The Earliest Record of a Solar Eclipse :

The earliest record of a solar eclipse comes from ancient China. The date of this eclipse, usually given as October 22, 2134 B.C., is not certain. Historians know the account was written sometime within a period of about two hundred years. During that time there were several total eclipses visible in China. The 2134 B.C. eclipse is simply the best guess. The ancient Chinese document Shu Ching records that "the Sun and Moon did not meet harmoniously." The story goes that the two royal astronomers, Hsi and Ho, had neglected their duties and failed to predict the event. Widespread Oriental belief held that an eclipse was caused by an invisible dragon devouring the Sun. Great noise and commotion (drummers drumming, archers shooting arrows into the sky, and the like) were customarily produced to frighten away the dragon and restore daylight.

The date of an eclipse referred to in the Bible is known for certain: "`And on that day,' says the Lord God, `I will make the Sun go down at noon, and darken the Earth in broad daylight'." (Amos 8:9) "That day" was June 15, 763 B.C. The date of this eclipse is confirmed by an Assyrian historical record known as the Eponym Canon. In Assyria, each year was named after a different ruling official and the year's events were recorded under that name in the Canon. Under the year corresponding to 763 B. C., a scribe at Nineveh recorded this eclipse and emphasized the importance of the event by drawing a line across the tablet. These ancient records have allowed historians to use eclipse data to improve the chronology of early Biblical times.

Many ancient civilizations believed the occurrence of an eclipse was a demon eating the sun. They thought that the best way to get rid of the “demon” that was consuming their sun was to unite and make as much noise as possible to scare it away. At the first sight of an eclipse, everyone would immediately gather to bang drums and shout or scream as loudly as possible. The ancient Greeks believed that an eclipse was a sign of angry gods, therefore it was thought of as a bad omen.

Solar eclipses have even altered the course of human history. In 585 BCE the Lydians and Medes were engaged in battle in what is present-day Turkey. The Greek historian Herodotus recorded that at the height of a particularly fierce battle, darkness fell upon the land. Apparently the two armies waged a war close to the path of a solar eclipse. The armies took this as a sign and stopped fighting instantly, making peace with each other.

The ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus tried to understand eclipses by using them to make scientific observations. Around 130 BCE, from observations of a solar eclipse seen from Hellespont and Alexandria, Hipparchus determined that the moon was about 429,000 kilometers (268,000 miles) away – only about 11 percent more than today’s accepted distance.

Although early eclipse pioneers, including Chinese astronomer Liu Hsiang, showed initiative and advanced thinking in their conclusions, it was not until 1605 when astronomer Johannes Kepler recorded a scientific observation of a total solar eclipse. More than a century later Edmund Halley published his account of a total solar eclipse that occurred in 1715 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in London. He described the sight although he misinterpreted much of what he saw.

During the eclipse of August 16, 1868, Sir Joseph Lockyer of England and Monsieur Pierre Janssen of France independently discovered the telltale signs of helium in the sun's corona. Helium became the first chemical element to be discovered outside the earth. It takes its name from the Greek word for the sun − Helios. On May 29, 1919, a total solar eclipse was used to prove Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity by showing that gravity can bend light. These days, astronomers also use total solar eclipses to photograph and study the composition of the sun's corona. They time the eclipse accurately to calculate the exact dimensions of the sun.

The Great Pyramid

The shape of Egyptian pyramids is thought to repfrom which the Egyptians believed the earth was created. The shape of a pyramid is thought to be representative of the descending rays of the sun, and most pyramids were faced with polished, highly reflective white limestone, in order to give them a brilliant appearance when viewed from a distance. Pyramids were often also named in ways that referred to solar luminescence. For example, the formal name of the Bent Pyramid at Dahsur.

The Egyptians believed the dark area of the night sky around which the stars appear to revolve was the physical gateway into the heavens. One of the narrow shafts that extends from the main burial chamber through the entire body of the Great Pyramid points directly towards the center of this part of the sky. This suggests the pyramid may have been designed to serve as a means to magically launch the deceased pharaoh's soul directly into the abode of the gods.
 "The pyramids at Giza—descendants of primitive 'stepped' prototypes built in superimposed layers—are gigantic prisms unique in world architecture, mathematics at an ultimate scale. It is quite possible that Cheop's Great Pyramid consumed more dressed stone blocks than any structure ever built, an estimated 2,300,000 of them, averaging 2.5 tons each. It is generally thought that the blocks were moved on log rollers and sledges and then ramped into place." Khufu or Cheop's Great Pyramid is 756 feet (241 meters) square in plan, and 481 feet (153 meters) high. The angle of inclination of the triangular faces is about 51.5 degrees. The square of its height equals the area of each triangular face, as determined by Herodotus in 450 B. C. The base of the pyramid covers about 13 acres.
The other two pyramids in the famous trio are Khafre, 704 feet (214.5 meters) square, 471 feet (143.5 meters) high, with a face inclination of 53.2 degrees, and Menkaure, 345.5 feet (110 meters) square, 216 feet (68.8 meters) high, with a face inclination of 51.3 degrees (or possibly 330ft wide and 206 ft high (105m x 65.5m)).
For ease of modeling the pyramids, it may be useful to also know the triangular face height for each as measured along the surface instead of vertically. According to trigonometry, these surface face heights are: Khufu, 612 feet (195 meters); Khafre, 588 feet (179 meters); Menkaure, 276.6 feet (88 meters) (or possibly 263.6 feet (84m)).

