Newsdesk Archive

Was it a terrorist missile, an off-course alien space craft or just a zippy mosquito with a hearty autumn constitution? Local authorities hope the FBI will know for sure.

Today scientists working in the University of Louisiana have discovered a statistical anomaly of similar proportions. Professors John Matese, Patrick Whitman and Daniel Whitmire have studied the orbits of comets for 20 years, and their recent findings have led to startling theories.

The 1972 U.S. ban on DDT is responsible for a genocide 10 times larger than that for which we sent Nazis to the gallows at Nuremberg. It is also responsible for a menticide which has already condemned one entire generation to a dark age of anti-science ignorance, and is now infecting a new one.

A series of prehistoric stone structures, reminiscent of Stonehenge but taller and possibly earlier, have been located 3,500ft above sea level on a mountain in Calabria, southern Italy.

THE archaeology and geology departments of M S University are all set to lend their expertise in the underwater exploration that will be carried out shortly in the Gulf of Cambay.

Peering through her glasses, ocean engineer Paulina Zelitsky spent months studying the grainy, black and white sonar images on her computer screen, searching for a scientific explanation for the fantastic geometric patterns she found beneath 2,000 feet of water.

For decades, the accepted wisdom was that the first humans crossed the then-frozen Bering Strait connecting Siberia and Alaska and settled as far south as New Mexico about 11,500 years ago. But discoveries at the Meadowcrowft Rockshelter about 30 miles southwest of Pittsburgh have shaken this theory to the core. Archaeologists have uncovered stone tools and other artifacts deep in the shelter that have been carbon-dated to at least 17,000 years ago.

Now that successive teams of French divers have explored the Mediterranean seabed in search of sunken antiquities, amateur divers will have the chance to see the Palace of Sighs that is said to have witnessed the embraces of Anthony and Cleopatra.

In the first of a series of articles, Dan Crisp examines the geographical treasure map of Plato's dialogues. Don't miss this ooportunity to read the essay on Atlantis Graham Hancock praises as "insightful!"

A detailed analysis of six cores retrieved from the rapidly shrinking ice fields atop Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro shows that those tropical glaciers began to form about 11,700 years ago. The cores also yielded remarkable evidence of three catastrophic droughts that plagued the tropics 8,300, 5,200 and 4,000 years ago. Lastly, the analysis also supports Ohio State University researchers' prediction that these unique bodies of ice will disappear in the next two decades, the victims of global warming. These findings were published today in the journal Science.

In part one of a series of articles written exclusively for GrahamHancock.com, long-time "Mysteries" message board contributer, Dan Crisp, takes a fresh look at Atlantis -- and argues that he can pin-point its location! If you want to know what Crisp cliams to know, be sure to visit the Underworld section of GrahamHancock.com this coming Monday, October 21st. Christopher F. Ash Web Editor, GrahamHancock.com

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A giant winged creature, like something out of Jurassic Park, has reportedly been sighted several times in Southwest Alaska in recent weeks. Villagers in Togiak and Manokotak say they have seen a huge bird that's much bigger than anything they have seen before. A pilot says he spotted the creature while flying passengers to Manokotak last week. He calculated that its wingspan matched the length of a wing on his Cessna 207. That's about 14 feet. Other people have put the wingspan in a similar range. Scientists aren't sure what to make of the reports. No one doubts that people in the region west of Dillingham have seen a very large rapto-like bird. But biologists and other people familiar with big Alaska birds say they're skeptical it's that big.

A favorite superstition of non-diffusionists and historical linguists is the mystery of the origin of the Olmecs. They appear not to notice the nearly exact similarities between the ancient peoples of Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, Rajasthan, etc., a part of India called Sivapuri, and the Meso-American Olmecs. I cannot understand or empathize with this type of non-awareness. In ancient Northern India, a religio-political savant was known as Ma-gul, Mo-gul or Ul-mag, which meant "The Great God Ul." The syllables were interchangeable. They were also called Eu-lama or Eu-rama (Aram), according to the different tribes' ability to pronounce "R" and "L." Eu = "Great." Rama/Lama = "Priest." Even today, among the Moslems, an Ulama or Ulema is a religious scholar and leader. There was even an ancient Near Eastern nation named Elam. These distinguished priest scholars were additionally called Ul-man, Olman, or Ul-manu. meaning "Deified Sovereigns of the Earth." When the non-Africanoid races of mankind left India for other parts of the world, the Ul-mags continued to call themselves Alleman (Germans), Aramean or Aramaic, and Olman, Ulmak or Olmek, in ancient Mexico. It is significant to note that the Phoenician sailor-traders had many names, one of which was Aram (Aramean). The Huichol Indians of Nayarit, Mexico call the port of San Blas Aramara, named after the India-Indian port they left on their voyage to America. Could this account for the name of the Nahuas?

Morien Institute: Do you have any thoughts about the recent discoveries of underwater megalithic structures in northwest India, at the Gulf of Cambay, and also in southeast India at Mahabalipuram? Dr Paul Weinzweig: "We follow these findings with interest. We believe that much of the significant archaeology of the future will be discovered in the little-explored world's oceans and will greatly expand our understanding of the enourmous antiquity of human civilization." Morien Institute: Similarly, do you have any thoughts about the underwater megalithic structures found off several of the Japanese islands, particularly the discovery at Yonaguni-Jima?" Dr Paul Weinzweig: "The marine structures at Yonaguni, as I understand them, bear close resemblance to the terraced terrestrial geology. Perhaps human settlements were carved out of local geology. In our Cuban site the granite monolithic stones are foriegn to the local marine and terrestrial geology."

There is mainstream NZ history, and then there are radical new approaches to answering some mysteries about NZ's history - it is thought that NZ was explored before the birth of Christ ~ !!

In 1972, Mariner 9 returned images that showed ridges on Mars that intersect and appear to rise from layered material near the south pole. The puzzling features were dubbed Inca City, and their origin has never been understood. Scientists thought they were sand dunes, possibly old ones that had been buried, hardened, and then exposed again. Other researchers figured they might be dikes of molten rock. A new image from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) reveal the ridges to be part of a larger circular structure that's about 53 miles (86 kilometers) across. "It is possible that this pattern reflects an origin related to an ancient, eroded meteor impact crater that was filled-in, buried, then partially exhumed," according to scientists at Malin Space Science Systems, which operates the camera for NASA. "In this case, the ridges might be the remains of filled-in fractures in the bedrock into which the crater formed, or filled-in cracks within the material that filled the crater. Or both explanations could be wrong." Mars loves a good mystery.

