Earth's Identical Twin Only 4 Light-Years Away

There are possibly millions of Earth-like planets lying out there in the immensity of the universe, each bearing just the proper conditions for the appearance and evolution of life, we just have to find them. Only a decade ago or so, the human race wasn't even capable of telling whether nearby stars, or any star in the universe for that matter ,bared any planet. The fact is that the first ever exoplanet was discovered in 1985, around a main sequence star ,however its detection wasn't confirmed until 1996.
Since then, more than 276 exoplanets have been discovered and confirmed, but none seems to have the characteristics of our planet. Gas giants, rocky planets ten times larger than the Earth. The problem is that the effects produced on a star by small planets such as our own are simply too low to be observed from great distances. Now astronomers claim to have evidence that there may be an Earth-like planet, or more, around the closest star to us, Alpha Centauri, a triple system about 4 light years away from Earth.Although on the night sky Alpha Centauri looks like a single bright star, as I said earlier, it is in fact a triple system formed of two Sun-like stars orbiting each other from a distance of about 23 astronomical units, part of the Population I of stars, meaning they have extremely high metallicity, a property shared by most stars that form in clouds of matter consisting of high amounts of dust, which is also a proper environment for the birth of protoplanetary disks and, possibly, planets.The usual technique for detecting the presence of a planet orbiting a star involves measuring the wobble of the star, induced by the gravitational pull of the planet. University of California researcher Javiera Guedes say that computer simulations have already shown in the past that there is a good chance that planets might have formed around one or both of the stars in the Alpha Centauri triple system. Her colleague, Greg Laughlin, from the University of California Santa Cruz, argues that, if the theory about planetary formation is correct, than there should definitely be at least a planet in that system.Even more intriguing is the fact that these planets have a high chance that they have conditions proper for the appearance of life. The simulations conducted by Guedes were mostly related to the smaller star, Alpha Centauri B, where Earth-like planets may form in the habitable zone of the system, and thus bear liquid water. There is no need for creating new detection methods, however the time required for such processes may span over the period of a few years.Most of the exoplanets found so far are gas giants, easy to understand why. Stellar wobble favors the detection of massive planets, as it depends on the gravitational field generated by the planet. Thus, greater gravitational pull basically means a greater chance to discover a new planet. Alpha Centauri B, on the other hand, is not just any star. It is the closest star to us, thus very bright. Further still, the detection of an Earth-like planet by measuring the wobble of the star is favored, because Alpha Centauri B is a relatively calm star, which would not interfere too much with the effects determined by the presence of a small planet.Its enhanced brightness can provide some of the most essential information related to the planet: whether it has or not an atmosphere, its chemical composition and many other characteristics.The study of the Alpha Centauri B star will be conducted by using the 1.5 meter telescope from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, and will also include an evaluation of the natural oscillation of the star in order to create an image of their internal structure. Alpha Centauri B skeptic researcher Sara Seager for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is not so convinced about the validity of the findings of the UC team, but she recognizes that the simulations related to the detection of the planet are quite impressive.

The Largest Biological Structure On Earth

The coral reefs form the largest biological structures on Earth. And the largest coral structure in the world is the Great Coral Barrier off the shore of northeastern Australia (parallel to the Queensland's shore),
located in the Coral Sea: it is 2,010 km (1,200 mi) long and 2 to 150 km (1.2-92 mi) wide, which would cover the surface of Norway. This is a tropical paradise with sunny islands, turquoise seas and gorgeous coral gardens. It is also the most biologically diverse reef and marine ecosystem in the world. Only in an islet, researchers found 100 species of corals, 700 of fish (imagine this is five times more than the number of fish species encountered in the European rivers!), 25 species of sea cucumbers, 34 species of cone-shelled snails. This without mentioning the sea turtles and sea birds. Overall, the Great Barrier Reef has 1,464 fish species (this means 10 % of the fish species found in the oceans), 405 species of reef forming corals (50 % of all known species), 1,000 species of sponges (20 % of the known species), 4,000 species of mollusks, 500 species of birds and 150 species of echinoderms. The Great Barrier is a succession of about 2,500 individual reefs of various type: platform, external and coastal, all forming a protective shield for the shore against the oceanic waves. Not all the islands of the barrier are coral-made. Some have a continental origin, being hill tops isolated from the mainland because of the rise of the sea level or the descend of the coast by about 100 m (330 ft). The Murray Islands represents the tops of three inactive volcanoes. The system of reefs and islands stretches from the Gulf of Papua (New Guinea) to the Lady Elliot island, south of the Capricorn Tropic. The continental platform in the barrier's area is 30-250 km (19-150 mi) wide and only 30-60 m (100-200 ft) deep, favoring the development of the reefs. The Great Coral Barrier is very young: it emerged about 15,000 years ago, at the end of the last glaciation, when the sea level rose, the water flooded what was then dry land. Australian Aborigines inhabited Australia before the existence of the Great Coral Barrier. Asian traders could have visited the area before the Europeans, in search of trepang (a highly sought sea cucumber). Today, the Great Coral Barrier is exploited for tourism, sea shells, corals and exotic fish. Resorts are found on the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast. Over 500,000 tourists visit the area annually, mainly from May to December (during the dry season), avoiding the wet summers when the monsoons trigger cyclones.In 1983, the whole area of 350,000 square km (140,000 square mi) was declared National Park. Still, the Great Coral Barrier is menaced by global warming and contamination, being exposed to coral bleaching in the next 50 years.