For ancient Egyptians, it was of key importance that when someone died their physical body should continue to exist on earth, so they could progress properly through the afterlife. Consequently, providing proper eternal accommodation for their body after they had died was very important to them. The afterlife they wanted to attain was thought of as a bigger and better version of the earthly Egypt - and in it they were to live close to their family and friends.

There was one exception to this rather homely vision of the next world. This was for the king, already a divine being on earth, who would complete his apotheosis on death. According to the earliest set of texts dealing with the next world, the Pyramid Texts, which were inscribed inside the royal tombs of 2500-2300 BC, the king would dwell with his fellow gods in the entourage of the sun-god, Re. He would spend eternity traversing the sky and underworld: one might be tempted to regard the fate of his subjects as more desirable.

The Great Sphinx

is a large human-headed lion that was carved from a mound of natural rock. It is located in Giza where it guards the front of Khafra's pyramid.

Legends have been told for many years about the Great Sphinx. These stories tell about the powers and mysteries of this sphinx. Some people even believe that there are hidden passageways or rooms underneath the Great Sphinx, but nothing has been found yet.

The beginning of one story about the Great Sphinx is written on a stele between the sphinx's paws.

The story reads that one day, a young prince fell asleep next to the Great Sphinx. He had been hunting all day, and was very tired. He dreamt that the Great Sphinx promised that he would become the ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt if he cleared away the sand covering its body (the Great Sphinx was covered up to its neck).

The rest of the story is gone, so you will have to use your imagination to work out the ending. This stele was put up by the pharaoh Thutmosis IV who lived around 1400 B.C.

Thunderstorms create beams of antimatter

A space-based telescope has detected beams of antimatter shooting out the top of thunderstorms, in what has been described as an “amazing curiousity of nature”.
The data was collected from NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray SpaceTelescope. In some cases the thunderstorms were thousands of kilometres away, and the beams were detected only after they had travelled along the Earth’s magnetic field and collided with the spacecraft.
“These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams,” said lead author astrophysicist Michael Briggs from University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Fermi launched in 2008 to study similar high-energy bursts from space. In space, gamma ray bursts stem from high energy events such as the death of a star.
These beams, though, stem from terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, high energy bursts of gamma rays that occur in Earth's atmosphere and are most likely associated with lightning.
Fermi has detected 130 terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, which last about a millisecond, but scientists estimate 500 such flashes occur daily worldwide.
The antimatter, which has the same properties of their matter 'twin' except with the opposite electric charge, is thought to be created when an avalanche of electrons are thrown up by a thunderstorm’s strong electromagnetic field. When these electrons strike other atoms in the atmosphere they release a burst of gamma rays.
Travelling near the nuclei of other atoms causes the gamma rays to transform into an electron/positron pair (a positron is an electron’s antimatter counterpart, with positive instead of negative charge).
Beams of high-energy positrons and electrons then travelled thousands of kilometres, guided by the Earth’s magnetic field. When the positrons struck Fermi, it detected a high-energy gamma ray signal, indicating the matter in the spacecraft and antimatter in the beams had annihilated each other.
Antimatter particles can be created by particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider and in high energy environments in space around black holes and supernovae. Just what it means that antimatter is also associated with lightning during thunderstorms is currently unclear.
“This result is so new and right at the cutting edge that we don’t fully understand the significance in terms of what we know about the atmosphere and space weather,” said Australian space weather scientist Murray Parkinson from the IPS Radio and Propagating Service at the Bureau of Meteorology, who wasn’t involved in the research. “It’s a stunning result,” he said.
“At the very least it is an amazing curiousity of nature. It makes me wonder how much we know about the Earth’s atmosphere and space environment.”

Cosmic ‘hall of mirrors’ distorts galaxy counts

Nearby bright galaxies have been distorting the view of the earliest galaxies, which are important in understanding what happened to the universe just after the Big Bang, researchers report.

Nearby bright galaxies have been distorting the view of the earliest galaxies, which are important in understanding what happened to the universe just after the Big Bang, researchers report.

"Our finding shows images from the earliest galaxies reach us more often via a gravitationally bent path. What you see is not exactly what is really there," astrophysicist Stuart Wyithe from the University of Melbourne, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

"Our finding shows images from the earliest galaxies reach us more often via a gravitationally bent path. What you see is not exactly what is really there," astrophysicist Stuart Wyithe from the University of Melbourne, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

Using images from the Hubble Space Telescope, Wyithe and colleagues measured the separation between older, more distant galaxies and brighter foreground galaxies. They compared what they saw to a mathematical model that takes in account gravitational lensing, and concluded that the ancient galaxies were seen to be larger, brighter and more distorted than they actually are.

This effect has likely resulted in inaccurate counts for number density of ancient galaxies as seen by the recent near-IR surveys with the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3, according to the researchers.

But, in a twist, this effect may help astronomers find these distant, hard-to-see galaxies. "The lensing acts as a natural telescope too, so it can also help us find these distant galaxies,” said Wyithe.

 Astronomers such as Wyithe study the earliest galaxies - called 'high redshift galaxies' because the light they emit gets shifted to longer wavelengths over time - to understand the source of energy that re-ionised the universe a mere 100, 000 years after the Big Bang.

Most scientists believe that the energy needed to heat the universe's early hydrogen gases to their ionised form came from high-energy photons from stars. However, the numbers of observed early galaxies do not provide enough starlight to account for the injected energy, so scientists continue to search for other fainter, unobservable galaxies.

Astrophysicist Andrew Hopkins from the Australian Astronomical Observatory in New South Wales, who was not involved in the research, said this study is "very exciting" because it ensures astronomers have the most accurate data possible for their search.

