A supernova blast 41,000 years ago started a deadly chain of events that led to the extinction of mammoths and other animals in North America, according to two scientists.
...a key piece of evidence for the supernova is a set of 34,000-year-old mammoth tusks riddled with tiny craters.
...Whatever caused the craters had to have been traveling around 6,214 miles per second, and no other natural phenomenon explains the damage, they said.
They think the supernova exploded 250 light-years away from Earth, which would account for the 7,000-year delay before the tusk grain pelting. It would have taken that long for the supernova materials to have showered to Earth.
Then, 21,000 years after that event, the researchers believe a comet-like formation from the supernova's debris blew over North America and wreaked havoc.
This means that any supernova that could affect us would have been seen 6750 years ago. Or a different time depending on the distance. Basically, we won't see it coming!
After producing and directing the most successful independent film of all time, "The Passion of the Christ", Mel Gibson is today preparing to film, in Mexico, what promises to be yet another blockbuster titled "Apocalypto". Though the script of the film is being kept "top secret", there is no question what the film will be about. The title "Apocalypto" which in Greek means "an unveiling and a new beginning" and the fact that the film will revolve around the ancient, highly evolved and mysterious Mayan civilization, gives away the theme and content of the film. "Apocalypto" will be filmed entirely in the Mayan language and the cast will consist of local indigenous Mayan actors.
Anything else you read is just conjecture. Most likely it is about the arrival of the Spaniards, and not 2012...
In case you need reminding, humans have been celebrating days like today for a very, very long time. The image above is from near New Grange in Ireland, on a equinox day.
"At the 5000 year old Loughcrew megalithic cairn T in Ireland the rising sun on the mornings around the equinox illuminate the passage and chamber."
Goes on sale in limlited quantities this November in Japan
It is capable of receiving people, explaining exhibits, detecting the presence of people, finding its way around, providing visual images and administering questionnaires. It can store parcels up to 22lbs inside a compartment in its torso, while taking and carrying out delivery orders.
To be held in Sedona, CA, USA on November 11th and 12th. It features speakers like Graham Hancock, Robert Schoch & John Major Jenkins, and is only $135 for the day. I get a feeling the ultimate reason for this get together is to promote the ideas of Walter Cruttenden, who will be telling the audience "that precession is caused by an unseen companion to the sun".
Sounds a bit like Niburu to me, but regardless, if I lived in California I'd be there.
Astronomers have found a fast moving pulsar on a trajectory that'll take it completely out of the Milky Way. The object, called B1508+55, is located about 7,700 light-years from Earth ...moving at approximately 1,100 km/s (670 miles/s). By tracking its position back, the astronomers have calculated that it started out in the constellation Cygnus. A powerful nearby supernova explosion probably kicked it into its current trajectory.
According to a doco I just saw on TV, it will be another two years before they have detected enough muons to have enough data to know the answer.
The largest particle detector in Mexico is being built inside a pyramid in the ancient settlement of Teotihuacan. The equipment will detect muons, tiny particles that are created when cosmic rays bombard the Earth's atmosphere.
Dr Arturo Menchaca and colleagues from Mexico's National Autonomous University hope that by tracking the muons through the pyramid, they can find cavities.
The experiment is costing half a million dollars. At the moment, it resembles a large, flat metal plate, connected to a box of wires with a monitor displaying a flickering yellow line.
This is the machine that tracks the muons, sub-atomic debris left over when cosmic rays smash into molecules in the Earth's atmosphere.
They travel at near the speed of light and pass through solid objects, leaving tiny traces. When a muon hits the receptor, the yellow line leaps up and down in spikes.
"The idea is to try to discover density variations in the pyramid," Dr Menchaca told BBC News Online.
"These cosmic rays are very penetrating radiation. Some of them go through this pyramid, and some of them are absorbed.
"The amount which is absorbed depends on the material which it finds. If we find more muons than we expect, then there is less matter in that part of the pyramid".
Less matter could indicate the cavity of a burial chamber.
The clue to why the pyramids exist is that some muons make it through the pyramid, some don't. Outside without protection, they'll all hit you. In a cosmic ray storm you would be safer under the pyramid.
For me the key point is that the power of the sun can let in harmful radiation...
Ozone in Earth's stratosphere protects the planet against harmful ultraviolet radiation. Most of the gas lies in the lower- and mid-stratosphere, where observations have shown a thinning above the poles caused mainly by man-made chemicals, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
Electron funnel
The domino-like effect began in October and November 2003, when the Sun unleashed a record barrage of radiation and charged particles toward Earth.
The planet's magnetic field funnelled some of the storm's electrons into the upper atmosphere above the poles. The electrons hit nitrogen molecules there, breaking some of them into nitrogen ions. Those reactive atoms then combined with nearby oxygen molecules to form molecules of nitrogen oxide - levels of which rose in November and December 2003, according to the satellite data.
Finally, downward-blowing winds in a polar vortex above the Arctic pushed these molecules into the stratosphere. There, each nitrogen oxide molecule could rip apart hundreds of ozone molecules, just as CFCs do. The effect remained even into July 2004, according to Randall's observations.
