Newsdesk Archive

A Russian Soyuz spaceship is soaring towards the International Space Station on the first manned mission since the US shuttle Columbia disintegrated in February. The craft lifted off on schedule at 0354GMT from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying a Russian and an American to replace the current ISS crew.

Twentieth century style gurus Charles and Ray Eames knew a good design when they saw one. Their influential short film Powers of Ten (1968) uses a 'ten times' scale change every ten seconds. The pivot point is a man lying in a field. A few minutes in one direction and we reach the Milky Way. A few minutes in the other direction and we are staring at the milky strands of the man's DNA.

Malaria is killing more children in Africa than ever before, it continues to impoverish much of the continent, and drugs to fight it have all but run out. So concludes the first comprehensive report on malaria in Africa, published today, Africa Malaria Day1. To discuss the situation, politicians, public-health experts and scientists are meeting simultaneously in London, Washington DC, Nairobi, and Kartoum today.

British scientists are about to pioneer a way of investigating water droplets that have survived from seas where the Earth's first microbes developed 3.8bn years ago. "This will be the oldest sea water ever investigated. We should learn a lot by comparing it with much later samples," said David Banks, of Leeds University, who is working on the project with colleagues in Denmark and South Africa.

Rome celebrated its 2,756th birthday yesterday, amid claims that the city may have been founded by a Trojan woman called Roma and not, as legend has it, by Romulus. According to Rome's Il Messaggero newspaper, a fragment of writing by the Graeco-Sicilian poet Stesichorus (638-555 BC) recounts how a woman named Roma arrived with a Trojan fleet in an idyllic place that could easily be Rome.

An archaeology team has discovered evidence of what may be the first settlement by Samoans along the coast of American Samoa's main island, Tutuila. The excavations at Fatu-ma-Futi village show post holes from three different ancient houses. Archaeologist David Addision says they must have been big houses, judging from the size of the poles. Mr Addison's team also found stone tools at the site.

An Australian archaeologist has been researching whether early languages spread across ancient continents with farming practices. How languages have developed and spread is a controversial topic for historians. Professor Peter Bellwood from the Australian National University and Dr Jared Diamond from the University of California have been examining the theory that early farmers helped to distribute language and replace the culture of traditional hunter-gatherers.

Scientists have peered through the smoggy orange haze of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and seen icy bedrock exposed on the surface. The observations reveal a surface that is not entirely covered by liquid and solid organic materials that rain out of the atmosphere, as was thought.

For as little as $20,000, you could soon have a letter sent to a new "post office" aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and back care of the Russian space agency. Having suspended its lucrative space tourism service after the Columbia disaster, the cash-strapped agency has now turned to selling postage stamps, the Interfax news agency reports.

Scientists on the prowl for life on Mars have trained their sights on the parched Atacama Desert of northern Chile. Scientists believe that if their high-tech robotics succeed in their quest to find life in the Earth's most inhospitable deserts, they may also be able to find life on Mars. David Wettergreen, a research scientist at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, described the Atacama as "the most arid desert on Earth. It is what scientists call an end member [ecosystem] in that it has the lowest organic content of anywhere on Earth."

Male saiga antelopes face a serious problem that threatens to push them over the brink of extinction: so many females, so little time. The global population of this antelope, native to the steppes and deserts of Central Asia and the Pre-Caspian region of Europe, has fallen by 80 percent to approximately 50,000. In the mid-1970s, the peak population was more than 1,250,000. Of the saiga antelopes that remain, most are female.

Dozens of women have asked to be made pregnant by a prehistoric iceman who died 5,000 years ago. The body of "Otzi the Iceman" was discovered by hikers in 1991 as ice melted in the Schnalstal glacier, high in the Italian Alps. Alex Susanna, director of the Bozen Museum where his body is exhibited, says requests have been received by many women wanting to have Otzi's babies. He told Austrian broadcasting company ORF that all of the requests had been turned down, not least because Otzi's penis had decayed away.

Scientists may have peeled away another layer of mystery about materials floating in deep space. Tiny multilayered balls called "carbon onions," produced in laboratory studies, appear to have the same light-absorption characteristics as dust particles in the regions between the stars. "It's the strongest evidence yet that cosmic dust has a multilayered onionlike carbon structure," said Manish Chhowalla, assistant professor of ceramic and materials engineering at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Three years ago, something weird happened to the Sun. Normally, our star, like Earth itself, has a north and a south magnetic pole. But for nearly a month beginning in March 2000, the Sun's south magnetic pole faded, and a north pole emerged to take its place. The Sun had two north poles.

An archaeological team from the French Institute for Oriental Antiquities in Cairo has found several rock-carved tombs in Sakkara dating back to the Old Kingdom (2400-2100 BC). It is believed that the tombs had been made for senior officials.The burial complex is in the area known as Tabat Al Geish to the southwest of Sakkara. Secretary-General of the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA) Dr Zahi Hawas said that the tomb had not been documented, and the first tomb that was discovered belonged to a priest Haw Nefer, who officiated at the funerary temple of King Pepi I of the VI Dynasty.