"It identifies a clear bias that future surveys of high redshift galaxies will be subject to, and shows what the effect of that bias is. We will actually have a very clear understanding of the true numbers of the highest redshift systems that are out there," he said.

Satellites criss-cross northern lights

Two satellites have simultaneously flown through a natural particle accelerator just above Earth's atmosphere for the first time to discover how the dramatic light displays of auroras are generated.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) C3 Cluster satellite first crossed the region at an altitude of 6,400 km, followed five minutes later by C1 at 9,000 km, and the readings have allowed the electrical landscape of the acceleration region to be mapped.

“Cluster has now shown us the very heart of the acceleration process responsible for most bright auroras. It has given us our first look at the electrical structure and stability of such an accelerator,” said Göran Marklund from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Mapping the creation of auroras

“This is like geography,” said Marklund, “Only instead of the contours being the height of a landscape, they are the electrical potentials that span the region.” These electrical potentials act in both uphill and downhill directions, accelerating particles towards and away from Earth, according to their charges.

When particles strike the atmosphere, they create the shimmering curtains of light known as the aurora, or more commonly the northern and southern lights. About two-thirds of the bright auroras are estimated to be produced in this way.

Since 2006, the Cluster satellites have been drifting away from their initial orbits because they are being constantly nudged by the gravity of the Moon and the Sun. Fortuitously, the current orbit occasionally passes through the Auroral Acceleration Region, which spans 4000 km to 12000 km above our planet.

Insight into the secrets of space plasma

The satellites do not encounter a natural particle accelerator on every orbit. Those responsible for the bright auroras are temporary alignments of the electrical fields around Earth. They are highly variable in altitude and so not always present.

This first encounter with a natural particle accelerator associated with a large-scale aurora has proved that they may be stable for at least five minutes. A few more encounters are expected in the near future before Cluster’s orbit drifts back out of the region.

Such natural particle accelerators pop up ubiquitously throughout the Solar System, especially in the strong magnetic fields of the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn.

A fizzy ocean found on saturn’s moon

New evidence has shown that Enceladus, a tiny moon floating just outside Saturn's rings, is home to a vast underground ocean, which is probably fizzy like a soft drink and could be friendly to microbial life.

For years researchers have been debating whether Enceladus, is wet or not, and a close encounter with the moon by NASA's Cassini probe in 2005 kicked off an investigation into its unusual conditions.

"Geophysicists expected this little world to be a lump of ice, cold, dead, and uninteresting," said Dennis Matson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Boy, were we surprised!"

A precociously active moon

Cassini found the little moon busily puffing plumes of water vapor, icy particles, and organic compounds out through fissures (now known as ‘tiger stripes’) in its frozen carapace. Mimas, a nearby moon about the same size, was as dead as researchers expected, but Enceladus was precociously active.

Many researchers viewed the icy jets as proof of a large subterranean body of water. Near-surface pockets of liquid water with temperatures near 32o F could explain the watery plumes. But there were problems with this theory. For one thing, where was the salt?

In initial flybys, Cassini's instruments detected carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and various hydrocarbons in the plume gasses. But there were none of the elements of salt that ocean water should contain.

Resetting the clocks

In 2009 Cassini's cosmic dust analyser located the missing salt – in a surprising place.

"It wasn't in the plume gasses where we'd been looking for it," said Matson. "Instead, sodium and potassium salts and carbonates were locked up in the plumes' icy particles.* And the source of these substances has to be an ocean. Stuff dissolved in an ocean is similar to the contents of these grains."

The latest Cassini observations presented another intriguing discovery: thermal measurements revealed fissures with temperatures as high as -120o Fahrenheit (190 Kelvin). "This discovery resets our clocks!" said Matson. "Temperatures this high have to be volcanic in origin. Heat must be flowing from the interior, enough to melt some of the underground ice, creating an underground waterworks."

Are physicists wasting their time hunting for a theory that unites the forces of nature?

In Ancient Greece, Pythagoras and his followers believed nature was a mathematical puzzle, constructed through ratios and patterns that combine integers, and that geometry was the key to deciphering it. The idea re-emerged in the late Renaissance, although Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton believed the mathematical description of nature could be found through the painstaking application of the scientific method, where hypotheses are tested by experiments and observations, and then accepted or rejected.
But that’s really only half the story. According to Newton, God was the supreme mathematician and the mathematical laws of nature were Creation’s blueprint.
And while the notion that God interfered with natural phenomena faded with the march of science, the idea that nature’s hidden code lay in wait to be discovered did not.
Modern Incarnations of unified field theories come in two flavours. The more traditional version, the so-called Grand Unified Theory, seeks to describe electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces as a single force, and the first of these theories was proposed in 1974 by Howard Georgi and Sheldon Glashow.
The more ambitious version seeks to include gravity in the unification framework. Superstring theory tries to do this by abandoning the age-old paradigm that matter is made of small, indivisible blocks, substituting them with vibrating strings that live in higher-dimensional spaces.
Like all good theories in physics, grand unified theories make predictions. One is that the proton, the particle that inhabits all atomic nuclei, is unstable. But for decades, experiments of increasing sensitivity have looked for decaying protons and failed to find them.
As a consequence, the models have been tweaked so that protons decay so rarely as to be outside the current reach of detection. Another prediction fared no better: bundled-up interacting fields called magnetic monopoles have never been found.

Oldest Galaxy lacked many Stars

The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted the oldest known galaxy – a mere 480 million years after the Big Bang – and its tiny size may hold clues to how stars formed during the universe's infancy.

The tiny smudge of light captured by the orbiting Hubble telescope took 13.2 thousand million years to reach Earth, which means the galaxy was born some 480 million years after the ‘Big Bang’ that created the cosmos.

Even older galaxies are likely to be out there, but they will only be detected with next-generation sensors aboard the Hubble's successor, they said. "We're getting back very close to the first galaxies, which we think formed around 200 to 300 million years after the Big Bang," said Garth Illingworth, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Galaxy far older than previous record-holder

Astronomers measuring the age of starlight look for something called redshift: the farther that light travels, the longer and ‘redder’ become its wavelength.

A high redshift number thus indicates that the object is old, for the light it emitted has taken billions of years to reach us across the expanding universe.

The new-found galaxy, UDFj-39546824, was found in a fingernail-sized sector of sky called the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field during 87 hours of scans in 2009 and 2010. Its finders calculate the redshift as a whopping 10.3, far older than the previous record for a galaxy of 8.6, announced by an international team last October.

Galaxies underwent a dramatic change

"This result is on the edge of our capabilities, but we spent months doing tests to confirm it, so we now feel pretty confident," Illingworth said. For all its great age, this early galaxy is a tiddler compared to those which came later. Our own Milky Way is 100 times bigger.

The observations also netted three other galaxies with redshifts higher than 8.3. Put together, these discoveries suggest galaxies underwent a dramatic change from about 480 million to 650 million years after the Big Bang. During these 170 million years, the rate of star birth in the early universe increased tenfold. "This is an astonishing increase in such a short period, just 1% of the current age of the universe.

"What does the Bible say about tattoos / body piercings?"

The Old Testament law commanded the Israelites, “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD”  So, even though today are not under the Old Testament law  the fact that there was a command against tattoos should raise some questions. The New Testament does not say anything about whether or not a believer should get a tattoo.

In relation to tattoos and body piercings, a good test is to determine whether we can honestly, in good conscience, ask God to bless and use that particular activity for His own good purposes. “So whether you eat or drinThe New Testament does not command against tattoos or body piercings, but it also does not give us any reason to believe God would have us get tattoos or body piercings.

An important scriptural principle on issues the Bible does not specifically address is if there is room for doubt whether it pleases God, then it is breminds us that anything that does not come from faith is sin. We need to remember that our bodies, as well as our souls, have been redeemed and belong to God. Although.  does not directly apply to tattoos or body piercings, it does give us a principle: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” This great truth should have a real bearing on what we do and where we go with our bodies. If our bodies belong to God, we should make sure we have His clear “permission” before we “mark them up” with tattoos or body piercings.

the word tattoo is said to has two major derivations- from
the polynesian word ‘ta’ which means striking something
and the tahitian word ‘tatau’ which means ‘to mark something’.

the history of tattoo began over 5000 years ago and is as
diverse as the people who wear them.

tattoos are created by inserting colored materials beneath
the skins surface. the first tattoos probably were created
by accident. someone had a small wound, and rubbed it
with a hand that was dirty with soot and ashes from the fire.
once the wound had healed, they saw that a mark stayed
permanently.

despite the social sciences' growing fascination with tattooing,
and the immense popularity of tattoos themselves,
the practice has not left much of a historical record.written records, physical remains, and works of art relevant to
egyptian tattoo have virtually been ignored by earlier egyptologists
influenced by prevailing social attitudes toward the medium.
today however, we know that there have been bodies recovered
dating to as early XI dynasty exhibiting the art form of tattoo.
in 1891, archaeologists discovered the mummified remains
of amunet, a priestess of the goddess hathor, at thebes who
lived some time between 2160 BC and 1994 BC.
this female mummy displayed several lines and dots tattooed
about her body - grouping dots and/or dashes were aligned into
abstract geometric patterns. this art form was restricted
to women only, and usually these women were associated
with ritualistic practice.
the egyptians spread the practice of tattooing throughout the world.
the pyramid-building third and fourth dynasties of egypt
developed international nations with crete, greece, persia,
and arabia. by 2,000 BC the art of tattooing had stretched out all the
way to southeast asia .
the ainu (western asian nomads) then brought it with them
as they moved to japan.the greeks learnt tattooing from the persians.
their woman were fascinated by the idea of tattoos as
exotic beauty marks.
the romans adopted tattooing from the greeks.
roman writers such as virgil, seneca, and galenus reported that
many slaves and criminals were tattooed.
a legal inscription from ephesus indicates that during the early
roman empire all slaves exported to asia were tattooed with the
words ‘tax paid’.
greeks and romans also used tattooing as a punishment.
early in the fourth century, when constantine became roman emperor
and rescinded the prohibition on christianity, he also banned tattooing
on face, which was common for convicts, soldiers, and gladiators.
constantine believed that the human face was a representation of the
image of god and should not be disfigured or defiled.

Astrologers angered by stars

Comments by Professor Brian Cox and Dara O'Briain have led to a petition against 'BBC bias' by the Astrological Association of Great Britain.

Professor Brian Cox and Dara O'Briain have unleashed the wrath of Britain's astrologers with their comments about the ancient art on BBC2's "Stargazing Live" show, with the result that the Astrological Association of  Great Britain have started a petition they plan to send to the BBC.

The section of the program that caused the fuss has been described in truly harrowing terms by 'respected astrologer' Angela Cornish, in an e-mail that was published by the Sky Script blog.

