Beefing Up the Universe's Biggest Black Holes

When it comes to black holes lurking within the hearts of galaxies, there's some real monsters out there. Measured in the millions to billions of solar masses, these incredibly dense cosmic objects pack so much material into so small an area that not only can light not escape, but their gravity traps entire clusters of stars in breakneck orbits around them -- and at close proximity they even warp the very nature of physics itself.

On occasion their powerful outbursts create beacons of high-energy radiation that can be seen from clear across the Universe.

Many galaxies, if not all, are home to enormous black holes at their center -- our own Milky Way being no exception. The supermassive black hole in the heart of our galaxy, Sgr A*, is estimated to weigh in at a hefty 4 million solar masses. That may sound impressive, but even this is literally dwarfed by what astronomers have discovered with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (along with radio data from the NSF's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, the Australia Telescope Compact Array and infrared data from the 2 Micron All-Sky Survey): ultramassive black holes lounging in the centers of distant galaxies, containing the equivalent masses of 10 to 40 billion suns.

Yes, I said billion.

During a survey of 18 galaxy clusters, Chandra detected enormous outbursts of energy from ten of the brightest galaxies -- such as the elliptical galaxy at the center of PKS 0745-19, seen above. These outbursts have cleared dark gaps in the hot, x-ray bright gas clouds surrounding the clusters, preventing the diffuse gas from condensing to form stars.

Because outbursts of this size would have to be fueled by the consumption of enormous amounts of material -- capable by only the most massive black holes -- scientists have calculated that these must be truly ultra-ultramassive... up to ten times more massive than earlier estimates. And if ten of these behemoths have been found in such a small collection of galaxies, it stands to reason that there must be more -- lots more.

"Our results show that there may be many more ultramassive black holes in the universe than previously thought," said study leader Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo of Stanford University.

More research and modeling will be needed to confirm the team's results, including comparison to a known ultramassive black hole in the galaxy M87, located in the nearby Virgo cluster of galaxies.

"If our results are confirmed, they will have important ramifications for understanding the formation and evolution of black holes across cosmic time," Hlavacek-Larrondo said. "I wouldn't be surprised if we end up finding the biggest black holes in the Universe."

Read more at Discovery News

America's Most Extreme Rocks Found

A soaring mountain range as tall as the Himalayas once towered over the U.S. East Coast. Some 20 miles (32 kilometers) of rock have since transformed into sand and mud, exposing an outcrop of the most extreme rocks in America.

Banded with colorful, unique garnets, the gneiss — a form of metamorphic rock — was pushed as far as rock can go before it melts, to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius), geologists report in the Dec. 13 issue of the journal Geology.

The find is the first discovery of ultrahigh temperature metamorphic rocks in the United States, said Jay Ague, a professor at Yale University and lead author of the study. The next hurdle is figuring out how they formed, he said.

"The fact that these rocks are there at all challenges all the existing models for mountain building in the area," Ague said. "These ultrahot (rocks) are becoming an important part of how we think mountain belts form," he told OurAmazingPlanet.

Walk on by
In appearance, the gneiss looks "quite ordinary," Ague said — it doesn't have the classic collection of minerals found in ultrahigh temperature rocks in Canada or other continents. In fact, Ague, who specializes in metamorphic rocks, walked over outcrops of the gneiss for nearly 20 years without recognizing its unique history. He even brought samples back to his lab at Yale, but only for the interesting minerals in veins crossing the gneiss.

Finally, in connection with a separate study, Ague and his colleagues recently examined the gneiss under a microscope.

Garnets in the gneiss had patterned inclusions of rutile, a mineral that also gives star sapphires their special appeal. "They are really quite beautiful," Ague said. "Those features in garnets are really only associated with really extreme temperature or pressure conditions, so right there we knew there was something special about these rocks," Ague said. "It was a completely serendipitous discovery."

The outcrops discovered so far stretch along Interstate 84 through northeast Connecticut toward the Massachusetts border. They are from the Brimfield Schist, part of the Acadian metamorphic belt. One quarry in the region uses the rock for road gravel, Ague said. Hikers along the Nipmuck Trail might also find a piece.

