Black Holes Set the Clock for Life on Earth

There is a chance -- just a chance -- that if black holes rule the universe, they could have "switched on" habitable planets, such as Earth, allowing them to support complex life.

It's an unavoidable implication of the work of astrophysicist Paul Mason, who is examining the role of the super high-energy particles from black holes and exploding stars in the advent of habitable planets.

Before life started on Earth, the planet was bathed in deadly radiation from the younger, angrier sun as well as a high tide of energetic particles -- a.k.a. cosmic rays -- being blasted around the galaxy and universe by exploding stars and giant black holes at the centers of galaxies. At some point the cosmic ray flux dropped enough so that life on Earth -- and on any Earth-like planet anywhere in the universe -- had a chance to flourish.

“It has taken the universe a while for the cosmic ray density and the frequency of bad events to decrease enough for life to handle it,” Mason told Discovery News. Mason is a professor at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces and presented his work on Wednesday at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Kissimmee, Fla.

Those bad events include supernovas -- the explosive deaths of very large and short-lived stars -- which were much more common in the early universe, when the rates of stars births was far higher, said Mason. Other very bad events were the storms of radiation that might have blown from the gigantic central black holes of galaxies when they gulped down matter. Such feeding frenzies -- and the harsh, sterilizing radiation they released -- were also more common in the past, as astronomers have learned by looking at more distant, and therefore more ancient, galaxies.

Compounding the early universe's problem with life is the fact that everything was much closer together. The small young universe was packed thick with sterilizing cosmic rays. It took billions of years for the expanding universe to pull things apart and help thin that deadly soup.

“It implies that the expansion of the universe is important for life,” Mason said, regarding this cosmic ray perspective on the universe.

What also helped life eventually fend off cosmic rays were the leftovers of all those supernovas. Dying stars are element factories which created the oxygen and nitrogen atoms that are now the primary components of our atmosphere. That atmosphere is what protects us from all but the most powerful cosmic rays that are still banging around the galaxy.

Mason's cosmic ray story seems to fit the observable universe, but there are still lots of unanswered questions. For instance, do all giant black holes necessarily zap their galaxies with the most dangerous, highest-energy cosmic rays?

“It's not very well established that these (giant black holes) release very high energy cosmic rays,” said physicist Dimitra Atri of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science in Seattle.

Read more at Discovery News

Mystery Solved: Why the Real King Kong Became Extinct

The largest ape to roam Earth died out 100,000 years ago because it failed to tuck into savannah grass after climate change hit its preferred diet of forest fruit, scientists suggest.

Gigantopithecus — the closest Nature ever came to producing a real King Kong — weighed five times as much as an adult man and probably stood three metres (nine feet) tall, according to sketchy estimates.

In its heyday a million years ago, it inhabited semi-tropical forests in southern China and mainland Southeast Asia.

Until now, though, almost nothing was known about the giant’s anatomical shape or habits.

The only fossil records are four partial lower jaws, and perhaps a thousand teeth — the first of which turned up in the 1930s in Hong Kong apothecaries where they were sold as “dragon’s teeth.”

These meagre remains “are clearly insufficient to say if the animal was bipedal or quadrupedal, and what would be its body proportions,” Herve Bocherens, a researcher at Tübingen University in Germany, told AFP.

Its closest modern cousin is the orangutan, but whether Gigantopithecus had the same golden-red hue, or was black like a gorilla is unknown.

A comparison graph of a 1.8-meter-tall human male in comparison to Gigantopithecus blacki (left) and G. giganteus (right): This graph is based on orangutan proportions while standing upright.

Another mystery: its diet. Was it a meat-eater or a vegetarian? Did it share a taste for bamboo with its neighbor the prehistoric giant panda?

Answering this riddle might also tell us why a monster that surely had little to fear from other fauna went extinct.

That’s where the teeth had a story to tell.

Examining slight variations in carbon isotopes found in tooth enamel, Bocherens and an international team of scientists showed that the primordial King Kong lived only in the forest, was a strict vegetarian, and probably wasn’t crazy about bamboo.

These narrow preferences did not pose a problem for Gigantopithecus until Earth was struck by a massive ice age during the Pleistocene Epoch, which stretched from about 2.6 million to 12,000 years ago.