The Mystery Of The Universal Deluge

The Bible tells us about the universal deluge, whose unique survivors were Noah and his arch in which he had loaded a pair of each animal species of the Earth. After 150 years of drifting, Noah landed on the Mount Ararat and life turned back to normal. The echoes of catastrophic deluges were found in many civilizations. The ancient Greeks described three deluges: one during the time of Ogyges, other one during the time of Deukalion and the last during Dardanus, an ancestor of the Troy.
Curiously, the latter two kings may have really witnessed deluges. Oceanologists
found evidences that, 10,000 years ago, the Black Sea may had really experienced a catastrophic deluge. 18,000 years ago, during the last glaciation, the Black Sea was not a brackish sea, but an enormous freshwater lake. But at the end of the last Ice Age, 9,500 years ago, the melting of the glaciers raised the ocean level by around 100 m (330 ft) and with this the level of the Mediterranean Sea as well. At that time, the lake of the Black Sea had its level 150 m (500 ft) below the Mediterranean. The two seas were separated just by a weak barrier, and when this one gave up, the water of the Mediterranean gushed into the basin of the Black Sea in a flow four times greater than that of the Niagara, flooding 100,000 square km (40,000 square mi). The catastrophic event could be heard on a range of 100 km (62 mi). Of course, the rumor of this phenomenon spread from Asia Minor (Turkey today) to the whole Middle East, including to the ancient Hebrews. The first evidence of the deluge was found 15 years ago on the Ukrainian shores of the Black Sea. 140 m (480 ft) layers of clay and gravel presented traces of erosion, thus the place had once been the mouth of a river. In the same place, the researchers found fossils of freshwater snails and terrestrial plant roots, confirming the hypothesis of a freshwater lake. Drills made between 50-120 m (160-400 ft) revealed the presence of a large amount of cockle fossils (Cardium edule), bivalves common in the Mediterranean. If the Mediterranean had slowly flowed into the Black Sea, as previously thought, the sediments would slowly have deposited, so the mollusks from deeper depths should have been older than those of the upper layers. But the C14 analysis showed that they all had the same age, pointing to the hypothesis of a rapid and violent flood. The researchers believe the deluge had positive effects: it chased away the Neolithic farmers and shepherds from the shores of a freshwater lake and the survivors had to relocate, spreading agriculture – emerged into the Middle East – into the European and Caucasus areas: Romania and Georgia-Armenia. From Romania, along the Danube and its tributaries, agriculture could have spread into Austria, Germany, Czech area and Poland.

The Mysterious Polar Aurorae

Polar lights (aurorae) have been described since Antiquity. Aristotle and Pliny wrote about the fear triggered by the arctic aurora, which people thought to forecast great adversities. Often,
these red lights were taken as coming from a large fire. During the Roman emperor Tiberius, Roman cohorts run to save the Ostia fortress, believing it was burning. During the 18th century, Danish guards of Copenhagen took an Arctic Aurora as the sign the city was in flames and triggered the alarm. The polar aurorae are produced by the impact of electrons emitted by the Sun with the atmosphere of the Earth, rarefied at high latitudes. Colliding with the atoms in the atmosphere, the solar electrons emit energy translated through polar lights. The phenomenon occurs at the two poles because the magnetism of the Earth deviates the flow of the electrons came from the Sun, attracting them along the terrestrial magnetic field towards a pole or another. The polar lights appear mostly in two forms. One type appears like wide rainbow arches, that last at the horizon for hours and even days. The second type is much more spectacular through the variety of shapes and color intensities. The most frequent of these aurorae appear like curtains floating in the atmosphere. They look crumbled on the edges but their colors are extremely beautiful.
They appear like drags of brown light, over which raises a curtain of violet clouds, thin enough for the stars to be seen through it. The center is always a bright yellowish, which grows continuously, like a rainbow. The edges appear like reddish and greenish stripes. They unfold like multicolor flags, fluttering like blown by the wind. The bunches of colors move from one place to another until they resemble large pyrotechnic fires. The colors are extremely varied and change at the same time. Various hues of red, orange, yellow and green mix. The sky appears like a fire cupola whose lights agitate like sea waves. The color intensities change like in a sunset. When the aurora starts to shut off, the red color remains the last, blooding the sky.

