Sun Bad Usually: Hot Sun = Sunburn = Skin Cancer

But for those who live in freezing Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, rates of skin cancer have increased by 66 percent in less than 20 years. The cause is an ozone hole twice the size of Europe, which makes it the most ultra-violet place to be outside of Antarctica

Sun Good During the past two decades, ultraviolet-B (UV-B) radiation from the sun has been blamed for a significant increase in melanoma and other skin cancer. However, during the same period, there have been many articles in reputable journals indicating that sunlight actually affords protection against many other types of cancer.

If Americans in the northern part of the country had more exposure to sunlight, then there might be 30,000 less deaths from about a dozen types of cancers, with only 3,000 more deaths from skin cancers. Story at NewsWise

This is not really a story, or a news, but there is this very good website about 2012 : Diagnosis 2012 Much informations, much links. (much colors too ;)

Human hair dating back to the last Ice Age ten to twelve thousand years ago was discovered in 1999 at an archaeological dig in Woodburn, Oregon between Salem and Portland. The Ice Age site is filled with the bones of elephants, sloths, condors and a bird with a 14-foot wingspan. The unidentified human hairs were found perfectly preserved a few feet underground and had enough follicles for DNA analysis...The geneticists found the hair didn't match any Asian hair DNA. It didn't match African, European. It didn't match anything.

The world's largest nonfiction work and its earliest encyclopedia is going to be given a new lease of life when it gets reprinted for the first time in 600 years.

The Yongle encyclopedia (Yongle Dadian) -- made up of 22,877 volumes in 11,095 books -- is being republished by the Beijing Library Press, China's state-run Xinhua news agency said on Thursday.

The expansion of the universe is accelerating Binary stars in 5 minute orbit Growing neutron stars in the lab

Last week, French and Danish scientists announced that they had spotted a peculiar anomaly in the magnetic field whose origins lay in the spiralling columns of liquid metal that flow in the core of the planet. These vortices could be the engines that drive the pole-flipping process.

The origin of the Earth's magnetic field was described by Einstein as one of the three great unsolved puzzles of physics.....

If a flip is due, should we be worried? The magnetic field protects against charged particles of the solar wind. Once the flip is under way, the overall magnetic field drops to a tenth of its pervious strength, while several poles appear all over the Earth. The field eventually returns to its full strength with the poles reversed.

Some links to HAARP, which just might be the USA's way of protecting us with a temporary global electro-magnetic shield...

Interview with expert - by Linda Moulton Howe

More... CNN have an article and multimedia (short doco and interactive mummy unwrapping)

NASA tries out anti-gravity device Dogs trained early humans Men running out of sperm Less tornadoes than normal Old Macintosh = bong

This article has lots to say about how:

anatomically modern humans who had migrated out of Africa 40,000 to 50,000 years ago were adapting to the frigid temperatures of the central east European Plain

The Russians can be a bit far out in the fields of science, but who are we to dispute their conclusions...

This abstract hints at the widespread adverse reactions that could result from geomagnetic storms:

The scientists at Russian People Friendship University and the Institute of Space Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, decided to see what happens in the cardiac system at geomagnetic storms. The scientists found out that the geomagnetic field storm influences the structure of the cardiac muscle cells fatally.

Elizabeth River, Virginia, USA is contaminated by creosote, pentachlorophenol, and other chemicals used by a nearby wood treatment plant. Normal killifish taken from clean rivers die there, and killifish residents of Elizabeth River die when placed in clean water.

They have adapted to the conditions, and their offspring inherit the adaptions - Office of Naval Research press release

“These fish have apparently become acclimated to the contaminants, perhaps through altered expression of certain genes, and their progeny apparently inherit the ability to tolerate these conditions, too. There’s some very interesting science going on here.”

Chandra's observations of RXJ1856.5-3754 and 3C58 suggest the matter in the two stars is even denser than nuclear matter found on Earth. This raises the possibility these stars are composed of pure quarks or contain crystals of sub-nuclear particles that normally have only a fleeting existence following high-energy collisions.

More at BBC, VOA, Newsday, Yahoo, CNN and Cosmiverse

Explorers believe they have discovered remains of a mythical city off the coast of India. According to legend it was swallowed up by the sea about 2,000 years ago...

"The ruins include walls, steps and stone blocks. The structures have been severely damaged over the years but are clearly man-made. Everyone is very excited about the discovery."

The last reversal happened about 780,000 years ago, over a period of several thousand years. Now Gauthier Hulot from the Institute of Earth Sciences in Paris and his colleagues think they have spotted early signs of another reversal.

They used data from the Ørsted satellite to study strange variations in the Earth's magnetic field. In particular, one large patch under South Africa is pointing in the opposite direction from the rest of the Earth's field and has been growing for hundreds of years.

The anomalies have already reduced the overall strength of the planet's magnetic field by about 10 per cent. If they continue to grow at the same rate, the Earth's dipole will disappear within just two millennia

There are other satellites which will be making a more detailed study, so expect revised guesstimates within the next few years. Article at New Scientist

NASA give a reasonable explanation as to why they landed on this asteroid last year:

Learning what near-Earth asteroids are made of and how they're put together is simply prudent. NASA's NEAR spacecraft did just that when it landed on one in 2001.

This means that Eros meets all the criteria for the "Hall of Records" asteroid depicted in Corbett View Master reel. And it is obviously an object that has been known about for a long time before the Corbett reels were produced.

So now we know which asteroid to find the "Hall of Records" on, and precisely where the entrance is. The next logical step would seem to be a robotic lander or manned mission to crack the seal and complete the cycle that Von Braun and his friend Willy Ley started 45 years ago. So, how about it NASA?

The Theory

The Image from NASA

More Eros anomalies

The Viewmaster Reels

Some Russian scientists believe that there is a link between magnetic storms and earthquakes

It has been assumed that the fields, generated due to the solar activity, earth flows fluctuations, the Earth`s speed of rotation and even the launch of magnetohydrodynamic generators affect the strained state of the earth`s crust, these fields `pumping` additional energy into the crust. Normally the aroused earthquakes are recorded several days after the provoking key event.

The two heads can eat at the same time and have actually been noted to fight each other for food.

Via Cosmiverse & Ananova

We've been able to listen to the earth for a while now, but this is more exotic:

Studying sound waves inside the Sun has provided new insights into the solar dynamo within, an international team of researchers reports in the journal Science today. They have detected variations in the speed at which different regions of the Sun's interior rotate, observations which appear to be intimately connected with the 11-year cycle of the Sun's magnetic activity and could explain more about how the Sun's colossal magnetic field behaves. ( mirror article )

Monitor the sun via these links

Well, his team did. This was posted at his official message board:

Hi Guys,

MikeS

Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions ever detected in the Universe. They are also one of the greatest mysteries of modern astronomy, since so far no clear evidence has existed to prove what causes them.

Until now, there have been two 'prime suspects' for what makes gamma-ray bursts, the collision of neutron stars - dead, ultra-dense stars - or the death of very massive stars in supernova explosions. The new results from the XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope rule out the first hypothesis and confirm the second, at least for the gamma-ray burst that occurred on December 11, 2001. reports ESA

However, not all supernovas have produced gamma-ray bursts, and the mechanism of how the burst is actually created is still unknown