That's when Nature, evolution -- and perhaps a refusal to try new foods -- conspired to doom the giant ape, Bocherens explained.

"Due to its size, Gigantopithecus presumably depended on a large amount of food," he said.

"When during the Pleistocene, more and more forested area turned into savannah landscapes, there was simply an insufficient food supply."

And yet, according to the study, other apes and early humans in Africa that had comparable dental gear were able to survive similar transitions by eating the leaves, grass and roots offered by their new environments.

But for some reason, Asia's giant ape -- which was probably too heavy to climb trees, or swing in their branches -- did not make the switch.

"Gigantopithecus probably did not have the same ecological flexibility and possibly lacked the physiological ability to resist stress and food shortage," notes the study, which is to be published in a specialist journal, Quaternary International.

Read more at Discovery News

ISIS Gone, Archaeologists Return to Key Iraq Sites

As the terrorist group ISIS is pushed out of northern Iraq, archaeologists are resuming work in the region, making new discoveries and figuring out how to conserve archaeological sites and reclaim looted antiquities.

Several discoveries, including new Neanderthal skeletal remains, have been made at Shanidar Cave, a site in Iraqi Kurdistan that was inhabited by Neanderthals more than 40,000 years ago.

Additionally, though ISIS did destroy and loot a great number of sites, there are several ways for archaeologists, scientific institutions, governments and law enforcement agencies in North America and Europe to help save the region's heritage, said Dlshad Marf Zamua, a Kurdish archaeologist and doctoral student at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

He criticized antiquity dealers who are benefiting financially from ISIS' looting and destruction, calling on authorities in North America and Europe to prevent those dealers from selling northern Iraq's heritage. "It was said that war was created for selling weapons, but in the situation of our area, the war was created for selling weapons, oil and antiquity objects," Marf Zamua said.

New research

Before ISIS moved into Iraq in the summer of 2014, scientists with 45 foreign missions from 16 countries were conducting archaeological excavations and surveys in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, said Marf Zamua.

Over the past few months, Kurdish forces have gone on the offensive and, with support from allied air strikes, are pushing ISIS out of the region. And archaeologists are returning to the area, including at Shanidar Cave. This cave was originally excavated between 1952 and 1960 by a team led by archaeologist Ralph Solecki from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The archaeologists at that time found several Neanderthal skeletons and pollen remains suggesting that the Neanderthals placed flowers in graves before burial.

In an article recently published in the journal Antiquity, a team that has recently returned to Shanidar Cave reported finding additional Neanderthal bones, "including a hamate [a wrist bone], the distal ends of the right tibia and fibula, and some articulated ankle bones, scattered fragments of two vertebrae, a rib and long bone fragments."

The newfound bones are likely from one of the Neanderthals that archaeologists dug up in the 1950s, said University of Cambridge archaeologist Graeme Barker, who is part of the research team. He said that as excavations continue, new Neanderthal skeletons may be found.

Additionally the team's research is shedding light on the environment in the cave where the Neanderthals lived.

For instance, scientists reporting in another paper published in the journal Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology found that bees were transporting pollen into the cave. This complicates the idea that Neanderthals in the cave buried their dead with flowers, suggesting instead that pollen remains from flowers could have entered the cave through natural means.

Protecting heritage

When ISIS took over parts of northern Iraq, the group began looting and destroying archaeological sites such as ancient Assyrian cities like Nimrud. After bulldozing these cities, but before blasting them, ISIS looted thousands of artifacts from the sites, Marf Zamua said. "Thousands of objects reached the black markets over the world."

Additionally, many unexcavated "Tell" (mound) sites were also bulldozed, looted and blasted. Those sites contained artifacts that have not yet been excavated. There "are hidden treasure [within these mounds], and by losing any of them, we lose an important part of history and civilization of Mesopotamia," Marf Zamua said.

In addition to curtailing the black market, scientific organizations in the West can help train Iraqi, Kurdish and Syrian archaeologists in conservation techniques, Marf Zamua said. "Institutes can offer local archaeologists scholarships in restoration, protecting heritage and museum studies," he said.