The Mysteries Of Weather

Meteorological systems are continuously moving air masses, with diameters of 150-4,000 km (92-2,500 mi). Some are 12-15 km (7.5-9.2 mi) deep, located in the troposphere (the lower layer of the atmosphere). Those that are 1-3 km (0.6-1.8 mi) deep are faster. The meteorological systems are defined by their variations in atmospheric pressure and surrounding winds. The main meteorological systems are anticyclones (regions of high pressure, in which the air movement is oriented downward) and cyclones (areas of low pressure, where the air masses rise). Clouds form where the air rises. That's why low pressure areas are connected to cloudy, rainy or stormy weather. Anticyclones have instable weather that lasts for several days. In the Northern Hemisphere, anticyclone winds blow in the direction of the clock hands, and in the Southern Hemisphere they have the opposite direction. On meteorological maps, anticyclones are marked through a series of concentric isobars (lines uniting regions with the same atmosphere pressures). In anticyclone area, a weak wind blows and the sky is serene. Without the clouds, the heat emanated by Earth's surface rises in the cosmic space, that's why the soil and the air above cool rapidly during the night. During the winter, this often brings the freezing or, in wet air, fog. The weak winds favor these phenomena. A stronger wind would mix the air, and the cooling at the ground level would rise higher. Anticyclones can form in cold areas inclusively. In these places the air is heavier, that's why the pressure close to the ground is higher. This type of anticyclones form during the winter in Central Canada and Siberia.They are usually narrow, no more than 3 km (1.9 mi). Around the tropics (20-30o N and S), huge anticyclones form. These air masses are deeper and more stable. Here, the air risen because of the hot tropical sun descends to the surface of the Earth because of the high atmospheric pressure. In these areas the hot deserts of the world, like Sahara, are located. From the tropical anticyclones, the trade winds blow to the Equator, and the western warm winds blow towards the Poles. West winds encounter the east winds blowing from the cold polar areas in a frontal area. Along these fronts the cyclones form. The cyclones bring unstable weather and storms over the central latitudes. The frontal zone is not a right line. Along the front, sinuosities can appear due to the cold winds blowing towards the Equator and hot winds blowing towards the Poles. These movements cause turbulences (twirling movements), whose effect is accentuated by the strong jet streams, winds blowing at the upper limit of the atmosphere. In depression areas, winds blow in opposite direction to the anticyclone winds: counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. On meteorological maps, depression zones are represented as concentric isobars, the atmosphere pressure being lower in the center. Warm air and cold air do not mix easily. Warm air advances as waves in a front and does not mix with the cold, dense air, but it raises over it. The warm air is replaced by cold air, forming the depression zone. The depression zone has two fronts: the warm front delimits the approaching warm air masses from the masses of cold air on the surface. Here, the warm air rises over the cold air. The water vapors in the rising air cool gradually, condensate and form clouds. Immediately after the warm front, the cold front is found. Along the cold front, the cold air penetrates under the warm air, making it rise. That's why the cold front is cloudy and rainy. The cold front moves more rapidly than the warm front, and when a cold front meets a warm front, the warm air is pushed above the cold air. The phenomenon is called occlusion. When the occlusion takes place, the decrease of the atmosphere pressure ceases soon. The emergence of a hazy cirrus cloud at high altitude usually forecasts a pressure drop. Subsequently, a thicker cloud will emerge at an average altitude; this is an altostratus cloud. At a lower altitude, a rain cloud (nimbostratus) appears. These clouds bring a persistent rain, of several hours, before the passing of a warm front. Following a hot front, the warmth comes in a cloudy, humid zone. They are followed by the cold front, bringing showers, because of the ascend of the air masses. Along a cold front, abundant rains are frequent, but they do not last much, like those from the warm front. After the passing of the cold front, weather is serene and cool. Except the polar areas, storms can be found everywhere in the world. Annually, about 2,000 storms occur around the Globe. Many storms form along the cold fronts, on the whirls of the rapidly ascending warm and wet air, forming dark storm clouds (cumulonimbus) that rise over the cold front and move with 30 km (19 mi) per hour. Because of the heat of the soil and of the inferior air layers, tropical storms are the most violent ones. In these areas, in just one day, 600 mm of water can fall. Storms caused by the heated soil can also form in the temperate areas during the hot summer days, especially in the later afternoon. Along the Equator, turbulent groups of clouds form when the heat and humidity rise in the upper layers. Sometimes, groups can join one another, getting away of the Equator and produce violent tropical cyclones, called hurricanes, typhoons or willy-willy, depending on the area. Hurricanes are much larger than normal storms. In fact, storms can be parts of the hurricanes. Their diameter can vary from 200 to 500 km (125-312 mi). The center is a quiet hotbed, with an ascendant atmospheric movement. In this area, the sky is serene and the air is calm. But around the hotbed, the air rises rapidly, aspiring humidity, and forming the extremely violent systems of clouds and whirls. The wind speed overcomes 119 km (75 mi) per hour, even reaching 300 km (190 mi) per hour. In 1970, a hurricane killed about 1 million people in Bangladesh and India (West Bengal). The tornadoes are smaller storms (their diameter is of several hundreds of meters) but the most destructive of all types of storms. In US, tornadoes are called also twisters, being funnel-shaped air whirls. The wind in the "funnels" has a speed of over 300 km per hour. The rapidest speed inside a tornado was of 450 km (280 mi) per hour; it was measured in Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1958. The tornadoes last just about one hour, advancing on the ground with a speed of 10 km (6 mi) to 560 km (350 mi) per hour. They produce enormous damages and are frequent in US and Australia. In the center of US, about 500-600 tornadoes occur annually.