Venus is considered the most inhospitable of planets, a barren inferno where surface temperatures approach 900 degrees Fahrenheit and the atmosphere is composed of metal-eating acids. But the second planet from the sun actually may be harboring life, according to a University of Texas at El Paso research team. Studying conditions above the surface, it noticed mysterious patches swirling around, which may be communities of bacteria. "From an astrobiology point of view, Venus is not hopeless, said Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a professor of hydrology and environmental science, who led the research. "I'd even argue that the chance for life on Venus is about as plausible as the chance for life on Mars." The team's theory is that microbes could be living in clouds 30 miles up in the Venusian atmosphere, where conditions are relatively balmy -- water droplets are present, the temperature is 158 degrees Fahrenheit and the atmosphere is similar to what it is on Earth. Using data from the Russian Venera space missions and the U.S. Pioneer Venus and Magellan probes, the team found chemical oddities there that could be explained by the presence of living microbes.

Does the first evidence of life date to 3.85 billion years ago (Ga), or 3.65 Ga? A 200-million-year discrepancy may seem trivial almost 4 billion years after the fact. And yet scientists continue to debate whether some of the oldest rocks ever found date to 3.85 Ga, or "just" 3.65 Ga. The discrepancy matters because the rocks, however old they are, indicate that life already existed at the time they formed. The dispute is not just a matter of how early life began, however, but under what conditions: The earlier date was during the tail end of an asteroid storm called the "late heavy bombardment," while the later date was after the bombardment ceased. For astrobiology, the issue could hardly have greater weight. What conditions allowed life to emerge? How quickly after the planet coalesced from primordial dust and gas did chemicals organize themselves into self-replicating, evolving systems -- into life? And what evidence of that early life would remain after billions of years?

Dinosaur hunter Tony Fiorillo returned to Alaska's North Slope in July, intent on extracting the skull of a pachyrhinosaur spotted a year before north of America's northernmost mountains. The plant-eating dinosaur was a cousin to triceratops. It grew up to 7 feet (2.1 meters) high and 18 feet (5.4 meters) long. Its head had a boney nasal protuberance that may have supported a horn, and a prominent frill at the back with two distinct horns. Fiorillo never did extract the skull. As he and other dinosaur hunters began work, they found seven more pachyrhinosaur skulls in an area of about 13 feet by 13 feet (3.9 meters by 3.9 meters). "We never would have predicted finding that much," said Fiorillo, a curator at the Dallas Museum of Natural History. They ended up covering parts of three skulls with a burlap and plaster cast and hauling them out. Only a few decades ago, most paleontologists imagined dinosaurs as tropic and subtropic animals with reptile physiology, and that Alaska was too far north to yield remains. But scientists relying heavily on volunteers are slowly unlocking the Arctic's life history secrets, including a rich dinosaur heritage.

The Pacific Ocean had always been the fishermen's lifeblood -- until the day they knelt blindfolded before its blue waters and the knife pierced their hearts, making them offerings to Ni, the god of the sea. In the biggest find of human sacrifices in South America to date, archaeologists have uncovered the remains of 200 fishermen savagely stabbed on a beach in central Peru 650 years ago.

By sloshing around 13 tonnes of mercury, scientists have made the most accurate measurement yet of Newton's gravitational constant G. The result adds weight to a controversial theory that the strength of gravity is subtly affected by the Earth's magnetic field. The size of G determines the strength of the gravitational pull that bodies exert on each other. But physicists have only a rough idea of its value. The two most accurate measurements of G so far, taken by teams at the University of Washington in Seattle and at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris, have experimental errors of about 100 parts per million, yet their values differ by 10 times that amount. Some researchers believe that this difference could be due not to the experiments, but to Earth's magnetic field, which varies in strength at different locations.

"Most conservation effort goes into birds and mammals - creatures like the panda, a dim, dead-end animal that was probably on the way out anyway. "Yet arguably it's the little things that run the world, things like soil microbes. They're the least-known species of all - scientists like something sexier to work on.

An odd, previously unknown sphere, some 360 miles in diameter, has been found at the bottom of the Earth. It was detected by a Harvard professor and a graduate student who patiently examined records of hundreds of thousands of earthquake waves that passed through the center of the planet in the past 30 years. "It may be the oldest fossil left from the formation of Earth," says Adam Dziewonski, Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science. "Its origin remains unknown, but its presence could change our basic ideas about the origin and history of the planet." Earth's center lies some 3,800 miles below our feet.

"First of all, we have reached a stage now where no one nation, not even the United States, can do it alone and perhaps should not do it alone. It should be a global enterprise. We are now in the age of nations. "To answer your question, I think the next goal is obviously Mars. I'm pretty convinced from some of the recent images that Mars does not just harbor life, it's infested. We better be careful when we land."

This is a field of research where the opinions of experts range from gung-ho boosterism to outright skepticism, where accusations of data fudging and sexism fly, and where the popular press is always watching from the sidelines, ready to trumpet each new claim and counterclaim to the world as soon as it is made. On one side of the debate are the pheromone boosters, some of whom have founded companies that sell pheromone-based perfumes and pharmaceuticals. On the other side are skeptics who argue that the phrase "human pheromone" is a contradiction in terms. Between the two extremes lies a middle ground of researchers who are doubtful of the strongest claims but unwilling to ignore the possibility that humans, like many other animals, use chemicals to communicate. Among them is Martha McClintock, PhD, who can be credited with starting the human pheromone phenomenon. In 1971, the University of Chicago psychologist, then an undergraduate at Wellesley College, published a study showing that the menstrual periods of women who lived together tended to converge on the same time every month, an effect thought to be mediated by pheromones.

One-third of the world's primate species now face a serious risk of extinction, according to a report by an international group of conservationists. They say the number of threatened species has risen sharply in the last three years. Primates living in two south-east Asian countries are said to be especially endangered. But several species are judged a little safer than they used to be. The report is entitled Primates In Peril: The World's Top 25 Most Endangered Primates. It is published by Conservation International (CI) and the primate specialist group of IUCN, the World Conservation Union.

