined to be rapid and total.One of many conspiracy theories proposes that the buildings came down in a manner consistent with a "controlled demolition".The new data shows this is not needed to explain the way the towers fell.

GLIESE 581c has got to be the ultimate tourist destination. Discovered in April this year, it is the first rocky planet beyond our solar system with anything like a pleasant climate. How mind-blowing would it be just to stroll along its beaches - surely it must have beaches - or watch the planet's red-dwarf sun setting in a scarlet blaze over the alien landscape.There's just one little problem to consider before you rush to book your ticket. Gliese 581c is 20 light years away - over a million times the distance from Earth to the sun. The journey there would make NASA's best efforts to explore our own solar system seem like a trip to the shops, and to get there in a human lifetime a craft would need to travel awfully fast. Even at half the speed of light you'd spend the best part of 50 years cooped up in a smelly space capsule. So what are the options?

The emerging story of a global climate shift a third of a billion years ago seems to be a prequel to what climate scientists expect from the current trend in global warming.Using the same sort of Global Circulation Models as those which predict climate change today, University of Michigan researcher Christopher Poulsen and his colleagues have reproduced what might have happened on the supercontinent Pangea in the late Paleozoic era, about 300 million years ago, when the polar ice melted."During this time you see all kinds of environmental changes," said Poulsen, referring to the fossils and chemical evidence left in rocks.Temperatures spiked at the equator and plants' ranges were changing quickly. There were at least three major advances of ice sheets at high latitudes, followed by thaws."The question is," he added, "How much can these ice sheets influence changes in the tropics?"

(AP) An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the "most remarkable" water science discovery in a century.John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies it would burn. The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.

3D face scans are set to speed up the diagnosis of rare genetic conditions in children, UK scientists say. More than 700 genetic syndromes affect facial traits, but some are difficult to spot because few cases exist. Now new software that compares an individual's face with a bank of 3D images of people with known conditions is aiding diagnosis. The technology, presented at the BA Festival of Science in York, had a 90% success rate, the scientists said.

A mummy of an Inca girl, described as "perfect" by the archaeologists who found her in 1999, has gone on display for the first time in Argentina. Hundreds of people crowded into a museum in the north-western city of Salta to see "la Doncella", the Maiden. The remains of the girl, who was 15 when she died, were found in an icy pit on top of a volcano in the Andes, along with a younger boy and girl. Researchers believe they were sacrificed by the Incas 500 years ago.

Egypt's top antiquities official was down in the fabled tomb of Tutankhamun a few weeks ago - doing a television interview, of all things - when he noticed something curious he had never seen before.In a back room closed to public view, Zahi Hawass spotted a cluster of reed boxes crammed with plaster fragments and limestone seals used to stamp hieroglyphs. Intrigued, the scholar took a closer look and saw that both were marked with a trio of icons - sun, scarab and basket - whose meaning he recognized instantly:Neb-kheperu-re, the throne name of the boy pharaoh.Eighty-five years after his tomb was discovered, and after his treasures have been ogled by millions of museumgoers, King Tut is still revealing surprises.

Fighting with his bare fists, and massively outnumbered, France's cockiest Gaul, Asterix, led a brave rebellion against the Roman occupier.Not only was his little village encircled by Julius Cæsar's troops, it was up against an expanding empire - unequalled in the art of warfare and determined to civilise a backward people who worshipped druids and believed in magic potions. Or so it was thought until now.But a discovery in central France has led to a significant reassessment of the Gauls, who were, it transpires, much more advanced than previously thought.advertisementRather than the random gatherings of rudimentary thatched huts illustrated in the Asterix books, first published in 1961, archaeologists now believe the Gauls lived in elegant buildings with tiled roofs, laid out in towns with public squares or forums.They also crafted metalwork just as complex as anything produced by the Romans, even before the Roman invasion in 52BC.

GENEVA: One breed of livestock is becoming extinct every month and genetic stockpiles are needed to preserve a wide variety of species, according to a report issued on Monday by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). African, Asian and Latin American species are most at threat from the over-reliance on just a few breeds of some types of farm animals, the FAO said at the opening of a conference on animal genetic resources in Interlaken in Switzerland. "Valuable breeds are disappearing at an alarming rate," said Carlos Sere, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) which contributed to the FAO report. "In many cases we will not even know the true value of an existing breed until it's already gone. This is why we need to act now to conserve what's left by putting them in gene banks," he said.

The impactor believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs and other life forms on Earth some 65 million years ago has been traced back to a breakup event in the main asteroid belt.A joint U.S.-Czech team from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Charles University in Prague suggests that the parent object of asteroid (298) Baptistina disrupted when it was hit by another large asteroid, creating numerous large fragments that would later create the Chicxulub crater on the Yucatan Peninsula as well as the prominent Tycho crater found on the Moon.The team of researchers, including Dr. William Bottke (SwRI), Dr. David Vokrouhlicky (Charles University, Prague) and Dr. David Nesvorny (SwRI), combined observations with several different numerical simulations to investigate the Baptistina disruption event and its aftermath. A particular focus of their work was how Baptistina fragments affected the Earth and Moon.At approximately 170 kilometers in diameter and having characteristics similar to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, the Baptistina parent body resided in the innermost region of the asteroid belt when it was hit by another asteroid estimated to be 60 kilometers in diameter. This catastrophic impact produced what is now known as the Baptistina asteroid family, a cluster of asteroid fragments with similar orbits. According to the team's modeling work, this family originally included approximately 300 bodies larger than 10 kilometers and 140,000 bodies larger than 1 kilometer.

The United Nations 2001 convention on protecting underwater cultural heritage was right to oppose the plundering of sunken archaeological treasures for profit. Unfortunately, only 15 countries have ratified the agreement, and the plundering has begun.In what may become the biggest underwater find ever, Odyssey Marine Explorations, a commercial operation from Tampa, Florida, has reportedly hauled 17 tons of gold and silver from a ship widely believed to be the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes that was sunk by a British warship off the coast of Portugal in October 1804.The company claims ownership of its find. And, of course, Spain is hiring lawyers and preparing its legal claim to the trove, claiming a sovereign nation's right over its cultural heritage.It's clearly going to be a protracted legal battle, but we think it would only be right to let another set of plaintiffs stake their claim to the treasure, too: Spain's former colonies in Latin America, where the loot was looted in the first place.

More than four in five people believe that Britain is in moral decline, a survey has indicated. The poll, for new BBC One show The Big Questions, found only 9% disagreed that moral standards were falling. Of 1,000 adults asked, 62% said religion was important in guiding the nation's morals, while 29% disagreed that faith had a role to play.

Depression is a more disabling condition than angina, arthritis, asthma and diabetes, World Health Organization research shows. And those with depression plus a chronic illness, such as diabetes, fare particularly badly, the study of more than 245,000 people suggests. Better treatment for depression would improve people's overall health, the researchers concluded in the Lancet. Experts called for better funding for mental health services.

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Archaeologists digging in northern Israel have discovered evidence of a 3,000-year-old beekeeping industry, including remnants of ancient honeycombs, beeswax and what they believe are the oldest intact beehives ever found.One of the ancient beehives found at Tel Rehov in Israel.The findings in the ruins of the city of Rehov this summer include 30 intact hives dating to around 900 B.C., archaeologist Amihai Mazar of Jerusalem's Hebrew University told The Associated Press. He said it offers unique evidence that an advanced honey industry existed in the Holy Land at the time of the Bible.Beekeeping was widely practiced in the ancient world, where honey was used for medicinal and religious purposes as well as for food, and beeswax was used to make molds for metal and to create surfaces to write on. While bees and beekeeping are depicted in ancient artwork, nothing similar to the Rehov hives has been found before, Mazar said.

A switch from predominantly undersea volcanoes to a mix of undersea and terrestrial ones shifted the Earth's atmosphere from devoid of oxygen to one with free oxygen, according to geologists. "The rise of oxygen allowed for the evolution of complex oxygen-breathing life forms," says Lee R. Kump, professor of geoscience, Penn State. Before 2.5 billion years ago, the Earth's atmosphere lacked oxygen. However, biomarkers in rocks 200 million years older than that period, show oxygen-producing cyanobacteria released oxygen at the same levels as today. The oxygen produced then, had to be going somewhere. "The absence of oxidized soil profiles and red beds indicates that oxidative weathering rates were negligible during the Archaean," the researchers report in the Aug. 30 issue of Nature.