The origin of the tornadoes is unknown. They are often accompanied by storms. The air pressure inside the tornado is low; the low pressure of the tornadoes and the high pressure of the building make the latter simply explode. In 1989, a tornado killed 1,300 people in Bangladesh. Air whirls are much rarer than tornadoes and can emerge even on sunny weather. The air rises and starts spinning around. Sometimes, it takes with it dust, straw, garbage which make it visible. In hot deserts, the air whirls raise sand. The most famous rain bringing wind is the monsoon. It is encountered in places where there are significant differences between the summer pressure and winter pressure, like in India. During the winter, an enormous anticyclone forms above the Asia. From this anticyclone, an east wind blows, determining a dry and relatively cool weather in India. During the spring, the land starts to heat and a huge air mass with low pressure develops over the Tibetan Plateau and Afghanistan. From the Indian Ocean, a wet air mass will enter this system of low pressure. These air currents will produce the southwest winds, which cause powerful rains in India each summer.

The Mysterious Lost World of Roraima

The name Tepui ("house of gods") comes from the language of the Pemon Indians and refers to the table-top mountain encountered only in the Guayana highlands of northern South America. Tepuis are isolated mountains, rising abruptly from the rain forest or savanna,
and not forming chains, things that makes them have of a unique variety of endemic plant and animal species. Angel Falls, the world's tallest waterfall, originates in a tepui.Mount Roraima is the highest and most famous of the tepuis. It is found at the border between Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana (80% in Venezuela). It is the highest peak in Guyana, and it is located at 5°12'08N, 60°44'07W. Its highest point is at 2,810 m (8986 ft).The plateau of Roraima has 50 square km (20 square mi), a real natural labyrinth made of canyons and amphitheaters. The soil of the tepui is made mainly of quartzite, a tough, compact grindstone, deposed 1.7 billion years ago, in Precambrian, being one of the Earth's oldest rocks. Along the years, water dissolved sand particles, modeling stone blocks, like ruined castles or small towers blackened by likens. The Guyana shield has never been covered by waters. In the tepui, plants and animals had to adapt to extreme conditions and unfertile soil. During the rainy season, between January to March, large amounts of rainfall strip the rocks, increasing the volume of the waters of the Orinoco River. Even if placed in Equator, the temperature is relatively cold, with an annual average value of only 8 degrees C. Because of the poor soil, some plants are carnivorous, getting the required nitrogen and phosphorus this way. Many grow on a very acid pit. Generally, the tepui have an endemic array of species adapted to these conditions. During the Ice Ages, the tepui vegetation descended to the base of the tepui, while during the warm interglacial ascended back on the top of the tepui. The most typical flowers of the tepui are the yellow Stegolepis. In the caves of the tepui nests the Oilbird (Steatornis caripensis), also called guácharo, the only bird known to use echolocation (like bats), only that they do not use ultrasounds, but audible sounds. The tepui have a fauna of 1 m (3.3 ft) long earthworms, frog-eating shrews and caecilians (limbless worm-resembling amphibians). Caecilians are blind and use their large teeth for consuming insect larvae. The Pemon Indians live at the base of Roraima, in the Gran Sabana. The population of 12,000 lives from farming, hunting and little cattle raising, but also from tourism, being carriers and guides for those intending to discover Roraima.Arthur Conan Doyle was inspired for his "The Lost World" by Roraima to place his world of Iguanodons and pterosaurs.

The Mystery Of Stonehenge

Stonehenge represents one of the most beautiful prehistoric places worldwide, located on the plain of Salisbury, about 130 km (80 mi) off London. Why was it raised there? The assembly was not formed just of the megaliths we see today, but it also comprised a circular fortification and an odd ring made of filled holes. The vertical and horizontal stones of Stonehenge look like having been made by a carpenter. The oldest stage of the Stonehenge assembly is represented by
a wooden large and rounded construction, surrounded by a circular groove. The remains of this fortification, built between 3,200-2,700 BC are still visible, despite erosion. The mound was about 2 m (6.6 ft) in height, 6 m (20 ft) in width and had a diameter of 98 m (327 ft). The central wood construction is hard to describe, as very little is left of it. The holes of the pylons suggest it could have had 30 m (100 ft) in diagonal and a straw roof. The main entrance was oriented southward. Stonehenge of those times had less an astronomical purpose and it was rather used for burials. The central building could have been a funerary chapel, depositing the corpses before incineration or before being put into the tombs. Between 2,700-2,200 BC, the 56 "Aubrey holes", placed in a circle, were dug. Many contain human remains, but they were caved before the ash resulting from incinerations was buried there. Thus, the holes could initially have had another purpose. One theory says the holes were used fro predicting moon eclipses. The date of the eclipses could be forecast, if 6 of the stones were placed in a certain manner on 6 of the holes, then moved around the circle in a hole annually. The most significant thing is the astronomical alignment of Stonehenge, confirmed by the fact that in a summer day the sun rises over the stone called Heel Stone. Others believe that the holes were used for ritual ceremonies of libations, consisting in tasting and then pouring full cups of wine, milk and other beverages, as a homage brought to the deities or the dead. The holes were after that sealed with the limestone of the area, to mark the place where a homage occurred. The stones were blue dolerite rocks, up to 80 tonnes, extracted from Preeli Hills, Pembrokshire, located 200 km (120 mi) away in Wales. 81 boulders, each with a weight of 50 tonnes, made of tough granite, were taken from Malborough, 35 km (22 mi) away. 30 were raised vertically, the others were used as floor. Today, only half of the stones have remained erected. The enigma is how the Neolithic people, living in small communities engaged in animal husbandry, gathering and hunting, had such handwork for raising such a large construction? The work would have necessitated hundreds of powerful men...A 2006 theory about the role played by the Stonehenge complex in ancient times was brought by Professor Timothy Darvill, Head of the Archaeology Group at Bournemouth University: he believes that the ancient monument was a source for healing and not a mortuary place, as previously thought. In December, during the winter solstice, ancient British people thought that the henge was ‘occupied’ by a prehistoric god similar to the Roman and Greek god of healing, medicine and disease, Apollo. Many ancient tombs around Stonehenge revealed that a good proportion of those buried presented illness, with many bone injuries. In 2007, archaeologists discovered, near Stonehenge, the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain, over 25 house sites, at the Durrington Walls, less than two miles (3 km) from Stonehenge. The square huts, with flanks of 16 feet (5m) length, were situated in a small valley north of Stonehenge, leading down to the Avon River. You should retain that Stonehenge was not built by Celts! Celts entered Britain during the 8th century BC. Druids, a modern pagan religious order getting back to the tradition of British Celts' priests, gather at Stonehenge, exactly during the summer solstice, as they regard it as a spiritualism center. Ancient druids too used to gather at Stonehenge to make sacrifices and offerings.

The Mystery Of Zombie Venom Injection

There's no Voodoo or tetrodoxin neurotoxin from pufferfish involved in this case. And these Zombies will surely die eaten alive. In a new research published in the "Journal of Experimental Biology", Israeli researchers have found how the parasitic jewel wasp manages, through a venom injected directly into a cockroach's brain, to eliminate the prey's free will. The wasp's toxins appeared to shut down octopamine, a chemical controlling the motivation for walking in the cockroach's brain.Devoid of control, the "zombie" roach can be herded by the parasitoid wasp into its subterranean nest, where a wasp egg is injected into its abdomen. The hatching larva will start to eat its living "meat can", which cannot react, from the inside out. "The whole thing takes about seven to eight days, during which the meat has to be fresh. If you kill a cockroach, it rots within a day." said
co-author and neurobiologist Frederic Libersat, of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Be'ér Sheva, Israel. One month later a mature wasp emerges from the roach's mummy. Octopamine is a brain chemical that turns insects alert, making them move and accomplish demanding physical activities. "It serves the same functions as noradrenaline, which is involved in the fight-or-flight reaction ... in the vertebrate brain," said Libersat. The wasps were found to insert their venom into the roach's protocerebrum, the brain nucleus containing octopamine-secreting neurons. The team could reverse the venom's action: by injecting an octopamine-like chemical directly into the protocerebrum of the zombie roaches, the free will of the insects was significantly restored. "This helps us understand how movement is initiated in animals," said Libersat. There are many parasites changing the behavior of their hosts, but only these parasitoid wasps directly target the host's brain using toxins. For example, snails and ants parasited by worms start standing on the top of the leaves of grass. This way, the snails are eaten by birds continuing the life cycle of the worm, while the ants are swollen by cows, for their parasite life cycle. Also, fishes parasited by tapeworms swim to the water surface, so that they can be eaten by water birds, which also get infected, and so on.