Finds uncovered at Saqqara, a 5,000-year-old burial ground on the banks of the Nile, are providing archaeologists with unprecedented clues as to how the ancient Egyptians lived their daily lives. National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's antiquities, and French archaeologist Alain Zivie, have spent years exploring the mysteries, secrets, and treasures of Egypt's past. In a new National Geographic Television Special, Egypt Eternal: The Quest for Lost Tombs, the archaeologists take viewers along as they uncover tombs meant to last for eternity

An eighteenth-century adventure story involving slavery on a desert island, violent death and escape became the literary sensation of its day and has been pronounced by experts since as exciting stuff but utter fiction. Now a British archaeologist has discovered the startling truth about Robert Drury and the story of his escape from Madagascar. The experts were wrong. His fantastic, graphic tale of torture, enslavement, battles between rival tribes and shipwreck was true and has opened an unexpected new window on a lost period of history. Drury's captain and crewmates were indeed slaughtered by violent islanders, while he survived only after enduring years of slavery before escaping, a tale that Drury detailed in his 1729 book, Madagascar: or Robert Drury's Journal During 15 Years' Captivity on that Island. The truth of Drury's encounter, which he called a plain, honest narrative of matters of fact', has been pieced together by British archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson, who last year uncovered the wreckage of the East India Company ship Degrave in which the young midshipman sailed to the island. On the same field trip, Pearson, of Sheffield University, dug up the remains of the village in which Drury was a captive.

An abundance of conflicting theories and unanswered questions has long surrounded these great monuments, and in spite of all our received knowledge -- that it was the tomb of the IVth- dynasty Pharaoh Khufu -- it is probably the greatest unsolved mystery of all time. This is due to the fact that not enough research been carried out on Pyramids, nor has all existing knowledge been properly collated. This leaves the field wide open for theories, each one of which gives rise to the next. Back in 1994, for example, when The Orion Mystery was published, there was a flutter of commotion among Egyptologists. The theory put forward by engineer Robert Bauval, who co- authored the book with Adrian Gilbert, was that, far from being built as tombs for successive Pharaohs as claimed by Egyptologists, Pyramids were designed as part of a grandiose master plan to reconstruct the layout of the constellations. Supreme Council of Antiquities Director Zahi Hawass said last month that he believed the shaft may have played a symbolic role in Khufu's religious philosophy. Khufu proclaimed himself Sun- God during his lifetime -- Pharaohs before him believed they became Sun Gods only after death -- and he may have tried to reflect his ideas in the design of his Pyramid. Some other experts still believe they were air shafts, but since they were once closed at both ends air would not have been able to pass through. If they had been left open as air shafts they would have exposed the burial chamber to outside influences, which was certainly contrary to the usual method of protecting the remains of the Pharaoh. It has even been suggested that the shafts were water channels. Another suggestion which -- compared with some of the others -- appears more likely is that the shafts were light or star shafts pointing directly to the stars Sirius (Isis -- from the Queen's chamber) and Orion (Osiris -- from the King's Chamber). This led to the suggestion that the shafts were escape routes for the soul to wing its way towards its respective star. It also linked the shafts to the theory that the entire layout of the three main stars corresponded to the belt in the constellation of Orion.

A few millenia from now, when archeologists are blowing the dust off artifacts in the sub-basement of the Museum of Television & Radio, I'm convinced they'll come across a TV programmer's manual with a chapter titled, "When in Doubt, Do Something on Egypt." The chapter will point out how audiences seem to lap up anything to do with pyramids, pharaohs, mummies, sarcophagi, embalming unguents and digging in the desert. It will advise that putting the word "lost" in the program's title, as in "The Lost House Keys of Ramses the Great" or "Ptolemy's Lost Ptunic," is worth several ratings points. And it will extol the virtues of cramming into two hours a load of material that normally would fill 20 minutes. These guidelines are assiduously followed in three specials airing this week, all of which have interesting information to share but all of which could have used ruthless editors, too.

Deep in Pachaug State Forest, a local hunter led some Thompson men to a rock ledge near a stream. The ledge caught David R. Wagner's eye, and as he and his friends began to examine the site, they discovered a treasure of Indian artifacts. They unearthed arrowheads, clay pots, stone pipes, copper beads and pendants at the remote site near the Sterling and Voluntown town line. Since they were digging on state land, Wagner called in State Archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni. The Thompson men thought they had discovered the find of the century, but after extensive testing, Bellantoni declared it the hoax of the century.

Christopher Dunn, Author of "The Giza Power Plant," contributes a new forum article in anticipation of November's Author of the Month discussion here at GrahamHancock.com. Remember to pick up your copy of Dunn's book today, so you can stay informed and participate fully in next month's debate.

The limited capacity of the commonly-used radiocarbon, or carbon-14 method, which could date back no further than 50,000 years, had previously rendered it impossible to achieve an accurate dating of the human fossils. Through the use of the new thermal ionization mass spectrometer, which measures the rate of decay in radioactive uranium (TIMS U- series dating), a more accurate and larger dating range can be achieved, said Wang, who is also a senior researcher with the Guangxi Museum of Nature. The scientists dated "Liujiang Man" by measuring the rate of decay of uranium by counting the number of thorium atoms, but instead of dating the fossils, which are porous, they dated the sediments, which better retain uranium, above and below the fossils.

Peruvian archeologists have discovered the first full Inca burial site at Machu Picchu since the famous mountaintop citadel was discovered 90 years ago, officials said on Saturday. "It's important because nothing like this -- a burial site and all that goes with it -- has been found since the Bingham era," Machu Picchu's administrator, Fernando Astete, told Reuters, referring to the U.S. explorer Hiram Bingham who rediscovered the Inca citadel in 1911. "The find is significant because of the funeral objects, such as stone and clay pots and five metal objects accompanying the remains of bones of a person, probably a woman," he added.

A geologist searching for earthquake faults at a construction site found something even more earth-shattering: the 100,000-year-old fossilized remains of a North American camel. Thursday's discovery by Robert Lemmer yielded four vertebrae -- the sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae, the thoracic vertebra and a neck vertebra. On Friday, another neck vertebra was discovered in a 12-foot deep trench dug to search for quake faults in the parking lot of a bowling alley. Fossilized bones were covered in a plaster solution by two paleontological preparers, Howell Thomas and Doug Goodreau, and transported to a laboratory at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum.