"If you didn't happen to see it, there were two presenters, Professor Brian Cox and Dara O'Briain. All was going well until they got to a part where they had models of the planets in our solar system on a table and Dara was explaining that all of the planets orbit at different speeds and distances away from the Sun. He said only the earth orbits the Sun in 365 days and returns to its own place, showing that horoscopes are nonsense. He then went on to add "Let's get this straight once and for all, Astrology is rubbish" The other presenter, Brian Cox, then agreed and said "in the interests of balance on the BBC, yes astrology is nonsense."

 Shocking stuff, I think you'll agree.

This is not the first time that Brian Cox has waded into the astrology controversy that has raged in science for literally almost none of the last couple of centuries. The hackles of Britain's astrologers were raised last year, when Cox took a moment during his Wonders of the Solar System series to explain to the public  that "astrology is a load of rubbish," a statement which pretty much echoes the scientific consensus on the matter, which says that, "astrology is a load of rubbish." It's a position that was first reached by Islamic Scholars at 650 years ago, and has been studiously ignored by such great minds as Jonathan Cainer ever since.

Since then, TV's most clean-shaven male Professor has become a bit of a lightning rod for astrologically-guided criticism, and The astrological Association of Great Britain’s new petition names him personally.

The Association will be requesting that the BBC make a public apology and a statement that they do not support the personal views of Professor Brian Cox or Dara O'Briains on the subject of astrology. We also request that the BBC will commit to making a fair and balanced representation of astrology when aired in the future.

On the second sentence at least I think we can all agree. I'd love to see the BBC give a fair and balanced representation of astrology. In fact sod it, let's extend that to all newspapers as well.

 The Association will be requesting that the BBC make a public apology and a statement that they do not support the personal views of Professor Brian Cox or Dara O'Briains on the subject of astrology. We also request that the BBC will commit to making a fair and balanced representation of astrology when aired in the future.

Such a representation would depict astrology as a pseudoscience with no real basis in evidence that was already being ridiculed in the dark ages, and note that after thousands of years astrologers still can’t produce statistically meaningful results.

It would observe that any apparent success of astrology probably owe more to the use of cold-reading techniques. Convenient Vaguenese, and the exploitation of Psychological quirks like confirmation bias or the Forer effects, and express amazement at the continued ability of the astrological industry to lift hundreds of millions of euros, pounds and dollars out of the pockets of customers each year.

 Finally, it would make the point that intellectually-speaking, the pursuit of meaningful predictions in astrology isn't so much flogging a dead horse as punching a piece of rock and wondering why it won't say anything. Fair and balanced reporting is not the best thing to ask for when your views have about as much credibility as Andy Coulson's future in journalism.

Anyway, the Association's statement goes on to say that:

"Communications the Association have received show that dissatisfaction is growing with Professor Brian Cox's support for Dara O'Briain's denigration of astrology in his Stargazing Live BBC2 television programme on 3rd January 2011 (see the portion commencing 17'30" and 19'45" into the programme). His justification was fragmentary astronomy and empty of logic. Yet he allowed the total condemnation of astrology. This is particularly disappointing, because for the previous nine months the Association had explained carefully to the BBC the reasons why Professor Cox's understanding of astrology was unreliable; following his gratuitous and unsubstantiated dismissal of it in Wonders of the Solar System."

Most Comets May be from other Solar Systems

The outer Solar System is full of comets from other planetary systems, say researchers, and this has implications for astronomers trying to explain the nature of these lonely interstellar wanderers.

The findings of a study led by planetary scientist Hal Levison, from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, imply that some famous comets such as Halley, Hale-Bopp and McNaught might have originated around other stars in the early days of the Sun.

“People who study the chemical composition of comets have been trying to fit what they see into what they think was chemically happening in the proto-planetary disc around the Sun,” said Levison.

Not so lonely in space after all

“What we’re saying is: take a step back, because not all these guys may be from our Solar System.”

Most comets come from the Oort Cloud, a population of more than 400 billion comets lying nearly one light-year away - or roughly eight trillion kilometres from the Sun. This is equivalent to 50,000 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun and about a quarter of the way to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star.

It has long been thought comets in the Oort Cloud were originally part of the rocky debris surrounding Jupiter and Saturn, and were kicked into their present orbits by the gravity of the outer planets and nearby stars.

90% from another solar system

But traditional models have been unable to explain the abundance of comets in the Oort cloud, under-estimating their number by a factor of about 70.

“What we were interested in trying to explain was the large number of objects that we see in the Oort cloud today,” said Levinson.

“We calculate that number by looking at the number of what we call long period comets – these are some of the most famous and brightest comets in history.”

The study, published today in Sciencexpress, the online early edition of the journal Science, shows it is possible more than 90% of comets in the Oort Cloud were captured from other stars when the Sun spread apart from its ‘birth cluster’.

The Sun has sisters

Levinson said it is common for stars to be born in ‘clusters’, fed by a large cloud of gas held together by its own gravity. Around each of these stars will form comets, many of which will be stripped from the star by the gravity of the cluster.

When some of the stars grow old enough, they emit strong stellar winds that literally blow the gas from the cluster, destroying its gravitational hold on the stars. Once this occurs the cluster starts to disperse, and if a star leaves the cluster at the same velocity as a comet from another star, the comet can be captured.

Trillions of comets on average originally form around each star, and the study’s computer simulations show up to a quarter of this average can end up in an Oort Cloud.

Plenty of comets for everybody

The fact the Sun stole so many comets doesn’t mean other stars missed out on the chance to have an Oort Cloud of their own. “It’s not a zero sum game,” said Levison, and noted for all of the comets captured by stars when the cluster dispersed, there are many times more floating around in inter-stellar space.

Astronomer Simon O’Toole from the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Sydney said it is not a complete surprise the Oort Cloud contains comets from other solar systems, but the very large proportion of 'foreigners' estimated by the study was surprising.