Prompted by the discovery of part of Cleopatra's palace in Alexandria's East Harbour, the Standing Committee of the Egyptian Antiquities Sector has agreed to send several excavation teams to search for and record sunken artifacts and cities along Egypt's coastlines. Sabri Abdul Aziz, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Sector and committee chairman said the Standing Committee has agreed that a team from the Maritime Antiquities Institute, affiliated to the American Research Centre survey the waters of Qusseir on the Red Sea to identify items from a sunken vessel and determine their age.

Australopithecus fossils from caves in South Africa may have been buried about 4 million years ago, as much as 1 million years earlier than previously thought. Australopithecus is an important hominid - human ancestor - that demonstrates the transition from ape-like features to human ones. Its kind were first discovered in East Africa and lived about four million years ago.

Tests have been carried out on ground penetrating missiles using 'bunker buster' technology that could be fired into the depths of dark lunar craters to look for ice. The proposed mission is called Polar Night, a lunar orbiter that would fire instrumented missiles towards the surface of the Moon.

German astronomers have found a third star in which a planet, somewhat larger than Jupiter, moves in front of its parent star. This special alignment is useful for astronomers as details of the orientation of the planet's orbit allows certain parameters to be determined such as the planet's mass The chances that an exoplanet passes in front of its central star as seen from the Earth are small. However, because of the importance of such events astronomers have been searching for stars that experience small dips in brightness that might be exoplanetary transits.

What has been billed by the Icelandic Government as the world's first filling station for hydrogen-powered vehicles has opened in the capital, Reykjavik. It is the first stage of a European Union-sponsored project that will see stations open in the next few months across Europe.

A previously unknown Roman fort has been found by the National Trust at its showpiece attraction in Dine-fwr Park in Llandeilo. The discovery has been hailed by archeologists as solving one of the oldest mysteries of Roman Wales - the fort's location - and creating several more. "It's an amazing find and very exciting but there's a lot more to discover," said Gwilym Hughes, director of Cambria Archaeology.

Fifteen years ago we knew of exactly one solar system - a collection of nine planets, untold numbers of small rocky bodies called asteroids and lumpy mixtures of ice and rock called comets orbiting around a rather average star. The third of those nine planets is a small, blue-green world, two-thirds of which is covered by water. It is Earth, and the solar system is our own. Since then astronomers have discovered dozens of other solar systems - other stars, very much like our own, with at least one planet in orbit around them.

Astronaut Donald Pettit dipped a wire loop in water, intending merely to prepare for an experiment aboard the International Space Station, and got a glimpse at the remarkable behavior of water under weightless conditions. On Earth, water molecules would cling across the loop for just a fraction of a second before gravity would pull them down. In space, Pettit found that surface tension can hold films of pure water in place for 12 hours at a time.

The Hubble Space Telescope, vanguard of astrophotography, launched on this date 13 years ago. Things did not start well, but the observatory's track record has been nothing short of stellar since a 1993 mission corrected initially blurred vision. To commemorate the birthday of the world's most well known observatory, astronomers today released yet another gorgeous Hubble photograph. The new image of a nebula called M17 shows swirls of gas illuminated by nearby, unseen stars.

DNA is, in every sense, a modern icon. For decades, it has enthralled scientists striving to understand its molecular meaning, provided an aesthetic template for artists, and challenged society with all sorts of ethical conundrums. The defining moment for DNA was the discovery of its structure. Published in the science journal Nature 50 years ago this month, James Watson and Francis Crick described how two strands of DNA embrace to form a double helix, and sparked a scientific revolution.

AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL excavation at the Padang has turned up artefacts to support the theory that there was already an ancient city teeming with trade in Singapore as early as the 14th century. Numerous artefacts, including Chinese coins from the Tang (AD 618-907) and Sung (AD 760-1279) dynasties, porcelain shards from the Yuan (AD 1260-1368) dynasty and beads from India, have been dug up from a 4.5 m by 2 m patch of ground just outside the Singapore Cricket Club.

Last month fishermen in the icy Ross Sea encountered a deep-sea giant. Almost 20 feet (6 meters) long, with spiked tentacles and huge, protruding eyes, it was feeding on Patagonian toothfish caught on longlines set by the fishermen. The creature was hauled aboard and taken to New Zealand for analysis. This confirmed the encounter as the first live sighting of a colossal squid.

Although there are many industrious tool-users in the natural world, the only animals with enough brainpower to develop and improve the tools they make have long been thought to be humans. Adding innovative new features, such as a wheel or an engine, to previous designs, was one of those traits some scientists believed made us unique. Now, according to researchers in New Zealand, a crafty species of crow found on the remote Pacific islands of New Caledonia may prove that this trait isn't so uniquely human after all.

Supreme Council for Antiquities Secretary General Zahi Hawas said in an interview published by Al-Ahram Hebdo on Wednesday that Egypt will dispatch archaeologists and restoration workers to participate in rescuing the Iraqi antiquities which were destroyed. Hawas added that Egypt will also send experts in museums to take part in repairing the museums of Baghdad, Mosul and Tikrit.