American Scientist have published a wishy-washy article debating whether humans or climate change caused the extinctions of megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene...
High-impact human hunting, referred to by archaeologists as "overkill," and climate change are the two most cited possible causes of the extinctions, but the role of each remains contested.
To me it is quite clear. The number of beasts that died in North America (millions) could not have been caused by humans, the ratio of kills per probably newly arrived human is too great. And climate change happens all the time... In my opinion a global cataclysm fits the bill - large creatures are more vulnerable when things topple over. Little creatures can hide in nooks and crannies. If scientists focussed on the size factor, and why it made a difference, they might one day arrive at the cataclysm theory as well.
Astronomers know that space entities can unleash flares, but they haven't been watching them long enough to know the maximum possible intensity. Consider this, on Earth we have super-volcanoes, and we have tsunamis - but they don't happen every decade or even every century...so being zapped from outer space is quite a possibility, based on what has not been observed yet
The Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) satellite inadvertently picked up an assortment of astronomical goodies in our solar neighborhood while surveying distant galaxies in ultraviolet light. The satellite's large field of view, 1.5° of sky, catches many nearby objects that unexpectedly flare and glow in this high-energy part of the spectrum.... including an exciting flare in a red-dwarf star whose brightness increased more than 10,000 times!
"We can create a movie of how a star brightens with time," says Welsh. And that's just what GALEX did. On April 20, 2004, the 13th-magnitude star, GJ 3685A, situated 45 light-years away in the constellation Virgo, erupted in a massive UV flash — brightening by 12 magnitudes in ultraviolet light. The movie, edited from about 20 minutes of data, shows that the red dwarf ignited not once, but twice. Through the events the star gave off more than one million times the energy of a typical solar flare. This flare was an extremely energetic case; most red dwarfs caught by GALEX have an average UV brightening of about 5 magnitudes.
Many or even the majority of folk who think something big will happen 2012, think that it will be something positive (I don't, but hopefully I am wrong...)
The most scientific happy ending theory involves "a kind of singularity, a radical change in the nature of things, or at least the nature of humans will occur that year." Basically, a point where our rate of change and invention as humans reaches a maximum, and some sort of blissful explosion of love and intelligence occurs. Follow the link the read the best single page on this idea I have come across.
I've been criticised for suggesting that some human species evolved in the space of a generation or two. This isn't the same thing, but appears to prove what scientists previously dismissed as impossible...
A new species of insect may have arisen in an evolutionary eye-blink as a result of cross-species mating. The discovery suggests that hybridisation - well known to be an important force in producing new plant species - may also be widespread in animals. Until now, it had been assumed that new animal species almost always arise by gradually splitting off from an existing lineage
Well, they haven't determined anything more than, the two they observed, came from a long way away.
If they all come from so far away, they believe that magnetars cannot be causing them.
The breakthrough came when, for the first time, astronomers were able to accurately pinpoint the locations of two recent short GRBs. They traced the bursts to relatively distant galaxies, bolstering the prevailing theory that the GRBs arise from collisions involving dense stellar corpses, called neutron stars.
...GRBs are volleys of very high energy photons that can originate from any direction in the sky and come in two classes. "Long" bursts last from seconds to minutes and have been found to coincide with powerful supernovae, suggesting they form when massive stars explode and their cores collapse into black holes.
But until recently "short" bursts - lasting just a split-second - have proved frustratingly elusive, disappearing without a trace before researchers could pinpoint or study them.
...Astronomers had suggested flare-ups in highly magnetised neutron stars, called magnetars, might produce short bursts. But these flare-ups can only get so strong before they destroy the stars, putting an upper limit on how far away a magnetar-based GRB can be observed. These bursts occurred about 10 times farther away than this limit, ruling out a magnetar source.
The Sahara has recently revealed ultra-ancient finds starting near the "old" shores of Lake Chad and extending hundreds of miles East, Northeast toward Egypt and the Nile. This includes the various Playa (old dried lakes) such as Nabta Playa also. Buried in the sands of Time were great slabs for foundations of long gone complexes. These slabs have ranged from 100(English tons) to slightly less. (Perfectly smooth sculptures weighing almost two tons were found in the Nabta Playa area.) This sophisticated engineering prowess, reminiscent of the monoliths at Balbeck in Lebanon, are so perfectly aligned, that today’s scientist usually ignore reporting such a paradox. These sites have recently been dated from as old as 30,000 b.c. to about 9,000 b.c.
Today, under the Mediterranean, numerous remains of old cities are being excavated that are dating out to 15,000 + years before Christ. More research must expose the interface with this new data, since ultra-sophisticated finds are being exposed off the coast of Malta, and also in that nation’s interior, where underground caverns, mounted by curious buildings such as Mnajdra, are now being explored. Some think that, if this Earth disaster did happen long ago, that the legends of beings living underground could have started with humans escaping the flooding waters by plunging into the caves (such as the Hypogeum where 7000 primeval souls were entombed) as a temporary solution to flood waters that, unfortunately, never ebbed. It is known that some of these caverns which plunge deeply under the Med — have been rumored to exit near the site of old Carthage and in parts of Italy.