"The rocks are not super unique-looking, so the possibility exists that there is a lot more of this out there to find," Ague said.

How do they get so hot?

The researchers now plan to figure out when the rocks formed — their current guess is about 400 million years ago — and what drove them to such extreme temperatures.

Their origin lies in the Acadian orogeny, when a chain of volcanic islands collided with North America.

"We can see back through all that history to unravel the earliest beginnings of how this rock formed," Ague said. "These rocks began as basically muds on ancient ocean floors in very chilly conditions. Then they were buried and completely recrystallized up to 1,000 degrees (Celsius), and then subject to two more metamorphic and deformational events, then ultimately brought back to the surface so we can see them here today."

Read more at Discovery News

Tracking the Origins of HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) may have affected humans for much longer than is currently believed. Alfred Roca, an assistant professor in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois, thinks that the genomes of an isolated West African human population provide important clues about how the disease has evolved.

HIV is thought to have originated from chimpanzees in central Africa that were infected with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a retrovirus. "If you look at the diversity present across SIV in chimpanzees, it suggests that they have had it for tens of thousands of years," Roca said.

HIV-1 Type M, which accounts for 90 percent of human infections, is believed to have crossed the species barrier into human populations between 1884 and 1924. Roca said that it may have crossed much earlier and many times, selecting for genetic resistance in isolated rural populations while remaining undetected.

"Some of the scientific literature suggests that the persistence of HIV in humans required population densities typical of the larger cities that appeared in West Central Africa during the colonial era," he said.

Perhaps an even more important factor is that, before modern medicine and vaccinations, infectious diseases such as smallpox killed large numbers of people. People with compromised immune systems may have succumbed first, preventing the immunodeficiency virus from spreading.

If HIV crossed the species barrier many times, it is possible that selection favored protective genetic variants in the affected populations. Roca and his co-investigators looked for evidence of this selection in the Biaka genomes.

The Biaka are a human community that inhabits forests in the range of the chimpanzee subspecies believed to be the source of the current HIV pandemic. The researchers compared Biaka genomes with the genomes of four other African populations who live outside the chimpanzee's range.

Biaka genotypes were available through the Human Genome Diversity Project, which collected biological samples from 52 different population groups across the world. The project genotyped these diverse human communities for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced "snips"), or genomic variation, at around 650,000 locations across the genome.

Previous research that used cell lines made in the 1980s from individuals who had AIDS or were believed to be at risk for it had identified 26 genomic locations as being involved in resistance to HIV. Kai Zhao, a graduate student working in Roca's laboratory, examined these locations.

Zhao ran all 10 possible pairwise comparisons for the five human populations and looked for selection signatures. Specifically, selection for a genetic trait tends to reduce diversity in the surrounding genomic region within the affected population, increasing the differences between populations.

The researchers looked at the genomic regions that contain genes known to have a protective effect against HIV to see if there was any overlap with the selection signatures. Eight of the comparisons found overlap. Seven involved the Biaka.

They identified four genes in these overlaps that code for proteins affecting either the ability of HIV to infect the host cell or the disease progression. The researchers also found that for several genes, SNPs associated with protection against HIV-1 were common among the Biaka.

Roca cautions that these results should not be considered definitive. It is not possible to rule out false positives.

"You may detect a signature of selection, but it doesn't necessarily mean that selection has caused it. It's just a good sign that selection may have occurred," he said. Also, the signature of selection may span several genes, of which only one is actually protective against HIV-1.

However, he said that the results are intriguing and indicate that this line of research is worth pursuing.

"If additional studies confirm that these genes have undergone selection and that human populations in the region have some genetic resistance to HIV-1, one could try to find additional genes in the population that may also be protective against HIV but have not yet been identified," he said.

Read more at Science Daily

Ancient Pharaoh's Throat Was Slashed

Ramesses III, Egypt's last great pharaoh, had his throat slashed in a royal coup led by his son and one of his wives, according to new forensic analysis.