Quite a few of the most beautiful objects in the Universe are still shrouded in mystery. Even though most of the nebulae of gas and dust in our vicinity are now rather well understood, there are some which continue to puzzle astronomers. This is the case of a small number of unusual nebulae that appear to be the subject of strong heating - in astronomical terminology, they present an amazingly "high degree of excitation". This is because they contain significant amounts of ions, i.e., atoms that have lost one or more of their electrons.

A thousand-year-old poem describing a striking yellow display of summer foliage in Japan is probably the earliest record of a plant virus. The Man'yoshu - the earliest and largest anthology of Japanese poetry - contains the verse written in 752 AD and attributed to the Empress Koken. It describes the "autumnal" colour of herbacious plants in summer.

The atlatl - pronounced "at-la-tal" - is a hand-held spear-thrower that was developed in northern Africa 25,000 years ago. Now high-speed video imaging of modern-day atlatl throws could help to settle archeologists' debates about the design and construction of the simple but effective gadgets. Atlatls spread all over the world before being largely superceded, around 10,000 years ago, by the bow and arrow. The atlatl's springy lever action flings flexible, lightweight darts at speeds of more than 100 kilometres per hour over distances of more than 200 metres.

A lot of people consider him to be the greatest inventor in history. He discovered alternating current, fluorescence, wireless transfer of power, remote control principles, he built a sun-powered engine, and a lot of other things. All achievements of the up-to-date electronic industry would be impossible without his discoveries and inventions. The experiment was very dangerous in its grandeur. The tower was tens of meters tall, it was topped with a large copper hemisphere. The whole construction produced lightning and sparks. The lightning was accompanied with the roar of thunder, which could be heard everywhere at the distance of 15 miles around.

A Buenos Aires-based artist is selling rubbish collected by poor Argentinians and selling it to European art collectors. Mathijs de Bruijne, from Holland, is selling the recycled garbage, which ranges from broken toys to discarded holiday snaps, through his website.

Drinking tea may prime the immune system to fight infections and even cancer, researchers have said. The drink contains particular chemicals which are also present in some bacteria, tumour cells, parasites and fungi. Because these are present in tea, the body is exposed to them so it can build up a defence against them if it comes up against them as part of a disease. The chemicals are called alkylamine antigens.

An outbreak of ghost activity that struck Lesotho last year has been found to have been the result of a spectacular meteor shower. On 21 July, a loud noise in the sky was heard over most of the country. Then in the village of Boqate Ha Sofonia, objects began to fall on the roofs of houses. Malino Mantsoe, one of the village residents, saw a large stone smash into the low-walled cooking area in front of her house, before knocking over and cracking a plastic container.

RESEARCHERS have known for a long time that a mixture of water and a gas such as methane can, in the right circumstances, form an ice-like substance called a clathrate, or gas hydrate, at temperatures above normal freezing point. Ice has an open molecular structure (this is why water, unlike most liquids, expands when it freezes, and thus bursts pipes in the winter). Add a bit of pressure and that openness will accommodate gas molecules. These, in turn, lend support to ice crystals that would otherwise melt. Pressure is one of the things that the bottom of the sea is famous for. So, if you add a source of methane, conditions there are often ideal for the formation of clathrates.

In the past few weeks, a handful of researchers around the globe have publicly renounced their connections to US scientific societies in protest of the US-led war in Iraq. The most widely circulated protest was a terse e-mail written by the prominent neural networking theorist Daniel Amit to the journal Physical Review E, which is published by the American Physical Society. The journal's editors had asked Amit, who is trained in statistical mechanics, to review a manuscript.

Astrobiology is a relatively new science concerned with the frequency and nature of life in the universe. So far, of course, we are aware of but a single planet that contains life: our own blue and green Earth. Yet it seems ludicrous to assume that this is the only planet with life in the Universe, given the immense numbers of stars in our Milky Way galaxy, and the immense number of galaxies revealed by humankind's powerful telescopes that relentlessly peer into the night skies. Surely there are millions of other planets where life has either formed and has perhaps traveled to. The astrobiologists of planet Earth have every confidence that there will be evidence of life either in our own solar system, or in the planetary systems of neighboring stars.

Scientists in Switzerland have finally confirmed that flies can actually fly. Previously scientists thought that their light weight allowed flies to technically "swim" in the air. But a study conducted in Zurich shows that friction, assumed to let flies swim in air, isn't a factor. Instead, inertia is the main physical influence in keeping them up in the air. For the study, drosophila flies were filmed using three cameras at 5,000 pictures per second.

As the world watches the price of crude oil fluctuate in response to the conflict in Iraq, chemists and advocates for alternative energy technologies are training their sights on the grease used to cook French fries. They say that oils derived from soybeans, corn, and other vegetables hold promise as a cleaner and renewable alternative to the finite resource sucked up from the ground.