The giant slabs, as large as freight cars, in the Sahara, Lebanon, Egypt and other places, show the finest craftsmanship, not unlike the smaller lithic works of Puma Punku at Tithanaco near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. The secrets of this world are literally untouched by any real investigation.
This Star Cluster is the densest part of the Universe. M15 Star Cluster is also the source of largest density of Black Holes and gateway to many other Universes. This is also the source of huge concentration of dark matters....
UFO researchers now believe that the aliens from this star cluster who visit us regularly will finally in 2012 expose themselves to us. They are preparing for the totally astounding event for a long time.
As far as Science magazine is concerned, the 125 questions they listed are the biggest puzzles yet to solved by science. Some of them are directly related to my theories, and I believe they all have a common factor - something big from outer space that hits Earth every 5000 years or so...
Where do ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays come from?
Above a certain energy, cosmic rays don't travel very far before being destroyed. So why are cosmic-ray hunters spotting such rays with no obvious source within our galaxy?
What powers quasars?
The mightiest energy fountains in the universe probably get their power from matter plunging into whirling supermassive black holes. But the details of what drives their jets remain anybody's guess
What drives the solar magnetic cycle?
Scientists believe differing rates of rotation from place to place on the sun underlie its 22-year sunspot cycle. They just can't make it work in their simulations. Either a detail is askew, or it's back to the drawing board.
What causes ice ages?
Something about the way the planet tilts, wobbles, and careens around the sun presumably brings on ice ages every 100,000 years or so, but reams of climate records haven't explained exactly how.
What causes reversals in Earth's magnetic field?
Computer models and laboratory experiments are generating new data on how Earth's magnetic poles might flip-flop. The trick will be matching simulations to enough aspects of the magnetic field beyond the inaccessible core to build a convincing case.
How can genome changes other than mutations be inherited?
Researchers are finding ever more examples of this process, called epigenetics, but they can't explain what causes and preserves the changes.
What caused mass extinctions?
A huge impact did in the dinosaurs, but the search for other catastrophic triggers of extinction has had no luck so far. If more subtle or stealthy culprits are to blame, they will take considerably longer to find.
How many kinds of humans coexisted in the recent past, and how did they relate?
The new dwarf human species fossil from Indonesia suggests that at least four kinds of humans thrived in the past 100,000 years. Better dates and additional material will help confirm or revise this picture.
Not too sure about this, as the story comes from the "Knights Templar" rather than the chapel itself...
The Knights Templar will use ultra-sound and thermal imaging equipment in a bid to find the reputed relics in the vaults.
John Ritchie, grand herald and spokesman for the Knights Templar, said: "The machine we are using is the most sophisticated anywhere and is capable of taking readings from the ground up to a mile deep without disturbing any of the land.
"We know many of the knights are buried in the grounds and there are many references to buried vaults, which we hope this project will finally uncover."
I'm quoting this article in full, because it is half of the evidence that something like cosmic rays can cause evolution. The other half will be that epigentics can carry on to the next generation, not via inherited DNA, but through the mother to the child during pregnancy (when some DNA can change).
Identical twins grow apart, genetically, as the years pass, a team of European and U.S. researchers reported.
Their study of identical twins show the genetic code itself does not change, but rather chemical changes after birth alter the way the gene is expressed, a process known as epigenetics.
The study, which involved researchers and twins in Spain, Denmark, Britain, Sweden and the United States, can help shed light on how environment and genes interact to produce disease and ordinary differences between people.
They studied 80 twins from Spain, and found significant epigenetic differences in 35 percent of them. The younger pairs of twins were identical, while the older pairs were more likely to differ from one another.
"Most importantly, we found a direct association between the remarkable epigenetic differences observed and the age of the monozygotic (identical) twins: the youngest pairs were epigenetically similar, whereas the oldest pairs were clearly distinct," the researchers wrote in this week's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Our study reveals that the patterns of epigenetic modifications in (identical) twin pairs diverge as they become older."
Identical twins occur in one out of every 250 births around the world. But although their genetic codes are virtually identical, there are clear differences that are obvious to more than just their mothers.
For instance, psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia and bipolar disease do not occur uniformly among identical twins. And there are often physical differences.
"There are several possible explanations for these observations, but one is the existence of epigenetic differences," Manel Esteller of the Spanish National Cancer Centre in Madrid and colleagues wrote.
This supports theories that environmental factors, such as smoking, diet and exercise, affect DNA directly, the researchers said.
It is also possible that, just as DNA mutations occur with simple aging, the epigenetic effects on genes also "drift" with age, the researchers said.
Not that this means the moon doesn't influence such things, it just didn't this time. A news item today speaks of how hard it is to predict earthquakes:
It's hard enough to predict when a ripe apple is going to fall from a tree, he said. "Earthquake prediction is much more difficult than that, because you don't even see the apple. It's underground."
In case you need reminding, humans have been celebrating days like today for a very, very long time. The image above is from near New Grange in Ireland, on a equinox day.
