Tag: rise (page 3 of 15)

First Weekend of the New Year Brings Quadrantid Meteor Shower

January 3, 2015 / / 0 Comments







Excerpt from savingadvice.com


For those who want to save money, one of the best free resources available to everyone are nature’s displays. The first weekend of the New Year will begin with a bang, although this bang will be of interstellar origins. This weekend (Jan. 3), the first meteor display of 2015 will reach its peak on Saturday night in a display of lights known as the Quadrantid meteor shower. According to science reporter Geoff Gaherty, “Meteor shows are usually named after the constellation in the sky where their radiant is located: the point in the sky from which they appear to radiate. Thus, the Perseids [showers] are named for Perseus and the Geminids [showers] are named for Gemini.”

Interestingly, Gaherty informs the reader that “there is no constellation named Quadrans” whence scientists derived the name Quadrantid. Instead, there was once the Quadrans Muralis constellation, which became a part of the constellation Bootes in 1922. The name of the meteor, however, was retained.

Quadrantids are also known to be a January meteor shower, as opposed to the more famous Perseids observed in August or the Geminids seen in December. Additionally, quadrantid meteors are less frequently observed than the other two meteor showers given that its peak intensity lasts only hours. Still, Gaherty writes that the Quadrantid shower “can produce as many bright meteors during its peak as the more famous Perseids.” Thus, in order to view this spectacular display, “timing is everything.”

Using past observations, researchers predict that the peak of 2015′s Quadrantid meteor shower will occur at 9 p.m. EST on Jan. 3. “During this time, the radiant will be close to the northern horizon and there is a good chance of seeing…meteors coming in close to the horizon to the east and west.”

The radiant, however, is expected to rise higher in the northeastern sky, until more meteors become visible in the east. According to Gaherty, the best time to then observe the Quadrantids will be between midnight and 2 a.m. (some reports say dawn) in the Northern Hemisphere.

Unfortunately, the shooting stars may be hard to view because of an almost-full moon on Saturday, which will radiate its own impressive brightness. Still, NASA predicts that at the peak of the Quadrantid shower, approximately 80 meteors an hour will be released, which should be remarkable in its own right.

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Did drought doom the Mayan Empire? New evidence from Belize’s ‘Blue Hole’

December 30, 2014 / / 0 Comments




Minerals taken from lagoons reveal a century-long drought occurred between A.D. 800 and A.D. 900, right when the Mayan civilization disintegrated.

Excerpt from Livescience.com

By Tia Ghose  


Drought may have driven the ancient Mayan Empire to collapse, new research suggests.

Minerals taken from Belize's famous underwater cave, known as the Blue Hole, as well as lagoons nearby, show that an extreme, century-long drought occurred between A.D. 800 and A.D. 900, right when the Mayan civilization disintegrated. After the rains returned, the Mayans moved north — but they disappeared again a few centuries later, and that disappearance occurred at the same time as another dry spell, the sediments reveal. 

Rise and decline

From A.D. 300 to A.D. 700, the Mayan civilization flourished in the Yucatan peninsula. These ancient Mesoamericans built stunning pyramids, mastered astronomy, and developed both a hieroglyphic writing system and a calendar system, which is famous for allegedly predicting that the world would end in 2012.


But in the centuries after A.D. 700, the civilization's building activities slowed and the culture descended into warfare and anarchy. Historians have speculatively linked that decline with everything from the ancient society's fear of malevolent spirits to deforestation completed to make way for cropland to the loss of favored foods, such as the Tikal deer.

The evidence for a drought has been growing in recent years: Since at least 1995, scientists have been looking more closely at the effects of drought. A 2012 study in the journal Science analyzed a 2,000-year-old stalagmite from a cave in southern Belize and found that sharp decreases in rainfall coincided with periods of decline in the culture. But that data came from just one cave, which meant it was difficult to make predictions for the area as a whole, Droxler said.

The main driver of this drought is thought to have been a shift in the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), a weather system that generally dumps water on tropical regions of the world while drying out the subtropics. During summers, the ITCZ pelts the Yucatan peninsula with rain, but the system travels farther south in the winter. Many scientists have suggested that during the Mayan decline, this monsoon system may have missed the Yucatan peninsula altogether.

Deep history

The team found that during the period between A.D. 800 and A.D. 1000, when the Mayan civilization collapsed, there were just one or two tropical cyclones every two decades, as opposed to the usual five or six. After that, the Maya moved north, building at sites such as Chichen Itza, in what is now Mexico.

But the new results also found that between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1100, during the height of the Little Ice Age, another major drought struck. This period coincides with the fall of Chichen Itza.

The findings strengthen the case that drought helped usher in the long decline of the Mayan culture.


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Is AI a threat to humanity?

December 30, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Excerpt from cnn.comImagine you're the kind of person who worries about a future when robots become smart enough to threaten the very existence of the human race. For years, you've been dismissed as a crackpot, consigned to the same category of peop...

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Rosetta’s Comet Lander Will Revive After Bumpy Touchdown, Scientists Say

December 20, 2014 / / 0 Comments


Mosaic of four images taken by Rosetta's navigation camera (NAVCAM) on 10 December 2014 at 20.1 km from the centre of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
The ESA comet lander Philae came to rest between two shadowed cliffs, limiting the sunlight hitting the lander's solar panels, but scientists hope the lander can be revived by February as more light arrives. This image of the comet's surface is a mosaic of four taken by Rosetta's navigation camera on December 10.

Hopes rise for reviving the hibernating lander's solar power as comet receives more sunlight.

Excerpt from news.nationalgeographic.com

SAN FRANCISCO—Fear not for Philae: The little lost lander could reawaken as soon as February, the Rosetta mission team said Wednesday. Increasing sunlight almost guarantees an end to the probe's current hibernation on a comet racing toward the sun.

The European Space Agency's $1.75-billion mission sent the lander to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on November 12 in an audacious, if bumpy, touchdown on the double-lobed comet. It was the first soft landing attempt on a comet.

The lander bounced after an anchoring harpoon failed to fire, turning initial elation to disappointment. After a two-hour bounce, Philae came to rest with one of its three feet planted on the comet and the others angled between two shadowed cliffs.

Those cliffs allow, for now, only 4 hours and 33 minutes of uninterrupted sunlight per day to the probe's solar panels, not enough to restart it. But the mission team announced at the American Geophysical Union meeting that more sunshine is on the way.

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How will the world end? From ‘demonic’ AI to nuclear war — seven scenarios that could end human race

December 8, 2014 / / 0 Comments




news.nationalpost.com 


Humanity may have already created its own nemesis, Professor Stephen Hawking warned last week. The Cambridge University physicist claimed that new developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) mean that within a few decades, computers thousands of times more powerful than in existence today may decide to usurp their creators and effectively end humanity’s 100,000-year dominance of Earth.
This Terminator scenario is taken seriously by many scientists and technologists. Before Prof. Hawking made his remarks, Elon Musk, the genius behind the Tesla electric car and PayPal, had stated that “with artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon,” comparing it unfavourably with nuclear war as the most potent threat to humanity’s existence.
Aside from the rise of the machines, many potential threats have been identified to our species, our civilization, even our planet. To keep you awake at night, here are seven of the most plausible.
Getty Images / ThinkStock
Getty Images / ThinkStockAn artist's depiction of an asteroid approaching Earth.
1. ASTEROID STRIKE
Our solar system is littered with billions of pieces of debris, from the size of large boulders to objects hundreds of kilometres across. We know that, from time to time, these hit the Earth. Sixty-five-million years ago, an object – possibly a comet a few times larger than the one on which the Philae probe landed last month – hit the Mexican coast and triggered a global winter that wiped out the dinosaurs. In 1908, a smaller object hit a remote part of Siberia and devastated hundreds of square kilometres of forest. Last week, 100 scientists, including Lord Rees of Ludlow, the Astronomer Royal, called for the creation of a global warning system to alert us if a killer rock is on the way.
Probability: remote in our lifetime, but one day we will be hit.
Result: there has been no strike big enough to wipe out all life on Earth – an “extinction-level event” – for at least three billion years. But a dino-killer would certainly be the end of our civilization and possibly our species.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.When artificial intelligence becomes self-aware, there is a chance it will look something like this scene from Terminator 3.
2. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Prof. Hawking is not worried about armies of autonomous drones taking over the world, but something more subtle – and more sinister. Some technologists believe that an event they call the Singularity is only a few decades away. This is a point at which the combined networked computing power of the world’s AI systems begins a massive, runaway increase in capability – an explosion in machine intelligence. By then, we will probably have handed over control to most of our vital systems, from food distribution networks to power plants, sewage and water treatment works, and the global banking system. The machines could bring us to our knees without a shot being fired. And we cannot simply pull the plug, because they control the power supplies.

Probability: unknown, although computing power is doubling every 18 months. We do not know if machines can be conscious or “want” to do anything, and sceptics point out that the cleverest computers in existence are currently no brighter than cockroaches.
Result: if the web wakes up and wants to sweep us aside, we may have a fight on our hands (perhaps even something similar to the man vs. machines battle in the Terminator films). But it is unlikely that the machines will want to destroy the planet – they “live” here, too.
Handout/AFP/Getty Images
Handout/AFP/Getty ImagesLaboratory technicians and physicians work on samples during research on the evolving Ebola disease in bats, at the Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases research Laboratory of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Pretoria on Nov. 21, 2011.
3. A GENETICALLY CREATED PLAGUE
This is possibly the most terrifying short-term threat because it is so plausible. The reason Ebola has not become a worldwide plague – and will not do so – is because it is so hard to transmit, and because it incapacitates and kills its victims so quickly. However, a modified version of the disease that can be transmitted through the air, or which allows its host to travel around for weeks, symptom-free, could kill many millions. It is unknown whether any terror group has the knowledge or facilities to do something like this, but it is chilling to realize that the main reason we understand Ebola so well is that its potential to be weaponized was quickly realized by defence experts.
Probability: someone will probably try it one day.
Result: potentially catastrophic. “Ordinary” infectious diseases such as avian-flu strains have the capability to wipe out hundreds of millions of people.
AP Photo/U.S. Army via Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
AP Photo/U.S. Army via Hiroshima Peace Memorial MuseumA mushroom cloud billows about one hour after a nuclear bomb was detonated above Hiroshima, Japan Aug. 6, 1945.
4. NUCLEAR WAR
This is still the most plausible “doomsday” scenario. Despite arms-limitations treaties, there are more than 15,000 nuclear warheads and bombs in existence – many more, in theory, than would be required to kill every human on Earth. Even a small nuclear war has the potential to cause widespread devastation. In 2011, a study by NASA scientists concluded that a limited atomic war between India and Pakistan involving just 100 Hiroshima-sized detonations would throw enough dust into the air to cause temperatures to drop more than 1.2C globally for a decade.
Probability: high. Nine states have nuclear weapons, and more want to join the club. The nuclear wannabes are not paragons of democracy.
Result: it is unlikely that even a global nuclear war between Russia and NATO would wipe us all out, but it would kill billions and wreck the world economy for a century. A regional war, we now know, could have effects far beyond the borders of the conflict.
CERN)/MCT
CERN)/MCTThis is one of the huge particle detectors in the Large Hadron Collider, a 17 mile-long tunnel under the French-Swiss border. Scientists are searching for evidence of what happened right after- and perhaps before- the Big Bang.
5. PARTICLE ACCELERATOR DISASTER
Before the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the massive machine at CERN in Switzerland that detected the Higgs boson a couple of years ago, was switched on, there was a legal challenge from a German scientist called Otto Rossler, who claimed the atom-smasher could theoretically create a small black hole by mistake – which would then go on to eat the Earth.
The claim was absurd: the collisions in the LHC are far less energetic than those caused naturally by cosmic rays hitting the planet. But it is possible that, one day, a souped-up version of the LHC could create something that destroys the Earth – or even the universe – at the speed of light.
Probability: very low indeed.
Result: potentially devastating, but don’t bother cancelling the house insurance just yet.
AP Photo/Oculus Rift/Fox
AP Photo/Oculus Rift/FoxThis photo shows a scene fromX-Men: Days of Future Past virtual reality experience. Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom has speculated that our universe may be one of countless "simulations" running in some alien computer, much like a computer game.
6. ‘GOD’ REACHES FOR THE OFF-SWITCH
Many scientists have pointed out that there is something fishy about our universe. The physical constants – the numbers governing the fundamental forces and masses of nature – seem fine-tuned to allow life of some form to exist. The great physicist Sir Fred Hoyle once wondered if the universe might be a “put-up job”.
More recently, the Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom has speculated that our universe may be one of countless “simulations” running in some alien computer, much like a computer game. If so, we have to hope that the beings behind our fake universe are benign – and do not reach for the off-button should we start misbehaving.
Probability: according to Professor Bostrom’s calculations, if certain assumptions are made, there is a greater than 50% chance that our universe is not real. And the increasingly puzzling absence of any evidence of alien life may be indirect evidence that the universe is not what it seems.
Result: catastrophic, if the gamers turn against us. The only consolation is the knowledge that there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast
AP Photo/Charles Rex ArbogastFloodwaters from the Souris River surround homes near Minot State University in Minot, N.D. on June 27, 2011. Global warming is rapidly turning America the beautiful into America the stormy and dangerous, according to the National Climate Assessment report released Tuesday, May 6, 2014.
7. CLIMATE CATASTROPHE
Almost no serious scientists now doubt that human carbon emissions are having an effect on the planet’s climate. The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested that containing temperature rises to below 2C above the pre-industrial average is now unlikely, and that we face a future three or four degrees warmer than today.
This will not literally be the end of the world – but humanity will need all the resources at its disposal to cope with such a dramatic shift. Unfortunately, the effects of climate change will really start to kick in just at the point when the human population is expected to peak – at about nine billion by the middle of this century. Millions of people, mostly poor, face losing their homes to sea-level rises (by up to a metre or more by 2100) and shifting weather patterns may disrupt agriculture dramatically.
Probability: it is now almost certain that CO2 levels will keep rising to 600 parts per billion and beyond. It is equally certain that the climate will respond accordingly.
Result: catastrophic in some places, less so in others (including northern Europe, where temperature rises will be moderated by the Atlantic). The good news is that, unlike with most of the disasters here, we have a chance to do something about climate change now.

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NASA’s Orion Conquers Orbital Test as U.S. Budget Debate Looms

December 6, 2014 / / 0 Comments




Excerpt from
businessweek.com

The Orion spacecraft’s almost flawless debut flight set the stage for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s next challenge: finding the funding to carry humans to Mars in the 2030s. 
The Apollo-like capsule orbited Earth twice yesterday to test critical functions, a 4 1/2-hour trip for the first U.S. vehicle built to transport humans to space since the shuttle in 1981. Now NASA must find political allies to keep championing a program that has already cost $7.4 billion. 

The voyage, less than two months after a pair of disasters stunned the commercial space industry, helps bolster NASA’s case for its biggest-ever expedition. Spending over 20 years for a Mars mission would dwarf outlays for the $100 billion International Space Station, the most expensive structure ever built.

“We have a new Congress in January -- let’s see what happens,” said Henry Hertzfeld, research professor of space policy and international affairs at George Washington University. At the very least, “anytime you have a success like that on something new, it’s great.” 

The NASA exploration budget that finances Orion and a new heavy-lift rocket is one of the few non-defense budget accounts for which House Republicans have proposed an increase from President Barack Obama’s request for fiscal 2015, said Brian Friel, a government fiscal analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence.

Spending Projections

Spending would rise 5 percent to $4.17 billion under the House bill, while the Senate proposes a 10 percent increase to $4.37 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The largest beneficiaries from more spending would be Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT:US), which manufactured the Orion, and Boeing Co. (BA:US), the contractor’s co-owner of the venture building the new rocket.

Orion is the first spaceship developed to carry humans beyond the moon, and later versions will be fine-tuned to travel to asteroids next decade and to Mars in the 2030s. NASA is targeting an Orion trip with astronauts by 2021. 

