The Atomic Theory Was Developed 2,600 Years Ago By An Ancient Hindu Sage

Is history as we know wrong? Despite the fact that John Dalton, an English Chemist, and physicist is credited with developing the atom theory, the truth may be more surprising than you could imagine.

If we take a look at historic records, some 2,600 years before Dalton, an ancient Hindu sage, and philosopher called Kashyap, developed it.

Born in 600 BC,  near Dwarka, Kashyap is the actual father of the Atomic theory.

People called him ‘Kanad,’ as ‘Kan’ which in ancient Sanskrit is translated to ‘the smallest particle’ after he was seen gathering grains from the street while on a pilgrimage to Prayag.

Kashyap was fascinated by small particles and began collecting them.

When asked why he was accumulating them he responded that while individual grains might appear as useless or worthless, a collection of hundreds of grains could make someone’s daily meal. He explained how a selection of meals could feed a family and ultimately all of humankind, demonstrating how the smallest grains mattered more than anyone could imagine.

Kashyap was fascinated with the world around him and started writing down his views on everything that surrounded him, and eventually conceptualized the idea of ‘the smallest particle’ that constitutes everything we see and don’t see.

Kashyap passed his knowledge onto others, and people then started referring to him as  ‘Acharya,’ the teacher.

Eventually, he became known by the name of Acharya Kanad or ‘the teacher of small particles.’

“Every object of creation is made of atoms which in turn connect with each other to form molecules,” –Kanad.

The more you read about Kanad, the more fascinated you will become with his life and work.

The story behind how he imagined the idea of a particle that could not be divided any further is remarkably compelling.

One day, he was walking with food in his hand, and started breaking it into smaller and smaller pieces until he realized he could not break down the food any further because it was too small It was then when Acharya Kanada described the ‘invisible matter as Paramnu or Anu which translated means ‘atom.’

Acharya Kanad explained how invisible matter could not be sensed through any human organ, nor can it be seen by the naked eye.

Acharya Kanadstated that an inherent urge made one Anu (atom) combine with another.

Acharya Kanad further explained that when two Anu which belonged to the same ‘class’ of substance were combined, a dwinuka or binary molecule was created.

The Ancient Hindu Saga theorized that different mixtures of Anu produced very different types of substances.

It was Kanad who also put forward the idea that anu (atoms) could be combined in several different ways which would produce chemical changes in the presence of other factors like heat.

To provide a more uncomplicated explanation, Kanad gave the blackening of earthen pot and ripening of fruit as an example.

Kanad was also the founder of the Vaisheshika School of philosophy, a place where he shared his ideas, knowledge and explained his theories about atoms, the nature of the cosmos, and all that surrounds us, both visible and invisible.

He also wrote a book titled “Vaisheshik Darshan” where he presented all of his research.

In regards to Kanad, his ideas, theories and discoveries, A.L. Basham, a veteran Australian Indologist asserted that Kanad’s teachings “were brilliant, imaginative explanations of the physical structure of the world, and in large measure, agreed with the findings of modern physics.”

However, Acharya Kanad wasn’t the only source of superior knowledge from ancient India.

According to observations by one of the most prominent Indian scientists, certain ‘slokas’ aka verses of the holy Vedas texts make mention of several undiscovered natural phenomena that were discovered by Westerners many centuries later.

Madhavan Nair stressed that the Vedas, or also known as the four sacred texts of one of the oldest missing Vedic religion, described the presence of water on the moon, the gravitational force, and other scientific phenomena there were not supposed to be known of until centuries later.

The Vedas hold an incredible wealth of information in the field of space and atomic energy.

We were on the right track until the year 600 BC, before the invasions said 71-year-old Padma Vibhushan awardee who believes the Vedas are a treasure trove of knowledge, comprising information on metallurgy, algebra, astronomy, math, architecture, and astrology among other things.

According to the former head of the Indian space agency, the Chandrayaan 1 satellite, orbited around the moon thanks to an equation expressed thousands of years ago by Aryabhata.

Source and reference

Image credit

{https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

20-03-2018 om 23:31 geschreven door peter  

1st Known Interstellar Visitor Gets Weirder: 'Oumuamua Likely Had 2 Stars

20-03-2018 om 23:20 geschreven door peter  

What’s up with Steve: A new kind of aurora demystified by scientists

BY TIBI PUIU

Few things compare to the dazzling light show performed by nature’s northern and southern lights — but they’re not alone. It was only in the past few years that a new type of aurora was found. Thanks to the watchful eye of citizen scientists and photographers, we can now add to programme an exquisite short-lived shimmering purple ribbon of plasma called Steve. Meanwhile, scientists have had time to carefully study the phenomenon in an attempt to learn what makes it tick.

A band of dedicated Canadian aurora chasers was among the first who took pictures of Steve. The aurora feature was first posted on the Facebook group Alberta Aurora Chasers in 2016 and, initially, most thought they were looking at a ‘proton arc’ — another rare type of aurora, which isn’t caused by electrons hitting Earth’s magnetic field but by more massive protons following a solar flare.

Eric Donovan from the University of Calgary was one of the first scientists who probed Steve, a 25 to 30 kilometer (15 to 18 miles) wide arc that aligns east-west and can extend over hundreds of miles. He recognized that this wasn’t a proton arc for a number of reasons, including the fact that a proton aurora is hardly visible.

Meet Steve. Image: Dave Markel Photography.

Donovan called some colleagues, and soon enough people like Elizabeth MacDonald, a space physicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, sent ESA’s Swarm magnetic field mission through Steve. Swarm is a constellation of satellites tasked with studying Earth’s magnetic field. The instruments recorded accelerated and heated charged particles coming from the sun, which physicists found that they interact with a particular part of the Earth’s magnetic field in the ionosphere. So, rather than a proton arc, Macdonald and colleagues associate Steve with a so-called “subauroral ion drift,” they wrote in a new paper published in Science Advances on Wednesday. This occurs 60 degrees above the equator, where the global electric and magnetic fields align, making ions and electrons fly rapidly from east to west.

These rather rare auroras last only an hour and must coincide with space weather, specifically an ejection of charged particles from the sun. And instead of red, green, or yellow auroras shaped in mesmerizing curtains, Steve forms a ribbon across the sky that looks purplish in color. Sometimes, as some lucky photographers found, Steve also features small green picket fence-like arcs.

Most recently, Steve has been sighted in Scotland, from near Oban in Argyll and Gairloch in Wester Ross. Other places where Steve has been spotted so far include the UK, Canada, Alaska, northern US states, and New Zealand.

Credit: Catalin Tapardel‎, Alberta Aurora Chasers.

To legitimize Steve in academia, the researchers also found a clever backronym for Steve: Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement. Originally, the people who first discovered the new aurora called it Steve in honor of the children’s movie Over the Hedge, in which a character arbitrarily conjures up the name Steve to describe an object he’s not sure about.

NASA is now calling on citizen scientists and photographers to help research Steve by reporting any sightings to the Aurorasaurus project. If you live in the right latitude, this might be your chance to make a huge contribution to science.

“Because this is a new way of observing a phenomenon linked to space, it provides a new way to study it,” Vassilis Angelopoulos, a space physicist at UCLA not involved in the study, told National Geographic. “Citizen scientists can also be involved in triangulating them and determining their altitudes."

{  https://www.zmescience.com/ }

20-03-2018 om 23:06 geschreven door peter  

What is a Supervolcano?

BY MIHAI ANDREI

As the name implies, a supervolcano is an extremely large volcano, capable of ejecting over 1,000 cubic kilometers (240 cubic miles) of deposits. There are six known supervolcanoes and twelve known super-eruptions.

Graphic scale of known volcanic and supervolcanic eruptions. Image in public domain.

1. What is a supervolcano

If we want to see what makes a supervolcano, we need to first understand what a volcano is — and what makes it ‘super’.

The Earth’s internal structure is layered in three spherical shells: an outer solid crust(everything we see and walk on), a viscous mantle, an outer core that is much less viscous than the mantle (often considered liquid), and a solid inner core. A volcano is a rupture in the crust that allows material from the asthenosphere to reach the surface in the form of lava, volcanic ash, and gases.

You can think of volcanoes as vents through which molten rock escapes to the surface.

Most volcanoes appear because the Earth’s crust is fractured into rigid plates called tectonic plates. These plates “float” on a hotter, softer layer in its mantle. When pressure from gases within the molten rock becomes too great, an eruption occurs, but in order for this to happen, a volcano must first gather magma in a magma chamber.

A magma chamber is like a cauldron of molten rock, put under great pressure, that gradually fractures the other rocks around it, as it tries to reach the surface in order to release its pressure. These magma chambers lie deep inside the earth, generally at around 1-10 km deep.

A depiction of the Yellowstone magma chamber. Yellowstone is a known supervolcano. Image via NPS.

When an eruption takes place and material is ejected from the magma chambers, they sometimes form features called calderas: large circular or oval depressions, more than 1 km (0.6 miles) in diameter. Calderas appear because the magma was supporting the weight above it, and when the magma is ejected through the volcano, the whole thing can collapse under its own weight. For this reason, calderas can somewhat resemble craters.

But sometimes, the magma can’t push through to the surface, so it gathers in the magma chamber, building up the pressure. As the magma pool gets bigger and bigger, the chamber grows, reaching ungodly pressures — and when it does it erupt, it’s an enormous eruption; you could say, a super-eruption.

That’s right: supervolcanoes form when they gather enough magma and pressure for a gargantuan explosion. In more formal terms, geologists classify supervolcanoes as having a “VEI” of 8. The Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) is a relative measure of the explosiveness of volcanic eruptions, devised by researchers from the United States Geological Survey. The largest possible VEI magnitude is 8 — so, in other words, a supervolcano is the largest possible volcano.

VEI and ejecta volume correlation — note that the VEI is a logarithmic scale, meaning that each degree of magnitude is ten times larger than the previous one. Tephra is the material produced by a volcanic eruption regardless of composition or fragment size.

3. What are the supervolcanoes?

Thankfully, there aren’t that many supervolcanoes on Earth. It’s not entirely clear just how many super-eruptions there have been in Earth’s history (we’ll use that term even though it’s not quite proper). Some research has found evidence of 60 super-eruptions, while other studies report 47 such events, with the most recent one being the Oruanui eruption of New Zealand’s Taupo Volcano, 26,500 years ago. The Oruanui eruption was a highly unusual one, with a complex interplay of ejection and pyroclastic flows, covering New Zealand’s North Island with ignimbrite (a type of hardened tuff) up to 200 meters (660 ft) deep. The same volcanic area caused two other super-eruptions, 340,000 and 1,080,000 years ago respectively.

Another famous eruption is Lake Toba, which occurred some 74,000 years ago (it’s rather unusual to have two super eruptions in such quick geological succession). The eruption of Toba led to a volcanic winter (a drop in global temperatures caused by volcanic ash and droplets of sulfuric acid and water which obscure the Sun) with a worldwide decrease in temperature between 3 to 5 °C (5.4 to 9.0 °F), and up to 15 °C (27 °F) in higher latitudes. This had catastrophic consequences for the planet’s wildlife — including early humans. It killed most of the humans living at the time, creating a population bottleneck in central east Africa and India, which affects the genetic makeup of the human worldwide population to this day.

An incomplete map of supervolcanoes around the world. Red is VEI 8 and orange is VEI 7.

However, without a doubt, the most famous supervolcano is Yellowstone.

4. The Yellowstone supervolcano

Unlike most volcanoes, which emerge at the boundary of tectonic plates, Yellowstone (in Idaho, US) is a hotspot. Hotspots are pockets of unusually hot magma. It is thought that these hotspots are fed by the underlying mantle. Intriguingly, their position is not influenced by plate tectonics — as the plates move, the hotspot stays in the same place, because it lies beneath the crust. This can create a so-called hotspot trail, which leads to the illusion that the hotspot is moving — it is, in fact, the surface of the Earth that is moving above the hotspot. There is a lot of scientific debate around the nature and development of hotspots, but let’s get back to Yellowstone, shall we?

Remember how we said hotspots can leave a trail behind them? That’s exactly what the Yellowstone hotspot did. So it has not one, but several calderas (including the Island Park Caldera, the Henry’s Fork Caldera, and the Bruneau-Jarbidge caldera). The current hotspot lies beneath the Yellowstone Caldera.

The calderas of Yellowstone.

Image credits: NPS.

The largest eruption at Yellowstone took place 2.1 million years ago and had a volume of 2,450 cubic kilometers. However, it had several smaller eruptions. Volcanism at Yellowstone seems to happen periodically — there was an eruption 1.3 million years ago, and another one approximately 630,000 years ago. Much smaller eruptions (not super-eruptions) have happened as early as 2,270 years ago.

A Yellowstone eruption would be a catastrophic scenario. Thankfully, that’s not likely to happen.