Vast canyons, towering volcanoes, sprawling fields of ice, deep craters, and high clouds can all be seen in this image of the Solar System's fourth planet: Mars. The orbiting robot Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft took the above mosaic of images as springtime dawned in Northern Mars in 2002 May. Sprawled across the image bottom is Valles Marinaris, a canyon three times the length of Earth's Grand Canyon, and four times as deep.

RELICS of Glasgow's medieval past have been found on the site of a former car park in the city centre. Pottery from the fourteenth century and foundations of nineteenth-century tenements, plus cobblestones, have so far been unearthed, although the ultimate prize, a fifteenth-century Franciscan friary garden, has still to be discovered. But time is running out before the site is turned into a £55m science park, and archaeologists have only two more weeks to dig deeper before formal construction work begins and further secrets of how people lived and worked centuries ago are buried beneath the concrete.

A joint Russian-American space crew has began final preparations for the first flight to the International Space station since the Columbia space shuttle disaster. Nasa astronaut Ed Lu and Russian Yury Malenchenko are completing training at Star City, Russia's cosmonaut training centre, in a mock-up of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft - now the only way for astronauts to fly to the ISS.

Scientists from the United States and Japan have successfully treated diabetic mice by inserting healthy genes in the animals. This new form of gene therapy, reported in the journal Nature Medicine, could lead to a novel approach for treating the growing problem of diabetes.

Archaeologists around the country are united in outrage with local campaigners over the decision to abandon any attempt to rescue the stern of a unique medieval boat discovered by chance last summer on the banks of the river Usk, during the construction of an arts centre in the heart of Newport, south Wales. "It makes you despair of the Welsh," said Dai Morgan Evans, the secretary of the Society of Antiquaries - who is Welsh.

Israeli archaeologists have discovered coins they believe date back to a failed second-century Jewish rebellion against Roman rule. They were discovered in caves near the Dead Sea, which families passed through as they fled the brutal repression that ended the three-year rebellion, led by Shimon Bar Kochba in 132 AD.

Hoping to solve an archaeological crime after more than two decades, the University of Alabama has revealed a major 1980 theft of Indian artifacts. Jim Knight, chairman of anthropology at the Tuscaloosa campus, said Monday that the disappearance of 264 pottery vessels, dating back some 800 years, was the largest recorded antiquities theft in the South.

The Italian government will hand over 161 ancient coins to Cyprus, as the lawful owner of the treasure. The coins, belonging to the 4th century B.C., were discovered in illicit excavations and were illegally exported from the island. The relic was posted on the web, but the Italian authorities were successful in impeding its sale. The Italian Education and Culture Minister will hand the ancient coins to Cyprus' Minister of Communications and Works, Mr Kikis Kazamias, in a special ceremony tomorrow, 23 April, at 16:00 at the Cyprus Museum.

SAMARRA, Iraq -- Amid the destruction of this war -- the bombing, the fighting, the looting -- this elegant city was left largely untouched. One of the world's architectural wonders, its golden domed mosques and its graceful minaret stand unscathed. Though its residents were mostly pro-Saddam Hussein, the city's elders capitulated to American forces before any real fighting took place.

It started with little more than a scant reference in a 190-year-old letter, then progressed when sonar equipment picked up some metal wreckage under the murky waters of Bodkin Creek. Now, historians believe that the mass under the Pasadena creek could be the remains of The Lion, a Baltimore schooner the British burned during the War of 1812.

Professor Colin Humphreys claims in a new book that phenomena described in Exodus can be shown to have natural causes, which science can explain. The book The Miracles of Exodus gives scientific explanations for a number of miracles including the burning bush that was not consumed, the 10 plagues of Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea.

The world's surviving elephants face a dangerous upsurge in poaching if ivory stockpiles are sold, conservationists believe. They say three southern African countries should be prevented from selling their confiscated tusks. They insist safeguards planned to ensure the sales do not fuel the demand for ivory will not work. They believe the sales could drive elephants to extinction in some countries within 20 years.

The barren and windswept landscape of Mars comes into clearer focus with NASA's release of thousands of new photos from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft. The pictures show tornado-like "dust devils" marching across the Red Planet, storms brewing and changing with the seasons, and strangely shaped dunes that result from sand blowing monotonously in the wind.

This summer, spotting Mars will be a breeze as the planet inches closer to Earth than ever in human history. Meanwhile, finding the Red Planet right now is still a bit challenging. But this week the Moon will serve as a great natural guidepost. The Moon will be near Mars the next three mornings (Tuesday through Thursday) in the southeastern sky. It's a great opportunity for casual skywatchers to find Mars beyond any doubt. Those looking for a challenge can use the pairing to then look for the planet Uranus or even Neptune.

In the most detailed investigation ever made of earthquake hazards throughout the Bay Area, scientists warned Monday that at least one severely damaging and deadly quake is very likely here within less than 30 years. That warning came amid new scientific estimates of the danger levels along the region's hazardous seismic faults.