Linda Moulton Howe interviewed John Anthony West on the Art Bell/Whitley Streiber Dreamland show this past Saturday (October 12th). You can read a brief transcript of part of the interview by following the link below.

The images appear slowly on the video screen, like ghosts from the ocean floor. The videotape, made by an unmanned submarine, shows massive stones in oddly symmetrical square and pyramid shapes in the deep-sea darkness. Sonar images taken from a research ship 2,000 feet above are even more puzzling. They show that the smooth, white stones are laid out in a geometric pattern. The images look like fragments of a city, in a place where nothing man-made should exist, spanning nearly eight square miles of a deep-ocean plain off Cuba's western tip.

Follow the link below for information.

In November, we turn the power on at "The Giza Powerplant" with Christopher P. Dunn! Pick up your copy of Dunn's book today, and join us as we explore a truly "alternative" interpretation of the Great Pyramid.

GrahamHancock.com "Mysteries" participant, Duncan Edlin provides us with his assesment of Graham Hancock's latest book.

A new article has been added to our Forum area by two Indian researchers,Deepak Bhattacharya and P. C. Naik, entitled, "NAKSHETRA - A Possible Inspiration for the Mariner's Compass." In this essay, the authors argue that evidence exists for the veneration of Orion by an ancient Indian culture which may have reproduced stars associated with that region of sky on the ground in architecture. Moreover, they argue that the angular relationships between these stars may have inspired the cardinal directions of the mariner's compass. Check it out!

Twelve years ago scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, concluded from DNA studies that "Eve", an ancestor common to all modern humans, was an African. Now scientists in South Africa have tracked "Eve" to the Khoisan peoples, who are the oldest indigenous group in southern Africa. To pinpoint Eve's origins, geneticists Himla Soodyall and Trefor Jenkins of the South African Institute for Medical Research and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg analyzed mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), genetic material from the energy-producing organelles in all cells. Because after conception only the egg's mitochondria survive, mtDNA forms a continuous thread running back in time through the maternal lineage. Knowing mtDNA mutation rates, scientists can infer, by comparing DNA segments from different populations, which are the most ancient patterns.

GrahamHancock.com exceeded one million page downloads over the month of September. During a single 24 hour period that month, the Web site attracted an estimated 15 THOUSAND unique visitors! This represents a doubling of site activity from over the same period one year ago. It should also be noted that GrahamHancock.com has experienced unprecedented growth since June of this year (after an initial drop off from a previous high established in February of this year). Activity levels exceeded February's record in August and then shot up to nearly reach 1.3 million page views in September. Alexa.com ranks GrahamHancock.com as the 53,454th most-popular site on the entire Internet. A great deal of the credit for our recent success must go to the message board moderation team and to the regular posters who make our message board such a source of creativity. "Hats off" to the volunteer staff at GrahamHancock.com for their dedication and to our regular forum participants who make this Web site an enjoyable experience for all of our visitors! Christopher F. Ash Web Editor, GrahamHancock.com

Work is clearly going well on the story for the fourth and final Indiana Jones film. Harrison Ford began talking about reprising the role in an interview with Britain's Total Film magazine. "With Indiana, there will be different aspects of his character that [Lucas, Spielberg, and I are] working on," he explained. "We'll see him in the '50s in America, or at least for part of the film, and I think that's an interesting opportunity there." It's the good old days all over again, with the dynamic Lucas-Spielberg duo hammering out a new adventure for Indy, and Ford bringing his legendary je-ne-sais-quoi to the part. The aging but energetic actor says that all three are working hard to maintain the spirit of the original, and he's always thought it unique how audiences liked seeing Indy take blows as well as give them. He's certainly not the indestructible James Bond type, and the new film will poke fun at Indy's age in many of its humorous moments.

A scene from the dawn of history: Primitive man and his wolf companion amble out of the cave to begin the morning's hunt. Fast-forward 100,000 years, add a leash and a stop at the doggy bakery, and we have the whole story of man's best friend. Right? Maybe not. Although many dog trainers lean on the notion of humans taming the savage wolf, securing a steady hunting companion and night watchman, some experts challenge this story of the dog's domestication. ''We have to move beyond the idea that man created the dog by taming a wolf,'' says Janice Koler-Matznick of the New Guinea Singing Dog Conservation Society in Central Point, Ore. Instead, she and others suggest that the dogs that became man's best friend were from another line of more social, cooperative animals. Experts say the debate is more than academic; it has an effect on the kind of training best suited to keep Fido on his best behavior.

To mark the 21st Anniversary of the Leeds International UFO Conference (1982-2002), the inaugural 2002 UFO Magazine Awards were presented during our Grand Gala Dinner at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Leeds, England, on Saturday evening, 21st September. 'While these Awards are principally intended to honour those who have made significant and important contributions towards the subject in the past 12 months, the categories ensure that equal recognition is bestowed on others who have demonstrated similar resolve and wholehearted commitment to the subject down the years. BEST TV DOCUMENTARY IN A UFO-RELATED SUBJECT NOMINATIONS AND ENTRIES Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age - A three-part documentary which examines lost civilizations and underwater cities that thrived before the last Ice Age, featuring Graham Hancock and produced for Channel 4 Rods! - An examination of a new aerial phenomena, first discovered by the producer and narrator, Jose Escamilla (USA) WINNER UNDERWORLD: FLOODED KINGDOMS OF THE ICE AGE * Alan Alford accepted the award on behalf of Channel 4

Find out who killed King Tut. [In USA] Watch The Assassination of King Tut, Sunday, Oct. 6, at 9 p.m. ET

In 1989, the remains of a human skeleton were discovered in a rock shelter at the Cook petroglyph site in Wyoming County, West Virginia during an archaeological Phase II investigation. Upon examination, archaeologist Robert Pyle speculated a connection between the ancient human remains and the Ogam petroglyphs about ten meters away. Mitochondrial DNA was extracted from the roots of the teeth and compared to previously cataloged DNA sequences from ethnic groups around the world. No association was found among North American groups. The closest DNA matches were European.

