The three new species, along with new examples of two previously known ancient crocodiles, were detailed Thursday by researchers Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and Hans Larsson of McGill University in Montreal. They spoke at a news conference organized by the National Geographic Society, which sponsored the research.
"These species open a window on a croc world completely foreign to what was living on northern continents," Sereno said of the unusual animals that lived 100 million years ago on the southern continent known as Gondwana.
The 12.4 mile-wide object has been cloaked in mystery since it was identified as a powerful X-ray source in 1999.
Astronomers now know the source is a neutron star 11,000 light years from Earth at the centre of the supernova Cassiopeia A. It is the youngest object of its kind ever discovered, having appeared just 330 years ago.
Neutron stars are the super-dense compact cores of massive stars whose outer shells have been blasted away in violent explosions at the end of their lives.
Compressed tightly by gravity, they are composed almost entirely of neutrons, sub-atomic particles with no electric charge that form part of atoms.
One teaspoonful of material from a neutron star would weigh a billion tonnes.
The newly identified neutron star has a unique atmosphere of carbon just centimetres thick.
Britain's first Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, is believed to have observed the supernova that spawned it in 1680.
Astronomers studied the supernova using the Chandra X-ray space telescope launched by the American space agency Nasa in 1999.
Every other neutron star identified by scientists has been much older.
It is hoped the object will reveal more clues about the role exploding stars play in building the universe.
Heavy elements flung out into space by supernovae end up in the rocks of planets such as the Earth. Even the human body is largely composed of stardust.
Professor Craig Heinke, from the University of Alberta in Canada, who co-led the new research published in the journal Nature, said: ''The discovery helps us understand how neutron stars are born in violent supernova explosions.
''This neutron star was born so hot that nuclear fusion happened on its surface, producing a carbon atmosphere just 10 centimetres thick.''
Conor Knighton breaks down the ghostly "reality" shows currently haunting basic cable.
infoMania is a half-hour satirical news show that airs on Current TV. The show puts a comedic spin on the 24-hour chaos and information overload brought about by the constant bombardment of the media. Hosted by Conor Knighton and co-starring Brett Erlich, Sarah Haskins, Ben Hoffman, Bryan Safi and Sergio Cilli, the show airs on Thursdays at 10 pm Eastern and Pacific Times and can be found online at http://current.com/infomania/ or on Current TV. And make sure to check out our facebook profile for special features at http://infomaniafacebook.com.Conor Knighton breaks down the ghostly "reality" shows currently haunting basic cable.... more
A new and rare species of "giant" orb web spider has been discovered in Africa and Madagascar.A new and rare species of "giant" orb web spider has been discovered in Africa and... more
Thirty-two planets have been discovered outside Earth's solar system through the use of a high-precision instrument installed at a Chilean telescope, an international team announced Monday. The instrument detects movements as small as 3.5 km/hr (2.1 mph), a slow walking pace, the observatory said.
The existence of the so-called exoplanets -- planets outside our solar system -- was announced at the European Southern Observatory/Center for Astrophysics, University of Porto conference in Porto, Portugal, according to a statement issued by the observatory.
"These observations have given astronomers a great insight into the diversity of planetary system and help us understand how they can form," team member Nuno Santos said in the statement.Thirty-two planets have been discovered outside Earth's solar system through the use... more
Is it possible to be 'all-knowing' and 'all-powerful' provided that what one means by these terms is that god knows all that can be known and can do all that can be done?
"Can ominscient god who,
Knows the future find,
The ominpotence to
Change his future mind?"Is it possible to be 'all-knowing' and 'all-powerful' provided that what one means by... more
The painting, titled Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress, recently sold for a mere £12,000 ($19,000). It was billed at a Christie's sale in 1998 as "German, early 19th century".
Peter Silverman, the Canadian-born owner, thought there was more to it and decided to get the drawing checked out after buying it in 2007. His hunch appears to have paid off.
A Paris laboratory discovered that a fingerprint from the tip of an index or middle-finger, found on the top left of the picture, was "highly comparable" to one found on da Vinci's work St Jerome, which he painted early in his career when he did not have assistants,The painting, titled Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress, recently sold for a... more
Each year on her birthday, Ann Hernandez and her boyfriend, Alan Tomaska, would settle on the rocky shore of Thacher Island and uncork a bottle of champagne in a toast to the day. When the bottle was empty and the tide going out, Hernandez would tuck a handwritten message inside and Tomaska would hurl the bottle over the rocks and into the crashing surf.
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Tomaska considered the ritual a lark.
But for Hernandez, the messages in a bottle were a kind of personal driftwood - a piece of her joining the sea and traveling with its currents to hoped-for far-flung locales.
“When we got back to our humdrum lives, we didn’t talk about the bottles,’’’ said Tomaska, a home remodeler. “But whenever we were on the island, she would say, ‘One of these days, someone is going to find one of those bottles.’ ’’
It would take six years, but someone did. Defying nautical laws and odds, one of Hernandez’s bottles last month bobbed along the coast of France to a quaint village, where a French couple, Michel and Daniele Onesime, scooped it out of the water and read with wonder the note inside.
“While we were setting out to go deep-sea fishing one morning from the port at St. Gilles Croix de Vie, on the Vendee coast, my wife and I found a white glass bottle floating by,’’ Michel Onesime wrote in an e-mail to the Globe. “The moment we plucked it from the water, we saw that there was a message inside.’’Each year on her birthday, Ann Hernandez and her boyfriend, Alan Tomaska, would settle... more
The nearly complete fossil of a 4.4-million-year-old human ancestor, a female dubbed "Ardi," is rewriting the story of human origins, paleontologists reported Thursday.