THE war in Iraq has halted the excavation of an ancient Persian citadel discovered by a Merseyside archaeologist. Dr Alan Greaves, a Liverpool University lecturer, has been forced to postpone his latest stage of exploring and excavating the site in South East Turkey. He must now wait until next year when it will be known if the region is safe to visit. The 2,500-year-old citadel was found in 2001 in the very top of a 40 metre-tall mound of earth.

HOUSTON, Texas (AP) -- The man in charge of NASA's space shuttle program, who was one of the agency's most recognized faces following the destruction of the shuttle Columbia, will soon resign, according to media reports. Ron Dittemore had planned to resign earlier but postponed his departure because of the shuttle disaster and investigation, a source said Sunday.

Human liver cells harbouring the hepatitis C virus can be selectively targeted and destroyed by a new gene therapy approach, according to new research. The key is a genetically-engineered "suicide" gene, delivered aboard a harmless virus, which is triggered only when it enters a hepatitis-infected cell. The two current treatments for the debilitating liver disease - alpha interferon and ribavarin - can reduce the level of infection, say researchers, but the virus usually comes back.

The archaeological team of the French Institute for Eastern Antiquities in Cairo unearthed a cemetery comprising rock tombs dated back to the ancient state "BC 2400-2100" in Sakkara. The cemetery comprised a number of tombs for the senior official, at the ancient state said Supreme Council of Antiquities SCA Secretary General Zahi Hawas.

Explanation: Have you ever seen a halo around the Moon? This fairly common sight occurs when high thin clouds containing millions of tiny ice crystals cover much of the sky. Each ice crystal acts like a miniature lens. Because most of the crystals have a similar elongated hexagonal shape, light entering one crystal face and exiting through the opposing face refracts 22 degrees, which corresponds to the radius of the Moon Halo. A similar Sun Halo may be visible during the day. The picture was taken in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, USA. The distant planet Jupiter appears by chance just to the left of the Moon. Exactly how ice-crystals form in clouds remains under investigation.

French archaeologists unearthed a necropolis filled with rock-hewn tombs that are more than 4,000 years old, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said Saturday. Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said the necropolis near the pyramids of Saqqara, about 15 miles south of Cairo, contained tombs from ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom, which lasted from 2400 BC-2100 BC.

M. Théophile Gautier relates in the Journal Officiel how the "Venus of Milo" was saved from the Prussians and the Communists. At the beginning of the war, he says, when the first defeats showed that Paris was in danger of being besieged, the most valuable of the pictures in the Louvre were taken out of their frames and sent to Brest; but it was not so easy to find a place of security for the statues, whose weight and fragility made it impossible to pack them properly for so long a journey. Among these statues by far the most valuable was the "Venus of Milo" and "he thought that this adorable work or art might become Prussian filled our connoisseurs with dismay". At last, after giving much thought to the subject, the guardians of the Louvre hit on an ingenious means of getting out of difficulty. The statue was taken down from its pedestal and laid in an oak coffin filled with wadding. In the dead of night some men who could be depended upon brought the coffin with its precious contents to a secret door in the Louvre, where it was taken up by some others and carried to a spot known only to themselves, where a crypt had been prepared for the goddess in the cellars of the Préfecture de Police.

DNA from the animals and plants that populated Siberia and Alaska up to 395,000 years ago has been recovered from specks of permafrost. The discovery of these genetic fragments - by far the oldest DNA sequences yet authenticated - will give scientists unprecedented power to reconstruct ancient ecosystems and track them through time. The work has already shed new light on the mysterious extinction of the region's large mammals.

PARIS -- Experts say that what seemed like random looting in Baghdad - the pillaging of treasures dating back 5,000 years in human history - may have been in part a carefully planned theft, and the stolen artifacts could already be on their way to collectors in Europe. On Friday, Interpol, the international police organization, announced it was sending a special team to Iraq to help track down the pillaged treasures, and called on everyone involved in the conservation and trade of antiquities ``to categorically decline any offers of cultural property originating from Iraq.''

Investigators now have the strongest evidence yet that the space shuttle Columbia's left wing was critically punctured during liftoff, when falling debris started the fatal chain of events that led to the breakup of the shuttle when it re-entered Earth's atmosphere, ABCNEWS has learned. The evidence comes from an old magnetic tape recorder that is part of the Orbiter Experiment Support System, sources said. It shows an unusual temperature increase in a key sensor just behind the leading edge of the left wing near the spot where foam that fell from the shuttle's external fuel tank is suspected of striking the shuttle, just 81 seconds into the flight.

Archaeologists working at the ancient Avebury stone circle have been surprised to uncover what could be one of the largest standing stones in the country. Experts at English Heritage and the National Trust say the stone could weigh in at 100 tons, rivalling the largest megaliths at its fellow site in Wiltshire, Stonehenge.

FAULTY genes which cause cancer in some Scottish women may have been inherited from invading Vikings 1,000 years ago, researchers have found. The discovery comes as part of a survey which shows a distinct pattern of genetic faults in women in Scotland and Northern Ireland with inherited breast and ovarian cancer.