A photograph taken at midsummer in 1996 shows the evening sun illuminating rectangular walls set up in the desert. The picture is part of a new book by Minna and Kenneth Lönnqvist. They see it as an indication that the largest room of the ruins of Qumran was a sun temple. In most studies it is considered a dining room in spite of the two altars that originally stood at the eastern end. The mute landscape opens up to the layman only when the archaeologists explain: "At the time of the summer solstice the rays of the setting sun shine at 286 degrees along the building's longitudinal axis. The room is situated at exactly the same angle as the Egyptian shrines dedicated to the sun cult."

The original X-rays, for the first time on public display at London's Science Museum, show an abnormal curvature of the spine and fusion of the upper vertebrae, a condition associated with scoliosis and a rare disorder called Klippel-Feil syndrome, which makes sufferers look as if they have a short neck. Moreover, people with Klippel-Feil have restricted movement of the upper spine and cannot turn their heads without moving the entire torso. According to Salt Lake City chief medical examiner Todd Grey, King Tut may have needed a cane to support himself or to help with walking. About 130 walking sticks found among his fabulous treasure would support the theory.

A mule has given birth to a male foal in a hamlet deep in rural Morocco. No big deal, you may think, but in fact the birth was a minor scientific miracle. A mule is the hybrid of a horse and a donkey and should be sterile - except in this instance.

Graham Hancock reviews three recent books on the subject of Atlantis. Find out which one he descries as "an impenetrable and pointless muddle!"

In a brilliant and unreserved essay, Robert Bauval does what no established orthodox academic has thus far been willing to do: he holds Dr. Hawass accountable for the repellant anti-Semitic views the latter has expressed on countless occasions - not the least of which occurred at the opening of "Gantenbrink's Door." Robert Bauval has once again demonstrated why the Egyptological establishment has ceded all credibility to the 'alternative fringe.' Not a single academic insider, nor National Geographic magazine (which has boosted Hawass' public image considerably, and bestowed upon him the honorary title of 'Explorer in Residence') has dared to publicly condemn Hawass' blanket attacks upon "Jews!" It took an 'outsider,' like Bauval, to finally state the obvious: "This is serious and dangerous rhetoric." How long must we must wait for the academic community to un-mask the monstrous anti-Semitism that stands guard over the accepted version of Egyptian history? -- Web Editor (Christopher F. Ash)

Join us this month in the Mysteries forum for an in-depth examination of the processes of evolution -- with special guest evolution-antagonist, Richard Milton. Be sure to read Milton's special guest essay on Darwinism (explore the linked material for plenty of backgrond information on Darwin's theory in its classic and modern forms).

In an Interview with EarthFiles.com (by Linda Moulton Howe), Dr. Mark Lehner endorses the pyramid star-shaft theory, including the link with both Orion (as Osiris) and Sirius.

Actor Mel Gibson is to direct a film about Jesus Christ made entirely in the ancient languages of Latin and Aramaic - without any subtitles. Gibson, currently starring in Signs, will direct The Passion, a drama focusing on the last 12 hours of Jesus Christ. The film marks his first return to directing since he won an Oscar for Braveheart in 1995. "People think I'm crazy, and maybe I am," Gibson said at a news conference in Rome. "But maybe I'm a genius.

More than 80 years after King Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered in the Valley of Kings, people will at last be able to see what the teenage Egyptian pharaoh may have looked like. A model of his face, recreated from X-rays taken in the 1960s, will go on display at the Science Museum in London today to reveal egyptologists' and scientists' impression of the mysterious 18-year-old. Visitors to Tutankhamun: Beneath the Mask may be surprised by his appearance. Anthony Geffen, executive producer of Atlantic Productions, which made a new Channel 5 documentary about one of Egypt's most famous sons, said: "The true face of the Golden Pharaoh bears little resemblance to the golden death mask the world associates with Tutankhamun."

Seventeen fishing traps or weirs believed to have been placed in a river about 4,000 years ago have been discovered at an archaeological site in Ishikari, Hokkaido, the Ishikari City Board of Education said Thursday. The site, Ishikari Momijiyama No. 49, is said to have the oldest and largest remains in the nation that indicate fishing took place in ancient rivers. Weirs are fencelike structures for trapping fish as they swim upstream. Eight other fishing devices of a different sort also were found, proving the site to have been a major freshwater salmon fishing spot in the Jomon period (ca 10,000 B.C.-ca 300 B.C.), archeologists said. The site is located on a dry riverbed, about 2.5 kilometers from the Ishikarigawa river.

A new book is coming in January 2003 from controversial Geologist Robert Schoch. Some sketchy details available here: http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/Schoch-5.29.2000.html

Today is the last day for the official Author of the Month discussion of Elaine Morgan's "The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis." If you've enjoyed the discussion, please post a message of thanks to Craig Hagstrom for helping make our first "AOM" event a great success (and please consider purchasing a copy of his book, "The Passionate Ape" from our Bookshop!). If you're appetite for AAT has been wetted by our limited coverage this month, you'll want to take a look through the new AAT Links Section of GrahamHancock.com. This section features sites with more in-depth coverage of the subject, as well as discussion forums where you can contribute your own ideas for the consideration of others. Though Elaine Morgan is no longer our Author of the Month, remember that the AAT and all topics related to human origins are always "on topic" at the Mysteries Forum! Christopher F. Ash Web Editor, GrahamHancock.com

On September 27, 1822, the French scholar could decipher hieroglyphic symbols, through his study of Rosetta stone. At that time, Rosetta was the main gate to Cairo, from the Mediterranean. A near side due to its location on the branch. At the time of the French Expedition, the Rosetta town and fort received the attention of the French. In July 1799, a member of the French Expedition found a basalt, 118 cm-long x 77 cm wide, 30cm thick stone, weighting 762 kg, with hieroglyphic and Greek inscriptions.

The arrival of Alexander the Great in 332 BC was not the close of an epoch, and nor did his heirs, the Ptolemies, cause a social revolution. The so-called "conquest" was a mere episode in Egyptian history, as there had been a blending of Egyptian and Greek cultures in Egypt long before Alexander's arrival. From the sixth century BC Greek traders and sailors had established communities in Egypt and worshipped Egyptian gods under Greek names. As well as having these close ties with Greeks, the Egyptians welcomed Alexander because Egypt and Greece shared a common enemy: Persia. When Alexander, after vanquishing the Persians, arrived at the Nile he stopped in Memphis to pay homage at the temple of Ptah, one of the "great gods" of Egypt, but did not waste time going to Thebes (Luxor), the southern capital and the centre of the cult of Amun-Re (that gesture of respect could wait until he went to Siwa). Instead, he sent his officer Apollonius south as his envoy while he himself marched down the Canopic branch of the Nile towards the Mediterranean.