Image credits: NPS.

6. Should we worry?

Not really. Studies have found that super-eruptions are extremely rare — on the basis of volcanic activity during the past 13.5 million years — there’s a 1% chance of an eruption of this scale in the next 460–7,200 years. Statistically, there are about 1.4 supervolcano eruptions every million years, so that would mean there is at least a 75% probability of a VEI 8 eruption in this timeframe.

La Garita Caldera is a large volcanic caldera in the San Juan volcanic field. It took place around 28 million years ago and it is among the largest known volcanic eruptions in our planet’s history.

Image via Wikipedia.

So while these eruptions can be extremely damaging, they’re so rare that the time-averaged impact really isn’t that big. However, here’s the thing: VEI 7 eruptions occur much more frequently (10-100 times), so that means that on average, we should be more worried about these VEI 7 eruptions than the supervolcano eruptions.

Supervolcanoes are some of the most impressive features on our planet, capable of ungodly eruptions which would send the entire planet into disarray. But as it so often happens, it’s not the big sword that’s threatening, but the thousand smaller cuts.

8. Bonus: A super-super volcano

Interestingly, a 2004 study reports evidence of a VEI 9 eruption, responsible for the Fish Canyon Tuff.

Wait a minute — I thought you said VEI 8 was the maximum possible eruption?!

Well, yes, but scientists found evidence of an eruption with a mass of >10¹⁶ kg and a magnitude of 9.2. So while VEI 8 is technically the largest classification, the Fish Canyon Tuff eruption was more than 10 times larger what would be necessary to classify as a supervolcano.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

20-03-2018 om 22:55 geschreven door peter  

UFOS AND “ALIENS” OVER KAPUSTIN YAR: RUSSIA’S MYSTERIES

Paranormal Research Paul Stonehill

What is Kapustin Yar? There are rumors of secret underground facilities by Kapustin Yar, where UFOs and “aliens” are kept by the Russian government.

Well...after the WWII, Soviet missile development program gave impetus to the creation of the Kapustin Yar test range.

The 1946 decree, officially establishing the rocket industry in the country, directed the Ministry of Armed Forces to propose the location for the Central Test Range for all jet-propelled weapons. The major factors which favored Kapustin Yar over other locations were the access by railroad, relative proximity to industrial infrastructure of the city of Stalingrad (Volgograd) on the Volga River and land availability for the construction of the range. The future range designated the 4th State Central Range (4th GTsP) centered is located at 48.4 degrees Northern latitude and 56.5 degrees Eastern longitude.

And UFOs have been sighted there ever since…

Category

• Science & Technology

License

• Standard YouTube License

{  https://www.youtube.com/ }

20-03-2018 om 22:34 geschreven door peter  

Video shows Navy jet’s encounter with a UFO, group says

CNN's Ryan Browne contributed to this report.

{ https://edition.cnn.com/ }

20-03-2018 om 22:08 geschreven door peter  

BY MICHELE DEBCZAK

ISTOCK

Aliens have been depicted countless times in cinema, from Georges Méliès's A Trip to the Moon (1902) to James Cameron's Avatar (2009). But despite the advancements in special-effects technology over the past century, most aliens we see on screen still share a lot of similarities—mainly, they look, move, and interact with the world like humans do. Vox explains how the classic alien look came to be in their new video below.

When you picture an alien, you may imagine a being with reptilian skin or big, black eyes, but the basic components of a human body—two arms, two legs, and a head with a face—are likely all there. In reality, finding an intelligent creature that evolved all those same features on a planet millions of light-years away would be an extraordinary coincidence. If alien life does exist, it may not look like anything we've ever seen on Earth.

But when it comes to science fiction, accuracy isn't always the goal. Creating an alien character humans can relate to may take priority. Or, the alien's design may need to work as a suit that can be worn by human performers. The result is a version of extraterrestrial life that looks alien— but not too alien—to movie audiences.

So if aliens probably won't have four limbs, two eyes, and a mouth, what would they look like if we ever met them person? These experts have some theories.

[h/t Vox]

{http://mentalfloss.com/ }

20-03-2018 om 21:52 geschreven door peter  

Tom McKay

YouTube Kids, the supposedly child-friendly version of YouTube that’s been shown to often play host to troves of slop content and disturbing videos, apparently was showing videos from British conspiracy theorist David Icke, a guy who believes reptilian aliens secretly control the world and are responsible for the Holocaust.

According to a Saturday report in Business Insider, searching for the term “UFO” on YouTube kids turned up a video purporting “to show a UFO shooting at a chemtrail.” The suggested followups for that video featured a number of Icke’s clips, including a nearly five-hour lecture on how aliens built the pyramids and secretly run the planet through a ruling class extraterrestrial-human hybrids. The video also delves into a number of other conspiracy theories, including claims Freemasons indulge in human sacrifice and President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by his own government.

According to Business Insider, “Two other conspiracy theory videos by Icke appeared in the related videos, meaning it was easy for children to quickly go from watching relatively innocent videos about toys to conspiracy content.

Searching for the term “moon landing” also resulted in a number of conspiratorial videos emerging, including one making the claim that CERN’s Large Hadron Collider had opened a portal to another world that an unfortunate employee then vanished in. While YouTube removed 25 videos specifically flagged by Business Insider, the site reported conspiracy content remains widely available on YouTube Kids and watching some of the videos resulted in others showing up in the app’s recommended video queue.

While the regular version of YouTube has its own problems with propaganda and disinformation (some of which, like videos blasting mass shooting survivors as “crisis actors,” have repeatedly made the site’s top page), YouTube Kids is ostensibly supposed to be totally free of this kind of content. It’s also likely that many parents are letting their kids watch it unattended, which may be ill-advised on the parents’ part, but is clearly part of the site’s business model.

YouTube has previously promised to clear out this kind of content, and shut down a number of channels featuring inappropriate videos starting last year. It’s debatable whether it’s actually possible to ensure this stuff doesn’t begin creeping in, though, since there are millions upon millions of videos intended for children available on both the main site and YouTube Kids, and YouTube and its parent company Google tend to rely first and foremost on algorithms to police this sea of content rather than human moderators. When it began paying attention in November 2017, YouTube demonetized at least two million videos and 50,000 channels with disturbing content aimed at kids, suggesting the scale of the problem whichever app is used.