New Aztec Pyramid Explains Many Mysteries

The Aztecs founded their bloody empire around A.D. 1200, and their civilization lasted only 300 years, while their empire dominated the area only 100 years before falling under the sword of the conquistadors. Still, at its peak, the empire spread from central Mexico to Guatemala, and it was one of the most advanced civilizations of America, with cities as larger as those of contemporaneous Europe. An 800-year-old Aztec pyramid has recently been found in the middle of Mexico City, inside the larger Aztec pyramid called the Grand Temple, at the location of the Aztec city of Tlatelolco."If the age of the edifice is confirmed, the discovery could push back the age of Tlatelolco – as well as that of its nearby 'twin city' Tenochtitlán – by a century or more", said lead researcher Salvador Guilliem, of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History. "The structure's construction suggests it could have been built as early as A.D. 1100 or 1200, at least a century earlier than historical accounts suggest the city was founded", he added.The work of his team is trying to solve many mysteries of the Grand Temple. "Until now we thought Tlatelolco's Grand Temple had seven phases of construction. Now we know that there are eight", Guilliem told National Geographic News. Ground-penetrating radar allowed the discovery of human remains and grave offerings, near the Grand Temple."We dug 2 meters [6.5 feet] and found an offering of green stones and five
skulls. The remains—belonging to four adults and a child—appear to have been positioned with heads turned toward the north and bodies to the south. We think this building corresponds to the military elite", he said. Aztec legends suggest that Tlatelolco was constructed around A.D. 1358, at the same time with Tenochtitlán, but recent researches have questioned this. "If true, the date of this pyramid fits with many other archaeological finds that reveal evidence of Aztec occupation earlier than the traditional dates", said Susan Gillespie, an anthropologist at the University of Florida. Archaeologists know little about the relationship between Tlatelolco, a large market province, and the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán. "The new discovery could challenge the notion that Tenochtitlán was the dominant twin during the early, entangled development of the two Aztec provinces. There are vague traces in the historical sources that Tlatelolco may have been more powerful than Tenochtitlán in its early decades. If there was indeed a large pyramid in Tlatelolco in the Early Aztec period, given that no such find exists in Tenochtitlán, it may suggest that Tlatelolco was indeed the dominant city in their early years", said Michael Smith, an Aztec expert at Arizona State University. Guilliem's team is convinced that the newly found pyramid was a temple dedicated to Tezcatlipoca Black, the Aztec god of commerce. "Workers intentionally broke into the smaller pyramid in 1368 while building a subsequent phase. When they broke it, it is very probable that they deposited a deity that's likely to be Tezcatlipoca. They most likely deposited an offering to the deity [Tezcatlipoca Black], conducted a ceremony, [and] then closed it again", said Guilliem.

The Mystery Of The Great Sphinx

The Great Sphinx of Giza is the largest monolith statue in the world. It is 73.5 m (241 ft) long, 6 m (20 ft) wide, and 20 m (65 ft) high and represent the oldest known monumental sculpture.
But its origins are still a subject of debate, as the statue seems to be much older than the Egyptian civilization. In the famous Egyptian Giza Valley, three pyramids captured the attention of the Egyptologists. They were built at close distance one from another, being placed on a line, but not on a straight one, as the third pyramid is deviated from the line determined by the other two. Looking on a sky map from around 10,500 BC, made on computer, researchers discovered the missing cue: the three pyramids and the Nile were the perfect mirror image of the Lion's Constellation. The three pyramids represented the three stars, placed in the same position, of which the third was less shiny, determining the Egyptians to build a third smaller pyramid, close to the Nile, representing the Milky Way. The Sphynx could have been built at Giza by a pre-Egyptian civilization around 10,500 BC, and the Egyptians could have taken from that civilization the map of the sky to raise the Giza pyramids around 2,000 BC. Initially, the Sphynx could have been built in a savanna and represented a lion, the figure of the constellation. Around 9,000 BC, the clime changed and the savanna turned gradually into the current desert. The lion's body was covered by sand and protected this way against the action of external agents, erosion being experienced only by the upper part of the monument. Thousands of years later, a pharaoh ordered the recarving of the head, this time representing not a lion head, bur his. This would explain the disproportion between the huge made body and the restored head, which dwindled and did not experience as much erosion as the body. Common theory says the Sphinx would have been built (or at least the face was of) by King Khafra, somewhere between 2520 BC and 2494 BC, or Khufu, his father and the builder of the largest pyramid ever. Still, much more puzzles are triggered by the Sphynx. Robert M. Schoch, making a facial analysis, showed the sphinx has a distinctive "African," "Nubian," or "Negroid" aspect (the face is one of a Black man), not real with Khafra's face. Some data points that during Khafra's rule, the Sphinx was already buried in sand.

The Mystery Of The Shiny Mayan Temples Revealed!

