King Tut explorer’s photos, treasures revealed

A photograph of one of an Egyptian pyramid from the photo collection of Lord Carnarvon.

Lord Carnarvon, the man who funded the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun and died five months later in mysterious circumstances before he could actually see the mummy’s face, was a superstitious man who wore the same lucky bow tie all his life.

Such anecdotes are part of a unique exhibition at Highclere Castle, home of the Carnarvon family since the architect of London’s Houses of Parliament built it in the 1840s.

Rising in the Berkshire countryside south of Newbury, England, the castle kept many secrets on its own. For more than 60 years, its walls concealed an important chapter of the King Tut search: a cache of Egyptian antiquities, excavated by George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon and his colleague and employee, Howard Carter in the years leading up to the discovery of the treasure-filled tomb.

“My grandfather was superstitious and did not want to talk about Egypt, so he took the Egyptian collection out of sight. It remained hidden away in a cupboard between two rooms down below the cellars for some 65 years. We found it after his death in 1987,” George, the current earl — the eighth — told Discovery News.

The Highclere cache is just a tiny part of a magnificent collection which Almina, Lord Carnarvon’s wife and the illegitimate daughter of Alfred de Rothschild of the famous banking family, sold to the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1926.

The long-hidden collection is now presented in its full glory in the cellars of the castle, along with hundreds of unpublished photographs taken by Lord Carnarvon between 1907 and 1914. They were discovered two years ago in the family archives by Fiona, the Eighth Countess of Carnarvon.

“These pictures reveal the enormous scale of excavations that Lord Carnarvon and Carter carried in the decade before their most sensational finding. They tell the story of two amazing men, who have never been fully recognized in England for the discovery they have made,” the Countess of Carnarvon told Discovery News.

The author of “Carnarvon & Carter,” the Countess was researching a biography of the fifth Earl, her husband’s great grandfather — oddly, none exists — when she discovered photos, letters, notes and drawing left by Lord Carnarvon and Carter.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31946548/ns/technology_and_science-science/

http://www.highclerecastle.co.uk/Front/Egypt.htm

Video: iPhone 3GS can tether… to an RC plane

We’re still not sure what to make of the iPhone in a pool video, but if this one is legit, it certainly represents one of the most glorious ways to endanger expensive hi-tech gadgetry. Let’s face it — who doesn’t want to see Apple’s moneymaker strapped to the belly of an RC plane and shot up into the air? Major engine noise and the phone’s camera struggling for focus are all excused by the awesome landing that seems to place the iPhone about an inch away from the gravelly ground. Make your way past the break for the full vid.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/16/video-iphone-3gs-can-tether-to-an-rc-plane/

India issuing biometric IDs to all 1.2 billion citizens

While not busy being the destination of Westerners seeking spiritual growth and the birthplace of the beloved Bollywood song and dance flick, apparently India is home to some 1.2 billion people — many of whom possess no proof of identification whatsoever. According to The Times (UK), less than seven per cent of the population are registered for income tax, and the voting lists are terribly inaccurate. Hoping to bring the nation’s census data into the 21st century, India has created the Unique Identification Authority. Under the direction of Nandan Nilekani, one of the founders of Infosys, the plan is to outfit every one of the nation’s citizens with a biometric ID card that contains personal data, fingerprint or iris scans, and possibly even criminal records and credit histories. Gathering the data is projected to cost at least $4.9 billion, a figure that’s likely to soar once the ball gets rolling. While the Government expects that the first cards will be issued within 18 months, analysts say that project won’t likely reach “critical mass” for at least four years.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/16/india-issuing-biometric-ids-to-all-1-2-billion-citizens/

Eternaleds debuts world’s first liquid-cooled LED light bulb

We know you probably wouldn’t answer “What’s the perfect companion to a liquid-cooled PC?” with “a liquid-cooled light bulb,” but amazingly enough, that’s a viable answer starting today. Eternaleds is stepping up big with planet’s first liquid-cooled LED bulb, the HydraLux-4, which will arrive in warm white and daylight white and should save you bundles on your energy bill over the next score. The company asserts that these bulbs produce “360 degree lighting” and can emit the same amount of illumination as a 25W incandescent with just 4W of energy. Each bulb is rated for 35,000 hours of use, and considering that a single one costs only $1.75 per year to run (at eight hours per day), we suppose the stiff $34.99 sticker is somewhat warranted.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/15/eternaleds-debuts-worlds-first-liquid-cooled-led-light-bulb/

The Mysterious Lizards Who Swim In Sand

When the tiny lizard known as the sandfish moves through sand, it literally dives under the surface of the ground as if swimming. Now physicists have figured out how they do it – and want to build sandfish robots.

Georgia Tech physicist Daniel Goldman and his team observed the sandfish as they swam through sand, using X-rays and tiny sensors placed in the sand that measured how grains were displaced as the lizards moved through them. One thing they discovered right away was that the sandfish were indeed “swimming” – they tucked their legs up next to their bodies and moved in an undulatory wave like fish through water. Another interesting finding was that the lizards could go slightly faster in tightly-packed sand, as long as they varied the frequency of the wave created by the movement of their bodies. Their work is published today in Science.