Leonardo Da Vinci may have been the son of a Middle Eastern slave, according to the director of an Italian museum located near the Renaissance master's birthplace in Tuscany. Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale Leonardo Da Vinci, announced last week at the museum that, after over 25 years of research, he has concluded that Da Vinci's father was a minor nobleman or craftsman named Ser Piero Da Vinci, while the artist's mother was a Middle Eastern slave, known by the name Caterina. Her exact country of origin remains unclear due to limited written records.

Archaeologists offered a first glimpse on Wednesday of a lost culture's holy site atop a German peak, and confirmed it as the source of the world's oldest map of the heavens. The exact location has been kept secret for weeks, amid fears that treasure-seekers would move in and disturb Bronze Age remains. The site is atop the Mittelberg, a 252m hill in the Ziegelroda Forest, 180km south-west of Berlin Scientists are still scratching their heads at the full meaning of a 32cm bronze-and-gold disc found by treasure hunters on the Mittelberg in 1999. The map on its face shows the Brocken as well as 32 stars including the Pleiades. Experts in pre-history can only guess at the identity of the people who made the "Nebra Disc" 3 600 years ago.

In today's release from the NASA/ASU/THEMIS team, an image showing the floor of the Hellas Basin, there is this apparently "low-key" announcement: "It is likely that water ice or even liquid water is present in the deposits and is somehow responsible for the observed landscape. The floor of Hellas remains a poorly understood portion of the planet that should benefit from the analysis of new THEMIS data." Indeed, and MarsNews.com will continue our analysis of all the THEMIS data coming in -- and not always coming in from official NASA websites. We are currently preparing an update to our previous report on the July 24th/25th image of Cydonia. Stay tuned...

A Spanish research team believes it may have captured the first ever images of a living giant squid, a mysterious animal which has only been seen dead or dying, said a spokesperson for the documentary maker Transglobe Films. The team of about 40 filmmakers and scientists shot more than 100 hours of footage during its 15-day Kraken Project off Spain's north-western coast, one of the areas where the giant squid is believed to live in ocean depths. Cameras were lowered into the sea to shoot at a depth of up to 800m. The team will now examine the footage to see whether it contains shots of the giant squid, Architeuthis by its scientific name. Local fishermen have caught large cephalopods recently, and the Kraken team retrieved a six-metre dead squid which weighed 50kg.

Gaston Maspero, the first director of Egypt's national storehouse of ancient treasures, is said to have believed his museum should resemble pharaohs' tombs - crowded with paintings and statues, furniture and jewelry. One hundred years after the Cairo Museum opened, its basement, at least, is everything the French Egyptologist could have hoped for. Wandering through its shadowy maze is like exploring the inside of a pyramid. Here, the beam of a flashlight picks out a 3-foot-long, bearded stone bust of a pharaoh resembling those at Luxor and Karnak that date back some 4,600 years. There, a trio of cupids straight out of a Victorian cemetery form an incongruous honor guard for a dark stone pharaonic figure in the familiar pose - arms straight at the sides, left foot forward, face imperious. A corner devoted to stone pedestals and capitals could be a spare parts shop for a classical architect.

Mid-60's Masada excavations forged a past through falsified evidence and concealed facts. This book not only presents a discussion of a specific study of ideology, politics, and archaeology, but also utilizes that study to say something of a much more general nature about science, deception, and falsehood and some of the ways we socially construct cultural meanings.

Controversial TV writer Andrew Davies said he had been berated by Druids after he compared them to the Taliban in a new ITV1 drama on Boudicca. He said the row erupted when he compared the Druid priests of the warrior queen who fought the Romans with the Taliban's stance against America and George W Bush. He added: "There are parallels and I got a lot of abusive letters from Druids who objected to these comparisons.

A high-flying young physicist, who rapidly published a series of remarkable discoveries, has been sacked by Bell Labs, New Jersey, for "scientific misconduct". Hendrik Schön's dismissal follows an independent investigation at the labs that found "compelling evidence" of data manipulation and misrepresentation in 16 of 24 papers examined. The investigation "completely cleared" 20 co-workers of scientific misconduct, but raised questions about the extent to which co-authors of papers and lab heads should be responsible for published material.

To boldly go, the timeless and optimistic Space Age theme, looks to have been reclaimed from a NASA lost-and-found drawer as long-range planners prepare to reveal next month a new roadmap for robotic and human missions to deep space, SPACE.com has learned. The 21st Century, science-driven agenda is designed to propel exploration beyond the International Space Station and involves a new habitation complex that would be built between Earth and the Moon, serving as a portal to Mars and other solar system targets.

In the head of a sunflower, the tiny florets that turn into seeds are typically arranged in two intersecting families of spirals, one winding clockwise and the other winding counterclockwise. Count the number of florets along a spiral and you are likely to find 21, 34, 55, 89, or 144. Indeed, if 34 floret (or seed) rows curve in one direction, there will be either 21 or 55 rows curving in the other direction. These numbers all belong to a sequence named for the 13th-century Italian mathematician Fibonacci. Each consecutive number is the sum of the two numbers that precede it. Thus, 1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 2 = 3, 2 + 3 = 5, 3 + 5 = 8, 5 + 8 = 13, and so on. The ratios of successive terms of the Fibonacci sequence get closer and closer to a specific irrational number, often called the golden ratio. The golden ratio can be represented as (1 + sqrt[5])/2, or 1.6180339887. . . . Note that the ratio 55/34 is 1.617647. . ., and the next ratio, 89/55, is 1.6181818. . ., and so on.

Relative to their size, humans have the biggest brains on the planet. Check out the guy sitting next to you on the bus: hunkered beneath a fringe of moussed hair and a few millimeters of skull are three crinkly pounds of brain -- the only substantive difference between you and species you regard as food or pets. But how did this happen? What special circumstance, what unperceived evolutionary force, nudged our hulking, hairy ancestors toward intelligence, and silently trebled the size of their brains in two million years or less?