Among the three great civilizations in America before its discovery by Columbus (Aztec, Inca and Maya), the Mayans from Central America were by far the most advanced, culturally and artistically. The Mayans were the sole people of the pre-Hispanic America who created a complex hieroglyphic writing, a counting system, and a calendar forecasting the minimal fixings, their astronomical knowledge overpassing that of the contemporaneous Europeans. The Mayans were also famous for their pyramidal temples,
up to 60 m (200 ft) tall. A new research published in the "Journal of Raman Spectroscopy" shows that the Mayans painted some of their temples with mica in order to make them shine in the sunlight. Mica traces have been found in paint samples coming from the Rosalila temple in Copán, Honduras. The temple was constructed in the 6th century A.D., and it was later "swallowed" by a giant pyramid built around it. "The covering of sparkling paint likely gave the sacred site a dazzling appearance. The mica pigment would have had a lustrous effect. Mica is used today in paints for that very purpose—to create a shimmering finish to the paint," lead author, Rosemary Goodall, a doctoral student in physical sciences at Australia's Queensland University of Technology, told National Geographic News. "The gleaming paint also appears to have been applied periodically, perhaps in honor of important anniversaries or ceremonial events," she added. The researchers investigated the red, green, and gray dyes painted over the stucco masks on the outer walls of the temple, using a new infrared analysis technique."The mica used in the paint likely came from beyond the Maya realm. It appears that mica was available in what is now Guatemala. [The Maya] would have had to trade for something like that. (This) gives us an insight into how people in the southern periphery [of the Maya realm] interacted with people in the more northern regions," said Goodall. The team believes that the mica was applied based on a religious schedule. "Mica has only been found on the Rosalila temple so far. The building was in use for one hundred years—we know that because [the Maya] dated the opening ceremony of the building, and they dated the closing ceremony. It was repainted somewhere between 15 and 20 times, but mica was only used, I estimate, in every fourth or fifth repainting. It's not on every layer. More than likely there was something very significant about when they used it, if it was only used infrequently," said Goodall. "The Maya had very regular calendar periods, so the next step is to look at the core [of the paint layers] and see if we can find out the frequency of [mica's] use, which may give us an indication of whether or not it was applied to celebrate one of these period endings, or to mark some significant date," she added. "I think that's a very interesting idea, because the Maya numerical system is a base-20 system, so their calendar is based on a 20-year period called a katun. We know from hieroglyphs that these katun endings, or these 20-year periods, were important times of ceremony in the life of the king. Obviously Rosalila would have been a very important place for Copán's royalty," Cynthia Robin, an anthropologist and Maya expert at Northwestern University in Illinois, told National Geographic News.

How To Study A Brain

The human brain is composed of billions of cells, each a separate entity that communicates with others. The chemical interaction of those cells determines personality, controls behavior and encodes memory; but much remains to be understood. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed tools for studying the chemistry of the brain, neuron by neuron. The analytical techniques can probe the spatial and temporal distribution of biologically important molecules, such as
vitamin E, and explore the chemical messengers behind thought, memory and emotion. By dismantling a slice of brain tissue into millions of single cell-size pieces, each of which can be interrogated by mass spectrometric imaging techniques, Sweedler's research group can perform cellular profiling, examine intercellular signaling, map the distribution of new neuropeptides, and follow the release of chemicals in an activity-dependent manner. Sweedler will describe the techniques and present new results at the 230th American Chemical Society national meeting in Washington, D.C. Using these techniques, Sweedler's group has already discovered multiple novel neuropeptides in a range of neuronal models from mollusks to mammals. "We work with sea slugs, whose simple brains contain 10,000 neurons; we work with insects possessing one million neurons; and we work with mice having 100 million neurons," said Sweedler, who also is a researcher at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. "Working with these model organisms allows us to examine the functioning of such basic operations as the neuronal control of behavior and long-term memory." Sweedler's group also developed an approach for looking at the distribution of smaller molecules in brain cells. In a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, and posted on its Web site, they report the subcellular imaging of vitamin E in the sea slug Aplysia californica. The researchers utilized novel sampling protocols and single cell time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry to identify and map the presence of vitamin E in the membranes of isolated neurons. "To our surprise, we found that vitamin E was not distributed uniformly in the neuronal membrane," Sweedler said. "Instead, vitamin E was concentrated in the neuron right where it extends to connect with other neurons." The subcellular localization of vitamin E, which had been impossible to obtain in the past, supports other work that suggested vitamin E performed an active role in transport mechanisms and cellular signaling of neurons. Co-authors of the paper are Sweedler, research scientists Jinju Lee and Stanislav Rubakhin, postdoctoral research associate John Jurchen and graduate student Eric Monroe.

Children With Three Biological Parents?