Says Goldman:

When started above the surface, the animals dive into the sand within a half second. Once below the surface, they no longer use their limbs for propulsion — instead, they move forward by propagating a traveling wave down their bodies like a snake . . . The large amplitude waves over the entire body are unlike the kinematics of other undulatory swimming organisms that are the same size as the sandfish, like eels, which propagate waves that start with a small amplitude that gets larger toward the tail . . . The results demonstrate that burrowing and swimming in complex media like sand can have intricacy similar to that of movement in air or water, and that organisms can exploit the solid and fluid-like properties of these media to move effectively within them.

There are implications for this research that go beyond understanding how lizards move through sand. Goldman and his team think it could help roboticists in designing rescue bots that could worm their way through collapsed rubble. It would also be useful for creating surveillance robots that can swim invisibly under sand, tracking enemy locations or even recording conversations that take place outdoors in sandy regions.

(Follow the link for videos) – http://io9.com/5316290/the-mysterious-lizards-who-swim-in-sand

Mysterious, Glowing Clouds Appear Across America’s Night Skies

Mysterious, glowing clouds previously seen almost exclusively in Earth’s polar regions have appeared in the skies over the United States and Europe over the past several days.

Photographers and other sky watchers in Omaha, Paris, Seattle, and other locations have run outside to capture images of what scientists call noctilucent (”night shining”) clouds. Formed by ice literally at the boundary where the earth’s atmosphere meets space 50 miles up, they shine because they are so high that they remain lit by the sun even after our star is below the horizon.

The clouds might be beautiful, but they could portend global changes caused by global warming. Noctilucent clouds are a fundamentally new phenomenon in the temperate mid-latitude sky, and it’s not clear why they’ve migrated down from the poles. Or why, over the last 25 years, more of them are appearing in the polar regions, too, and shining more brightly.

“That’s a real concern and question,” said James Russell, an atmospheric scientist at Hampton University and the principal investigator of an ongoing NASA satellite mission to study the clouds. “Why are they getting more numerous? Why are they getting brighter? Why are they appearing at lower latitudes?”

Nobody knows for sure, but most of the answers seem to point to human-caused global atmospheric change.

Noctilucent clouds were first observed in 1885 by an amateur astronomer. No observations of anything resembling noctilucent clouds before that time has ever been found. There is no lack of observations of other phenomena in the sky, so atmospheric scientists are fairly sure that the phenomenon is recent, although they are not sure why.

Over the last 125 years, scientists have learned how the clouds form. At temperatures around minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, dust blowing up from below or falling into the atmosphere from space provides a resting spot for water vapor to condense and freeze. Right now, during the northern hemisphere’s summer, the atmosphere is heating up and expanding. At the outside edge of the atmosphere, that actually means that it’s getting colder because it’s pushed farther out into space.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/nightclouds/

Moth Blocks Bat Attack by Jamming Sonar

Navy engineers aren’t the only ones who can jam sonar. Scientists have discovered a species of tiger moth that thwarts hungry bats by emitting extra-loud clicks to block the bats’ ability to echolocate.

Researchers have long known that some species of moths send out clicks in response to bat sonar, but until now, no one has been able to prove that the clicks actually interfere with echolocation. “The idea of a jamming mechanism has been thrown around for 50 years, but nobody has really put a moth and a bat together in a flight room to see what happens,” said ecology graduate student Aaron Corcoran of Wake Forest University, co-author of the study published Thursday in Science.

Corcoran and his colleagues pitted a particularly noisy species of tiger moth, the Bertholdia trigona, against big brown bats trained to hunt in a flight room. As long as the moths were able to click, the bats couldn’t catch them, even though the moths were tethered on a string.

But when the scientists pierced a small hole in the moths’ sound-producing structures, called tymbals, the silenced moths quickly became lunch. (follow link for video of this)

“It’s the first good, solid case of this going on,” said insect behavior expert James Fullard of the University of Toronto at Mississauga, who was not involved in the study. “For this bat and this moth, it looks pretty convincing that jamming is what’s going on.”

Not all clicking moths can jam sonar, Fullard said, and that’s part of what makes this discovery so exciting. Previous research revealed that two other varieties of tiger moth make clicks that are too quiet to interfere with bat echolocation. Instead, he said, these moths likely use the clicks as a warning: Because most moths that click back at bats are poisonous, scientists think the noise may communicate, “Don’t eat me, I taste bad.”

But B. trigona isn’t poisonous, and the Wake Forest researchers experimented with young bats that had no prior exposure to clicking moths, so they hadn’t already learned to equate clicking with a bad taste. Nor did it seem like the bats were just startled by the clicking moths. Even after multiple attempts on multiple nights, the bats still couldn’t catch the intact B. trigona.

“Mammals habituate to startle rather quickly,” Corcoran said. “We went through seven days of trials, but the bats never habituated. They were put off by the clicks right away and throughout the whole experiment.”