In a statement to Business Insider, YouTube even alluded to how solutions to this problem rely on its “human trained systems” rather than actual humans:

The YouTube Kids app is home to a wide variety of content that includes enriching and entertaining videos for families. This content is screened using human trained systems. That being said, no system is perfect and sometimes we miss the mark. When we do, we take immediate action to block the videos or, as necessary, channels from appearing in the app. We will continue to work to improve the YouTube Kids app experience.

In any case, prior advice stands: Don’t let YouTube babysit your childrenunless you want them watching disturbing Spiderman-bikini girl mashups, videos of Peppa Pig being fed bleach, or apparently, elderly British men telling them that the government is secretly staffed by alien lizard monsters wearing human skin.

[Business Insider]

{ https://gizmodo.com/ }

20-03-2018 om 21:40 geschreven door peter  

A better way to search for space aliens?

By Seth Shostak

{ http://www.euronews.com/ }

20-03-2018 om 21:11 geschreven door peter  

Top 6 Theories About Lost City Of Atlantis

“Sleeping Atlantis

Silent cool waters
dancing upon her skin ~
silent cool water
ushering dreams within…” 
― Muse, Enigmatic Evolution

There have been many theories about Atlantis. A great naval power in the ancient world, the utopian island kingdom mysteriously disappeared into the sea over the course of a single day. Some researchers have a firm belief that this mysterious island existed very much in history, while some suggest that it just existed in the pages of history as a speculated story. According to Plato, Atlantis existed 9,000 years ago, even before his time.

Here is a list of 6 such theories about this mysterious lost civilization.

1 – Atlantis Was A Continent In The Mid Atlantic That Suddenly Sunk Into The Ocean

The speculations about the existence of Atlantis surfaced in the 19th century, when in 1882 Ignatius Donnelly in his book, ‘Atlantis, the Antediluvian World’ mentioned the arguments that metallurgy, language and agriculture, are things handed over to people who were more advanced, civilised and knowledgable. He kind of supported the theory proposed by Plato that Atlantis sank because of flooding due to shifting ocean waters.

2 – The Bermuda Triangle Swallowed Up Atlantis

Some researchers believe in the theory that Donnelly proposed and some don’t. Those who believed in the Donnelly’s speculation, proposed their own claims as to where Atlantis must have been. One of the writers were Charles Berlitz. He claimed that Atlantis was a real continent located off the Bahamas that had fallen victim to the notorious Bermuda Triangle. Supporters of this theory believe that there were walls and street like remains found in the coast of Bimini.

3 – Atlantis Was Antarctica

Some theorists believe that Atlantis was a more temperate version of Antarctica. It is based on the work of Charles Hapgood, ‘Earth’s Shifting Crust’ according to which, around 12,000 years ago the Earth’s crust shifted, and displaced the continent that became Antarctica from a location that was much further north than it is today.

4 – The Story Of Atlantis Was A Mythical Retelling Of The Black Sea Flood

The researchers who proposed this theory believed that Atlantis was not real but the story of its demise was inspired by the real life incident of flooding of the Black Sea, around 5600 B.C. The flooding inundated civilizations known to flourish along its shore and as the inhabitants of the region scattered, they spread tales of the deluge.

5 – Atlantis Is The Story Of The Minoan Civilization That Flourished In The Greek Islands Circa 2500-1600 B.C

One of the most recent theories that are proposed by the researchers concerns the civilization that flourished on the Greek islands of Crete and Thera (now Santorini) more than 4,000 years ago, the Minoans. This was considered as Europe’s first great civilization. This great and powerful civilisation suddenly disappeared, which is linked to Plato’s theory relating to the sudden disappearance of Atlantis. Theorists believe that the Minoans disappeared following a massive Earthquake and Tsunami.

6 – Atlantis Didn’t Exist At All–Plato Invented It

Plato (428/427 - 348/347 BCE) is considered the pre-eminent Greek philosopher, known for his Dialogues and for founding his Academy north of Athens, traditionally considered the first university in the western world.

The theorists who don’t believe Atlantis was real, support the claims that Plato’s theory of Atlantis was nothing else than fiction. They also believe that Plato invented Atlantis as his vision of an ideal civilization, and intended the story of its demise to be a cautionary tale of the gods punishing human hubris.

Despite many research efforts by the modern oceanography, no substantial proofs of a sunken civilisation have been found.

{http://www.look4ward.co.uk/ }

20-03-2018 om 17:40 geschreven door peter  

DON’T TALK TO ALIENS, WARNS STEPHEN HAWKING (VIDEO)

The aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.

“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of microbes or simple animals — the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history.

One scene in his documentary for the Discovery Channel shows herds of two-legged herbivores browsing on an alien cliff-face where they are picked off by flying, yellow lizard-like predators. Another shows glowing fluorescent aquatic animals forming vast shoals in the oceans thought to underlie the thick ice coating Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter.

Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

The completion of the documentary marks a triumph for Hawking, now 68, who is paralysed by motor neurone disease and has very limited powers of communication. The project took him and his producers three years, during which he insisted on rewriting large chunks of the script and checking the filming.

John Smithson, executive producer for Discovery, said: “He wanted to make a programme that was entertaining for a general audience as well as scientific and that’s a tough job, given the complexity of the ideas involved.”

Hawking has suggested the possibility of alien life before but his views have been clarified by a series of scientific breakthroughs, such as the discovery, since 1995, of more than 450 planets orbiting distant stars, showing that planets are a common phenomenon.

So far, all the new planets found have been far larger than Earth, but only because the telescopes used to detect them are not sensitive enough to detect Earth-sized bodies at such distances.

Another breakthrough is the discovery that life on Earth has proven able to colonise its most extreme environments. If life can survive and evolve there, scientists reason, then perhaps nowhere is out of bounds.

Hawking’s belief in aliens places him in good scientific company. In his recent Wonders of the Solar System BBC series, Professor Brian Cox backed the idea, too, suggesting Mars, Europa and Titan, a moon of Saturn, as likely places to look.

Similarly, Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, warned in a lecture earlier this year that aliens might prove to be beyond human understanding.

“I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive,” he said. “Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.”

Source www.thesundaytimes.co.uk

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

20-03-2018 om 17:30 geschreven door peter  

Ancient Oceans on Mars May Have Been Older and Shallower Than Thought

20-03-2018 om 17:16 geschreven door peter  

20-03-2018 om 16:14 geschreven door peter  

Oceanen op Mars werden volgens nieuwe studie 300 miljoen jaar eerder gevormd dan gedacht en zouden niet zo diep geweest zijn - HLN.be

Bron: Nature, UC Berkley

De geofysici linken de oceanen van Mars aan het ontstaan van het grootste vulkanische systeem in ons zonnestelsel – Tharsis – en de sleutelrol die de opwarming van de planeet speelde in het mogelijk maken van vloeibaar water op de rode planeet.

Lees ook

Zo wil Elon Musk Mars koloniseren en de mensheid redden bij oorlog

IJskappen

Zij die beweren dat er nooit vloeibaar water was op Mars, verwijzen naar het feit dat de grootte van de oceanen niet strookt met de schatting van de hoeveelheid water die er in de ijskappen en bevroren ondergrond van Mars zit en verdampt kan zijn in de ruimte. Er zou in dat scenario niet genoeg water aanwezig geweest zijn om de oceanen te vullen. (lees hieronder verder)

Volgens de nieuwe theorie zouden de oceanen zich echter 300 miljoen jaar eerder gevormd hebben, vóór of op hetzelfde moment als Tharsis. Omdat het vulkanische gebied toen nog niet zo groot was, verstoorde het de planeet nog niet zo veel als later. In het bijzonder de vlakten die het grootste deel van de noordelijke hemisfeer bedekken en waarvan gedacht wordt dat ze de oude oceaanbodem zijn. De zeeën zouden daardoor minder diep zijn geweest en maar de helft van het water bevat hebben als altijd werd aangenomen.

“Tot nu toe werd aangenomen dat het vulkanische systeem Tharsis zich vroeg en snel ontwikkelde en dat de oceanen pas later kwamen”, aldus professor Michael Manga, een van de auteurs van de paper die deze week in Nature verscheen. “Volgens ons kwamen de oceanen eerst en lagen ze er al toen het vulkanische gebied met zijn lavastromen ontstond.”

Gassen

“We vermoeden dat Tharsis gassen de atmosfeer in spuwde, die een broeikaseffect deed ontstaan die vloeibaar water aan de oppervlakte mogelijk maakte. En dat vulkaanuitbarstingen kanalen deden ontstaan die het ondergrondse water toeliet om de oppervlakte te bereiken en de noordelijke vlaktes met water te vullen”, aldus nog Manga. (lees hieronder verder)

De nieuwe theorie rekent ook af met een ander argument tegen het bestaan van oceanen op Mars: dat de kustlijnen van de oceanen erg onregelmatig zijn en in hoogte tot wel 1.000 meter verschillen. Terwijl ze zoals op de Aarde eigenlijk vlak zouden moeten zijn.

Kustlijn

Dat kan volgens de studie verklaard worden als de eerste oceaan – Arabia – zich 4 miljoen jaar geleden begon te vormen en - eventueel met tussenpozen - bestond tijdens de eerste 20 procent van het ontstaan van Tharsis. De groeiende vulkaan kan het land omlaaggedrukt hebben en de kustlijn vervormd hebben, wat de onregelmatigheden in de hoogte van de kustlijn van Arabia kan verklaren. De onregelmatige kustlijn van de volgende oceaan – Deuteronilus – kan op vergelijkbare wijze worden verklaard als die ontstond tijdens de laatste 17 procent van het ontstaan van Tharsis, ongeveer 3,6 miljard jaar geleden. (lees hieronder verder)

Tharsis deed uiteindelijk een bult ontstaan aan de andere kant van de planeet en een laagte halfweg ertussen. Het verklaart waarom het volume water dat die laagte nu kan bevatten twee keer zo groot is dan wat de nieuwe studie schat dat die bevatte 4 miljoen jaar geleden”, klinkt het nog.

Hypothese

De onderzoekers drukken er wel op dat het om een hypothese gaat. “Maar wetenschappers kunnen een preciezere datering proberen te maken van Tharsis en de kustlijnen om te zien of ze overeind blijft”, aldus Manga.

De volgende Marslander van de NASA kan ook helpen om het raadsel te ontrafelen. Hij wordt in mei gelanceerd en zal een seismometer op de bodem van de planeet zetten, die een beeld moet geven van wat er zich onder het oppervlakte van Mars afspeelt. En misschien wel bevroren overblijfselen kan vinden van die eeuwenoude oceaan of zelfs vloeibaar water.  

{ https://www.hln.be/wetenschap-planeet }

20-03-2018 om 16:03 geschreven door peter  

Visser ontdekt mysterieus zeewezen dat lijkt op monster van Loch Ness -  HLN.be

Bron: Daily Mail, The Sun

WETENSCHAP & PLANEET Een zeewezen dat lijkt op het monster van Loch Ness wekt heel wat nieuwsgierigheid op. Op amateurbeelden is te zien hoe een karkas op het strand van Wolf Island in de Amerikaanse staat Georgia ligt. Volgens experts is het niet meteen duidelijk om welk zeewezen het precies gaat.

Has the Loch Ness Monster been found dead in the US? Mystery beast found washed

 Is het Loch Ness Monster dood terug gevonden in the US? Een mysterieus beest aangespoeld gevonden

Warren, een visser uit Waycross in de Amerikaanse staat Georgia, was aan het varen met zijn zoon in de buurt van Wolf Island toen hij het vreemde zeewezen ontdekte. Aanvankelijk dacht hij dat het om een dode zeehond ging. Toen de man een foto maakte, merkte hij op dat het dier lijkt op het monster van Loch Ness, het mythische wezen dat volgens een legende rondzwemt in het troebele water van het gelijknamige meer in Schotland.

Lees ook

Gigantisch zeewezen spoelt aan op Filipijns eiland

Enkele experts zagen de beelden op het internet, maar konden het wezen niet onmiddellijk identificeren. Sommigen beweren dat het om een franjehaai gaat, anderen zeggen dat het een reuzenhaai is. Vooralsnog zijn wetenschappers het grondig oneens. Een reuzenhaai is immers zo’n acht meter lang, maar het aangespoelde dier is veel kleiner.

{ https://www.hln.be/wetenschap-planeet }

20-03-2018 om 15:53 geschreven door peter  

Wereldberoemde standbeelden op Paaseiland verdwijnen onder de stijgende zee -  HLN.be

Bron: AD.nl

De geheimzinnige beelden - de moai - behoren tot de beroemdste sculpturen ter wereld. De metershoge beeldhouwwerken uit vulkanisch gesteente maken Paaseiland een van de meest fascinerende plekken op aarde.