TEOTIHUACAN, Mexico (Reuters) - Archeologists digging at Mexico's famed Pyramid of the Moon think they could be a few feet away from a royal grave, key to unlocking the secrets of the first major metropolis built in the Americas. The Aztecs stumbled on these awesome stone pyramids, plazas and temples in about 1500, several centuries after the city was torched and abandoned. They believed it was a divine work and so named the site Teotihuacan, "City of the Gods" in their indigenous nahuatl tongue. After 200 years of excavations and research, archeologists are similarly in the dark about who built the city, which at its peak in 500 A.D. is believed to have housed 200,000 people, rivaling Shakespeare's London, but a millennium earlier.

A hardy microbe that can withstand huge doses of radiation could have evolved this ability on Mars. That is the conclusion of Russian scientists who say it would take far longer than life has existed here for the bug to evolve that ability in Earth's clement conditions. They suggest the harsher environment of Mars makes it a more likely birthplace. The hardy bugs could have travelled to Earth on pieces of rock that were blasted into space by an impacting asteroid and fell to Earth as meteorites. Deinococcus radiodurans is renowned for its resistance to radiation - it can survive several thousand times the lethal dose for humans. To investigate how the trait might have evolved, Anatoli Pavlov and his colleagues from the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St Petersburg tried to induce it in E. coli.

While men today sometimes receive criticism from women about their communication skills, a new book reveals that a male was probably the first human to speak. According to "The Speciation of Modern Homo Sapiens," published last week by The British Academy, a male likely was the first to acquire a gene, called protocadherinXY, believed to play a crucial role in human capacity for language. The book states that the gene emerged as a translocation, or change, of a segment on the Y chromosome, which is associated with men.

Carvings on an ancient ossuary in the Cincinnati Art Museum depict a pyramid-topped tomb in Jerusalem according to University of Cincinnati professor Steven Fine, who was the first to recognize the significance of the engravings. The discovery adds to the small number images that show what Jerusalem looked like in the first century. Fine, who heads the university's Judaic Studies department, noticed the carvings when he visited the museum and saw a small stone chest or ossuary of the type produced in Jerusalem between about 20 B.C. and A.D. 66. When Fine, who has written extensively about ossuaries, looked at it more closely, he realized that carved onto its side was a unique depiction of a building resting upon a broad pedestal and topped with three triangles representing ancient pyramids, or cones, atop a tomb. "I immediately knew that I was looking at the stylized image of a massive Jerusalem tomb of the first century, the period of the early Rabbi known simply as Hillel, and of Jesus of Nazareth," says Fine.

Geneticist Steve Jones says science is now telling us what feminists knew all along - the future is female. The male of the species is doomed as the Y chromosome withers away. The one thing that scientists ought to be is humble,' he says, sounding for a second more like a priest than a professor, 'because they, more than anyone, know how little they can explain.'

It is one of the longest Mayan texts ever found, but archaeologists say it is even more important because it provides the strongest evidence yet of a century-long superpower war that may have spawned the greatest achievements of the Maya even as it sowed the seeds of their downfall. "What we found contradicts what was previously said, including by me," Vanderbilt University's Arthur A. Demarest said yesterday in announcing the new findings. "You know you have an important discovery when you have to start rewriting and apologizing."

On August 30, 2002, Justice John Jelderks, Justice Magistrate of the United States District Court in Portland, Oregon, handed down the long-awaited decision on the so-called Kennewick Man case. Jelderks found that the scientists must be allowed access to the skeletal remains, and that the remains must not be repatriated to the American Indian tribes cited in the court case. Jelderk's reasoning is quite interesting, and will no doubt have repercussions in future applications of legislation protecting archaeological resources. As legal documents go, the Kennewick Man decision is clearly written, logically reasoned, and absolutely devasting in its criticism of the activities of the U.S. Corps of Engineers and Department of the Interior. But, that's really beside the point, to be honest, although it does make for some entertaining--or very painful--reading. The main gist of the argument is that the prevailing legislation that should have dictated what happened to the bones should have been the Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA), not the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).

Chinese archaeologists have discovered a site which is believed to be an ancient stoneware processing plant in Heilongjiang Province, northeast China. The plant, located in Nehe City on the floodplain of the Nenjiang River, is said to date back 10,000 to 12,000 years to thelate Palaeolithic Age.

...like it or not, in science, as in most human intellectual endeavors, who is doing the saying matters as much as what is being said, at least in terms of getting an initial hearing. Science is, in this sense, conservative and sometimes elitist. It has to be in order to survive in a surfeit of would-be revolutionaries. For every Stephen Wolfram there are 100 James Carters. There needs to be some screening process whereby truly revolutionary ideas are weeded out from ersatz ones.

At last week's meeting of the NASA Advisory Council -- held at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory -- there was a great deal of news about new developments in Mars exploration besides the revelations (already reported in "SpaceDaily") that the two U.S. rovers intended for launch in 2003 are still running into problems that may possibly delay arrival of one or both of them at Mars by as much as four years. The remainder of the decade's program has run into additional problems -- not linked to the U.S., but to difficulties and likely program cancellations in the Mars projects of three different European nations, two of them partnered with the U.S.. And a whole series of additional factors -- including the massive cost of a Mars sample return mission -- are forcing the U.S. to radically revise its post-2009 Mars program, including the form of the first sample-return mission

Egypt is waging war to protect the Pyramids and the Sphinx from an "organized campaign" by Israel and foreign amateur archeologists, officials here say. "Israeli allegations that they built the Pyramids abound and we must face up to this even if it triggers a (diplomatic) crisis" with Israel, Egyptian Culture Minister Farouq Hosni told the weekly Rose Al Youssef. "We must not ignore these allegations and keep silent. We must counterattack with full strength because this is how they took Palestine. They kept on saying Palestine belongs to them and they are doing the same with the Pyramids." "There are people waging a big attack against us," Hawass said. "I swore two years ago I would not reveal their names, but I found out that I must mention them because it is becoming a threat," he said. Hawass identified them as Robert Bauval, an architect from Belgium; Graham Hancock, a British journalist; John Anthony West, a US tourist guide; and Richard Hoagland "who speaks of the existence of pyramids on Mars."