While Orion was among the top trending topics worldwide on Twitter.com, NASA’s new ambitions are unfolding amid a federal budget squeeze and the short attention spans of the social-media era, not the race-for-the-moon competition of the Cold War. 

At Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where a Delta IV Heavy rocket carried Orion aloft, some of the weather-worn buildings displayed faded signs from news organizations that once camped out to chronicle the Apollo program. They were a reminder that interest in NASA diminished after the U.S. won the race to the moon.



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First legal pot, now Colorado launches new voting experiment

November 1, 2014 / / 0 Comments




Excerpt from nypost.com

As Colorado goes Election Night, so goes the nation — maybe.
The Centennial State is clearly a barometer of President Obama’s falling popularity. 

The man who began his meteoric rise as the Democratic presidential nominee in Denver’s stadium in 2008 has lost much of his luster with Colorado voters and appears to be bringing down other Democrats with him. 

Polls show Republican Cory Gardner ahead by seven points in his race to unseat incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Udall, and GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez is neck and neck with sitting Gov. John HIckenlooper. 

But before Republicans pop the champagne corks, it’s worth considering the big wild card in this election.

Like the rest of Colorado’s roughly 3 million registered voters, I received my ballot in the mail about two weeks ago. This year will be the first that all Colorado voters received mail ballots, even without requesting them. 

The potential for thousands more voters to cast ballots in what is usually a low-turnout midterm election could easily confound pollsters and politicos. 

Conventional wisdom is that higher turnout favors Democrats — and the odds of higher turnout helping Dems in Colorado seem somewhat greater, given the demographics of the state.
Some 14 percent of eligible voters in Colorado are Hispanic. Obama improved his share of support among Colorado Hispanic voters from 61 percent in 2008 to 75 percent in 2012. 

If mail ballots boost Hispanic voter participation by a few percentage points this year, it will likely redound to Democrats’ benefit. In a race as tight as the Colorado governor’s race, Hispanic voters could well determine the outcome.

But demographics don’t give the full picture. Since 2008, Democrats have benefited from a much stronger ground game that put operatives in the field to turn out their likely voters. 

The effort wasn’t enough to stop populist Tea Party voters from boosting GOP fortunes in the 2010
congressional races, but Colorado was the exception. Democrat Michael Bennet won an open Senate race with just 30,000 more votes than his Republican opponent, Ken Buck. 

The question in 2014 is whether mail balloting helps or erases the Democrats’ edge.

A New York Times analysis of Colorado mail ballots that had already been tallied 10 days out from the election seemed to give Republicans an advantage. Registered Republicans had mailed in ballots in higher numbers than Democrats, 42.8 percent to 32.3 percent. 

But those trends may not continue. It could be that more Republicans simply cast their ballots early, which is where the Democratic ground game will come in handy. 

Early voting makes it easier for “volunteers” — many of them paid political and union operatives — to go door to door to urge those who haven’t voted to do so.


Who is to stop “volunteers” from showing up with dozens of mail ballots collected from elderly voters or others who may have been pressured by union reps or family members to cast their votes?
Colorado will have regulations in place to limit the number of ballots a single individual can drop off at collection centers after 2015, but this year the possibility of ballot stuffing is real.

State election officials claim that the signature on the ballot envelope is their way to detect phony ballots. But the system hardly seems foolproof, requiring signatures to be scanned and matched against a database that may prove more cumbersome than anticipated.

Nov. 4 will be a test for Colorado — and for the nation — on this new experiment in democracy.

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Mexico archaeologists explore Teotihuacan tunnel

October 29, 2014 / / 0 Comments


Photo released by Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) shows a sculpture unearthed at the Teotihuacan archeological site in Mexico. Mexican archaeologists have concluded a yearslong exploration of a tunnel sealed nearly 2,000 years ago at the ancient city of Teotihuacan and found thousands of relics. Teotihuacan dominated central Mexico centuries before the rise of the Aztecs in the 14th century. 


Mexico City (AP) — A yearslong exploration of a tunnel sealed almost 2,000 years ago at the ancient city of Teotihuacan yielded thousands of relics and the discovery of three chambers that could hold more important finds, Mexican archaeologists said Wednesday.