Lees ook

15 bestemmingen waarmee je best niet meer te lang wacht om ze af te vinken op je verlanglijstje

De beelden, die aan de kust van het klein eiland in de Stille Oceaan staan, herinneren aan de bloeiende civilisatie die er eeuwen geleden bestond. Polynesiërs bevolkten het eiland en bouwden honderden sculpturen tussen de 12de eeuw en 15de eeuw. Maar nu zou het allemaal vernietigd kunnen worden, waarschuwen de Verenigde Naties in een bericht. De oorzaak is de klimaatverandering. Sommige klimaatmodellen voorspellen dat de zeespiegel tussen de 1,5 en 1,8 meter zal stijgen tegen 2100. Volgens een artikel in de New York Times vrezen bewoners en wetenschappers het einde van de moai en de historische graven. Stormen en golven vormen een bedreiging zoals nooit tevoren.

Nederlander 

Drie van de beroemdste toeristische attracties op het eiland zijn bedreigd, zo stelt de New York Times. Het ceremonie-platform Tongariki met vijftien moai, die landinwaarts kijken. Anakena; een strand met wit koraalzand waar volgens de overlevering een Polynesische hoofdman met zijn gevolg landde en dat eiland koloniseerde. En Akahanga, waar de eerste koning van de Rapa Nui, de inheemse bevolking, is begraven in een tombe.

Nog steeds is niet opgehelderd hoe de sculpturen, die tot 200 ton wegen, werden gebouwd en waardoor de bevolking is gedecimeerd nadat de Nederlander Jacob Roggeveen het eiland op paaszondag 1722 ontdekte.

Muur

Volgens de New York Times proberen de eilandbewoners tegen de natuur te vechten. Zij bouwden een muur als bescherming tegen de golven. Als die niet de erosie stopt, moeten zij de sculpturen van de kust weghalen om ze te redden. Een wetenschapper waarschuwt hiervoor: “Dat kan je doen, maar dan verlies je hun geschiedenis.”

AP

{ https://www.hln.be/wetenschap-planeet }

20-03-2018 om 15:41 geschreven door peter  

A few years ago, an April Fool’s piece in the Daily Mail referred to “the U.S. Military’s supposed research into using microwaves as a mind control weapon”. For many people, however, the subject is no joke. Machines designed to tamper with a victim’s thoughts are, according to those who know about such things, employed on a routine basis by governments and other agencies. What few people realize, however, is that reports of such devices have a long history that stretches back more than two hundred years.

Until relatively recently, belief in mind control machines was automatically assumed to be a sign of madness. The first detailed study of the subject was an article entitled “On the Origin of the Influencing Machine in Schizophrenia”, written by the Austrian psychoanalyst Viktor Tausk in 1919. From a study of various psychiatric patients, Tausk concluded that a relatively common form of delusion involved what he referred to as an “influencing machine” (or in the original German, Beeinflussungs-apparat): a device that “produces, as well as removes, thoughts and feelings by means of waves or rays or mysterious forces which the patient’s knowledge of physics is inadequate to explain”.

If such beliefs are symptomatic of mental illness, then according to Mike Jay “Patient Zero” was an English businessman named James Tilly Matthews. In 1797, after accusing the government of treasonous conspiracy, Matthews was incarcerated in the Bedlam lunatic asylum in London. It was there that he developed his theory of the “Air Loom” – the progenitor of all future influencing machines and mind control devices. To quote from Jay’s article:

Matthews was convinced that outside the grounds of Bedlam, in a basement cellar by London Wall, a gang of villains were controlling and tormenting his mind with diabolical rays. They were using a machine called an Air Loom, of which Matthews was able to draw intimate technical diagrams, and which combined recent developments in gas chemistry with the strange force of animal magnetism, or mesmerism. […] Its discharges of magnetic fluid were focused to deliver thoughts, feelings and sensations directly into Matthews’ brain. […] To facilitate this process, the gang had implanted a magnet into his head. As a result of the Air Loom, Matthews was tormented constantly by delusions, physical agonies, fits of laughter and being forced to parrot whatever nonsense they chose to feed into his head.

The Air Loom

In an article about the Air Loom in the May 2003 issue of Fortean Times, Mark Pilkington described how subsequent delusions evolved to keep pace with the latest developments in science: “patients were quick to grasp new technologies in their attempts to rationalize what was happening to them”. In 1886, soon after the invention of the telephone, one doctor observed that his patients would now complain “that people use these instruments to torment them”. In 1897, the Swedish author August Strindberg wrote in his autobiography that “the idea that I was being persecuted by enemies who employed electricity began to obsess me”. By the time Tausk came to write his famous paper in 1919, the situation had evolved still further:

The schizophrenic influencing machine is a machine of mystical nature. The patients are able to give only vague hints of its construction. It consists of boxes, cranks, levers, wheels, buttons, wires, batteries, and the like. Patients endeavour to discover the construction of the apparatus by means of their technical knowledge, and it appears that with the progressive popularization of the sciences, all the forces known to technology are utilized to explain the functioning of the apparatus. All the discoveries of mankind, however, are regarded as inadequate to explain the marvellous powers of this machine, by which the patients feel themselves persecuted.

Despite their technical sophistication, the mind control devices – from the days of the Air Loom to the early 20th century – were always the work of human beings. Sometimes the shadowy operators were members of a criminal gang, in other cases they were agents of the government – but no-one imagined they were anything but human. Then Richard Shaver came onto the scene, and everything changed.

On the face of it, Shaver was a science fiction writer. The bulk of his output was published in Amazing Stories magazine, under the editorship of Ray Palmer, between 1945 and 1949. But Shaver maintained that his writings were based on the truth, and Palmer went along with this – presenting the stories in the guise of a neo-fortean “Shaver Mystery”. Central to the Shaver Mystery was the idea of a vast, unknown subterranean world populated by ancient, degenerate creatures known as “deros”. According to David Hatcher Childress, writing in Lost Continents and the Hollow Earth:

The deros have special beam weapon rays that they use to create as much trouble with the outside world as possible. The dero secretly foster wars, crimes and disasters while working among surface people or using their “controlling rays”. These rays can create solid-looking illusions, nightmares, hypnotic compulsions and urges to commit a crime.

This is remarkably close to the widespread belief in clandestine government activities that can be found on the web today – not just mind control on an industrial scale, but the deliberate creation of wars and “natural” disasters.

So was Shaver telling the truth? Many people will have difficulty with the concept of subterranean deros… but if he had talked about aliens, or an alliance between aliens and the government, his ideas would still meet with approval in many quarters today. This begs the question: were Shaver’s deros really aliens who created the illusion of a vast underground world in his mind?