What is exciting about the effect of mutated ASPM, says André Goffinet, a neurobiologist at the University of Namur Medical School, Belgium, is that the brain is only smaller, not more primitive-looking, suggesting that changes in ASPM could indeed have scaled up the human brain during evolution. To test this idea, says Walsh, the team is now trying to move the human ASPM gene into a mouse to see if it will grow a bigger brain

Circumcised women experience sexual arousal and orgasm as frequently as uncircumcised women, according to a study in Nigeria. The researchers also found no difference in the frequency of intercourse or age of first sexual experience between the two groups of women. These findings remove key arguments used to defend the practice, they say. Friday Okonofua and colleagues at the Women's Health and Action Research Centre in Benin City studied 1836 women, 45 per cent of whom had been circumcised.

For decades, scientists have agreed that human and chimpanzee DNA is 98.5 percent identical. A recent study suggests that number may need to be revised. Using a new, more sophisticated method to measure the similarities between human and chimp DNA, the two species may share only 95 percent genetic material. The result is surprising, said David Nelson, a geneticist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, "in that it's more than twice as much difference as we thought" existed.

A mysterious door has been found in a previously unexplored shaft inside Egypt's biggest pyramid, only days after a similar stone slab was found in another shaft, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said on Monday. Last week, in front of television cameras, a specially designed robot climbed about 215 feet up one of two narrow passages stretching from a chamber inside the pyramid of Cheops to peer through a hole drilled into a stone door, only to find another door behind it. Away from the cameras, the robot was sent up the second shaft, only partially examined in the past. It found another door, which had copper handles like the one in the first shaft and was at the same distance of 65 meters, Hawass said.

Archaeologists are appealing for local people in Teesside [UK] to help unearth history. Three trenches are being opened up in Hartlepool's Headland area, to try to unearth a series of features which were discovered in a geophysical survey eight years ago.

A Japanese team of archaeologists have unearthed a huge structure at Sakkara revealing one of the oldest examples of architectural style of the early dynasties (3000-2700 BC). The find reveals much about the building methods used in Zoser's 'step' pyramid, which was completed during the III Dynasty (2705-2630 BC).

Patrick Conner acknowledges that the two pyramids in his side yard are a bit unusual and attract a lot of attention. The two large structures are visible from U.S. 31, and curious motorists often use the front yard of his home as a parking lot, so they can get a closer look. But if those visitors think Conner's outside pyramids are unusual, they should peek into his house.

A new calculation of the age of many of South Africa's best-known fossils by a team at the University of Witwaters-rand has turned the clock of human evolution forward by a million years. But not everyone in scientific circles is happy about the way the team rearranged our evolutionary tree. The researchers found that the Cradle of Humankind heritage site at Sterkfontein near Krugersdorp might be a million years younger than thought. Their recalculation puts Australopithecus africanus, the Southern African apeman who was thought to be a progenitor of humankind, living alongside early members of our own genus Homo.

Worried about global warming? Talk to a few scientists at Woods Hole. Oceanographers there are seeing big trouble with the Gulf Stream, which warms both North America and Europe

Archeologists digging at Mexico's famed Pyramid of the Moon think they could be a few feet away from a royal grave, key to unlocking the secrets of the first major metropolis built in the Americas. It is not known who ruled in Teotihuacan -- founded around the time of Christ 30 miles northeast of Mexico City and mysteriously collapsing around 700 A.D. -- or what the original city was called, or what language its people spoke. But Japanese archeologist Saburo Sugiyama and his Mexican colleague, Ruben Cabrera, believe some of the answers lie inside the Pyramid of the Moon and their recent find of three skeletons of high-ranking officials or priests has given them hope of unraveling Teotihuacan's mysteries. Sugiyama believes the latest skeletons are only part of a larger grave. His theory is that they are very close to a burial site of a Teotihuacan king or governor. "We have not found any burial chamber tombs to date. But it is possible that there is something special, the grave of a governor or someone of maximum importance," Sugiyama said. "If anyone important died, it's logical they are buried here."

This video, never broadcast in the United States media (to our knowledge), was made after an historic yet little-known press conference in London was given by Phobos 2 scientists from the Soviet Union. The scientists presented almost all their data from the mission and reported, among other things, that this terrain was apparently real and unexplained. It showed up in both visible and infrared images taken by Phobos 2... In the Channel 4 report, Dr. John Becklake of the London Science Museum stated, "The city-like pattern is 60 kilometers wide and could easily be mistaken for an aerial view of Los Angeles... We have some very, very thin lines on the surface of Mars, in the infrared, which means its heat, and its not visible, its heat... these have a width of 3-4 kilometers wide. As for the question of what it is: I don't know, and the Russians aren't telling us."

Richard Milton, noted anti-Darwinist critic and author of "Shattering the Myths of Darwinism," reviews the anti-creationist book, "The Antiquity of Man," written by Michael Brass.

[Ed. Note: While this article claims that the land bridge in question is "man-made," Graham Hancock does not make this claim in Underworld. Rather, it is suggested that ancient Indian texts preserve a memory of the land bridge when it was last above water] Space images taken by NASA reveal a mysterious ancient bridge in the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka. The recently discovered bridge currently named as Adam´s Bridge is made of chain of shoals, c.18 mi (30 km) long. The bridge´s unique curvature and composition by age reveals that it is man made. The legends as well as Archeological studies reveal that the first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to the a primitive age, about 17,50,000 years ago and the bridge´s age is also almost equivalent.

It's small, it's fast, and it's bizarre-looking. Paleontologists in China have discovered the skull of a new dinosaur species with beaver-like buck teeth on its upper jaw and the beginnings of a beak on its lower jaw. The skull is around 128 million years old and was found in Liaoning Province, a region in northeastern China that has proven to be a spectacular treasure trove of dinosaur fossils.

Multiple Sclerosis could be a sexually transmitted infection, a neurologist is claiming. Dr Christopher Hawkes says he is not suggesting MS, which causes progressive paralysis, is exclusively the result of a sexually transmitted infection. But he says it could be genetic factors increase susceptibility to a sexually transmitted agent that affects neural health.

Faint signs of water have been spotted in a distant solar system. The astronomers studied 17 stars, all of which are thought to have planetary systems or cometary clouds. They used the 32-metre Medicina radio telescope near Bologna to search for water "maser" emissions - tell-tale microwaves that might come from water in a planet's atmosphere.