The researchers haven’t yet proven how the moth’s sonar-jamming mechanism works, but they have two leading hypotheses: The moth’s clicks may act as false echoes, essentially making the bat “see” double, or they may interrupt the bat’s own echoes, making its prey appear closer than it is.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/mothjam/

Scientists Find Tsunami ‘Shadow’ Visible From Space

The ground track of the Jason-1 satellite is shown here as it crossed the Sumatra-Andaman tsunami at hourly intervals after the earthquake occurred. White stars show the location of the tsunami wave sources. (Credit: NOAA)

For the first time, NOAA scientists have demonstrated that tsunamis in the open ocean can change sea surface texture in a way that can be measured by satellite-borne radars. The finding could one day help save lives through improved detection and forecasting of tsunami intensity and direction at the ocean surface.

“We’ve found that roughness of the surface water provides a good measure of the true strength of the tsunami along its entire leading edge. This is the first time that we can see tsunami propagation in this way across the open ocean,” said lead author Oleg Godin of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, in Boulder, Colo.

Large tsunamis crossing the open ocean stir up and darken the surface waters along the leading edge of the wave, according to the study. The rougher water forms a long, shadow-like strip parallel to the wave and proportional to the strength of the tsunami. That shadow can be measured by orbiting radars and may one day help scientists improve early warning systems. The research is published online this week in the journal, Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences.

The new research challenges the traditional belief that tsunamis are too subtle in the open ocean to be seen at the surface. The findings confirm a theory, developed by Godin and published in 2002-05, that tsunamis in the deep ocean can be detected remotely through changes in surface roughness.

In 1994, a tsunami shadow was captured by video from shore moments before the wave struck Hawaii. That observation and earlier written documentation of a shadow that accompanied a deadly tsunami on April 1, 1946, inspired Godin to develop his theory. He tested the theory during the deadly December 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami, the result of the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake.

Godin and colleagues analyzed altimeter measurements of the 2004 tsunami from NASA’s Jason-1 satellite. The data revealed clear evidence of an increased surface roughness along the leading edge of the tsunami as it passed across the Indian Ocean between two and six degrees south latitude.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090716103849.htm

Primitive Asteroids In Main Asteroid Belt May Have Formed Far From The Sun

Researchers collected this micrometeorite in the vicinity of CONCORDIA station in central Antarctica (Dome C, 73°S, 123°E). (Credit: CSNSM-Orsay-CNRS / IPEV)

Many of the objects found today in the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter may have formed in the outermost reaches of the solar system, according to an international team of astronomers led by scientists from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI).

The team used numerical simulations to show that some comet-like objects residing in a disk outside the original orbit of the planets were scattered across the solar system and into the outer asteroid belt during a violent phase of planetary evolution.

Usually, the solar system is considered a place of relative permanence, with changes occurring gradually over hundreds of millions to billions of years. New models of planet formation indicate, however, that at specific times, the architecture of the solar system experienced dramatic upheaval.

In particular, it now seems probable that approximately 3.9 billion years ago, the giant planets of our solar system — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — rearranged themselves in a tumultuous spasm. “This last major event of planet formation appears to have affected nearly every nook and cranny of the solar system,” says lead author Dr. Hal Levison of SwRI.

Key evidence for this event was first identified in the samples returned from the Moon by the Apollo astronauts. They tell us about an ancient cataclysmic bombardment where large asteroids and comets rained down on the Moon.

Scientists now recognize that this event was not limited solely to the Moon; it also affected the Earth and many other solar system bodies. “The existence of life on Earth, as well as the conditions that made our world habitable for us, are strongly linked to what happened at this distant time,” states Dr. David Nesvorny of SwRI.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090715131556.htm

Does DNA Have ‘Telepathic’ Properties? – Experts Say “Yes”

DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to assemble itself, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn’t be able to. Explanation: None, at least not yet.

Scientists are reporting evidence that contrary to our current beliefs about what is possible, intact double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. Somehow they are able to identify one another, and the tiny bits of genetic material tend to congregate with similar DNA. The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible.

Even so, the research published in ACS’ Journal of Physical Chemistry B, shows very clearly that homology recognition between sequences of several hundred nucleotides occurs without physical contact or presence of proteins. Double helixes of DNA can recognize matching molecules from a distance and then gather together, all seemingly without help from any other molecules or chemical signals.

In the study, scientists observed the behavior of fluorescently tagged DNA strands placed in water that contained no proteins or other material that could interfere with the experiment. Strands with identical nucleotide sequences were about twice as likely to gather together as DNA strands with different sequences. No one knows how individual DNA strands could possibly be communicating in this way, yet somehow they do. The “telepathic” effect is a source of wonder and amazement for scientists.

“Amazingly, the forces responsible for the sequence recognition can reach across more than one nanometer of water separating the surfaces of the nearest neighbor DNA,” said the authors Geoff S. Baldwin, Sergey Leikin, John M. Seddon, and Alexei A. Kornyshev and colleagues.

This recognition effect may help increase the accuracy and efficiency of the homologous recombination of genes, which is a process responsible for DNA repair, evolution, and genetic diversity. The new findings may also shed light on ways to avoid recombination errors, which are factors in cancer, aging, and other health issues.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/07/does-dna-have-telepathic-properties-research-says-yes.html