Read more at Discovery News

Andromeda Galaxy Is Peppered With 'X-Ray Heaters'

A NASA observatory has zoomed-in on the Milky Way’s galactic big “sister” and spied 40 X-ray binaries, objects that are believed to be a key factor in the heating of interstellar gases and therefore major drivers of galaxy evolution.

NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, is a space telescope capable of detecting some of the highest-energy X-rays the universe can generate and when spying on the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), NuSTAR astronomers weren’t disappointed.

Andromeda, like the Milky Way, is a more massive spiral galaxy located around 2.5 million light-years away. This may sound like a long way, but Andromeda is our nearest spiral galaxy neighbor. Its relative closeness means missions like NuSTAR can study Andromeda’s X-ray emissions in great detail and some new findings were presented today (Jan. 5) at the 227th meeting of American Astronomical Society in Kissimmee, Fla.

“Andromeda is the only large spiral galaxy where we can see individual X-ray binaries and study them in detail in an environment like our own,” said Daniel Wik, of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “We can then use this information to deduce what’s going on in more distant galaxies, which are harder to see.”

X-ray binaries consist of two stellar objects — typically one star and a stellar remnant, like a neutron star or black hole. As the pair orbit one another, plasma from the star is dragged away by the compact remnant As this plasma falls toward the black hole or neutron star, the gas undergoes rapid and intense heating — a process that can generate high-energy X-rays.

Now, using NuSTAR observations of a nearby galaxy, astronomers can gain a better understanding as to whether the X-ray binaries are composed mainly of black holes or neutron stars and how their radiation compares with the average X-ray emissions from more distant galaxies. This, in turn, can help us understand the heating influence X-ray binaries have on their galactic environment and how the Andromeda galaxy compares with our own.

Read more at Discovery News

Black Hole's Rejected Snack Becomes Science Goldmine

Remember that mysterious cloud of gas that was supposed to be on a collision course with the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy? Well, astronomers are still trying to work out why it wasn’t sucked in, and why it didn’t spark the mother of all cosmic fireworks displays.

But in doing so, researchers have revealed some fascinating new things about the monster singularity that lurks over 25,000 light years from Earth.

In 2011, astronomers noticed a cloud of gas speeding through the innermost reaches of the galactic bulge. Ahead of the object, known (rather un-romantically) as “G2″, was supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (or, simply, Sgr A*). After some caluculations, it was realized that this cloud would come within 250 sun-Earth distances of the black hole, close enough to be sucked in by the black hole’s powerful gravitational pull.

This was really exciting: for the first time in human history we’d be able to study material before it fell into a black hole, from approach to dazzling finale.

At the time, it was assumed G2 was composed of a nebulous collection of stellar gases. It was also assumed that, while undergoing extreme tidal warping, the cloud would be stretched out like a long noodle, with tendrils being sucked into the black hole’s accretion disk. Somewhere along the line it was hoped that the emissions from knots of this gas interacting with the extreme spacetime environment surrounding Sgr A*’s event horizon would be detected as X-ray flashes — possibly the biggest eruptions we’d ever see come from Sgr A*. We’d witness our black hole in action; from discovery of an in-falling object to that object’s ultimate doom — when matter gets transformed to energy and the black hole has a cosmic feast.

But… nothing happened.

Well, stuff did happen, but the destruction of G2 became something of a non-event and astrophysicists have been trying to work out exactly what happened… or, more accurately, why something didn’t happen.

The current hypothesis is that G2 isn’t the loose collection of gas it was assumed to be; it could be a star enveloped in a cloud of gravitationally-bound gas. During its close encounter with Sgr A*, the cloud maintained its integrity and very little gas was stripped away from the cloaked star. No infalling matter; no cosmic fireworks; disappointed astronomers.

In new research published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), astronomers Michael McCourt and Ann-Marie Madigan of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astronomy (CfA) described their study of G2, revealing that although it was a bit of a dud, the event did probe the extreme environment surrounding Sgr A*. Of particular interest: they may have tracked down where the black hole finds its regular feast.

McCourt and Madigan tracked G2, and another gas cloud called “G1″, travel through the vicinity of Sgr A*. It just so happens that the clouds passed so close, that they would have traveled through the black hole’s “accretion flow” — in other words, these clouds could be used as tracers to see the structure of the matter that regularly falls into the black hole.