And that brings us up against the Catch-22 of mind control. If Shaver was lying, or deluded, then of course we can’t believe a word he said. But if he was telling the truth – and he really was the victim of systematic mind control – then… well, we still can’t believe a word he said, can we?

Dero, from Amazing Stories June 1947

Andrew May

Mind control history channel

{http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

20-03-2018 om 15:17 geschreven door peter  

We all want to be a little smarter, a little more effective and skilled.  Some people exercise and take vitamins, some people do jigsaw puzzles, and some of our Silicon Valley overlords micro-dose themselves with LSD every morning.  Now an Australian company has developed a new tool in our eternal quest for perfection. HUMM Tech recently announced the Edge V One, a wearable device—a headband, to be precise—they claim can boost brain power by up to 20%, but some experts worry that this headband of intellect could be hacked to mind control the person wearing it.

The Edge V One works by reading the electrical signals produced by the brain and delivering a small jolt of electricity approximately equivalent to the power of an electric toothbrush to parts of the brain that are not performing at optimum levels. CEO of HUMM Tech Iain Mcintyre described it like this:

What we’re doing is artificially connecting parts of the brain and letting those parts of the brain talk to each other better.

Our understanding of consciousness and the human brain is being upended all the time. Recently, we’ve learned that about the role of brain waves in consciousness, and we have a better picture of what the mind looks like. This brain boosting headband seems to fall in line with many other current discoveries.

Studies show that the mind looks like a wave of electricity through the brain. This device can, allegedly, redirect that electricity to boost brain power.

HUMM Tech says that their headband is the “beginning of a revolution,” that will lead to direct human interfacing with machines. They did, however, agree that there was a risk to the technologies. Asked if the tech was a type of mind-control, HUMM Tech co-founder Dr. Tim Fiori said it was “kind of mind-control.” Iain Mcintyre also agreed that, if the technology was abused, it might be possible for bad actors to hack the brains of those who wear this device.

Perhaps we should be concerned with this potential mind control technology falling into the hands of companies who have already admitted efforts to manipulate populations getting their hands on it. Facebook is currently working on similar technologies, as is Elon Musk, and as our own Brent Swancer recently examined, government research into mind control is a well established tradition.

Iain Mcintyre described the potential applications of machine interfacing technologies in a way that sounds like a dream come true for Facebook, and many Facebook users:

“Instead of needing to type on your phone, your brain can send the word to the person you want to message.”

So, machine enabled telepathy. Telepathy filtered through the corporate service providing it. Yikes. Will we soon see targeted ads based on our dreams and private thoughts?

This is what the zombie apocalypse looks like.

Of course, none of this is a new idea. Transhumanism has been around for a long time, but it’s only now that the first wave of technologies are being released to the civilian population. Should we run for the hills?

That’s up to you. Every technological revolution carries with it new and weird risks that were impossible to conceive of before it was invented. As our capability for incredible and amazing feats of progress increases, so too does our capability for exciting new ways to do terrible things to each other. So it goes.

At least this headband might let you savagely beat your friends at video games before Facebook completely zombifies you.

The Edge V One will be released on Kickstarter later this year.

{http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

20-03-2018 om 15:05 geschreven door peter  

Scientists Are Amazed By Stone Age Tools They Dug Up In Kenya

Rhitu Chatterjee

Assortment of Early and Middle Stone Age tools found in the Olorgesailie Basin, Kenya. The tool at left is a hand axe.

Jay Reed/NPR

Our ancestors in Kenya's Southern Rift Valley made some pretty innovative tools. And they made them far earlier than previously thought.

The oldest innovations were axes designed to be held in the palm of the hand. They were shaped like a tear drop, with a rounded end and a pointed eye. The edges were wavy and sharp. And they look as if they were great at chopping down branches — or chopping up the carcass of a large animal.

This early Stone Age hand axe was excavated at Olorgesailie, Kenya. A chemical analysis of the stone shows it was made with locally available rocks.

Jay Reed/NPR

"I think of the hand axes as the Swiss army knife of the Stone Age," says paleoanthropologist Rick Potts, director of the Human Origins program at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and one of the lead scientists in a new study by a team of international scientists.

The researchers also found that the next technological revolution, marking the beginning of the Middle Stone Age happened tens of thousands of years earlier than previously thought.

And the researchers think that long periods of stress from repeated earthquakes and cycles of drought and heavy rains may have pushed these early humans to partner up with neighboring communities to come up with ways to cope.

Rick Potts, director of the National Museum of Natural History's Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian. He has been excavating in the Southern Rift Valley in Kenya since the 1980s.

Jay Reed

The team was digging in a region called Olorgesailie in southern Kenya, an area filled with layers of sediment dating back 1.2 million years. The oldest stone tools discovered there are characteristic of what's called the Acheulian culture of the Early Stone Age and consisted mostly of the hand axes.

In this Olorgesailie Basin excavation site, red ocher pigments were found with Middle Stone Age artifacts. This is the earliest evidence of the extraction and use of pigments among ancient humans.

Human Origins Program/Smithsonian

In addition to branch- and carcass-chopping, the axes were likely used to dig for water to drink or tubers to eat. The carcasses probably belonged to large animals like the giant (now extinct) ancestors of hippos, elephants and wild pigs that roamed the grasslands back then. Potts says the ancient humans of that time likely scavenged dead animals, as their heavy, clunky hand axes wouldn't have served well for hunting big game. "These are very large tools," he says. "They might have been thrown but not very accurately."

The hand axe was a multipurpose tool used by our ancestors for chopping up branches and carcasses as well as digging for tubers. They remained unchanged for several hundred thousand years.

Jay Reed/NPR

Nevertheless, these hand axes served the ancient humans well for several hundred thousand years — from 1.2 million years ago to 500,000 years ago — and the technology remained largely unchanged during the time.

But around 320,000 years ago, the ancient humans seem to have switched to an entirely new technology. The scientists found numerous smaller, flatter, sharper stone tools.

"We see a smaller technology, a more diverse series of stone tools," says Potts. These tools were designed for specific purposes — some were used as blades, some as scrapers or spear heads. The scientists report their findings in three new studies published Thursday in the journal Science.

"In Olorgesailie, you have the only record of the last million years in Africa," says Marta Mirazon Lahr, a paleoanthropologist who wasn't involved in the new study. And it's "the earliest ever documented Middle Stone Age in the whole continent."

The new studies also show that by 320,000 years ago this technology was well established in the region, suggesting that human ancestors likely started developing it even earlier, she says.