Computed tomography (CT) imaging revealed a serious wound in the throat of pharaoh's mummy, just beneath the larynx.

Possibly caused by a sharp knife or a blade, the injury was about 2.75 inches wide and extended almost to the spine, cutting all the soft tissue on the front of the neck.

"Accordingly, all organs in this region, such as the trachea, oesophagus, and large blood vessels, were severed," a team of Egyptian and European researchers led by Albert Zink, a paleopathologist at the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman of the European Academy of Bolzano in Italy, wrote in the current issue of the British Medical Journal.

"The extent and depth of the wound indicated that it could have caused the immediate death of Ramesses III," they added.

The second Pharaoh of the 20th dynasty, Ramesses III ruled from about 1188 to 1155 B.C. He was the last significant king of the New Kingdom.

Ancient documents describe him as the "Great God" and a military leader who defended Egypt from repeated invasion of an ethnic group that the Egyptians called the Sea Peoples.

He was about 65 when he died, but the cause of his death has never been clear.

Ancient documents including the Judicial Papyrus of Turin clearly state that in 1155 B.C. members of Ramesses III's harem attempted to murder him as part of a palace coup to change the line of succession.

According to the documents, the coup failed, but it is less clear whether the assassination was successful. Some some texts says it was, while other accounts imply that the king survived the attack, at least for a short while.

The Judicial Papyrus tells of four separate trials and lists the punishments reserved to those involved in the conspiracy, which included queen Tiye, one of the king's two known wives, and her son Prince Pentawere.

To resolve the 3,000-year-old puzzle, Zink and colleagues carried anthropological and forensic cold case analysis on the mummy of Ramesses III and the unidentified remains of a younger man buried nearby in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.

Called man E, or Screaming Mummy for its open mouth and contorted face, the mummy was believed to be the pharaoh's son Pentawere.

CT scans and DNA tests on the mummies, which are now kept at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, produced important results.

The researchers could see a Horus eye amulet embedded in Ramesses III's wound. The charm symbolized royal power, protection, and good health.

"Most probably, the ancient Egyptian embalmers tried to restore the wound during mummification by inserting the amulet, generally used for healing purposes, and by covering the neck with a collar of thick linen layers," the researchers said.

Although it is possible that the throat was cut after his death, the Zink and colleagues believe this is highly unlikely.

"A treatment in which the throat was cut by the embalmers has not been described in any other Egyptian mummy," they said.

DNA analysis showed that Ramesses III and unknown man E shared the same Y chromosome and 50 percent of their genetic material, strongly suggesting that they were father and son.

According to the Judicial Papyrus of Turin, Pentawere was found guilty at trial, and then took his own life.

About 18-20 years old, the mummy of man E had a very strange, reddish color and was covered by a goat skin, a material regarded as ritually impure.

"He was badly treated for a mummy," Zink said.

Moreover, the young man had unusual compressed skin folds and wrinkles around his neck as well as an inflated chest.

According to the researchers, this may suggest he was strangled to death.

Read more at Discovery News

Knight in Baked Armor Found at 'Pompeii of Japan'

The remains of a high-caste man wearing armor who was buried by hot ash -- possibly as he tried to calm the wrath of an erupting volcano -- have been found in an area known as the "Pompeii of Japan."

Archaeologists say they have unearthed the well-preserved body of a sixth-century man who had apparently turned to face a flow of molten rock as it gushed through his settlement.

"Under normal circumstances, you would flee if pyroclastic flows are rushing toward you and bringing waves of heat. But this person died facing it," said Shinichiro Ohki, of Gunma Archaeological Research Foundation.

"Maybe, if he were someone of a high position, he might have been praying, or doing something in the direction of the volcano and attempting to appease its anger," Ohki told AFP on Monday.

The remains, along with a part of an infant's skull, were found in the Kanai Higashiura dig in Gunma prefecture, roughly 110 kilometers (70 miles) northwest of Tokyo, at the site of the volcanic Mount Haruna.

The find comes from an area known to enthusiasts as the "Pompeii of Japan" a reference to the Roman city near modern-day Naples buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79.