As both clouds follow a similar trajectory around the black hole, small changes in the objects’ gas could be measured. And the evolution of these clouds revealed characteristics of the interstellar material surrounding Sgr A*.

“Although it is not yet clear whether these objects contain embedded stars, their extended gaseous envelopes evolve independently as gas clouds,” they write. “We find evolution consistent with the G-clouds (G1 and G2) originating in the clockwise disc. Our analysis enables the first unique determination of the rotation axis of the accretion flow: we localize the rotation axis to within 20 degrees, finding an orientation consistent with the parsec-scale jet identified in X-ray observations and with the circumnuclear disc, a massive torus of molecular gas (approximately) 1.5 parsecs (5 light-years) from Sgr A*.”

Read more at Discovery News

Ivan the Terrible Military Arsenal Found

Russian archaeologists have unearthed the full arsenal of a military commander who served Ivan the Terrible, the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences has announced.

Found during a survey for an highway expansion outside Zvenigorod, an ancient town 18 miles west of Moscow, the cache consists of helmets stored in leather boxes, sections of sabers, arrows and and a type of armor known as kolchugs.

The location of the finding was the 16th century village of Ignatievskoe, once the homeland of the Dobrynins, a family belonging to the Russian boyar nobility.

One member of this family once figured amongst Ivan the Terrible’s “hand-picked thousand,” an elite force the Tsar established in 1550.

The first Tsar of Russia, Ivan IV “The Terrible” (1533-1584) is acknowledged to have established the current Russian territory during his long reign, which was one of the bloodiest in the country’s history.

He conquered the khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberia, creating a huge, multi-ethnic and centrally controlled state. Ivan the Terrible is also known for the atrocious things he did during his rule, and for brutally executing thousands of people, including his own son.

During the dig, archaeologists unearthed the remains of about 60 buildings of what was once the village of Ignatievskoe. The arsenal was found in the underground timber-lined storehouse of one of the buildings, which was burned down in a fire.

The weapons were stored in special boxes, and included various tools of warfare such as belts and camp tents.

According to the archaeologists, the inventory was prepared for a military expedition. It suggests the existence of a standing army which was fed and housed by members of the nobility as part of their responsibility as courtiers.

“This gives us a much better idea how a Russian noble would have prepared for setting out on a military campaign – each nobleman would have had his own arsenal in readiness,” archaeologist Alexei Alexeyev, who in charge of the excavation, said in a statement.

The highlight of the 500-year-old arsenal were a pair of spiked helmets almost undamaged by rust.

Read more at Discovery News

Eve Was Created From Adam's Penis: Bible Scholar

Eve was not made from one of Adam’s ribs, but was instead created using a bone in his penis, a Biblical scholar has claimed causing much stir.

The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 tells that God made Adam from of the dust of the ground, then created Eve out of one of Adam’s ribs.

Ziony Zevit, distinguished professor of Biblical Literature and Northwest Semitic Languages at the American Jewish University in California, argues the Biblical story has been wrongly interpreted since a mistranslation confused rib with baculum, or penis bone.

First presented in the 2013 book “What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden?” Zevit’s shocking claim has recently resurfaced in a paper published in Biblical Archaeology Review, causing a heated controversy among outraged Christian readers.

According to Zevit, the bone of contention — literally — centers around the Hebrew word “tsela,” used in the Old Testament to indicate the bone taken from Adam to create Eve.

“This Hebrew word occurs some 40 times in the Hebrew Bible, where it refers to the side of a building or of an altar or ark, a side-chamber, or a branch of a mountain. In each of these instances, it refers to something off-center, lateral to a main structure,” Zevit wrote.

Tsela was first translated as rib in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible dating to the mid-third century B.C.

It would have then lost its original meaning, which according to Zevit relates to “limbs lateral to the vertical axis of an erect human body: hands, feet, or, in the case of males, the penis.”

“Of these appendages, the only one lacking a bone is the penis,” Zevit wrote.

This would explain why the human penis has no “os baculum,” or bone, unlike most mammals, including primates such as gorillas and chimpanzees.