“It’s a very intriguing result and an interesting idea, one that was actually suggested a while ago,” he said. “The great thing about the tremendous advances in computing power is that you can do calculations (like this) that you just couldn’t do, even 20 years ago.”

Can we feel the future through psi?

A storm is hovering over the editors of the  Journal Personality & Social Psychology which is to publish a paper offering evidence for precognition – knowledge of unpredictable future events Feeling the Future, written by Daryl Bem, an emeritus professor of Cornell University, reports the results of nine experiments with more than 1,000 subjects, all but one of which appear to suggest paranormal powers. His findings are due to be published by the respected journal this year, and sceptics have been queueing up to rubbish them.

Among Bem's contentions is that participants given a memory test were more likely to remember words that they were later asked to practise, suggesting that the effects of this post-test rehearsal somehow reached back in time. He also found that subjects asked to select which of two curtains on a computer screen hid an erotic image were able to do so at a significantly greater rate than chance would predict. Intriguingly, the same experiment didn't produce any unusual results when the images behind the virtual curtain were less titillating.

The study is striking not so much for its data – anomalous results from smallish one-off experiments can hardly be described as earth-shattering – but for the fact that it comes from such a distinguished source (Bem is a highly acclaimed research psychologist), and because it has been accepted by such a prominent publication, following the usual peer review procedures. But perhaps even more interesting is the reaction it is producing among some critics – Ray Hyman, another emeritus psychology professor has described the publication as "Pure craziness …an embarassment of Future life ", while Robert Park, a physicist at the University of Maryland called it. “a waste of time…it leads the public off into strange directions that will be unproductive”

The strength of such denunciations are curious. If Bem's experiments are indicative of ESP, then the implications are fascinating and wide-ranging, and at least worthy of continued investigation. Indeed, part of Bem's motivation, he says, was to construct easily replicable trial procedures so that interested parties could help build a reliable evidence base. If his trials are flawed, then they should be challenged robustly in the public domain.

Leaps in understanding require daring as well as rigour, and while extraordinary claims may require extraordinary evidence, there does seem to be sufficient data for ESP to at least merit an ongoing debate. Dean Radin's book  The Noetic Universe offers reams of serious studies purporting to show phenomena such as perception at a distance, mind-matter interaction and telepathy – including meta-analyses of apparently well-conducted trials – that appear to add up to something interesting. Radin also suggests that theories underpinning psychic phenomena are no weirder – and indeed potentially compatible with – those regularly put forward and accepted in mainstream physics, or in mind-body medicine.

To the interested observer, the wide divergence of views among psi experts can be as befuddling as the evidence itself. When the people who have devoted their careers either to proposing or debunking the existence of the paranormal can't agree on the fundamentals of their field, even when presented with the same data, then what chance does the lay observer have? The arguments tend to stand or fall on the finer points of study design or statistical interpretation. One of the main critiques of Bem's study is not that his results are suspect, but that he has analysed them insufficiently, although it's worth noting that one of the sceptic re-analyses concludes that his data offers a “Surprising degree of evidence” in favour of precognition.

But perhaps the most telling statistic in Bem's paper is that 34% of psychologists consider psychic phenomena to be impossible. Improbable, maybe. Unproven, perhaps. But impossible? That certainty seems to reflect a clinging to orthodoxy that is as much belief-based as the public's conviction that psychic powers are real and in our possession (apparently, 62% of us claim to know who’s calling before we pick up the phone).

Daryl Bem's experiments may or may not give us evidence that precognition exists – but if publication of his paper can show that interest in psychic phenomena isn't limited to crackpot true believers, and that studies of it are worthy of more than blind dismissal or uncritical acceptance, then it will have more than served a purpose.

The Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle (also known as Devil's Triangle and Devil's Sea) is a nearly half-million square-mile (1.2 million km2) area of ocean roughly defined by Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and the southernmost tip of Florida. This area is noted for a high incidence of unexplined losses of ships, small boats, and aircraft.

While there is a common belief that a number of ships and airplanes have disappeared under highly unusual circumstances in this region, the United States Coast Guard and others disagree with that assessment, citing statistics demonstrating that the number of incidents involving lost ships and aircraft is no larger than that of any other heavily traveled region Many of the alleged mysteries have proven not so mysterious or unusual upon close examination, with inaccuracies and misinformation about the cases often circulating and recirculating over the decades.

The triangle is an arbitrary shape, crudely marking out a corridor of the Atlantic, stretching northward from the West Indies, along the North American seaboard, as far as the Carolinas. In the Age of Sail, ships returning to Europe from parts south would sail north to the Carolinas, then turn east for Europe, taking advantage of the prevailing wind direction across the North Atlantic. Even with the development of steam and internal-combustion engines, a great deal more shipping traffic was (and still is) found nearer the US coastline than towards the empty centre of the Atlantic. The Triangle also loosely conforms with the course of the Gulf Stream as it leaves the West Indies, and has always been an area of volatile weather. The combination of distinctly heavy maritime traffic and tempestuous weather meant that a certain, also distinctly large, number of vessels would flounder in storms.

Given the historical limitations of communications technology, most of those ships that sank without survivors would disappear without a trace. The advent of wireless communications, radar, and satellite navigation meant that the unexplained disappearances largely ceased at some point in the 20th Century. The occasional vessel still sinks, but rarely without a trace. It should be noted that both the concept and the name of the Bermuda Triangle date only to the 1960s, and were the products of an American journalist.