Project leader Sergio Gomez said researchers recently reached the end of the 340-foot (103-meter) tunnel after meticulously working their way down its length, collecting relics from seeds to pottery to animal bones.

Shells unearthed by investigators at the Teotihuacan archeological site in Mexico. Mexican archaeologists have concluded a yearslong exploration of a tunnel sealed nearly 2,000 years ago at the ancient city of Teotihuacan and found thousands of relics. Teotihuacan dominated central Mexico centuries before the rise of the Aztecs in the 14th century. (AP Photo/Proyecto Tlalocan, INAH)


A large offering found near the entrance to the chambers, some 59 feet (18 meters) below the Temple of the Plumed Serpent, suggests they could be the tombs of the city's elite.

"Because this is one of the most sacred places in all Teotihuacan, we believe that it could have been used for the rulers to ... acquire divine endowment allowing them to rule on the surface," Gomez said.

Unlike at other pre-Columbian ruins in Mexico, archaeologists have never found any remains believed to belong to Teotihuacan's rulers. Such a discovery could help shine light on the leadership structure of the city, including whether rule was hereditary.

Sculptures and shells unearthed by investigators at the Teotihuacan archeological site in Mexico. Mexican archaeologists have concluded a yearslong exploration of a tunnel sealed nearly 2,000 years ago at the ancient city of Teotihuacan and found thousands of relics. Teotihuacan dominated central Mexico centuries before the rise of the Aztecs in the 14th century. (AP Photo/Proyecto Tlalocan, INAH)


"We have not lost hope of finding that, and if they are there, they must be from someone very, very important," Gomez said.

So far Gomez's team has excavated only about 2 feet (60 centimeters) into the chambers. A full exploration will take at least another year.

Sculptures unearthed by investigators at the Teotihuacan archeological site in Mexico. Mexican archaeologists have concluded a yearslong exploration of a tunnel sealed nearly 2,000 years ago at the ancient city of Teotihuacan and found thousands of relics. Teotihuacan dominated central Mexico centuries before the rise of the Aztecs in the 14th century. (AP Photo/Proyecto Tlalocan, INAH)
Initial studies by the National Institute of Anthropology and History show the tunnel functioned until around A.D. 250, when it was closed off.

Teotihuacan long dominated central Mexico and had its apex between 100 B.C. and A.D. 750. It is believed to have been home to more than 100,000 people, but was abandoned before the rise of the Aztecs in the 14th century.


Today it is an important archaeological site on the outskirts of Mexico City and a major tourist draw known for its broad avenues and massive pyramids.

Honduran Paola Quinonez speaks to Reuters in Mexico City
Honduran Paola Quinonez speaks to Reuters in Mexico City September 3, 2014. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

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Is this the origins of the Anunnaki story? ~ Neanderthals & humans first mated 50,000 years ago, DNA reveals

October 22, 2014 / / 1 Comment


Early European
Universal human: This reconstruction is of a different modern human from Romania 43,000 years ago. But it gives some clues to what the Siberian man may have looked like. This population was not long out of Africa and genetically midway between Europeans and Asians
Excerpt from bbc.com
The genome sequence from a thigh bone found in Siberia shows the first episode of mixing occurred between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago.

The male hunter is one of the earliest modern humans discovered in Eurasia.

The study in Nature journal also supports the finding that our species emerged from Africa some 60,000 years ago, before spreading around the world.

The analysis raises the possibility that the human line first emerged millions of years earlier than current estimates.

"We seem to have caught evolution red handed”
Prof Svante Paabo Max-Plack Institute
The work of Prof Svante Paabo, from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, is rewriting the story of humanity. Prof Paabo and his colleagues have pioneered methods to extract DNA from ancient human remains and read its genetic code. From this sequence, Prof Paabo has been able to decipher an increasingly detailed story of modern humans as they spread across the globe.

"The amazing thing is that we have a good genome of a 45,000 year old person who was close to the ancestor of all present-day humans outside Africa," Prof Paabo told BBC News. 