Dug up or done up? Recently publicized artifacts from the Bible lands have stirred unusual controversy among archaeologists and other scientists. It's not unusual for archaeologists to turn up fragments and shards in a structured dig as they sift through rubble and examine remnants of buildings and caves. Teams of archaeologists and adventurers regularly trek to Israel and other countries in the near Middle East hoping to unearth Biblical-era artifacts.

With Easter and Passover coming soon, it's time to look at what scientists have to say about the stories in the Bible. British scientist Colin J. Humphrey says Mount Sinai, where Moses received God's Law, is really in Saudi Arabia, and not in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, because the mountain must have been an active volcano, since it shook and emitted fire and smoke (Exodus 19:18). He thinks the site is Mount Bedr in northwestern Saudi Arabia, since there were no ancient volcanoes in what was later named the Sinai Peninsula. And he thinks the "burning bush" was caused by flammable natural gas or volcanic gas escaping from a small vent in the ground. Another scientist thinks Christ didn't die on the cross, but was drugged instead. Some scholars say Exodus couldn't have happened because the arid wilderness couldn't have provided food and water for 603,550 men (the usual translation of Numbers 1:46), or 2 million people, counting women and children. But Humphreys says the Hebrew word often translated "thousand" also means "clan" or "troop," which could reduce the number to 20,000.

If the rock art in the Chauvet cave is 30,000 years old, it is the most ancient example of human art in existence and the implications for the evolution of culture are immense. This date is accepted and celebrated by archaeologists. But could it be wrong? "I would be astounded if this date proves to be correct," leading archaeologist Paul Bahn says now. "It flies in the face of all we know about ice-age art." He has reignited the debate about the age of the paintings at Chauvet by questioning the science that says they are so old. The controversy is currently dividing the archaeology community.

The strange streaks of light seen by astronauts on space missions, linked to cosmic rays, still defy a full explanation. The latest work confirms that the flashes can be correlated with the high-energy particles known as cosmic rays, which bombard the retinas of the astronauts' eyes. But it cannot completely explain how. Understanding the nature of these enigmatic light shows is necessary to allow planners to fully assess the risks of future missions to astronauts, says research team leader Marco Casolino, of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics. This would especially be the case for voyages beyond the Earth's magnetic field, which blocks most cosmic rays.

Researchers report evidence that fusion has occurred within collapsing bubbles of deuterium-containing vapor. Critics would like to see more definitive proof. A team of researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Institute of Mechanics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) has been using acoustic waves to agitate a flask of deuterated acetone, causing bubbles to expand and contract in phase with the sound. But the researchers really stirred things up in March when they claimed evidence for deuterium-deuterium fusion in their bubbles.1 Presumably, the shock wave produced by each rapidly imploding bubble was sufficiently intense to force the deuterons together.

Family lore held that the soapstone outcropping on Fred Graves' property was used by ancient Indians. And stone bowl shards seemed to bear that out. So when Graves sold 70 acres of his property to Gwinnett County for a park, he mentioned it to some officials. An archaeological consultant last month verified that the site contains shards and pieces of soapstone pottery dating from 3000 B.C. to 1500 B.C., among the oldest evidence of prehistoric man in Gwinnett County.

The 20 letters are etched elegantly along the length of the pockmarked, limestone box. Reading from right to left, the inscription in the 2,000-year- old sand-colored stone begins, "Ya'akov, bar Yosef" - James, son of Joseph. Then, in a fainter and less symmetrical scrawl, "akhui diYeshua" - Brother of Jesus. The trapezoidal object was used in ancient Jewish burial rituals to hold the bones of the dead. Is the box, or ossuary as it was called, a genuine relic of first century Jerusalem, as many archaeologists believe? And if the inscription is also authentic, might it refer to Jesus of Nazareth, the first century religious leader whose fleeting ministry in the desert transformed history?

The oldest ever DNA has been found preserved in ice in Siberia. The record-breaking samples are from plants which lived there 400,000 years ago. The genetic material is probably three or four times older than any other ancient DNA found on the planet. Soil frozen into the ice has also yielded fragments of DNA of large prehistoric animals, including the woolly mammoth, reindeer and musk ox.

Scientists are returning to one of the most remarkable places on our planet, the so-called Lost City of Atlantis. An expedition from the University of Washington is to use the submersible Alvin to take the first samples from the formation of 18-storey-high hydrothermal vents in the mid-Atlantic. Formed by superheated water seeping out of the seafloor, the strange structures are made in a different way from other known hydrothermal vents. It could be home to new forms of life and it could shed new light on the origin of life on the Earth and on other worlds as well.

Signs carved into 8,600-year-old tortoise shells found in China may be the earliest written words, say archaeologists. The symbols were written down in the late Stone Age, or Neolithic Age. They predate the earliest recorded writings from Mesopotamia - in what is now Iraq - by more than 2,000 years. The archaeologists say they bear similarities to written characters used thousands of years later during the Shang dynasty, which lasted from 1700-1100 BC.

