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Jesus' Tomb Opened for First Time in Centuries — The Holy Edicule, the shrine that surrounds the rock tomb traditionally believed to belong to Jesus Christ, sits within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Here, a conservation team led by the National Technical University of Athens works on a long-awaited restoration project of the structure.
**Credit: ODED BALILTY / NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC**

The original rock where Jesus Christ is traditionally believed to have been buried in Jerusalem has been exposed to the light of day for the first time in centuries.

According to an exclusive report by National Geographic, a partner in the project at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the original rock surface has been covered with marble slabs since at least 1555, and possibly longer. During a conservation project to shore up the shrine surrounding the tomb, a team from the National Technical University of Athens in Greece realized that they would need to access the substructure of the shrine to restore it, said Fredrik Hiebert, the archaeologist-in-residence at the National Geographic Society. [See Photos of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre]

"The Greek conservation group are the first, as far as we know, to actually open this," Hiebert told Live Science. "It's pretty exceptional."

Holy site

Some theological historians believe that Jesus was a real man who was born sometime around the year 1 or earlier in Bethlehem in modern-day Palestine, only later to move to Nazareth in Israel. He is thought to have died around the year 29.

Workers remove a marble slab covering the original stone "burial bed" where Jesus Christ is said to have been laid to rest after being crucified. A layer of loose fill material is seen beneath. Scientists were surprised at how much of the original cave structure remained, said National Geographic archaeologist-in-residence Fredrik Hiebert.
**Credit: DUSAN VRANIC/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC**

The site venerated as the tomb of Jesus is encased in structures like a Russian nesting doll. According to the Hebrew Bible, Jesus was laid to rest on a stone platform in a cave hewn out of a rock wall. In 326, the first Christian emperor of Rome, Constantine, sent his mother, Helena, as a representative to Jerusalem, where locals pointed out one cave among an area of first-century burials that was said to hold the tomb of Jesus.

Constantine had a shrine installed over the cave. The original top of the cave was removed so that pilgrims could look down and view the slab where Jesus' body was said to have rested. This shrine is known as the Holy Edicule, and it was last reconstructed after a fire in the early 1800s, according to National Geographic. [See Images of Jesus' House and Nazareth Artifacts]

The Holy Edicule itself sits within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or Church of the Resurrection, which is a famed pilgrimage site and working monastery. It's built directly over the cave where Jesus was said to be buried; another wing sits over the site where he is said to have been crucified. Three sects jointly manage the site: the Greek Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Armenian Orthodox Church. The three groups agreed in 1958 that conservation of the Edicule was necessary, but it's taken nearly 50 years to agree on a method and to secure funding. (According to National Geographic, the project will cost more than $4 million.)

"There was a moment in which you could see on the faces of the important people of the church, a certain happiness that this has actually happened," Hiebert said of the conservation.

Shoring up history

A grid of iron bars installed in the 1940s held the Edicule structure upright until the project started. Now, Hiebert said, the Greek team — with years of experience under their belts of shoring up ancient structures like the Parthenon — will inject mortar around the marble slabs that make up the Edicule.

"This will permanently restore them, and it won't need supports," Hiebert said.

The conservation team was surprised at how much of the original cave structure remains, he said. They've peeled back marble slabs from the 19th century that were in turn covering slabs from the 15th century, covering slabs from the 12th century, which themselves shield the original bedrock.

As to whether the tomb ever contained the remains of the historicalJesus, "it's a matter of faith," Hiebert said. There are no remains to analyze or DNA evidence to exhume. There is scholarly debate over whether Jesus even existed, said Robert Cargill, an archaeologist and author of "The Cities that Built the Bible" (HarperOne, 2016). A minority of historians think Jesus was a literary construct, said Cargill, who was not involved in the new tomb project, while others think a real person named Jesusexisted but that little is known about him.

"We know that Romans crucified people and that people were buried there" in the first and second centuries, Cargill told Live Science. It's also known that there was an oral tradition about the site of Jesus' burial 300 years later, when Helena came to visit Jerusalem.

"We still don't have any [archaeological] evidence that Jesus was crucified, nor do we have evidence that he was crucified there beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre," Cargill said.

Nevertheless, Cargill said, the site is an important one for early Christianity and for the Christian cultural tradition.

"It has been a sacred place for 1,600 years," he said.

The excavations are unlikely to reveal anything new about the history of early Christianity, particularly since the current Edicule structure is only about 200 years old, Cargill said. However, the conservation project has opened up a new view of this old site.

"You can actually look down onto the rock from above, which you couldn't do when the Edicule is actually there," Cargill said. "That's a perspective that most people haven't seen."

Original article on Live Science.

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No, 'Honeycomb' Clouds Don't Explain Bermuda Triangle Mystery — **Open-cell cloud formation over the Bahamas, imaged by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite on Feb. 19, 2002.**
**Credit: Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC**

A satellite image showing peculiar hexagonal clouds over the ocean area known as the Bermuda Triangle is prompting speculation about whether they may represent a recurring phenomenon responsible for decades of unexplained disappearances in the region.

The photo appeared in the Science Channel's "What on Earth"? series in a recent episode about the Bermuda Triangle, a loosely defined area bound on the west by the tip of Florida, to the south by Puerto Rico and to the north by Bermuda. In the image, oddly shaped cloud networks hovered above the triangle's western tip, off the coast of Florida, over the Bahamas. Seen from above, the clouds appeared to form six-sided outlines, like honeycombs, with hard edges. They range in size from 20 to 55 miles (32 to 89 kilometers) across, according to the Science Channel.

According to the Science Channel, similar cloud formations in the North Sea near the U.K. have been associated with so-called "air bombs" — powerful downdrafts of air that could overpower and destroy ships and airplanes. But even though the clouds over the North Sea and the Bahamas may look the same, they likely have different causes and interact with the ocean below in different ways, experts say. [Gallery: Lost in the Bermuda Triangle]

The image over the Bahamas was captured in 2002 by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on the Terra satellite. The Science Channel described the hexagons as measuring approximately 20 to 55 miles across, and invited comparison to an image of a similar cloud configuration 4,500 miles (7,200 km) away, over the North Sea.

Randy Cerveny, a meteorologist at Arizona State University, told the Science Channel that the hexagonal shapes were signatures of "microbursts," rapid and highly focused blasts of downward-moving air that can generate sea-surface winds reaching nearly 100 mph (161 km/h) and ocean waves towering more than 40 feet (12 meters) high — which could certainly wreak havoc on the sea surface and any vessel on or near it.

**Illustration of a microburst. The air moves in a downward motion until it hits ground level, then spreads outward in all directions.**
**Credit: NASA**

According to the Science Channel, radar images of the North Sea clouds did reveal underlying wind gusts close to 100 mph. However, the episode did not present any evidence that similar winds battered the Atlantic Ocean under the hexagonal clouds seen over the Bahamas in 2002, saying only that "scientists believe" the same winds existed.

And meteorologist Kevin Corriveau told NBC Newsthat the hexagonal shape of the Bermuda clouds did not display the distinctive signature of a microburst.

"You would normally have one large to extremely large thunderstorm that wouldn't have an opening in the middle," he said.

He explained that the weather patterns in the two areas were too different to allow comparisons between similar cloud shapes. Moreover, the peculiar formations in the Bahamas may have occurred because of erratic weather patterns created by small islands heating the air differently than the Florida coastline.

"I wouldn't say what we're seeing in the Bahamas is the exact same as in the North Sea," Corriveau said.

**Open- and closed-cell clouds over the Pacific, imaged by MODIS on Feb. 1, 2016.**
**Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Jeff Schmaltz/LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response**

Honeycomb cloud networks are actually a regular occurrence under certain conditions in the mid-latitudes, according to NASA — they can take shape as part of a low-pressure system or cyclone when cold air masses move over warm water. And they can form as open-cell clouds — cloud outlines surrounding an empty space — or closed-cell clouds, which are solid shapes.

Since the 1940s, dozens of ships and airplanes have gone missing while traveling through the Bermuda Triangle. Disappearances were blamed on numerous implausible culprits, from the lost city of Atlantis to deep-sea methane blasts.

Equipment failure and human error are less dramatic explanations for vanished vessels in the Bermuda Triangle, but they are the most likely ones, experts say. "There is no evidence that mysterious disappearances occur with any greater frequency in the Bermuda Triangle than in any other large, well-traveled area of the ocean," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement.

Original article on Live Science.