The mausoleum of China's first emperor Qinshihuang, near which the world-famous terracotta army was unearthed, would stay underground in peace in the foreseeable future, a leading expert said. "I would not witness the excavation in my life. In the foreseeable future the mausoleum will maintain the status quo," said Prof. Cao Wei, deputy curator of the Museum of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qinshihuang.Chinese researchers in 2002 confirmed that there was a huge underground palace in the mausoleum by using remote sensing and geophysical exploration technologies, which Cao said did no harm to the mausoleum.The Shaanxi government is planning to set up a 2.9-square-km theme park of the Qinshihuang mausoleum site and a museum of bronze chariots unearthed near the mausoleum of Emperor Qinshihuang.The 2,200-year-old mausoleum was discovered in Lintong county, 35 km east of Xi'an, in 1974 by peasants who were digging a well. The Chinese terracotta army buried around the mausoleum was one of the greatest archeological finds of modern times.

A team of astronomers from the US and the UK has obtained some of the clearest pictures of space ever taken. They were acquired using a new "adaptive optics" system which sharpens pictures taken from the Mount Palomar Observatory in California. The images are twice as sharp as those from Hubble Space Telescope. The new system, dubbed "Lucky", is the result of work by a team from Cambridge University and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

PARIS (AFP) - The first individual genome ever sequenced -- a complete DNA blueprint of celebrity scientist Craig Venter -- has revealed genetic variation among humans far richer than previously imagined.Published Tuesday in the online open-access journal PLoS Biology, the 2.8 billion contiguous bits of genetic code will also hasten advances in preventative medicine, said Venter, who is both an author and the object of the study.Within five years, faster and cheaper sequencing techniques could produce complete genomes for 10,000 people, laying the foundation for "an era of individualized genomics," he predicted."Once we have those, we will basically be able to sort out every fundamental question about nature versus nurture, what's genetic and what's environment," he said by phone.The findings overturn what had in a few short years become genetic gospel: that all human beings are, genetically speaking, 99.9 identical.

CAMBRIDGE, England (AFP) - British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking revealed his desire on Monday to make "real science as exciting as science fiction" as he publicised a new book for children about the cosmos. "It is easier to explain things to children because they have open minds and are eager to learn," he told reporters at the prestigious Cambridge University, where he is a professor."George's Secret Key to the Universe", the first book in a planned trilogy, explains the workings of the solar system, asteroids, black holes -- one of Hawking's favourite topics -- and other celestial bodies with the help of a set of young heroes.It will be released in French on Thursday, and in English a week later, and is set to be sold in 29 countries. The second book in the trilogy will be published next year.

Walter Cruttenden is Guest Author of the Month for September 2007 to discuss his book 'Lost Star of Myth and Time and also accompanying Forum Article:History and Celestial TimeWalter kicks of with his first posting:What the Moon Says About the Motion of the SunAll are welcome to join in discussion.

Highly detailed photographs of the Moon taken by the Apollo missions are being made available to the public for the first time in more than 30 years.Photos taken on the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions in the 1970s showed the Moon in great detail but were only ever viewed by a few scientists.Since then they have been locked away in freezers by Nasa to preserve them.Arizona State University is now making them available from the internet after using high resolution scanners.

Jupiter were just half its mass, Earth would be a far more dangerous place. But without the giant planet, life would be pretty much the same as it is now. That's the surprising outcome, presented here today at the European Planetary Science Congress, of new computer simulations that show how Jupiter regulates the number of comets impacting our planet. According to physicist Jonathan Horner of the Open University in Milton Keynes, U.K., the common belief that Jupiter acts as a protective shield by deflecting onrushing comets needs some tweaking. Comets are dirty chunks of ice in the outer regions of the solar system left over from the formation of the planets. A few kilometers in diameter, they can wreak havoc when they collide with Earth. But their elongated orbits can be strongly perturbed by Jupiter's gravity. In fact, the massive planet flings some comets out of the solar system altogether. That's why astronomers suggested in the early 1990s that Jupiter serves as a sort of planetary bodyguard for Earth. But according to Horner, the matter is not so straightforward. His team's computer simulations confirm that comet impacts would be more numerous if Jupiter were less massive because fewer comets would be flung into outer space.Read more ....