"The technology they have is not a crude, early version of the Middle Stone Age. It is the full-blown Middle Stone Age," Lahr says. "They have stone tools that are small, that are prepared and retouched, that are made with technique thought to come hundreds of thousands of years later."

Obsidian rock found at Olorgesailie was originally brought by the ancient humans from distant places, some as far away as 50 miles from the site. Scientists think this is evidence of a larger social network of groups of ancient people who stayed in touch and exchanged obsidian and other resources.

Jay Reed/NPR

The diversity of stone tools from the Middle Stone Age suggests advanced thinking and planning. "The flakes are being much more carefully prepared for a particular purpose," says Alison Brooks, an anthropologist at George Washington University and an author of the three studies.

"They are fairly small in size, compared to the technology of earlier people. And in addition, they are made with much finer grained material," which allowed them to better control shapes and sizes of the stone tools.

"We see the ability to produce small triangular points, that look like they were projectile points," says Potts. "They were tapered at the end, so that could have been put on the shaft of something that flew through the air." In other words, a potentially lethal spear.

So our ancestors likely shifted from scavenging to hunting. An analysis of the fossilized animal bones found in the sediments show that people in that period were eating a range of mammals — which were by now much smaller, and closer in size to the animals of today — including hares, rabbits and springbok and even a couple of species of birds and fishes, says Brooks.

And they weren't just picking up nearby stones to create their weapons. Earlier hand axes were made primarily from volcanic basalt, sourced within 2 to 2.5 miles of where these humans lived. The latter weapons were made of stones like obsidian, which originated far from Olorgesailie.

A small stone point made of non-local obsidian. The chemical composition of the artifact matches obsidian sources as far as 55 miles away.

Jay Reed/NPR

"That black obsidian, that rare rock was being transported, brought in in chunks, from 15 to 30 miles away," says Potts. "We have a couple of rocks that were brought from up to 55 miles away."

These distances are far greater than what modern-day hunter gatherers travel over the course of a year, he says.

"They weren't just traveling long distances and chipping rocks as they go," he adds. "If they did that, then there would have just been small chips of obsidian left at the archaeological sites where we dig. Instead we see large pieces of raw material coming in. The rocks were shaped at Olorgesaile itself."

That kind of exchange of raw materials is a tell-tale sign of exchange between different groups of people, the scientists say. "In the Middle Stone Age, we begin to see the early stages of social networks, of being aware of another group and exchanging rocks over longer distances."

Potts and his colleagues also find evidence of exchange of brightly colored red and black rocks that were then drilled into, possibly to extract pigment. This is the earliest evidence of the extraction of pigments, says Lahr.

It's also evidence of a complex culture, where the ancient humans probably used pigments symbolically — perhaps to paint themselves, or their hides, or weapons. And where different groups exchanged raw materials (and possibly food).

Red rock found on the site. There is evidence that the rock was drilled to extract its red pigment.

Jay Reed/NPR

There's that same kind of exchange today, says Brooks, referring to hunter gatherer groups like the Hadza people of northern Tanzania.

"They deliberately maintain distant contacts with people in these other groups," she says. They have strategies to maintain these contacts — either by encouraging their children to marry into these other groups, or they take trips to visit the groups, to maintain ties by giving gifts. "It's a way of building up these distant contacts, which are extremely important for their survival."

During times of stress, when food or water is scarce, people from one group can disperse and take shelter with other groups that they've cultivated a relationship with. "So the networks are like money in the bank, or wheat in your silo or cows in your barn," says Brooks. "They don't have any other way of saving for a rainy day."

And as she and her colleagues show, the beginning of the Middle Stone Age in Kenya was preceded by a long and tumultuous phase in the region.

"Things were going haywire, in terms of the development of geological faults, earthquake activity that moved the low places high and the high places low," says Potts. "It changed the shape of the landscape." This was accompanied by repeated cycles of droughts and high rainfall.

"And it is precisely during those time periods that we expect to see hunting and gathering people to move further distances," says Potts, "and to begin to nurture relationships with groups beyond their own group."

It is no different than what humans all over the world do today, he adds. When times are tough, we look for greener pastures. The archaeological records from the Middle Stone Age at Olorgesailie reveal "the roots of that kind of migration," he says.

{ https://www.npr.org/sections/}

20-03-2018 om 14:54 geschreven door peter  

It seems like each month, there’s a new discovery proclaimed to have the potential to “rewrite the history of human civilization.” Like in every scientific discipline, the exponential rate of technological growth and development has led to many new breakthroughs in human archaeology and anthropology lately. Last year, a set of fossil teeth were discovered in Germany which were claimed to push the earliest known date of human migration back by millions of years. Even as those claims are still being validated, a new discovery published this week has yet again generated headlines of “rewriting” human history.

According to two twin studies published this week in Science, archaeologists have discovered sophisticated stone tools in Kenya’s Olorgesailie Basin which are the oldest of their kind. In confirmed, this discovery could mean early humans were trading with one another, fashioning tools, and painting objects far earlier than we know – implying a level of intelligence and sophistication usually associated with much more recent ancestors. 

Kenya’s Olorgesailie region contains some of the best examples of Stone Age tools known to science.

The majority of the excavation was performed under the direction of by Richard Potts of the Smithsonian Institution in conjunction with the National Museums of Kenya. The bulk of the discovery consists of stone tools, nearly half of which were carved from obsidian sourced from volcanic areas 50 kilometers away from where they were discovered. These Middle Stone Age tools have been dated to 320,000 years old. Eighty-eight lumps of pigment were also discovered, some of which show evidence of grinding or tooling. The researchers believe these pigments could have been used to signal some sort of group identity or social status, and the fact that they were carried long distances shows they were of some specific significance to the group of humans or human ancestors who left them there.

Unfortunately, the excavation of this site has yet to reveal any hominid fossils, so it’s impossible to tell if these tools were used by early Homo sapiens or by another human ancestor species. George Washington University’s Alison Brooks co-authored these new papers and says that without any definitive fossil record, the identity of these tools’ creators remains a mystery:

There was the argument that Homo sapiens came along and then developed all these things. But now it seems that the behavior and the morphology came along together. Maybe the behavior even came first.

Will we ever really know the early history of our species? Who knows what hidden aspects of history lie just under our feet, forgotten along with so many other vestiges of the past? While this new discovery might not be a perfectly-preserved early human found in a block of ice, it adds to the growing body of evidence which suggests human civilizations could be much older than we think.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

20-03-2018 om 14:42 geschreven door peter