Prof Paabo has analysed DNA from part of a leg bone of a man that lived in Western Siberia around 45,000 years ago. This is a key moment at the cross roads of the world, when modern humans were on the cusp of an expansion into Europe and Asia.


Thigh bone

Prof Paabo Svante has unlocked the secrets contained in this femur from one of the earliest humans discovered out of Africa.
The key finding was that the man had large, unshuffled chunks of DNA from a now extinct species of human, Neanderthals who evolved outside of Africa. 

"Our analysis shows that modern humans had already interbred with Neanderthals then and we can determine when that first happened much more precisely than we could before." 

Prof Paabo and his team published research in 2010 which showed that all non-African humans today have Neanderthal DNA. But that genetic material has been broken into much smaller chunks over the generations. 

By extrapolating the size of DNA chunks backwards, Prof Paabo and his colleagues were able to calculate when the first interbreeding with Neanderthals occurred. His study shows that it was between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago.

According to Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, this early interbreeding might indicate when the ancestors of people living outside of Africa today made their first steps out of the continent in which our species evolved more than 150,000 years ago.

Prof Stringer was among those who believed that the first exit by modern humans from Africa that give rise to people outside of Africa today might have happened earlier, possibly 100,000 years ago. The evidence from Prof Paabo's research is persuading him that it was now much later.


River Irtysh

Crossroads for humanity: the river Irtysh in Western Siberia where the bone was found. 


Prof Paabo also compared the DNA of the man living 45,000 years ago with those living today. He found that the man was genetically midway between Europeans and Asians - indicating he lived close to the time before our species separated into different racial groups.

Prof Paabo was also able to estimate the rate at which human DNA has changed or mutated over the millennia. He found that it was slower than the rate suggested by fossil evidence and similar to what has been observed in families. 

"We have caught evolution red handed!" Prof Paabo said gleefully.
This raises the possibility that the very first species of the human line separated from apes 10 or 11 million years ago - rather than the five or six million years ago that genetic evidence had previously suggested. 

But he stressed in his research paper that much more analysis was needed before re-dating the emergence of the human line.

"We caution that (mutation) rates may have changed over time and may differ between human populations," he said.

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7 Types of Non-Believers Who Don’t Need Religion

September 25, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Valerie Tarico, AlterNetReligious labels help shore up identity. So what are some of the things non-believers can call themselves?Catholic, born-again, Reformed, Jew, Muslim, Shiite, Sunni, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist…religions give people labels. The downside can be tribalism, an assumption that insiders are better than outsiders, that they merit more compassion, integrity and generosity or even that violence toward “infidels” is acceptable. But the upside is that religious o [...]

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What is Enlightenment?

September 20, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Thomas Razzeto, GrahamHancock.comMy most passionate plea is for you to wake up to your true self as pure awareness. We have all heard it said that you are not a human being having a spiritual experience, but instead, you are a spiritual being having a human experience. Yet you are not a being of any kind, spiritual or physical. You are pure awareness! And most importantly, your awareness is the One Awareness – the Divine Awareness – and as such, it is the only reality tha [...]

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David Wilcock – The Solar System Is Moving Into A New Area Of Vibration

September 18, 2014 / / 0 Comments

According to the research of David Wilcock, there is an impending shift going on within our solar system that will give us all the opportunity to make a quantum leap in consciousness.I was watching a "Contact In The Desert" video featuringDavid Wilcock and he brought up some information that is quite fascinating.The following is an excerpt from "The Brown Notebook" which is a channeling from Walt Rogers that was done in the 1950's.   Much of what was channeled is proving to be tr [...]

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Consuming Canned Foods Increases Toxic Exposure 1000 Fold

September 15, 2014 / / 0 Comments

April McCarthy, Prevent DiseaseConsuming a daily serving of canned food products has a more than 1,000% increase in urinary bisphenol A (BPA) concentrations compared with when the same individuals consumed fresh food daily. The study is one of the first to quantify BPA levels in humans after ingestion of canned foods.The findings were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).In 2009, the North American Metal Packaging Alliance, a Washington-based trade [...]

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