Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalGamma-Rays Spewed As a Black Hole Forms Might 'Reverse Time'
By Yasemin Saplakoglu, Staff Writer | August 23, 2018 02:41pm ET
As a massive star collapses into a black hole, it sends out a brilliant SOS signal in the form of ultrabright gamma-ray bursts. Now, scientists have found something very peculiar about those mysterious signals: They seem to reverse time.
Well, sort of.
A new study, published Aug. 13 in The Astrophysical Journal, has found that these gamma-ray bursts are time-reversed, meaning the brilliant light wave is spit out one way and then sent out again in the opposite order.
The researchers said they have no idea what's causing these time-reversed gamma-ray signals, but they added that the physics around black holes are so strange that nothing can be ruled out. [Supernova Photos: Great Images of Star Explosions]
Last gasps of dying stars
Gamma-ray bursts are some of the highest-energy explosions ever detected, shining brighter than a million trillion times the output of Earth's sun, according to NASA.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/63415-time-reversed-structures-gamma-ray-bursts.html
Massive Pyramid, Lost City and Ancient Human Sacrifices Unearthed in China
Source: Live Science
By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor | August 23, 2018 08:00am ET
- click for image -
https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5saXZlc2NpZW5jZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzEwMS80MTcvb3JpZ2luYWwvY2hpbmVzZS1weXJhbWlkLWNvcHkuanBn
This figure shows images of the step pyramid. a) part of the stone buttresses of the second and the third steps of the pyramid; b) eye symbols that decorate the pyramid c) a view of the buttresses under excavation; d) a general view of the pyramid before excavation.
Credit: Zhouyong Sun and Jing Shao
A 4,300-year-old city, which has a massive step pyramid that is at least 230 feet (70 meters) high and spans 59 acres (24 hectares) at its base, has been excavated in China, archaeologists reported in the August issue of the journal Antiquity.
The pyramid was decorated with eye symbols and "anthropomorphic," or part-human, part-animal faces. Those figures "may have endowed the stepped pyramid with special religious power and further strengthened the general visual impression on its large audience," the archaeologists wrote in the article. [The 25 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds on Earth]
For five centuries, a city flourished around the pyramid. At one time, the city encompassed an area of 988 acres (400 hectares), making it one of the largest in the world, the archaeologists wrote. Today, the ruins of the city are called "Shimao," but its name in ancient times is unknown.
The pyramid contains 11 steps, each of which was lined with stone. On the topmost step, there "were extensive palaces built of rammed earth, with wooden pillars and roofing tiles, a gigantic water reservoir, and domestic remains related to daily life," the researchers wrote.
Read more: https://www.livescience.com/63406-massive-shimao-pyramid-unearthed-china.html?utm_source=notification
(Ordinarily, this should go in the Science forum. I posted it in LBN because it is so amazing, as I see it.)
Uruguay awaits ex-president Mujica's next political move
BY MAURICIO RABUFFETTI (AFP) 5 HOURS AGO
Former president Jose Mujica and his vice president wife Lucia Topolansky were urban guerrillas prior to
taking up politics
MIGUEL ROJO, AFP/File
Uruguay's charismatic former guerrilla-turned president Jose "Pepe" Mujica earned international acclaim for his austere ways while in office, and for his efforts to legalize marijuana, abortion and same-sex marriage in his traditionally conservative country.
Two films centering around the 83-year-old politician's life are due to premiere next month at the Venice Film Festival, putting Mujica right back in the global spotlight he craves.
But back home, the mustachioed leftist is a divisive character, chided over his economic record as much as he is lauded for his seemingly utopian vision.
And a cryptic message after leaving the Senate saying he would now dedicate himself to the "ideological battle" has left many speculating whether he will make another run for the top job next year in the South American country.
More:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/uruguay-awaits-ex-president-mujica-s-next-political-move/article/530163
DNA Analysis Of 6,500-Year-Old Remains Reveals Origins Of Mysterious Ancient Culture
DNA Analysis Of 6,500-Year-Old Remains Reveals Origins Of Mysterious Ancient Culture
By Madison Dapcevich
21 AUG 2018, 11:10
One of the largest DNA analyses ever conducted in the Middle East points to the origin of an ancient culture that settled in the area thousands of millennia ago. Publishing their work in Nature Communications, a multinational team of researchers believes it could resolve a long-standing debate on where the ancient people from an important evolutionary period came from.
Around 6,000 to 7,000 years ago, an ancient civilization in modern-day Iran began to undergo cultural, social, political, and economic transitions in what is now known as the Chalcolithic period between the first farming societies of the Neolithic era and the urban and literate societies of the Bronze Age. During this time, humans began establishing permanent village settlements and producing food at an agricultural scale. But where these people came from and what sparked these changes has long mystified archaeologists – until now.
According to scientists, the research is one of the largest ancient DNA studies conducted from one archaeological site and is the largest ever reported in the area.
First discovered in 1995, Israel’s Peqi’in Cave houses more than 600 people buried in its stalactite walls. Among the remains are a wide variety of jars, ancient ceramic containers filled with bones of the dead known as ossuaries, and other burial gifts meant to help transition the deceased to the next world. Some of these items are typical of the region, while others come from remote areas suggesting an exchange of ideas and culture between different regions.
More:
https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/dna-analysis-of-6500yearold-remains-reveals-origins-of-mysterious-ancient-culture/
Many images at Peqi’in Cave:
https://tinyurl.com/y9bybhdd
Not to scale? Maya civilizations show strange correlation
August 21, 2018 by Jenna Marshall, Santa Fe Institute
Researchers who study urban areas have long observed a connection between size and proximity—namely, that cities become more dense as they gain in population. The more people live in a place, the closer together they live and work.
This closeness is important: It likely accelerates learning and facilitates the sharing of ideas. It's readily demonstrated by data on civilizations separated by time and space, from pre-conquest Central Mexico to Medieval European cities to present-day metropolises.
But some societies buck the trend. Archaeologists have found evidence of "low-density urbanism" around the globe, including Maya sites in Mesoamerica. These populous areas didn't undergo a density increase as their numbers swelled; in some cases, they followed an inverse correlation.
"The existing data we have for Maya society shows the opposite pattern," says anthropologist and SFI External Professor Scott Ortman (University of Colorado-Boulder). As the Maya population rose, the city spread out, and the density fell. People didn't live closer together; they spread out.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-scale-maya-civilizations-strange.html#jCp
Study shows indigenous Canadian Arctic people's textiles predated European contact
August 21, 2018, Brown University
Two examples of Dorset culture spun yarn from the Nanook Site.
The study shows that the ancient Arctic peoples developed yarn
spinning technology independently. Credit: Brown University
A new study by Brown University researchers shows that the Dorset and Thule people—ancestors of today's Inuit—created spun yarn some 500 to 1,000 years before Vikings arrived in North America. The finding, made possible in part by a new method for dating fiber artifacts contaminated with oil, is evidence of independent, homegrown indigenous fiber technology rather than a transfer of knowledge from Viking settlers.
The study was led by Michele Hayeur Smith, a research associate at Brown's Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, who focused on artifacts from five Dorset and Thule archaeological sites in the eastern Canadian Arctic held in the Canadian Museum of History's collections. Co-authored with Kevin P. Smith, deputy director and chief curator of the Haffenreffer Museum, and Gørill Nilsen of the Arctic University of Norway, the research is changing the understanding of indigenous textile technology as well as the nature of the contact between Dorset and Thule peoples and the earliest European explorers of the eastern Canadian Arctic.
Here, Hayeur Smith and Smith discuss the study, published in Journal of Archaeological Science, and what it means for understanding the history of the high Canadian Arctic.
Q: What was the impetus for undertaking this study?
Michele Hayeur Smith (MHS): I am a specialist in Norse textiles, and I was researching the production and circulation of textiles from the Viking age to the 19th century. I started this project because it came to my attention that there were huge collections of pre-modern textiles in Iceland, which is where I started out. I was also interested in looking at women. Textiles happen to be a very gendered activity in Norse society—men had no involvement whatsoever with it. In Iceland, it became very important because it was a form of currency for almost 800 years: Everything was based on the value of cloth.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-indigenous-canadian-arctic-people-textiles.html#jCp
Robots help find new tunnels at ancient temple in Peru's Andes
AUGUST 21, 2018 / 3:15 PM / UPDATED 8 HOURS AGO
Reuters Staff
2 MIN READ
LIMA (Reuters) - Small, camera-carrying robots helped archaeologists in Peru discover three new underground passageways holding ceramics, tools and human remains at the more than 3,000 year-old Chavin de Huantar temple in the Andes, Peru’s culture ministry said.