Other areas often purported to possess unusual characteristics are the Devil's Sea, located near Japan, and the Marysburgh Vortex or the Great Lakes Triangle, located in eastern Lake Ontario. The Bermuda Triangle (a.k.a. the Devil's Triangle) is a triangular area in the Atlantic Ocean bounded roughly at its points by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. Legend has it that many people, ships and planes have mysteriously vanished in this area. How many have mysteriously disappeared depends on who is doing the locating and the counting. The size of the triangle varies from 500,000 square miles to three times that size, depending on the imagination of the author. (Some include the Azores, the Gulf of Mexico, and the West Indies in the "triangle.") Some trace the mystery back to the time of Columbus. Even so, estimates range from about 200 to no more than 1,000 incidents in the past 500 years. Howard Rosenberg claims that in 1973 the U.S. Coast Guard answered more than 8,000 distress calls in the area and that more than 50 ships and 20 planes have gone down in the Bermuda Triangle within the last century.

Many theories have been given to explain the extraordinary mystery of these missing ships and planes. Evil extraterrestrials, residue crystals from Atlantis, evil humans with anti-gravity devices or other weird technologies, and vile vortices from the fourth dimension are favorites among fantasy writers. Strange magnetic fields and oceanic flatulence (methane gas from the bottom of the ocean) are favorites among the technically-minded. Weather (thunderstorms, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, high waves, currents, etc.) bad luck, pirates, explosive cargoes, incompetent navigators, and other natural and human causes are favorites among skeptical investigators.

There are some skeptics who argue that the facts do not support the legend, that there is no mystery to be solved, and nothing that needs explaining.The number of wrecks in this area is not extraordinary, given its size, location and the amount of traffic it receives. Many of the ships and planes that have been identified as having disappeared mysteriously in the Bermuda Triangle were not in the Bermuda Triangle at all. Investigations to date have not produced scientific evidence of any unusual phenomena involved in the disappearances. Thus, any explanation, including so-called scientific ones in terms of methane gas being released from the ocean floor, magnetic disturbances, etc., are not needed. The real mystery is how the Bermuda Triangle became a mystery at all.

The modern legend of the Bermuda Triangle began soon after five Navy planes [Flight 19] vanished on a training mission during a severe storm in 1945. The most logical theory as to why they vanished is that lead pilot Lt. Charles Taylor’s compass failed. The trainees' planes were not equipped with working navigational instruments. The group was disoriented and simply, though tragically, ran out of fuel. No mysterious forces were likely to have been involved other than the mysterious force of gravity on planes with no fuel. It is true that one of the rescue planes blew up shortly after take-off, but this was likely due to a faulty gas tank rather than to any mysterious forces.

 

Invisible force

At the South Pole, the harshest environment on Earth, astronomers try to unravel the mystery of dark matter, a force greater than gravity that will determine the fate of the cosmos.

For thousands of years our species has studied the night sky and wondered if anything else is out there. In 2009, we celebrated the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s answer: Yes. Galileo trained a new instrument, the telescope, on the heavens and saw what no other person had seen before: hundreds of extra stars, mountains on the Moon, satellites of Jupiter.

Since then, we have found more than 400 planets around other stars, 100 billion stars in our galaxy, over 100 billion galaxies beyond our own, even the faint radiation that is the echo of the Big Bang.

"Now scientists think that even this extravagant census of the universe might be as out-of-date as the five-planet cosmos that Galileo inherited from the ancients. Astronomers have compiled evidence that what we’ve always thought of as the actual universe – me, you, this magazine, planets, stars, galaxies, all the matter in space – represents a mere 4% of what’s actually out there.

The rest they call, for want of a better word, dark: 23% is something they call dark matter, and 73% is something even more mysterious, which they call dark energy.

“We have a complete inventory of the universe,” Sean Carroll, a California Institute of Technology cosmologist, has said, “and it makes no sense.”

Scientists have some ideas about what dark matter might be – exotic and still hypothetical particles – but they have hardly a clue about dark energy. In 2003, the U.S. National Research Council listed “What Is the Nature of Dark Energy?” as one of the most pressing scientific problems of the coming decades.

The head of the committee that wrote the report, University of Chicago cosmologist Michael S Turner, goes further and ranks dark energy as “the most profound mystery in all of science.”

The effort to solve it has mobilised a generation of astronomers in a rethinking of physics and cosmology to rival and perhaps surpass the revolution Galileo inaugurated on an autumn evening in Padua. They are coming to terms with a deep irony: it is sight itself that has blinded us to nearly the entire universe.



Human brain has been 'shrinking for the last 20,000 years'

For two million years it is believed our brains got increasingly larger but over the last 20,000 years it appears that the opposite has been happening - they've been shrinking instead. Some scientists believe our brains, like new computer chips could be shrinking in size because it is becoming more efficient while others subscribe to the idea that we are actually getting less intelligent. But which is the more likely 'Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimetres to 1,350 cubic centimetres, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball,' Kathleen McAuliffe writes in Discover magazine.

'The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion.'

She was reporting on comments made by Dr John Hawks, an anthropologist from the University of Wisconsin, who argues that the fact the size of the human brain is decreasing doesn't necessarily mean our intelligence is in decline as well.

Some paleontologists agree with this diagnosis, that our brains may have become smaller in size, but increasingly efficient.But others believe that man has indeed become steadily more stupid as he has evolved.
Several theories have been advanced to explain the mystery of the shrinking brain. One is that big heads were necessary to survive Upper Paleolithic life, which involved cold, outdoor activities.
A second theory is that skulls developed to cope with a chewy diet of rabbits, reindeer, foxes and horses.
As our food has become easier to eat, so our heads have stopped growing, according to supporters of this theory.
Other experts say that with high infant mortality, only the toughest survived - and the toughest tended to have big heads. Therefore a gradually decreasing infant mortality rate has led to a proportionate decrease in the size of our brains.
A recent study conducted by David Geary and Drew Bailey, cognitive scientists at the University of Missouri, explored how cranial size changed as humans adapted to an increasingly complex social environment between 1.9million and 10,000 years ago.
They found that when population density was low, such as during the majority of our evolution, the cranium increased in size. But when a certain area's population changed from sparse to dense, our cranium size decreased.They concluded that as increasingly complex societies emerged, the brain grew smaller because people didn't have to be as smart to stay alive.
But Dr Geary warns against stereotyping our ancestors as being more intelligent than us.
He said: 'Practically speaking, our ancestors were not our intellectual or creative equals because they lacked the same kind of cultural support.
'The rise of agriculture and modern cities based on economic specialisation has allowed the very brightest people to focus their efforts on the sciences, the arts and other fields.
'Their ancient counterparts didn't have that infrastructure to support them. It took all their efforts just to get through life.'

Dr Hawks, on the other hand, believes that the decrease in the size of our brains may actually show we are getting more intelligent.

The brain, he says, uses up to 20 per cent of all the fuel we consume. Therefore a bigger brain will require more energy and take longer to develop.

Dr Hawks notes that a boom in the human population between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago led to an unusual advantageous mutation to take place.

He believes this could have resulted in the brain becoming more streamlined, our neurochemistry shifting to boost the capacity of our brains.

But it seems the size of our brains could be on the increase again.

A recent study by anthropologist Richard Jantz of the University of Tennessee found that our brain size is on the increase again.

He measured and compared the craniums of Americans of African and European descent from late colonial times to the 20th century and found that our brain size is on the move again.

Dwapara Yuga

According to Puranic sources, Krishna's disappearance marks the end of Dvapara Yuga and the start of Kali Yuga, which is dated to February 17/18, 3228 BCE. Vaishnava teachers such as Ramanujacharya and GaudiyaVaishnavas held the view that the body of Krishna is completely spiritual and never decays as this appears to be the perspective of the Bhagavata Purana. Krishna never appears to grow old or age at all in the historical depictions of the Puranas despite passing of several decades, but there are grounds for a debate whether this indicates that he has no material body, since battles and other descriptions of the Mahabhārata epic show clear indications that he seems to be subject to the limitations of nature. While battles apparently seem to indicate limitations, Mahabharatha also shows in many places where Krishna is not subject to any limitations as through episodes Duryodhana trying to arrest Krishna where his body burst into fire showing all creation within him.Krishna is also explicitly told to be without deterioration elsewhere.

• 3800 BC (Descending Treta 2900) and before - High Vedic Age, the Rig-Veda 3100 BC (Descending Dwapara 0)   - Mahabharata War, Kurukshetra, Gita, Canonization of the Vedas by Vyasa
• 1900 BC (Descending Dwapara 1200)   - Drying up of the  Sarasvati river and end of the Vedic Age

Thus from a Yuga perspective we can see that the High Vedic Age was part of Descending Treta Yuga. It fell, right at the beginning of Descending Dawpara Yuga and collapsed mid-way through.

The book's authors argue that earlier Sanskrit scholars were unduly influenced by a) Colonial interests, for example Max Muller being in the pay of the British, b) "Aryan" racial theories and c) Fundamentalist Christian time-lines with comparatively recent dates for the origins of the world. To this day in Glen Rose, TX there are parallel museums, one for dinosaur tracks set in stone and another for creationism.

The ruins of one of the last cities associated with the Vedic Age are at Mohenjo-daro in modern Pakistan.

Built in 2600 BC (Descending Dwapara 500) and abandoned in 1500 BC (Descending Dwapara 1600), it was not rediscovered until 1922 AD (Ascending Dwapara 222).

Much as for Ancient Egypt, earlier strata at the site show higher civilization, descending as we move forward in time. Extreme radioactivity suggests that nuclear attack may have marked the end of the city. Much as for all facts prior to Ascending Dwapara Yuga, competing theories and dates mar definitive conclusions and can lead to unflattering comparisons with literature of the style popularized by Dennis-Weatley, the devil rides out (a bit). Such comparisons are perhaps a constrictive reflex, an unwillingness to accept higher civilization in the past by peoples today in underdeveloped nations and dismissing their cultural heritage as just so much '’Mumbo-Jumbo’.

When reading books of ancient history or archeology, it's helpful to have a quick Yuga-calculater to situate the dates and provide new insight. It can hardly be a mere coincidence that the Mahabharata War falls right at the boundary of Treta and Dwapara, or that Einstein discovered matter and energy are interchangeable right at the boundary of Dwapara and Kali, just at the same time that Sri Yukteswar corrected the Kali era misinterpretation of the ancient Yuga calculations found in the Vedas.

3300-3400BC First Sumerian and Egyptian writings are the oldest known, prior to that, i.e. looking back into fully developed Treta and Satya Yugas, we enter into pre-history 3100 B C pre-history-descendingTreta-Yuga closes, Descending  Dwapara-Yuga begins. 3100 Mahabharata-war. 700BC Classical Antiquity - Descending Dwapara Yuga closes, Descending Kali Yuga Begins
700BC The Greek poet Heseod described the last Golden Age of man, presided over by King Chronus of Atlantis. Vases found in South America and identical vases unearthed in Troy, by the archaeologist Schliemann, bore the inscription, "From the King Chronus of Atlantis."