Common knowledge says that a child has two parents. But what about three biological parents? A team at the Newcastle University has created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man,
a technology that one day could be a therapy for couples, for getting kids free of genetic diseases. Still, these embryos are primarily produced by one man and one woman."We are not trying to alter genes, we're just trying to swap a small proportion of the bad ones for some good ones," co-author Patrick Chinnery, a professor of neurogenetics at Newcastle University, told National Geographic News. The skipped bad genes are those encountered in the mitochondria, organelles producing cell's energy, and encountered outside the nucleus in any cell, including the female egg. DNA is encountered only in the nucleus and mithocondria, but while nuclear DNA comes 50 % from the mother and 50 % from the mother, mithocondrial DNA comes 100 % from the mother as all mitochondria come from the mother. Mutations in the mitochondrial DNA cause severe conditions like muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, strokes, and mental retardation. The research team took the nucleus of embryos carrying defective mitochondria in the woman's egg and transplanted it into an nucleus-emptied egg donated from a second woman with healthy mitochondria. "Most of the genes that make you who you are are inside the nucleus. We're not going anywhere near that," said Chinnery, pointing that in fact the child had only 2 parents. 10 such embryos have been achieved, but they were allowed to develop only 5 days. "If successful, this research could give families who might otherwise have a bleak future a chance to avoid some very grave diseases," said Francoise Shenfield, a fertility expert with the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. Such tests carried on mice in Japan led to healthy mice offspring, with corrected mitochondria genes. "Further tests to assess the safety and efficacy of the process are necessary before it can be offered as a potential treatment," said Shenfield.

Magnetic Reconnection Reveal Its Secrets

Because plasma is mostly composed of charged particles, such as electrons and ions, which have a global neutral charge, it is able to generate powerful magnetic fields, a very important feature if you ask a nuclear physicist working on the design of a nuclear fusion reactor. However, all good things must also have bad aspects as well, and when it comes to plasma magnetic reconnection there are. Magnetic reconnection represents a phenomenon in which magnetic fields originating from different sources break up and connect to each other, while high amounts of energy are released.Magnetic reconnection can be routinely observed on the surface of the Sun,
during the release of energy in the form of solar flares, and on Earth during intense aurora activity. Magnetic reconnection is also one of the factors that prevents physicists from creating nuclear fusion reactors that have high-efficiency electric energy production capabilities. As you probably already known, nuclear fusion reactors use powerful magnetic fields to confine a hot plasma gas. In order to produce the magnetic fields, one must provide high quantities of electric energy. But, due to magnetic reconnection, usually a nuclear fusion reactor drains more power to generate the magnetic fields than it produces by nuclear fusion, mostly meaning its operation is useless. On the other hand, the ESA Cluster mission studying the magnetic reconnection phenomenon has recently revealed that the regions required to determine a magnetic reconnection must be much larger than predicted. The area where the magnetic reconnection process is initiated is called the 'electron diffusion region', which can span in an area measuring 2 to 10 kilometers, thus the chance that we may be able to study these regions in the near future is rather remote.Nonetheless, computer simulations may provide a partial explanation on the processes that take place during a magnetic reconnection event, in the electron diffusion regions. Five years ago, the satellites from the ESA Cluster program detected what seemed to be a turbulent plasma region in the Earth's magnetosheath, measuring a massive 3,000 kilometers in length. Although it is 300 times longer than previously predicted by theory and at least four times bigger that seen in computer simulations, the new simulations seem to correlate perfectly with the observations.ESA satellites are capable of making high-resolution images of magnetic and electric fields, however higher resolution observations on the electron diffusion regions are required, in order to make precise measurements. NASA will complement ESA's fleet of magnetic imaging satellites with a number of four other satellites in the year 2014, which will be able to conduct simultaneous measurements on the effects determined by the magnetic reconnection phenomenon.

The Mystery Of Blue Eyes

Nature played with one of our ancestors, and it caused the blue eye color to appear; and now, women are in love with the blue eyes of Leonardo DiCaprio and men with those of Kristanna Loken. And that ancestor lived 6,000-10,000 years ago, as found by a research carried out at the University of Copenhagen. "Originally, we all had brown eyes. But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a 'switch', which literally 'turned off' the ability to produce brown eyes ", said Professor Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. The OCA2 gene encodes the P protein, which controls the synthesis of
melanin, the pigment protein that gives the color of our hair, eyes and skin. The mutation is found in the gene adjacent to OCA2 that controls the activity of OCA2 and does not turn off completely the OCA2. It just decreases its action of spurring melanin synthesis in the iris, so that the low amount of melanin in the iris appears as blue, and not brown. If the OCA2 gene had been silenced completely, the result would have been a total lack of melanin in hair, eyes or skin, a disease called albinism. In this case, the eyes would have been red, due to the blood vessels of the iris. Eye color variation from brown to green is caused by the variable amount of iris melanin, but blue eyes are correlated with a very low level of variation in the melanin levels of the eyes, strictly linked to one genetic variation. "From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor. They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA," said Eiberg. Oppositely, brown eyes can be the result of a large variation in the DNA sector controlling the melanin synthesis. The team investigated mitochondrial DNA (coming always from the maternal line) from blue-eyed individuals coming from countries far from one another, such as Jordan, Denmark and Turkey. In 1996, the same team had detected that OCA2 was involved in the eye color. The mutation from brown eyes to blue eyes is another example of neuter mutation; like hair color or baldness, it does not impact the individual’s survival ability.