The robots, remote-controlled all-terrain vehicles carrying lights and cameras, were designed by engineers at the University of Stanford and helped explore narrow passageways at the ancient site, the ministry added.
One of the passageways contained the remains of three people, including one who appears to have been sacrificed, John Rick, an archaeologist with the University of Stanford, told journalists at Chavin de Huantar on Monday.
Chavin de Huantar was once a religious and administrative centre for people across the Andes. It was named after the Chavin people who grew crops in Peru’s central Andes more than 2,000 years ago.
More:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-peru-archaeology/robots-help-find-new-tunnels-at-ancient-temple-in-perus-andes-idUKKCN1L621X
Chavin de Huantar temple complex
Many more images:
https://tinyurl.com/y9vhy4yc
Baffling Viral Video Shows Ants Carrying Flowers to a Dead Bee
(Nicole Webinger)
What weird 'ritual' is this?
JACINTA BOWLER 22 AUG 2018
It looks like something out of a sad fairy tale. Tiny ants are pulling over petals, making a pile, and on top rests a dead bumblebee.
The original video was posted by Minnesota resident Nicole Webinger, but has since been taken down - although there's no shortage of copies proliferating across the internet.
"Saw this outside of my work by the garden. There was a dead bumblebee, and we were watching the ants bring flower petals and leaving them around the bumblebee," she wrote in a post accompanying the video, according to reshareworthy.
"It looked like they were having a funeral for it."
More:
https://www.sciencealert.com/what-is-really-happening-in-this-video-of-ants-giving-a-bee-a-funeral
Honduran Prosecutors Withhold Evidence in Berta Cceres Murder Case
Honduran Prosecutors Withhold Evidence in Berta Cáceres Murder Case
Honduran activist Berta Cáceres addresses thousands of protesters in the Honduran capital following the country's 2009 coup d'état.
SANDRA CUFFE
BY
Sandra Cuffe Truthout
PUBLISHED
August 21, 2018
The trial of eight men charged with the murder of Honduran activist Berta Cáceres is right around the corner, but prosecutors may be heading to trial without important evidence. More than two dozen electronic devices seized in related raids as far back as 2016 were never subjected to analysis, according to an official response to Cáceres’s relatives from the Office of the Prosecutor for Crimes Against Life, a document that has not yet been made public.
Cáceres’s daughter Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres does not believe it was an oversight or lack of professionalism. Now serving as the general coordinator of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), the organization her mother co-founded and led at the time of her murder, Zúñiga Cáceres views the revelations about the gaps in evidence as part of a strategy.
“It’s a form of denial, of refusing to determine what is really behind the murder,” she told Truthout.
Berta Cáceres was shot to death on March 2, 2016, in her home in La Esperanza, a town in western Honduras. Her longtime friend and colleague, Mexican activist Gustavo Castro, was wounded during the attack. As a prominent Indigenous and social movement leader, Cáceres had been receiving death threats related to her involvement with the COPINH-affiliated community struggle against the proposed Agua Zarca hydroeletric dam, currently on hold, and against Desarrollos Energéticos, S.A. (DESA), the company behind it.
“I will return, and I will be millions,” reads a flag with Berta Cáceres’s image outside the Siguatepeque courthouse during an April court case related to the authorization of the Agua Zarca dam.
SANDRA CUFFE
More:
https://truthout.org/articles/honduran-prosecutors-withhold-evidence-in-berta-caceres-murder-case/
Bioluminescent beauties: Australian creatures that glow
Lauderdale, Tasmania. IMAGE CREDIT: Matthew Holz Photography
BY AG STAFF | AUGUST 21, 2018
Whether for defence or to lure prey, the bioluminescence of these Australian animals is one of nature’s most beautiful scenes.
LIFE IN AUSTRALIA HAS adapted to our harsh climate in remarkable ways, but it’s those that use bioluminescence to lure prey, communicate and ward off predators, that have captured our attention.
Australia and New Zealand are the only places in the world where you can see glow worms in situ. Places like Glow Worm Glen in Bundanoon, NSW and the Melba Gully in the Great Otway National Park, VIC are popular not just with tourists, but local revellers too.
While we know why these glow worms become bioluminescent, some of Australia’s other glowing creatures are more mysterious, like the glowing scorpions of the Aussie outback, which continue to puzzle scientists.
More:
https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2018/08/bioluminescent-beauties-meet-australias-sparkling-species/
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