The albatross in Coleridge's famous poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, is killed for no real reason. It's a mindless act. The bird's death, and the Mariner's nightmarish fate, show what can happen when humans alienate themselves from the natural world. Today, Coleridge's poem seems much more than just a fable. Modern-day mariners are killing tens of thousands of real-life albatrosses each year. The birds are being killed on hooks meant for fish. Killed for no reason at all.

The Tourism and Antiquities Investigation Department have found a tomb under a house on the west bank of Luxor. The householder employed an illegal trader in antiquities and three other men from Cairo to excavate the tomb secretly. Acting on a tip-off, police went to the house of 68-year-old fumed AL Shahat, where they found a hole 1.5 metre in diameter in the back yard. At the southeast side was a passageway carved in solid rock leading to a burial chamber.

The columns of Tuthmosis IV are being re-erected on the open court of the Karnak temple in Luxor as part of an Egyptian-French project that began three years ago. Tuthmosis IV was one of the kings of the XXVIII Dynasty of the New Kingdom. The columns were placed on mastabas (stone benches) for restoration.

Apollo 17's December 07-19 1972 voyage to the moon was the crowning glory and finishing point of our entire manned lunar exploration program. The site chosen for this greatest and longest of all Apollo adventures was a small valley located in the Taurus-Littrow highlands. Because of the numerous towering massifs which rise on nearly all sides of this site 2000 to 2500 meters, it was also the most dangerous landing of the Apollo program.

One of the first signs that something was changing came in March last year in the suburbs of northern Atlanta, when people started talking, a little more frequently than might be expected, about mousetraps. It was hardly unprecedented in the US that a group of local parents should be lobbying for their children to be taught that evolution was a disputed theory, not a fact. But the way some of them were doing it was new, which is where the mousetraps came in. Unlike some of the openly evangelical Christian lobbies, they didn't want schools to teach creationism - the theory that God created the universe in seven days - they only wanted to air a theory known as Intelligent Design. ID holds that the living cell is "irreducibly complex", like a mousetrap. Remove the spring from a mousetrap and it isn't just an inferior mousetrap; it isn't a mousetrap at all. It had to have been created by an intelligent designer. It was the same, they said, for cells, and so life must have been designed by some kind of intelligence. Critics called this "stealth creationism" - religious dogma masquerading as science - but the ID proponents got their way, thanks partly to wording in President Bush's new education bill. Schools in Atlanta are now theoretically entitled to "teach the controversy" (though officials have urged teachers to stick to evolution for now, sparking a lawsuit) - and textbooks presenting Darwinism as fact have stickers inside, pointing out that it might not be.

A US space agency (Nasa) satellite is sending back data on a glacier that feeds Lake Palcacocha in the Andes. Government officials and geologists are concerned that a large ice chunk could break off and fall into the lake. They are monitoring the situation closely, in case it triggers a flood, threatening the city of Huaraz in the Rio Santa Valley below. The images are being captured by an instrument on Nasa's Terra satellite.

Beagle 2, the British-led mission to land on Mars and look for life, has yet to attract any firm sponsors, BBC News Online has learned. The pioneering mission is being funded by a combination of grants and loans from space agencies, research councils, manufacturers and the UK government, among others. But despite being constructed and awaiting a June launch from Kazakhstan, no one has yet firmly agreed to sponsor the probe. The force behind Beagle, Colin Pillinger of the Open University, remains optimistic.

Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial nebula was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mechain and later added to the catalog of his friend and colleague Charles Messier as M106. Modern deep telescopic views reveal it to be an island universe -- a spiral galaxy around 30 thousand light-years across located only about 21 million light-years beyond the stars of the Milky Way. Youthful blue star clusters and reddish stellar nurseries trace the striking spiral arms of M106. Seen so clearly in this beautiful image, the galaxy's bright core is also visible across the spectrum from radio to x-rays, making M106 a nearby example of the Seyfert class of active galaxies. The bright core of a Seyfert galaxy is believed to be powered by matter falling into a massive central black hole.

Two studies have found that a single letter change in the genetic code is responsible for a premature ageing condition. The finding could hold hints on the processes that underpin ageing. Since it was first described in 1886, more than 100 cases of Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS) have been reported worldwide. Sufferers seem to age up to ten times faster than normal. Children develop pinched and wrinkled skin, lose their hair and grow slowly. They are prone to ailments more common in the elderly, such as stiff joints and hip dislocations. Most die by the age of 13, usually from a heart attack or stroke.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi museum officials and U.S. military authorities now think that the much-publicized looting of antiquities from the world-renowned Iraq Museum was most likely a well-executed theft, perhaps planned before Baghdad fell. Museum officials have determined that most of the looting that did take place at the museum, home to more than 170,000 artifacts of human civilization, was focused on office machines and furniture, as at other government buildings, and that only selected antiquities were taken.