The body is clad in a relatively sophisticated kind of armor made by craftsmen who bound small iron plates with thin leather strips, which would have represented the latest technological import from the Korean Peninsula.

It may have been brought to Japan after the practice of horse riding was introduced in the late fifth century, Ohki said, adding that the armor was much more sophisticated than the single-plate type common in the period.

Read more at Discovery News

Earthquake That Killed A King Ruptured Ground

In 1255, before the modern study of earthquakes shed light on some of their inner workings, a major quake ruptured in the Himalayas, killing the king of Nepal. Scientists who have studied the historic quake had originally thought the temblor didn't rupture the Earth's surface, but a new study suggests it did.

These findings reveal that investigators may one day find more evidence of past earthquakes in the Himalayas, shedding light on the risks these disasters pose in one of the most densely populated earthquake-prone zones in the world.

The Himalayas, which are home to the highest mountain peaks in the world, are the result of the tectonic plate that hosts the Indian subcontinent slamming into the plate that holds the rest of Asia. As the plates continue to mash into each other, this titanic activity reshapes the face of the planet, and earthquakes result — a fact that places many at risk, given how the population density along the front of the Himalayas is similar to that of New York City.

Although massive earthquakes have rocked the region — quakes in 1897, 1905, 1934 and 1950 all had magnitudes between 7.8 and 8.9, each causing tremendous damage — oddly, none were known to have ruptured Earth's surface. Without evidence of past earthquakes visible at the surface, it becomes difficult to know when precisely they occurred or how powerful they might have been, limiting what researchers can say about what hazards people in the area might face in the future.

 Now scientists have uncovered evidence of not one but two great Himalayan quakes breaking the Earth's surface.

To discover these past ruptures, scientists looked at old aerial photos of the region and visited the most promising areas during four one-month-long field trips. The researchers discovered river deposits in Nepal that had shifted due to movements along the main seismic fault in the earth that currently marks the boundary between the Indian and Asian tectonic plates.

Using radiocarbon dating, the investigators found these shifts were apparently caused by great earthquakes in 1255 and 1934, showing that both quakes ruptured the surface. When it comes to the 1255 quake, historical records mentioned that many houses and temples in Nepal collapsed and that one-third of the population of the Kathmandu Valley was killed. "The incumbent king, Abhaya Malla, too, was killed due to the same earthquake," researcher Laurent Bollinger, a seismotectonician at France's Commissariat on Atomic Energy, told OurAmazingPlanet.

Read more at Discovery News

Russians Lost in Wilderness 'Ate Companion'

Two Russians who were rescued in November after four months lost in the taiga wilderness of the Far East ate the corpse of a companion in order to survive, reports said Monday.

A group of four men had disappeared in August on a river-fishing expedition to the vast Yakutia region in the Russian Far East, one of the most remote and inhospitable places in the world.

Only two of the men were finally helicoptered to safety at the end of November and the discovery of fragments of a human corpse at their campsite prompted investigators to open a murder case amid rumors of cannibalism.

The two survivors have not been arrested but are being treated as witnesses in the murder case. However it appears investigators are now certain cannibalism took place.

"During questioning, one of the witnesses testified that cannibalism did indeed take place," a source in the investigation told the Komsomolskaya Pranda daily.

"It was not murder.

"They ate the man after he died from being unable to cope with the conditions."

Yakutia newsite NVPress.ru also quoted local investigators as saying that the fisherman named Alexander Abdullayev confessed that he and the other survivor Alexei Gorulenko ate the corpse of Andrei Kurochkin.

"According to Abdullayev, Kurochkin died a natural death -- he froze to death -- and he and Alexei Gorulenko fed themselves with his flesh for weeks," NVPress.ru said.

Investigators from Yakutsk, the capital of Yakutia, confirmed officially for the first time last week that they were looking at cannibalism as a possible explanation.

The local branch of the Investigative Committee (SK) said they had flown out one of the fishermen -- apparently Abdullayev -- last week to look for the fourth man named as Viktor Komarov.

They found the fishermen's UAZ jeep -- in which they had driven deep into the taiga -- half submerged in a frozen river but the "corpse of the fourth fisherman was not found."

Read more at Discovery News

Sabertooth Cat Lived in Vegas

Las Vegas, home of casinos and decadent night life, was also once home to sabertooth cats, as evidenced by the remains of one such animal recently unearthed in the hills just north of the bustling Nevada city.

These wild big felines existed from 42 million to 11,000 years ago. The recent discovery, reported in the Las Vegas Review Journal, marks the first sabertooth cat from the Upper Las Vegas Wash, a fossil-rich region that many hope will soon become a protected national monument.

This particular sabertooth cat lived 15,590 years ago. (These animals are sometimes referred to as sabertoothed, saber-tooth, sabre-tooth).

The find confirms what paleontologists have long suspected. The iconic feline predator was once at the top of the local food chain there, stalking mammoths, camels, bison and other prey.

A team from California's San Bernardino County Museum made the discovery.

"We knew it had to be there," Kathleen Springer, senior curator for the museum, told the Las Vegas Review Journal. "There was all this amazing lunch everywhere."

"Lunch," in this case, refers to all of the fossilized prey bones littered around the site.

"The sabertooth cat is right up there with the T. rex. That's the one everyone recognizes," Springer added.

These cats had foot-long fangs, a bobbed tail, and a sleek body that was somewhat like a huge version of today's housecats.

Eric Scott, the museum's curator of paleontology, first found the site nine years ago. It's taken time for Scott and his colleagues to fully analyze the bones collected from there.

As for the sabertooth cat remains: "They just looked funky," he said. "I saw them on the prep table, and I got a little impatient."

He thought they might belong to a moutain lion, but "they were way too big."

Read more at Discovery News

Myth, Hype and Nonsense: Days Before 'Doomsday'

NASA has released a video intended to put the world's mind at rest about Dec. 21, 2012 -- the much hyped end-date of the Mayan "Long Count" calendar. Titled "Why the World Didn't End Yesterday," the video does a sound debunking of the misinformation being bandied about by doomsayers trying to make a fast buck out of people's fears.

But why did the space agency bother releasing a video intended for Dec. 22 (i.e. one day after "doomsday") a week early?

The ever watchful Alan Boyle at NBC News' Cosmic Log questioned NASA on this oddity and received a, well, very rational answer. Kinda.

"The teaser for the video explains everything: 'NASA is so confident that the world is not coming to an end on Dec. 21, that they have already released a video for the day after,'" Tony Philips, writer and editor for the excellent NASA Science and Spaceweather.com websites, told Boyle.

Philips attributed the video as his idea, adding: "I felt it was a lighter and more creative way to approach the topic than some of the other treatments we've seen. Some people have been confused by it, but not all. The unorthodox approach is definitely a conversation-starter, which was our goal all along." (emphasis added)

While this may seem to make sense, I was left banging my head on the desk. I keep hearing confused voices: "If NASA was that confident that the world wasn't coming to an end on Dec. 21, why didn't they release a Dec. 22 video on... Dec. 22? Does NASA know something we don't?"

Handling The End Of The World

Until now, NASA has handled the "Mayan doomsday" nonsense excellently. The agency first went on the record denouncing various doomsday scenarios during the sinister marketing ploys employed by the production company of the movie doomsday-disaster movie "2012" in 2009. Since then they have knocked down each flawed cosmological theory in turn.

David Morrison, NASA scientist based at NASA Ames, has been combating the doomsday misinformation for many years via questions submitted to his "Ask an Astrobiologist" website (an excellent summary of the questions fielded by Morrison can be found here). Morrison attributes the public's fear of this doomsday to "cosmophobia" -- a growing trend that's based on people's fear of the cosmic unknown.

Doomsday scenarios such as a marauding Planet X (or Nibiru), killer solar flare, weird galactic alignments and polar/geomagnetic shifts fall firmly in under "cosmophobia," and doomsayers that stand to make money out of doomsday books and website advertising use this phenomenon to great effect.