The analysis of Adripithecus ramidus (it means "root of the ground ape"), reported in the journal Science, changes the notion that humans and chimps, our closest genetic cousins, both trace their lineage to a creature that was more like today's chimp. Rather, the research suggests that their common ancestor was a walking forest forager more cooperative in nature than the competitive, aggressive chimp and that chimps were an evolutionary offshoot of this creature.
So that could mean that while humans didn't diverge much from their evolutionary ancestors, "chimps and gorillas look like really special evolutionary outcomes," says Science study author Owen Lovejoy of Ohio's Kent State University.
The species was first discovered in fragments in 1992. The new analysis suggests our predecessors lacked tusk-like canines to brawl with, or hand-like feet to swing from trees, dashing the popular image of a chimp-like start for homo sapiens.The nearly complete fossil of a 4.4-million-year-old human ancestor, a female dubbed... more
The big news in the journal Science tomorrow is the discovery of the oldest human skeleton -- a small-brained, 110-pound female of the species Ardipithecus ramidus, nicknamed "Ardi." She lived in what is now Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago, which makes her over a million years older than the famous "Lucy" fossil, found in the same region thirty-five years ago.
Maybe this constitutes the missing link in evolution? I wonder that creationists will say about this discovery.The big news in the journal Science tomorrow is the discovery of the oldest human... more
Exceptionally well preserved dinosaur fossils uncovered in north-eastern China display the earliest known feathers.Exceptionally well preserved dinosaur fossils uncovered in north-eastern China display... more
Photographs of the Space Shuttle Discovery (which flew into space as STS-128) arriving at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, September 21, 2009. A specially modified Boeing 747 known as the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) is used to transport the orbiter to Florida when it lands elsewhere - in this case Edwards Air Force Base.Photographs of the Space Shuttle Discovery (which flew into space as STS-128) arriving... more
The newly discovered meat hunter - who roamed the Earth tens of millions of years before Tyrannosaurus rex - is a perfect, miniature copy of its more famous and fearsome relative, except for the possible addition of a feathery mane.The newly discovered meat hunter - who roamed the Earth tens of millions of years... more
Thirty-nine living relatives of Adolf Hitler have been discovered by Belgian researchers after they claim to have decoded the Nazi dictator's DNA.
Analysing forgotten cigarette butts in a small village in Lower Austria, a used paper napkin in a New York fast food restaurant and the seals of letters sent over 30 years ago from northern France, Marc Vermeeren and Jean-Paul Mulders say they have traced all known living relatives of the Fuehrer for the first time.
As well as three living in America, whose existence has been reported on before, they also claim to have tracked down 36 others who still live in the wooded area of Austria where Hitler was born.Thirty-nine living relatives of Adolf Hitler have been discovered by Belgian... more
After receiving injections of genes that produce color-detecting proteins, two color-blind monkeys have seen red and green for the first time. Except in its extreme forms, color blindness isn't a debilitating condition, but it's a convenient stand-in for other types of blindness that might be treated with gene therapy. The monkey success raises the possibility of reversing those diseases, in a manner that most scientists considered impossible. 'We said it was possible to give an adult monkey with a model of human red-green color blindness the retina of a person with normal color vision. Every single person I talked to said, absolutely not,' said study co-author Jay Neitz, a University of Washington ophthalmologist. 'And almost every unsolved vision defect out there has this component in one way or another, where the ability to translate light into a gene signal is involved.' The full-spectrum supplementation of the squirrel monkeys' sight, described Wednesday in Nature, comes just less than a year after researchers used gene therapy to restore light perception in people afflicted by Leber Congenital Amaurosis, a rare and untreatable form of blindnessAfter receiving injections of genes that produce color-detecting proteins, two... more
WASHINGTON – Astronomers have finally found a place outside our solar system where there's a firm place to stand — if only it weren't so broiling hot.
As scientists search the skies for life elsewhere, they have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system. But they all have been gas balls or can't be proven to be solid. Now a team of European astronomers has confirmed the first rocky extrasolar planet.
Scientists have long figured that if life begins on a planet, it needs a solid surface to rest on, so finding one elsewhere is a big deal.
"We basically live on a rock ourselves," said co-discoverer Artie Hatzes, director of the Thuringer observatory in Germany. "It's as close to something like the Earth that we've found so far. It's just a little too close to its sun."WASHINGTON – Astronomers have finally found a place outside our solar system where... more
Shelley Pack and Sarah Norton break up with Carbon Dioxide, and ride public transportation to cut down on their CO2 emissions. Surviving the bus in Hollywood with short skirts and heels, can make saving the environment a true adventure.Shelley Pack and Sarah Norton break up with Carbon Dioxide, and ride public... more
Biologists and other scientists from US, Britain, and Papua New Guinea were exploring jungle habitat in search of new species of animals. They eventually found a crater were a volcano erupted 200,000 years ago on the island of Papua New Guinea. The discovered "16 frogs which have never before been recorded by science, at least three new fish, a new bat and a giant rat, which may turn out to be the biggest in the world," after just 5 weeks into their journey. This luscious rain forest is being currently being brought down at a rate of 3.5% a year.
It's amazing what is out there in the world that people still have yet to discover; if not every pristine site is destroyed, maybe there are much more things we will discover in the rain forest. It's an awesome article, check it out.Biologists and other scientists from US, Britain, and Papua New Guinea were exploring... more