CAIRO (AFP) - European diplomats in four-wheel drive cars have caused millions of dollars worth of damage to a fossilised whale lying for millions of years in the Egyptian desert, a security source said on Sunday. "Whale Valley officials have informed the authorities that people from two diplomatic corps vehicles destroyed the fossil," the source told AFP after the destruction was discovered around 150 kilometres (95 miles) south of Cairo.Two cars drove into the protected area on Friday and then refused to stop when asked to do so by wardens who nevertheless got the vehicles' registration numbers which the source said were from "a European country."

BUCHAREST, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Romanian archeologists have found the Capitol of Sarmizegetusa, a temple in the ancient Roman province of Dacia, Rompres news agency reported Thursday. "We were glad to confirm the suppositions we have been nourishing for 25 years, about the place where the Capitol lies, one of the most important temples of Roman Dacia," said Ioan Piso, an official of Transylvania National History Museum in central Romania."This is the temple of Jupiter and the Triad Capitoline, made of Jupiter, Junona and Minerva," Rompres quoted Piso as saying. Such temples used to be erected in every Roman city, after the model of Rome, Piso said, noting the significance of the latest discovery to the history of Romania. The Capitol of Sarmizegetusa is unique, because the dedication of the edifice meant that the cult of Jupiter had been officially brought to the Roman province of Dacia, Piso said.

Climate change and an increasing population could trigger a global food crisis in the next half century as countries struggle for fertile land to grow crops and rear animals, scientists warned yesterday.To keep up with the growth in human population, more food will have to be produced worldwide over the next 50 years than has been during the past 10,000 years combined, the experts said.

Prague, Aug 27 (CTK) - Czech archaeologists plan to explore the mysterious vault of the Rozmberk noble family on the underground premises of the Cistercian monastery in Vyssi Brod, south Bohemia, using a modern radar equipment, the daily Lidove noviny (LN) reported Monday.The vault was sealed up after the last Rozmberk family member, Petr Vok, was buried there in 1611, and it has remained untouched since then. It was protected by an old legend warning that he who opens the vault and disturbs the peace of the late Rozmberk ancestors will be cursed - he will die within a year, the paper says.The monastery was occupied by the SS troops during WW2, and later by the then Czechoslovak communist secret police (StB). However, neither the Germans, nor StB officers dared to open the vault in fears of the ancient curse, LN recalls.Now the archaeologists who want to inspect the Rozmberk vault after 400 years hope to avoid the dreadful curse by using modern "non-destructive methods" that will enable them to explore the vault without opening it by force.

A wooden sign stands at the entrance to the dirt road leading to the Segev Forest in the Western Galilee, inscribed with the symbol of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). Beneath it in fading green letters is the name "Rosh Zayit Ruin." Without perusing the entrance to the dirt road carefully, you might not see the weed-covered sign, and not realize that this is the entrance to a very special archaeological site.Only an all-terrain vehicle can reach the place because the road is so bad. Before you reach the site, consisting of ruins from the 10th century BCE, you will notice how poorly the area is kept up. The communities in the Misgav region, where the ruin is located, are to begin restoration and development work during the holidays in the hope of upgrading their foundering tourism profile. The site itself is on a hill with a spectacular view. To the west, you can see the entire Acre Valley and Haifa Bay, and to the north and east are the Western and Upper Galilee mountains. Many archaeologists have found in the site the solution to a historical mystery going back to the time of King Solomon.

HOUSTON (AP) -- After six years of planning and negotiations, and a controversy reverberating through the scientific community, the world's most famous fossil made her public debut Tuesday.Lucy, a 3.2 million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis, was unveiled during a media preview at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, where she will be the centerpiece of an exhibit opening Friday."Lucy's Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia'' features more than 150 religious and cultural artifacts from Ethiopia -- a part of the exhibit that museum officials and the Ethiopian government worry may be overshadowed by the furor surrounding Lucy.The decision to bring Lucy to Houston for public exhibit spurred outrage among the world's most noted paleonathropologists, who say the fragile fossil could be irreparably damaged by the travel to Houston and a subsequent six-year tour.

ATHENS, Greece - Archaeologists excavating a sprawling prehistoric fortress in southern Greece have discovered a secret underground passage thought to have supplied the site with water in times of danger.Dating to the mid-13th century B.C., the stone passage passed under the massive walls of the Mycenaean citadel of Midea and probably led to a nearby water source, authorities said Friday.The passage would allow the people of Midea, about 93 miles south of Athens, safe access to drinkable water even in times of enemy attack."It is a very important discovery, which gave us great joy," excavation director Katie Demakopoulou said.

A study into the mysterious changing skull shape of medieval man casts serious doubt on current theories.The peculiar shift from long narrow heads to those of a rounder shape, and back again, which took place between the 11th and 13th centuries, has been noted at sites throughout western Europe. But a study of skulls found at the deserted village of Wharram Percy, near Malton, North Yorkshire, suggests that the anatomical blip was not down to an influx of Norman immigrants, or climate change, English Heritage has said. It examined nearly 700 skeletons recovered from the village. Unlike other research, data from the Wharram site traces the change to a single, indigenous community which has been radiocarbon-dated.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A giant hole in the Universe is devoid of galaxies, stars and even lacks dark matter, astronomers said on Thursday.The team at the University of Minnesota said the void is nearly a billion light-years across and they have no idea why it is there."Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size," said astronomy professor Lawrence Rudnick.

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- The soil on Mars may contain microbial life, according to a new interpretation of data first collected more than 30 years ago.Scientists want to know whether or not Mars ever supported life.The search for life on Mars appeared to hit a dead end in 1976 when Viking landers touched down on the red planet and failed to detect biological activity.But Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, said on Friday the spacecraft may in fact have found signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface.His analysis of one of the experiments carried out by the Viking spacecraft suggests that 0.1 percent of the Martian soil could be of biological origin.

The search for the origins of civilization has taken archaeologists to less pleasant places than Swabia. Nestled between France, Switzerland, and Bavaria, the German region is the heart of Baden-Wuerttemburg, a state that markets itself as a center for creativity and innovation. It's no idle boast. Hundreds of small high-tech firms dot the region. Giants such as Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and Zeiss are all based in the gleaming, modern state capital, Stuttgart. American archaeologist Nicholas Conard is convinced Swabia's tradition of innovation goes back a long way: 40,000 years, give or take a few thousand. Excavating in caves east of Tübingen, a medieval town 20 miles south of Stuttgart, Conard has unearthed expertly carved figurines and the oldest musical instruments in the world. The finds are among the earliest art ever discovered, and they're extremely sophisticated in terms of craftsmanship, suggesting a surprising degree of cultural complexity.

Where did humans originate and how did they populate the entire globe? Scientists may finally be able to answer these fundamental questions when they have enough DNA samples from people all over the world. The Genographic Project attempts to trace the ancient journey of man through the genetic analysis of present-day populations on every continent. This nonprofit, five-year research partnership of National Geographic and IBM is led by geneticist Dr. Spencer Wells with support from the Waitt Family Foundation. India is one of the ten international centres for this world-spanning project. A state-of-the-art facility dedicated for genographic work was established at the Madurai Kamaraj University this July. Vijaysree Venkatraman interviewed Dr. Ramasamy Pitchappan, Regional Director of Genographic Project, India.Read more ....

Experts have found a way to trigger an out-of-body experience in volunteers. The experiments, described in the Science journal, offer a scientific explanation for a phenomenon experienced by one in 10 people. Two teams used virtual reality goggles to con the brain into thinking the body was located elsewhere. The visual illusion plus the feel of their real bodies being touched made volunteers sense that they had moved outside of their physical bodies.

Underwater caves in sheltered bays could house a wealth of untapped pre-European archaeological treasures, say Australian researchers.And people involved in coastal developments need to be more aware of the potential for disturbing this underwater heritage, they say.Sydney-based archaeologist Cosmos Coroneos and colleagues will report on possible underwater sites in Sydney at the Australian Archaeology Conference at the University of Sydney next month."About 6000 years ago, the coast of Sydney was probably about 20-30 kilometres off shore," says Coroneos. "As the sea levels rose people retreated inland."He says this means that there is probably a lot of evidence of Aboriginal occupation that is now under water.

I'm in a community hall, on the outskirts of Celle, a north German town. On the walls are pictures of dark blue peacocks. Sitting at various tables around the room are dozens of Devil worshippers. At least, that's what some people call them.Though we don't know it yet, right now several suicide bombs are going off near Mosul in Iraq, killing maybe 400. The victims belong to the same faith as those gathered here today.They are Yezidi. And I'm here to unearth the reality of their fascinating religion. Why do they have such troubled relations with outsiders? Do they really worship the Devil?The Yezidi of Celle are one of the largest groups of their sect outside the homeland of Kurdish Iraq. There may be 7,000 in this small town. Yezidi across the world number between 400,000 and 800,000.

A University of Colorado at Boulder team excavating an ancient Maya village in El Salvador buried by a volcanic eruption 1,400 years ago has discovered an ancient field of manioc, the first evidence for cultivation of the calorie-rich tuber in the New World.The manioc field was discovered under roughly 10 feet of ash, said CU-Boulder anthropology Professor Payson Sheets, who has been directing the excavation of the ancient village of Ceren since its discovery in 1978. Considered the best-preserved ancient village in Latin America, Ceren's buildings, artifacts and landscape were frozen in time by the sudden eruption of the nearby Loma Caldera volcano about 600 A.D., providing a unique window on the everyday lives of prehistoric Mayan farmers.The discovery marks the first time manioc cultivation has been discovered at an archaeological site anywhere in the Americas, said Sheets. The National Geographic Society funded the 2007 CU-Boulder research effort at Ceren, the most recent of five research grants made by NGS to the ongoing excavations by Sheets and his students."We have long wondered what else the prehistoric Mayan people were growing and eating besides corn and beans, so finding this field was a jackpot of sorts for us," he said. "Manioc's extraordinary productivity may help explain how the Classic Maya at huge sites like Tikal in Guatemala and Copan in Honduras supported such dense populations."

Looking to get it away from it all? Consider Albania. An archaeology team reports that the mountains of northern Albania, perhaps the most remote place left in Europe, have been a hide-out for a surprisingly long time.A leader of the expedition, archaeologist Michael Galaty of Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss., reports on this summer's expedition now that he's back from to the Shala Valley in northern Northern Albania's mountains, the tail end of the Alps. "Some five hundred years ago, people came here fleeing the Ottoman empire. We expected to find what they left behind," Galaty says. Perched on a promontory near the village of Grunas (Groo-NAS) are the remains of walls, which the team initially assumed were from a hideout left over from the 1500's, a time when exiles repopulated the region, on the lam from the new empire. However, a little digging on a 2006 expedition revealed something wrong with the walls. They were too old and some were made of "cyclopean" stone, boulders roughly fitted together without any mortar, a style associated with the Bronze-Age Greek Kingdom of Mycenae. Instead of a medieval hidey-hole, the team had unearthed the remains of a fortress from the Bronze Age, some time around 800 B.C., as indicated by a radiocarbon date and the pottery and stone tools left behind there.

Astronomers have spotted a space oddity in Earth's neighbourhood - a dead star with some unusual characteristics. The object, known as a neutron star, was studied using space telescopes and ground-based observatories. But this one, located in the constellation Ursa Minor, seems to lack some key characteristics found in other neutron stars. Details of the study, by a team of American and Canadian researchers, will appear in the Astrophysical Journal. If confirmed, it would be only the eighth known "isolated neutron star" - meaning a neutron star that does not have an associated supernova remnant, binary companion, or radio pulsations.

It's one of Minnesota's greatest mysteries. It's something that puts settlers in America well before Columbus. A Minnesota geologist thinks the controversial Kensington Runestone is the real thing and there is evidence that he says backs up the theory.The Kensington Runestone is a rock found near Alexandria a century ago. It's inscription speaking of Norwegians here in 1362. It begs the question. Were Vikings exploring our land more than 100 years before Columbus? Or is it just an elaborate hoax? New research shows that the stone is genuine and there's hidden code that may prove it. It contains carved words that have haunted these hills and the Ohman family for more than 100 years, yet their faith has never wavered.