The Romans relished their founding myths. Aeneas, a fugitive from fallen Troy, anchored in the mouth of the Tiber River and there in the hills of Latium rekindled the flame of Trojan greatness. Romulus and Remus, twin sons of Mars and a sleeping beauty, were suckled by a she-wolf and grew up to establish the city destined for grandeur. In reality, though, the Romans owed more than they ever admitted to their accomplished predecessors and former enemies on the Italian peninsula, the Etruscans. They were known as Rasenna, and Tusci or Etrusci by Romans, whose historians generally ignored or belittled them.

April 16 brings us the first Full Moon of the new spring season. The official moment that the Moon will turn full is 3:35 p.m. EDT. Interestingly, at the instant of that full Moon, its position in the sky will place it just off to the north and east of the spot that was occupied by the Sun on the first day of autumn. Last September, it was pointed out that the full Moon occurring nearest to the autumnal equinox is traditionally called the Harvest Moon. What sets the Harvest Moon apart from the others is that instead of rising at its normal average of 50 minutes later each day, it seems to rise at nearly the same time for several nights.

Gourd fragments unearthed in Peru have pushed back clear evidence of religion in the Americas by a thousand years, to 2250 BC. The two key pieces are incised with an image of the fanged "staff god", a major deity in later Andean cultures. They were discovered at a burial site in the Patavilca River valley and dated using carbon isotopes.

An Earth-monitoring instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite is keeping a close eye on a potential glacial disaster-in-the-making in Peru's spectacular, snow-capped Cordillera Blanca (White Mountains), the highest range of the Peruvian Andes. Data from NASA's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (Aster) is assisting Peruvian government officials and geologists in monitoring a glacier that feeds Lake Palcacocha, located high above the city of Huaraz, 270 kilometers (168 miles) north of Lima. An ominous crack has developed in the glacier. Should the large glacier chunk break off and fall into the lake, the ensuing flood could hurtle down the Cojup Valley into the Rio Santa Valley below, reaching Huaraz and its population of 60,000 in less than 15 minutes.

NAPLES, Italy (Reuters) - Entombed in volcanic ash 2,000 years ago, Pompeii has long offered visitors a glimpse of ancient Roman life. Now they can also get a sniff. Directors at the sprawling archaeological site inaugurated "The Perfumer's House" on Tuesday and took the stoppers off 15 different perfumes concocted after a decade of research. Lily, rose, basil and fennel are just a few of the heady scents that once fired the imaginations of ancient Romans, said Anna Maria Ciarallo, Pompeii's head of biological research.

The discovery last fall of an ancient Hohokam village and the remains of several humans in a heavily populated area of south Phoenix surprised archaeologists, who had believed there was little chance of finding more Native American ruins within the city. Archaeologists kept the discovery a secret for several months while they removed human remains and completed a study because they wanted to protect the site from vandals and looters. The archaeologists have finished their work and believe all the human remains and burial artifacts have been removed.

Israeli investigators said Tuesday that they have found a new technique to measure the age of ancient metal artifacts. The method parallels radiocarbon dating, which has been used by archaeologists for decades to determine the age of bones and other organic relics. Until now, scientists had no direct way of determining the age of archaeological finds made of stable metals, including lead. But researchers have found that turning lead into a superconductor by super-freezing the metal, then looking at the level of oxidization -- rust -- made distinct by the process, could provide a new way to peer into the past.

For the first time scientists have predicted the explosion of a star. The star in question is designated Supernova 2003dh and was seen to brighten on 8 April. The prediction was the consequence of detecting a pulse of energy in the form of gamma rays from the same direction ten days earlier.

Complex life is a surprisingly recent occurrence. For more than three billion years the only living earthlings were simple, single-celled sacs of gloop. Then suddenly, just a few hundred million years ago, the first multi-celled animals appeared out of the primordial slime. This single evolutionary leap gave rise to every complex creature on Earth, humans included. Nobody knows why it happened, or why at that moment, so late in Earth's history. Now a theory has emerged that attempts to explain both mysteries. According to Paul Hoffman, a geologist at Harvard University, what shook the Earth out of its primitive complacency and triggered the emergence of modern animals was a devastating super-ice-age, called "snowball Earth".

At first glance, Puerto Rico seems a strange place to eye the sky. A tilted block of land guarding the eastern end of the Greater Antilles, this island boasts no soaring mountains on which an optical telescope could perch, nor an unpopulated outback that would suit the signal-sensitive ears of a radio array.

Thai scientists are to launch a probe into a famous fireball phenomenon occurring in the Mekong River once a year in the country's north, local media reported today. Every year on the first full moon of the 11th lunar month, which coincides with the end of Buddhist Lent, hundreds of red, pink and orange fireballs soar up into the sky from the Mekong, drawing crowds of spectators.

A new, laboratory-based affirmation of the existence of a united Israelite monarchy headed by kings David and Solomon in the 10th century B.C.E. has been revealed as the result of excavations carried out by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute of Archeology. The findings have particular significance in view of the debate existing among archaeologists as to the authenticity of the biblical account of the two kings and the period and extent of their reign.