It would also clear up why men don’t have an uneven number of ribs compared to women.

In this view, the part in Genesis 2:21, in which God closes the flesh beneath the “tsela,” should be interpreted as to God closing up the flesh that exists on the underside of the penis.

Not surprisingly, Zevit’s phallic interpretation of the Biblical story has come under fire, with several readers of Biblical Archaeology threatening to cancel their subscription.

Israel’s daily Haaretz also entered the debate, arguing that ancient linguistics provide no support for the theory.

“Ziony Zevit’s theory is even more unlikely than the original story,” journalist Elon Gilad wrote.

Read more at Discovery News

500-Year-Old Skeleton May Belong to Pirate

Human remains unearthed last year under a school playground in Edinburgh, UK do not belong to a Bronze Age individual, as previously thought, but to a 16th-century pirate who was executed nearby, the City of Edinburgh Council said.

The skeleton was found during survey work for an extension at the city’s oldest working primary school, located near Newhaven harbor.

“Workers expected to find remains of the original harbor and shipbuilding but instead uncovered human bones,” the City of Edinburgh Council said in a statement.

Some 4,000-year-old shards of pottery found near the poorly preserved remains led archaeologists to believe the remains were from the Bronze Age.

But recent radiocarbon dating by experts at AOC Archaeology indicates the skeleton was from the 16th or 17th centuries.

“Thanks to carbon dating techniques, archaeologists now know that the skeleton was likely to have been a murder victim — and quite possibly a pirate,” Councillor Richard Lewis, Culture Convener for the City of Edinburgh Council, said.

A a gallows-type structure called a gibbet, commonly used to execute witches and pirates, stood on the edge of Newhaven dockyards 600 years ago.

Archaeologists believe the man, who was likely in his 50s, was hung on that device for piracy or other crimes and displayed in plain sight of ships to deter fellow pirates.

He was then buried in a shallow, unmarked grave.

Read more at Discovery News

Four New Elements Added to Periodic Table

The periodic table now has its seventh row completed with the introduction of four new chemical elements.

The elements 113, 115, 117 and 118, discovered by scientists in Japan, Russia and the United States are the first to be added to the table since 2011, when elements 114 and 116 were added. Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev produced the first true iteration of the table in 1869.

The Japanese research team was granted the right to name new element 113, the first on the periodic table to be named by Asian scientists, the team’s institute said last week.

Japan’s Riken Institute said a team led by Kosuke Morita was awarded the rights from global scientific bodies — the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) — after successfully creating the new synthetic element three times from 2004 to 2012.

It is the first element on the periodic table to be discovered and named by Asian scientists, Riken said.

Synthetic elements do not occur naturally on Earth and are produced artificially through experiments.

A release on IUPAC’s website confirmed the accomplishment.

“Several studies published from 2004 to 2012 have been construed as sufficient to ratify the discovery and priority,” it said.

The name has yet to be decided, but Riken said that Morita will propose one in 2016. The three remaining elements, 115, 117, and 118 – known temporarily as ununpentium (Uup), ununseptium (Uus), and ununoctium (Uuo), respectively – will also get new names.

Read more at Discovery News

This is the Entire Universe Squeezed into One Image

An enterprising artist has taken on one of the biggest concepts known to man: the universe.

Pablo Carlos Budassi is drawing eyes across the Internet this week for a dazzling logarithmic visualization of the observable universe that he created and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in 2013.

The spectacular illustration features our solar system at the very center, followed by “inner and outer planets, Kuiper belt, Oort cloud, Alpha Centauri, Perseus Arm, Milky Way galaxy, Andromeda galaxy, nearby galaxies, Cosmic Web, Cosmic microwave radiation and Big Bang’s invisible plasma on the edge,” according to the file’s description on Wikimedia Commons.

In an interview, Budassi told Tech Insider that he was inspired to craft the visualization while drawing hexaflexagons.

“Then when I was drawing hexaflexagons for my sons birthday souvenirs I started drawing central views of the cosmos and the solar system,” he told the website. “That day the idea of a logarithmic view came and in the next days I was able to it with Photoshop using images from NASA and some textures created by my own.”

From Discovery News