Also, the idea that there is some kind of grand conspiracy (i.e., the government or some secret society has some privileged information about the end of the world) is another strong factor. To many, NASA debunking various doomsday scenarios from their ivory towers of science is "proof" that something weird is going on. To those people, no amount of debunking or logic will stop them believing in doom and gloom, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Google: "Mayan + Doomsday"

Since I began debunking the "Mayan doomsday" in 2008, I've not only acquired a fascination for archaeology and the ancient Mayan culture, I've also been confounded by the psychology behind society's fascination with the end of the word. Every day, through Google Alerts, I receive tidbits of news from around the globe about tales of doom and gloom and how people are "prepping" for the "Mayan prophesy."

Today, I've read about how a Chinese businessman has been building expensive spherical doomsday shelters; guides on how to discuss doomsday fears with your kids; news about an obscure region of France that is rumored to be "protected" from impending doom (there's a Turkish refuge too); and warnings about disturbances in a Chicago school district, to name just a handful of strange goings on around the world.

But what about the Mayan descendents currently living in Central America? Well, they're bewildered. They're approaching Dec. 21 with positivity, because this is a time of celebration and renewal for the Maya culture -- not a time of dread, fear and foreboding. It seems the Western "messianic thinking" is in full flow -- a marketing fallacy indeed!

"For us, this Dec. 21 is the end of a great era and also the beginning of a new era. We renew our beliefs. We renew a host of things that surround us," said José Manrique Esquivel, a descendent of the ancient Maya. Esquivel blames a few profiteering individuals for misrepresenting his culture, turning this highly spiritual event into a doomsday circus. Sounds familiar, right?

One More Week Of Silliness

So, we have just one more week of the doomsday silliness, but there are many people who are genuinely concerned about this Friday. For those, the "what if?" factor is strong. But this "what if?" has been fabricated by a few profit-making schemers -- not by the Mayans who never predicted doomsday. In fact, they didn't even allude to it. It's a scam, a con, a hoax. Nothing more, nothing less. Hell, the Dec. 21 "end date" isn't even set in stone! There's some ambiguity as to when the Long Count calendar even ends.

Sadly, the human mind has a tendency to attach some prophesy or superstition to coincidental dates. The logic goes like this: Dec. 21, 2012 is the darkest day of the year (for the Northern Hemisphere -- it's the winter solstice), it may as well be the Apocalypse too.

And so, back to NASA's new video. Although I admire the effort, releasing a Dec. 22 video early does little to calm the individuals who hold a genuine concern for Dec. 21. 'What if' NASA is covering something up? 'What if' they released that video a week early because they know they wont get a chance to air it on Saturday? You don't have to take my word for it, you just have to scroll through the 2000+ comments on the video's YouTube page to see a few people are asking these questions. Sure, the majority of people "get it," but those aren't the people who we should be concerned about.

Read more at Discovery News

Drilling for a 2,000-Year-Old Ice Core

Australia announced plans to drill a 2,000 year-old ice core in the heart of Antarctica in a bid to retrieve a frozen record of how the planet has evolved and what might be in store.

The Aurora Basin North project involves scientists from Australia, France, Denmark and the United States who hope it will also advance the search for the scientific "holy grail" of the million-year-old ice core.

The project, in an area that harbors some of the deepest ice in the frozen continent, over three kilometers (1.9-miles) thick, will give experts access to some of the most detailed records yet of past climate in the vast region.

Australian Environment Minister Tony Burke on Saturday said such drills were critically important to understanding how the climate has naturally varied to help predict future responses to global climate change.

"Ice cores provide the written history of our atmosphere and our water," he said in announcing the project which will start with a French team traversing the site in December next year.

The eight-week drill through 400 meters (1,312 feet) of ice, 600 kilometers inland from Australia's Casey Station in the continent's east, will follow soon after.

"Seeking ice cores from this new area where there is much higher snow fall than other inland sites provides a massive increase in the level of detail which lives within the ice," Burke added.

"We have had information that is 2,000 years old before, but we have never had access to this sort of detail which we believe lies deep within this part of the ice."

Read more at Discovery News