Gobekli Tepe's Cosmic Blueprint Revealed

Report by Andrew Collins author of From the Ashes of Angels (1996), The Cygnus Mystery (2006) and Beneath the Pyramids (2009)

On a hilly ridge called Göbekli Tepe in the Taurus Mountains of southeast Turkey, near the ancient city of Sanliurfa, archaeologists have uncovered the oldest stone temple complex in the world. Constructed most probably during the second half of the tenth millennium BC, some 7,000 years before Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid, the site consists of a series of rings of enormous T-shaped pillars, many bearing carved reliefs of Ice Age animals, strange glyphs and geometric forms.

Monştrii spaţiului: gaura neagră NGC 1277

O gaură neagră cu masa de miliarde de ori mai mare decât cea a Soarelui este obiect de studiu şi de discuţii între cercetători. Monstrul cu pricina pare a-şi fi părăsit galaxia mamă şi a se fi instalat într-o altă galaxie, după o călătorie cu o viteză vertiginoasă.

Mai mult, gaura neagră a luat cu ea şi „prizonieri”, stele capturate din galaxia iniţială.

Dinosaur-killing space rock 'was a comet'

The space rock that hit Earth 65m years ago and is widely implicated in the end of the dinosaurs was probably a speeding comet, US scientists say.

Researchers in New Hampshire suggest the 180km-wide Chicxulub crater in Mexico was carved out by a smaller object than previously thought.

Many scientists consider a large and relatively slow moving asteroid to have been the likely culprit.

Big Bang’s afterglow shows universe is 80 million years older than scientists first thought

ARIS — A new examination of what is essentially the universe’s birth certificate allows astronomers to tweak the age, girth and speed of the cosmos, more secure in their knowledge of how it evolved, what it’s made of and its ultimate fate.

Sure, the universe suddenly seems to be showing its age, now calculated at 13.8 billion years — 80 million years older than scientists had thought. It’s got about 3 percent more girth — technically it’s more matter than mysterious dark energy — and it is expanding about 3 percent more slowly.

Coasta de Est din Statele Unite ale Americii, "aprinsă" de un meteor

Cerul de deasupra Coastei de Est din Statele Unite ale Americii s-a luminat noaptea trecută, după ce un meteor a trecut peste New York, iar reţelele sociale s-au umplut de imagini cu acesta, majoritatea însă false.

Cei care locuiau în zonă s-au dus rapid pe Twitter şi Facebook pentru a anunţa lumina foarte rapidă care a trecut peste ei, iar mulţi au pus fotografii, dar acestea nu erau reale. NASA a confirmat totuşi evenimentul prin vocea lui Bill Cooke, de la centrul de evenimentele meteoroidale. El a spus că ar fi vorba de "un singur meteor". 

Nasa Confirms Meteor After 'Fireball' Reports

A flash of light that streaked across the sky over the east coast of the United States was probably a single meteor, Nasa has announced.

"Judging from the brightness, we're dealing with something as bright as the full moon," said Bill Cooke, who works for Nasa's Meteoroid Environmental Office.

"We basically had a boulder enter the atmosphere over the northeast."

НАСА: над восточным побережьем США пронесся метеор (видео)

Представитель американского аэрокосмического агентства НАСА Билл Кук заявил, что пролетевший накануне над восточным побережьем США болид был "единичным метеором".

"Судя по его яркости, мы имеем дело с чем-то столь же ярким, как полная Луна", - сказал он Ассошиэйтед пресс. Как добавил представитель НАСА со ссылкой на сообщения очевидцев, небесное тело напоминало огненный шар, который двигался по направлению к юго-востоку страны.

Умные больше плачут: слезы развивают мозг

Плакать наши предки стали раньше, чем говорить - только так можно было сообщить соплеменникам о своих чувствах и мыслях

Среди всех жителей Земли человек - единственное существо, которое может рыдать от счастья или горя. Не удивительно ли, что довольно простая способность разводить мокроту столь уникальна? Почему она присуща только гомо сапиенс? Ответ на этот вопрос дает новая книга профессора неврологии из Университетского Колледжа Лондона Майкла Тримбла «Отчего людям нравится плакать».

Ogdoad of Hermopolis

Definition: The Ogdoad of Hermopolis was the group of gods who created the world, or at least the sun, according to Egyptian mythology centered in Hermopolis Magna. The Ennead of Heliopolis is a contrasting grouping of 9 creating Heliopolitan gods. A third cosmogony is the Memphis Theology, which is centered on the god Ptah.

Since the Ogdoad of Hermopolis is an Ogdoad, there are 8 deities, in 4 pairs of males and females. Their functions may be described as chaos and generation, eternity, darkness, and moisture, or as invisibility, endlessness, obscurity, and water, all perhaps in a primeval watery chaos. The pairs are spelled out in English as Amun and Amaunet, Heh (Huh) and Hehet, Kek and Keket, and Nun and Naunet, although spelling varies. Sometimes in later representations, the male (the first in each pair) is depicted as frog-headed and the female with a snake head, all generated spontaneously from the Nile mud.

Sideline quasars helped to stifle early galaxy formation

University of Colorado Boulder astronomers targeting one of the brightest quasars glowing in the universe some 11 billion years ago say "sideline quasars" likely teamed up with it to heat abundant helium gas billions of years ago, preventing small galaxy formation.

CU-Boulder Professor Michael Shull and Research Associate David Syphers used the Hubble Space Telescope to look at the quasar -- the brilliant core of an active galaxy that acted as a "lighthouse" for the observations -- to better understand the conditions of the early universe. The scientists studied gaseous material between the telescope and the quasar with a $70 million ultraviolet spectrograph on Hubble designed by a team from CU-Boulder's Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy.