Scary stuff to think of yourself as a food source for the likes of them. LOL.

There are some nasty stories about giants in the Americas. Us little guys finally got rid of 'em.

Ya mean "as" dinner. LOL!

There were giants in those days, great men of renown.

LOL....c'mon over for dinner.

Probably just trying to improve the taste;)

As many races there are. We all have our creation myths. And they might all be right....there were a lotta gods around doin' the hokey pokey with humans.

Maybe genetic experiments that didn't work out too well;)

Wonder how many Adams there's been?

The Evidences for a Recent Dating for Adam, about 14,000 to 15,000 years Before Present

http://www.accuracyingenesis.com/adam.html

Clovis People Were Not Alone During Early Colonization of the Americas

By Kate Wong | July 13, 2012 | 8

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/07/13/clovis-people-had-company-in-early-colonization-of-the-americas/

Once upon a time, the initial migration of humans into the New World looked like a very tidy story: the so-called Clovis people, it appeared, were the first to enter the Americas, arriving from Siberia by land bridge and spreading across the continental U.S. in pursuit of large game animals, leaving behind their telltale fluted stone tools and other remains. But in recent years, discoveries of remains that appear to pre-date the Clovis culture have upended that Clovis First scenario. Now new findings from the Paisley Caves in Oregon join the growing body of evidence that the human colonization of the Americas was more complex than researchers once thought, showing that a separate technological tradition co-existed with the Clovis one and may well have preceded it.

Previous work at the Paisley Caves had turned up preserved human feces (coprolites) containing DNA and some stone projectile points made in what archaeologists term the Western Stemmed Tradition, which differs from Clovis primarily in the way in which the point is affixed to a dart shaft. Initial dating results indicated that the remains rivaled Clovis in age, but questions about their antiquity lingered. In the new study, published in the July 13 Science, Dennis Jenkins of the University of Oregon and his colleagues report on high-precision radiocarbon dating of more than 100 new samples from Paisley Caves that establish the chronology of the site and put the oldest stone points at more than 13,000 years old, making them at least as old as the oldest known Clovis artifacts elsewhere.

The Clovis First theory predicts that the Western Stemmed technology evolved from the Clovis one, yet no Clovis tools or tools that look like they could have given rise to Clovis have turned up in Paisley Caves. Thus although Western Stemmed might share a common ancestral technology with Clovis, it does not come out of the Clovis lineage itself, Jenkins asserted in a press teleconference. In the Science paper he and his colleagues conclude: “The Paisley Caves evidence supports the hypothesis that the [Western Stemmed Technology] was an indigenous development in the far western United States, whereas Clovis may have developed independently in the Plains and Southeast.” The findings buttress claims for a non Clovis-derived tool-making tradition at the site of Monte Verde in Chile, Jenkins added, noting “this really seems to suggest there are multiple technology trajectories at the same time here at the end of the Pleistocene in the Western Hemisphere.”

The investigators also recovered more coprolites containing mitochondrial DNA (which is maternally inherited, as opposed to nuclear DNA, which is inherited from both parents) from the site, taking precautions to ensure the samples were not contaminated with foreign DNA. Sequencing confirmed earlier work indicating that the Paisley Cave folks carried the so-called haplogroup A mitochondrial lineage that is common among Native Americans today and is thought to have originated in Asia. Team member Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen said in the press teleconference that the Paisley Cave people were Asian in origin and possibly related to or ancestral to modern day Native Americans. To nail the relationship down further , he said, the researchers will need to retrieve nuclear DNA from the coprolites.

The oldest coprolite at the site was radiocarbon dated to 14,500 years ago, making it the oldest directly dated human remain in the western hemisphere and older than the oldest point from the site by more than a thousand years. Whether the person who left behind that turd made tools in the Western Stemmed fashion is unknown, but study co-author Loren Davis of Oregon State University said in a statement that the DNA from that coprolite resembles the DNA from a coprolite that is the same age as the oldest points. “They were from the same genetic group,” he said.

According to Davis, more evidence that the Western Stemmed people were as early or earlier than the Clovis people may come from the site of Coopers Ferry in western Idaho, which contains points that have been preliminarily dated to 13,200 years ago—an age that he and his colleagues are working to confirm. As for the Paisley Caves, although more archaeological material remains to be unearthed there, Jenkins has terminated the excavations in order to preserve the contents for future archaeologists armed with improved study tools and methodologies. Analyses of materials already recovered from the site will continue, however.

In 2011, archaeologists working at the Debra L. Friedkin site in Texas reported on their discovery of thousands of stone tools dating to between 13,200 and 15,500 years ago that were also distinct from Clovis points. That assemblage was found under a level containing Clovis tools, however, and researchers involved in the discovery suggested that the Clovis style of projectile manufacture may have derived from that earlier tradition. No such technological precursor is known for Western Stemmed projectile

Dead Men's Secrets

"Big Bang or the Big Bounce?" --New Science Points to a Continuum

July 12, 2012

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/07/the-big-bang-or-the-big-bounce-new-math-points-to-a-continuum.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond+%28The+Daily+Galaxy+--Great+Discoveries+Channel%3A+Sci%2C+Space%2C+Tech.%29

The big bang may not have been the beginning of the universe, but merely the beginning of one of an infinite series of universes. Two fundamental concepts in physics, both of which explain the nature of the Universe in many ways, have been difficult to reconcile with each other. European researchers have developed a mathematical approach to do so that has the potential to explain what came before the Big Bang.

The big bang singularity --the single point from which the entire universe is supposed to have sprung-- is the major sticking point in the big bang theory; the calculations just can't account for such a singularity. Without evidence associated with the earliest instant of the expansion, the Big Bang theory does not provide any explanation for such an initial condition.
According to Einstein’s (classical) theory of general relativity, space is a continuum. Regions of space can be subdivided into smaller and smaller volumes without end.

The fundamental idea of quantum mechanics is that physical quantities exist in discrete packets (quanta) rather than in a continuum. Further, these quanta and the physical phenomena related to them exist on an extremely small scale (Planck scale).

So far, the theories of quantum mechanics have failed to ‘quantise’ gravity. Loop quantum gravity (LQG) is an attempt to do so. It represents space as a net of quantised intersecting loops of excited gravitational fields called spin networks. This network viewed over time is called spin foam.

Not only does LQG provide a precise mathematical picture of space and time, it enables mathematical solutions to long-standing problems related to black holes and the Big Bang. Amazingly, LQG predicts that the Big Bang was actually a ‘Big Bounce’, not a singularity but a continuum, where the collapse of a previous universe spawned the creation of ours.

European researchers initiated the ‘Effective field theory for loop quantum gravity’ (EFTFORLQG) project to further develop this exciting candidate theory reconciling classical and quantum descriptions of the Universe.

Scientists focused on the background-independent structure of LQG which requires that the mathematics defining the system of spacetime be independent of any coordinate system or reference frame (background).

They applied both semi-classical approximations (Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approximations, WKBs) and effective field theory (sort of approximate gravitational field theory) techniques to analyze a classical geometry of space, study the dynamics of semi-classical states of spin foam and apply the mathematical formulations to astrophysical phenomena such as black holes.

Results produced by the EFTFORLQG project team exceeded expectations. Scientists truly contributed to establishing LQG as a major contender for describing the quantum picture of space and time compatible with general relativity with exciting implications for unravelling some of the major mysteries of the Universe.

Dark matter’s tendrils revealed

A superb post

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=77383388

http://www.crystalinks.com/dropa.html

Cemetery of giant creatures found in Central Africa
24.06.2011
http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/24-06-2011/118302-giants_cemetery-0/
 
A team of anthropologists found a mysterious burial in the jungle near the city of Kigali Rwanda (Central Africa). The remains belong to gigantic creatures that bear little resemblance to humans. Head of research group believes that they could be visitors from another planet who died as a result of a catastrophe.

According to the scientists, they were buried at least 500 years ago. At first, researchers thought that they came across the remains of ancient settlements, but no signs of human life have been found nearby.

The 40 communal graves had approximately 200 bodies in them, all perfectly preserved. The creatures were tall - approximately 7 feet. Their heads were disproportionately large and they had no mouth, nose or eyes.

The anthropologists believe that the creatures were members of an alien landing, possibly destroyed by some terrestrial virus to which they had no immunity. However, no traces of the landing of the spacecraft or its fragments were discovered.

Part II of the article

This is not the first such finding. In the summer of 1937 a group of Chinese scientists led by Professor Chi Putei surveyed the caves of Mount Bayan-Kara-Ula. Inside they found skeletons with excessively large heads and puny bodies. Nearby there were 176 stone plates. In the center of each plate there was a hole from which a spiral groove spread out to the perimeter with some characters on it.

In addition, the cave walls were covered with pictures of the rising sun, moon and stars, with many painted dots or small items, slowly approaching the mountains and the earth's surface.

Experts in deciphering ancient written characters have been puzzled over the disclosure of the secret spirals from the cave Bayan-Kara-Ula for two decades. Finally, the professor of Beijing University Zum Umniu deciphered several inscriptions.

The grooved letters narrated that approximately 12 thousand years ago some flying objects crashed in these mountains. Chinese archaeologists found a mention of the peoples who lived in the mountainous caves of Bayan-Kara-Ula.

A corpse of another "alien" was found by Turkish cavers. A mummy of the ice age was resting in a sarcophagus made of crystalline material. The height of the humanoid male creature did not exceed 1 meter 20 centimeters, his skin was light green, and he had large transparent wings on his sides.

According to the researchers, in spite of the unusual appearance the creature looked more like a person rather than an animal. His nose, lips, ears, hands, feet, nails, were very similar to human. Only his eyes were very different, three times bigger than those of a human, and colorless, like reptile's eyes.

Not that long ago in one of the ancient Egyptian tombs a mummy of a man 2.5 meters tall was found. It had no nose or ears, and its mouth was very wide and had no tongue.

According to archaeologist Gaston de Villars, the age of the Mummy is approximately 4 thousand years. It was buried as an Egyptian nobleman - carefully mummified and surrounded by servants, food and art objects designed for the afterlife. However, as it was discovered, not all objects around the finding belong to the Egyptian or even Earth's culture. For example, among the finds was a round polished metal disk covered with strange characters, a costume made of metal with the remnants of something resembling plastic shoes, and many stone tablets filled with images of stars, planets and strange machines. The Shrine where a strange mummy was found also looks unusual. The burial was made of the material unknown in antiquity. The stone was literally carved from the rock so that the walls were smooth, like polished marble. It looked as if it was cut by a laser. Incidentally, the stone's surface was fused. The tomb was decorated with a substance resembling lead.

However, the "alien" theory is not the only one. According to some researchers, the "giants" and "dwarfs" could be a mere side branch of humanity that once lived on Earth, but for some reason became extinct.

"It's a boson:" Higgs quest bears new particle

By Chris Wickham and Robert Evans | Reuters – 24 mins ago

GENEVA (Reuters) - Scientists at Europe's CERN research center have found a new subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe, which appears to be the boson imagined and named half a century ago by theoretical physicist Peter Higgs.
"We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature," CERN director general Rolf Heuer told a gathering of scientists and the world's media near Geneva on Wednesday.
"The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe."

http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-unveil-milestone-higgs-boson-hunt-044513533.html

Cool......but I had to smile at the "almost certainly" phrase.

Breaking--APNewsBreak: Evidence of 'God particle' found
July 2, 11:30am EDT

By JOHN HEILPRIN and SETH BORENSTEIN
Associated Press


GENEVA (AP) -- Scientists working at the world's biggest atom smasher plan to announce Wednesday that they have gathered enough evidence to show that the long-sought "God particle" answering fundamental questions about the universe almost certainly does exist.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_SWITZERLAND_GOD_PARTICLE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-07-02-09-27-46

Dramatic change spotted on a faraway planet

by Staff Writers
Baltimore MD (SPX) Jul 02, 2012

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Dramatic_change_spotted_on_a_faraway_planet_999.html

HD 189733b has a blue sky, but that's where the similarities with Earth stop. The planet is a huge gas giant similar to Jupiter, but it lies extremely close to its star, just one thirtieth the distance Earth is from the Sun.


Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have seen dramatic changes in the upper atmosphere of a faraway planet. Just after a violent flare on its parent star bathed it in intense X-ray radiation, the planet's atmosphere gave off a powerful burst of evaporation. The observations give a tantalising glimpse of the changing climates and weather on planets outside our Solar System.

Astronomer Alain Lecavelier des Etangs (CNRS-UPMC, France) and his team used Hubble to observe the atmosphere of exoplanet HD 189733b [1] during two periods in early 2010 and late 2011, as it was silhouetted against its parent star [2]. While backlit in this way, the planet's atmosphere imprints its chemical signature on the starlight, allowing astronomers to decode what is happening on scales that are too tiny to image directly.

The observations were carried out in order to confirm what the team had previously seen once before in a different planetary system: the evaporation of an exoplanet's atmosphere (heic0403).

HD 189733b has a blue sky, but that's where the similarities with Earth stop. The planet is a huge gas giant similar to Jupiter, but it lies extremely close to its star, just one thirtieth the distance Earth is from the Sun.

Even though its star is slightly smaller and cooler than the Sun, this makes the planet's climate exceptionally hot, at above 1000 degrees Celsius, and the upper atmosphere is battered by energetic extreme-ultraviolet and X-ray radiation. As such, it is an excellent candidate to study the effects of a star on a planetary atmosphere.

"The first set of observations were actually disappointing," Lecavelier says, "since they showed no trace of the planet's atmosphere at all. We only realised we had chanced upon something more interesting when the second set of observations came in."

The team's follow-up observations, made in 2011, showed a dramatic change, with clear signs of a plume of gas being blown from the planet at a rate of at least 1000 tonnes per second.

"We hadn't just confirmed that some planets' atmospheres evaporate," Lecavelier explains, "we had watched the physical conditions in the evaporating atmosphere vary over time. Nobody had done that before."

The next question was: why the change?
Despite the extreme temperature of the planet, the atmosphere is not hot enough to evaporate at the rate seen in 2011. Instead the evaporation is thought to be driven by the intense X-ray and extreme-ultraviolet radiation from the parent star, HD 189733A, which is about 20 times more powerful than that of our own Sun. Taking into account also that HD 189733b is a giant planet very close to its star, then it must suffer an X-ray dose 3 million times higher than the Earth.

Evidence to support X-ray driven evaporation comes from simultaneous observations of HD 189733A with the Swift satellite [3], which, unlike Hubble, can observe the star's atmosphere-frying X-rays. A few hours before Hubble observed the planet for the second time, Swift recorded a powerful flash of radiation coming from the surface of the star, in which the star briefly became 4 times brighter in X-rays.

"X-ray emissions are a small part of the star's total output, but it is the part that it is energetic enough to drive the evaporation of the atmosphere," explains Peter Wheatley (University of Warwick, UK), one of the co-authors of the study. "This was the brightest X-ray flare from HD 189733A of several observed to date, and it seems very likely that the impact of this flare on the planet drove the evaporation seen a few hours later with Hubble."

X-rays are energetic enough to heat the gas in the upper atmosphere to tens of thousands of degrees, hot enough to escape the gravitational pull of the giant planet. A similar process occurs, albeit less dramatically, when a space weather event such as a solar flare hits the Earth's ionosphere, disrupting communications.

While the team believes that the flash of X-rays is the most likely cause of the atmospheric changes they saw on HD 189733b, there are other possible explanations. For example, it may be that the baseline level of X-ray emission from the star increased between 2010 and 2011, in a seasonal process similar to the Sun's 11-year sunspot cycle.

Regardless of the details of exactly what happened to HD 189733b's atmosphere, which the team hope to clarify using future observations with Hubble and ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope, there is no question that the planet was hit by a stellar flare, and no question that the rate of evaporation of the planet's atmosphere shot up.

This research has relevance not only for the study of Jupiter-like planets. Several recent discoveries of rocky "super Earths" near their parent stars are thought to be the remnants of planets like HD 189733b, after the complete evaporation of their atmospheres. [4]

Notes
The international team of astronomers in this study consists of A. Lecavelier des Etangs (Institut d'astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, UPMC, France), V. Bourrier (Institut d'astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, UPMC, France), P. J. Wheatley (Department of Physics, University of Warwick, UK), H. Dupuy (Institut d'astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, UPMC, France), D. Ehrenreich (Institut de Planetologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble, UJF/CNRS, Grenoble, France), A. Vidal-Madjar (Institut d'astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, UPMC, France), G. Hebrard (Institut d'astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, UPMC, France), G. E. Ballester(Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, USA), J.-M. Desert (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, USA), R. Ferlet (Institut d'astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, UPMC, France) and D. K. Sing (Astrophysics Group, School of Physics, University of Exeter, UK).

The study is presented in a paper entitled "Temporal variations in the evaporating atmosphere of the exoplanet HD189733b" which will be published in a forthcoming issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

[1] HD 189733b is a 'hot Jupiter' exoplanet orbiting the star HD 189733A, located around 60 light-years from Earth. Hot Jupiters are gas giant planets which orbit close to their parent stars. HD 189733b lies very close to its star, at only one thirtieth the distance between the Sun and the Earth, meaning it experiences temperatures of above 1000 degrees Celsius and orbits its parent star every 53 hours. It has around 10% more mass than Jupiter. Even Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, is around 10 times further away. The planet has a hazy atmosphere made up primarily of hydrogen, which scatters short wavelengths of light, meaning it would appear blue. Its star, HD 189733A, is around 80% of the mass of the Sun, just over three quarters its diameter, around 800 degrees Celsius cooler and slightly redder in colour. It is part of a double star system with the star HD 189733B (not to be confused with the planet, HD 189733b), however this companion star is several thousand times further from HD 189733A, and much smaller than HD 189733A, and so has little or no effect on the planet.

[2] This method of observing exoplanets is known as the transit method, as it takes advantage of the planet transiting across the face of its parent star. Only a small fraction of exoplanets can be studied using the transit method, as it relies on the planet's orbit being seen perfectly side-on from our perspective. However, for those planets where it is possible, observing transits is an extremely powerful tool. These observations were carried out using Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, an instrument which, much like a prism, splits light into its constituent colours. The relative brightnesses of different wavelengths of light carry a lot of information including the fingerprint of the types, properties, abundances and even motion of gases it has passed through. In this case, the team were looking for hydrogen gas (the predominant component of HD 189733b's atmosphere) being blown off the atmosphere.

[3] The Swift satellite is an international mission bringing together NASA, the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). Its primary purpose is detecting and studying gamma-ray bursts, but its X-ray and ultraviolet/optical telescopes are also used for other astronomical observations.

[4] Super Earths are a class of rocky exoplanets that are similar in composition to the Earth, but with a few times the mass. Super Earths within their stars' habitable zones (where temperatures allow liquid water) are considered to be good candidates for life. Exoplanets Kepler-10b and CoRoT-7b are classed as super Earths, but are far too close to their stars to maintain liquid water. They are thought to be the rocky cores of planets similar to HD 189733b which have lost their entire atmospheres to evaporation.

Thnx Rich.....great find. They cut down the last tree in order to build these things.

Mysterious Easter Island 'heads' have bodies too

June 13: Recent excavations are revealing new discoveries about the towering statutes of Easter Island. Msnbc.com's Dara Brown speaks with Dr. Jo Anne Van Tilburg, archaeologist and director of the Easter Island Statue Project, about the findings from recent excavations.

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/mysterious-easter-island-heads-have-bodies-too/6v60o02?from=

Quintet of Galaxies Rocked by Shock Wave Larger than the Milky Way

June 11, 2012

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/06/image-of-the-day-quintet-of-galaxies-rocked-by-shock-wave-larger-than-the-milky-way.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond+%28The+Daily+Galaxy+--Great+Discoveries+Channel%3A+Sci%2C+Space%2C+Tech.%29


Infrared observations made with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope revealed the presence of a huge intergalactic shock wave, or "sonic boom" in the middle of Stephan's Quintet, a group of galaxies which is now the scene of a gigantic cosmic cataclysm. This discovery, made in 2011 by an international research team including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Heidelberg, provides a local view of what might have been going on in the early universe, when vast mergers and collisions between galaxies were commonplace.

When astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope turned their attention to a well-known group of galaxies called Stephan's Quintet, they were, quite simply, shocked at what they saw. There, sweeping through the group, lurks one of the biggest shock waves ever seen. For decades, astronomers using optical telescopes have known that the galaxies in this group, located about 300 million light years away, have a very distorted distribution of visible light from stars, indicating that the galaxies have experienced encounters in the past, and are now engaged in further collisions.
But this, as it turns out, is only part of the drama. Recently, astronomers have become able to measure what, apart from the stars, is present in Stephan's Quintet. By looking in the radio and X-rays they discovered huge quantities of gas -- about 100,000 million solar masses, mainly composed of hydrogen and helium -- in the space between the galaxies, more than all the gas inside the galaxies themselves.

A team of scientists from Caltech, USA and from the Astrophysics Department of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Heidelberg, Germany, discovered that one of the galaxies, called NGC7318b, which is falling towards the others at high speed, is generating a giant shock wave in front of it -- larger even than the Milky Way -- as it ploughs its way through the intergalactic gas.

The signature of the shock-wave was given by the detection of strong radiation from molecular hydrogen. When hydrogen molecules are "excited" by the mechanical energy produced in the collision and transported by shock waves, they emit a distinctive type of radiation that can be detected in the infrared, and it was this radiation that was picked up by Spitzer.

"The strength of the emission and the fact that it shows the gas to be highly disturbed was a huge surprise to us, said team leader Dr. Phil Appleton. "We expected to see the spectral signature of dust grains -- but instead we saw an almost pure laboratory-like spectrum of hydrogen molecules and almost nothing else. It was quite unlike anything we had seen before in a galaxy system."

Spectrometers have the ability to break light down into its component wavelengths, where the chemical signatures of the material that produced it can be seen as spectral lines. The width of these lines allows astronomers to determine the velocity of the gas, with wider lines indicating gas at a higher velocity. The hydrogen line seen by Spitzer in Stephan's Quintet is the widest ever observed for hot hydrogen molecules, corresponding to gas motions of 870 kilometres per second, equivalent to a Mach number of 100 or more.

"To better understand this situation", says Dr. Richard Tuffs, a team member from MPIK, "one can think of the shock waves created by supersonic aircraft in the Earth atmosphere. There, water droplets can condense behind the shock in humid conditions, while in Stephan's Quintet hydrogen molecules could form out of a turbulent and cooling intergalactic medium. Of course, all this is happening on an enormous scale in Stephan's Quintet."

The Spitzer observations provide a diagnostic for studying conditions in merging and colliding galaxies, which were much more prevalent in the early universe.

"Observing a nearby densely populated galaxy group, immersed in a thick gas cloud, gives us a local view of what might have been going on in the early universe about 10 billion years ago, soon after the first galaxies formed, when the intergalactic medium and the galaxy density were much greater than today. In this respect these observations are a bit like stepping into a time machine", said Dr. Cristina Popescu, another team member from MPIK.

The results may indicate that some of the emission from the most luminous infrared galaxies seen in the very distant Universe may actually be created not by stars, but by vast shocks in the gas between the colliding galaxies.

Heh....I'll look. If you find one, let me know.....I've been out of the game for a while.

Lol,

Maybe a Tesla stock board for camoflage?

There has to be stock out there that pertains somewhat to the topic that we can use for a cover?

Thnx DT......I'll ask, but the TOU says no off topic free boards.....only stock boards are supposed to be free.

try it as a free board for a while?

I'm letting my sub expire. I will do my best to be here on Happy Hour each Friday.

Man these guys would have made a great basketball team. This is a first for me. Thnx Rich.

A New Human Species
Stone age remains of people with a penchant for home-cooked venison could represent a new human evolutionary line

Submitted by Henry on March 20, 2012


A skull, possibly from a new species of human, recovered from
Longlin cave in Guangxi province, China. Photograph: Darren Curnoe

The fossilised remains of stone age people recovered from two caves in south west China may belong to a new species of human that survived until around the dawn of agriculture.

The partial skulls and other bone fragments, which are from at least four individuals and are between 14,300 and 11,500 years old, have an extraordinary mix of primitive and modern anatomical features that stunned the researchers who found them.

Named the Red Deer Cave people, after their apparent penchant for home-cooked venison, they are the most recent human remains found anywhere in the world that do not closely resemble modern humans.

The individuals differ from modern humans in their jutting jaws, large molar teeth, prominent brows, thick skulls, flat faces and broad noses. Their brains were of average size by ice age standards.

"They could be a new evolutionary line or a previously unknown modern human population that arrived early from Africa and failed to contribute genetically to living east Asians," said Darren Curnoe, who led the research team at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

"While finely balanced, I think the evidence is slightly weighted towards the Red Deer Cave people representing a new evolutionary line. First, their skulls are anatomically unique. They look very different to all modern humans, whether alive today or in Africa 150,000 years ago," Curnoe told the Guardian.

"Second, the very fact they persisted until almost 11,000 years ago, when we know that very modern looking people lived at the same time immediately to the east and south, suggests they must have been isolated from them. We might infer from this isolation that they either didn't interbreed or did so in a limited way."

One partial skeleton, with much of the skull and teeth, and some rib and limb bones, was recovered from Longlin cave in Guangxi province. More than 30 bones, including at least three partial skulls, two lower jaws and some teeth, ribs and limb fragments, were unearthed at nearby Maludong, or Red Deer Cave, near the city of Mengzi in Yunnan province.

At Maludong, fossil hunters also found remnants of various mammals, all of them species still around today, except for giant red deer, the remains of which were found in abundance. "They clearly had a taste for venison, with evidence they cooked these large deer in the cave," Curnoe said.

The findings are reported in the journal PLoS ONE.

The stone age bones are particularly important because scientists have few human fossils from Asia that are well described and reliably dated, making the story of the peopling of Asia hopelessly vague. The latest findings point to a far more complex picture of human evolution than was previously thought.

"The discovery of the Red Deer Cave people shows just how complicated and interesting human evolutionary history was in Asia right at the end of the ice age. We had multiple populations living in the area, probably representing different evolutionary lines: the Red Deer Cave people on the East Asian continent, Homo floresiensis, or the 'Hobbit', on the island of Flores in Indonesia, and modern humans widely dispersed from northeast Asia to Australia. This paints an amazing picture of diversity, one we had no clue about until this last decade," Curnoe said.

Much of Asia was also occupied by Neanderthals and another group of archaic humans called the Denisovans. Scientists learned of the Denisovans after recovering a fossilised little finger from the Denisova cave in the Altai mountains of southern Siberia in 2010.

The fossils from Longlin cave were found in 1979 by a geologist prospecting in the area. At the time, researchers removed only the lower jaw and a few fragments of rib and limb bones from the cave wall. The rest of the skeleton was left encased in a block of rock, which sat in the basement of the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in Kunming, Yunnan, for 30 years. The fossils were rediscovered in 2009 by Ji Xueping, a researcher at the institute, who teamed up with Curnoe to examine the remains.

"It was clear from what we could see that the remains were very primitive and likely to be scientifically important. We had a skilled technician remove the bones from the rock, and they were glued back together. Only then was it clear what we had found: a partial skeleton with a very unusual anatomy," Curnoe said.

The fossils at Maludong were found in 1989 but went unstudied until 2008.

Lumps of charcoal uncovered alongside the Longlin fossils were carbon dated to 11,500 years, a time when modern humans in southern China began to make pottery for food storage and to gather wild rice in some of the first steps towards full-scale farming.

Marta Mirazón Lahr, an evolutionary biologist at Cambridge University, is convinced the remains are from modern humans. The unusual features, she said, suggest the Red Deer Cave people are either "late descendants of an early population of modern humans in Asia" or a very small population that developed the traits through a process known as genetic drift.

Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum, London, was similarly sceptical.

"The human remains from the Longlin Cave and Maludong are very important, particularly because we do not have much well-described and well-dated material from the late Pleistocene of China.

"The fossils are unlike recent populations of modern humans in several respects, and the mosaic of more archaic features could indicate the dispersal of a poorly known and more primitive form of modern human that left Africa before the main exodus at about 60,000 years. This dispersal could have reached as far as China, surviving there for many millennia, before disappearing in the last 12,000 years."

But he added: "There might be another possible explanation for the more archaic features. Could these alternatively be attributed to gene flow from a more archaic population that survived alongside modern humans? In the case of the Longlin Cave and Maludong fossils, the most likely candidate would be the enigmatic Denisovans who apparently interbred with the ancestors of modern Australasians somewhere in south east Asia. Could these Chinese fossils be further evidence of such hybridisation?"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/mar/14/red-deer-cave-people-species-human

Doomsday Earth - Mega Quake - Full Episode 2 - National Geographic

The Universe Song

The Truth About Nephilim Giants (Full Video) - Steve Quayle

Phenomenon

Blue Gold - World Water Wars. (Full Film)

The Observable Universe: Seven Trillion Dwarfs and Billions of Undetected Galaxies

March 12, 2012



The European Space Agency’s Herschel space telescope has discovered that previously unseen distant galaxies are responsible for a cosmic fog of infrared radiation. The galaxies are some of the faintest and furthest objects seen by Herschel, and opened a new window on the birth of stars in the early Universe.

Astronomers estimate that their are billions and billions of galaxies in the observable universe (as well as some seven trillion dwarf galaxies) . Here's how astronomers breakout the visible universe within 14 billion light years:

Superclusters in the visible universe = 10 million

Galaxy groups in the visible universe = 25 billion

Large galaxies in the visible universe = 350 billion

Dwarf galaxies in the visible universe = 7 trillion

Stars in the visible universe = 30 billion trillion (3x10²²)

Astronomers realized this past year that they may have underestimated the number of galaxies in some parts of the universe by as much as 90 percent, according to a study in 2011 by Matthew Hayes of the University of Geneva's observatory, who led the investigation using the world's most advanced optical instrument -- Europe's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, which has four 8.2-meter (26.65-feet) behemoths. They turned two of the giants towards a well-studied area of deep space called the GOODS-South field.

In the case of very distant, old galaxies, the telltale light may not reach Earth as it is blocked by interstellar clouds of dust and gas -- and, as a result, these galaxies are missed by the map-makers.

"Astronomers always knew they were missing some fraction of the galaxies... but for the first time we now have a measurement. The number of missed galaxies is substantial," said Matthew Hayes of the University of Geneva's observatory, who led the investigation.

The team carried out two sets of observations in the same region, hunting for light emitted by galaxies born 10 billion years ago.The first looked for so-called Lyman-alpha light, the classic telltale used to compile cosmic maps, named after its U.S. discoverer, Theodore Lyman. Lyman-alpha is energy released by excited hydrogen atoms. The second observation used a special camera called HAWK-1 to look for a signature emitted at a different wavelength, also by glowing hydrogen, which is known as the hydrogen-alpha (or H-alpha) line.

The second sweep yielded a whole bagful of light sources that had not been spotted using the Lyman-alpha technique. They include some of the faintest galaxies ever found, forged at a time when the universe was just a child.

The astronomers conclude that Lyman-alpha surveys may only spot just a tiny number of the total light emitted from far galaxies. Astonishingly, as many as 90 percent of such distant galaxies may go unseen in these exercises.

"If there are 10 galaxies seen, there could be a hundred there, unseen" said Hayes.

The discovery added powerfully to knowledge about the timeline by which stars and then galaxies formed.

The Daily Galaxy via ESA and discovery.com

Credits: ESA/PEP Consortium and The image at the top of the page shows A dwarf galaxy found by MIT's Dr. Simona Vegetti and colleagues --a satellite of an elliptical galaxy almost 10 billion light-years away from Earth. The team detected it by studying how the massive elliptical galaxy, called JVAS B1938+666, serves as a gravitational lens for light from an even more distant galaxy directly behind it. Their discovery was published in the Jan. 18 online edition of the journal Nature.
Like all supermassive elliptical galaxies, JVAS B1938+666's gravity can deflect light passing by it. Often the light from a background galaxy gets deformed into an arc around the lens galaxy, and sometimes what's called an Einstein ring. In this case, the ring is formed mainly by two lensed images of the background galaxy. The size, shape and brightness of the Einstein ring depends on the distribution of mass throughout the foreground lensing galaxy.

http://onorbit.com/node/4271

The Universe S02 E07 - Astrobiology

Time Machine....... The World Shaped By Time

Biggest solar storm in years nears Earth, may disrupt power

By Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Updated 2h 8m ago

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/story/2012-03-07/solar-storm-earth-power-disruptions/53398390/1?csp=34news

WASHINGTON – The largest solar flare in five years is racing toward Earth, threatening to unleash a torrent of charged particles that could disrupt power grids, GPS and airplane flights.

The sun erupted Tuesday evening, and the effects should start smacking Earth around 7 a.m. EST Thursday, according to forecasters at the federal government's Space Weather Prediction Center. They say the flare is growing as it speeds outward from the sun.

"It's hitting us right in the nose," said Joe Kunches, a scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He called it the sun's version of "Super Tuesday."

The solar storm is likely to last through Friday morning, but the region that erupted can still send more blasts our way, Kunches said. He said another set of active sunspots is ready to aim at Earth right after this.

But for now, scientists are waiting to see what happens Thursday when the charged particles hit Earth at 4 million mph.

NASA solar physicist Alex Young added, "It could give us a bit of a jolt." But he said this is far from a super solar storm.

The storm is coming after an earlier and weaker solar eruption happened Sunday, Kunches said. This newer blast of particles will probably arrive slightly later than forecasters first thought.

That means for North America the "good" part of a solar storm — the one that creates more noticeable auroras or Northern Lights— will peak Thursday evening. Auroras could dip as far south as the Great Lakes states or lower, Kunches said, but a full moon will make them harder to see.
Auroras are "probably the treat we get when the sun erupts," Kunches said.

But there is the potential for widespread problems. Solar storms have three ways they can disrupt technology on Earth: with magnetic, radio and radiation emissions. This is an unusual situation when all three types of solar storm disruptions are likely to be strong, Kunches said.

That means "a whole host of things" could follow, he said.

The magnetic part of the storm has the potential to trip electrical power grids. Kunches said power companies around the Earth have been alerted for possible outages. The timing and speed of the storm determines whether it will knock off power grids, he said.

In 1989, a strong solar storm knocked out the power grid in Quebec, causing 6 million people to lose power.

Solar storms can also make global positioning systems less accurate, which is mostly a problem for precision drilling and other technologies, Kunches said. There also could be GPS outages.

The storm also can cause communication problems and added radiation around the north and south poles, which will probably force airlines to reroute flights. Some already have done so, Kunches said.

Satellites could be affected by the storm, too. NASA spokesman Rob Navias said the space agency isn't taking any extra precautions to protect astronauts on the International Space Station from added radiation from the solar storm.

Strange, Colossal Explosions Observed on Venus

March 06, 2012



Odd, colossal explosions, known as hot flow anomalies (HFAs) fueled by solar energy detonate just above the surface of Venus, a new study finds. Similar eruptions have been seen before near Earth, Saturn and possibly Mars. This is the first true confirmation of HFAs on Venus, which differ dramatically fromwhat happens near our planet with itsstrong magnetic field.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/03/odd-colossal-explosions-known-as-hot-flow-anomalies-hfas-fueled-by-solar-energy-detonate-just-above-the-surface-of-venus.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond+%28The+Daily+Galaxy+--Great+Discoveries+Channel%3A+Sci%2C+Space%2C+Tech.%29

"At Venus, since there's no protective magnetic field, the explosion happens right above the surface of the planet," study lead author Glyn Collinson, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement. In the grand scheme of the solar system, Venus and Earth are almost the same distance from the sun. Yet the planets differ dramatically: Venus is some 100 times hotter than Earth and its days more than 200 times longer. The atmosphere on Venus is so thick that the longest any spacecraft has survived on its surface before being crushed is a little over two hours. There's another difference, too. Earth has a magnetic field and Venus does not – a crucial distinction when assessing the effects of the sun on each planet.

As the solar wind rushes outward from the sun at nearly a million miles per hour, it is stopped about 44,000 miles away from Earth when it collides with the giant magnetic envelope that surrounds the planet called the magnetosphere. Most of the solar wind flows around the magnetosphere, but in certain circumstances it can enter the magnetosphere to create a variety of dynamic space weather effects on Earth. Venus has no such protective shield, but it is still an immovable rock surrounded by an atmosphere that disrupts and interacts with the solar wind, causing interesting space weather effects.

A recent study, appearing online in the Journal of Geophysical Research on February 29, 2012, has found clear evidence on Venus for a type of space weather outburst quite common at Earth, called a hot flow anomaly. These anomalies, also known as HFAs, cause a temporary reversal of the solar wind that normally moves past a planet. An HFA surge causes the material to flood backward, says David Sibeck, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who studies HFAs at Earth and is a co-author on the paper.

"They are an amazing phenomenon," says Sibeck. "Hot flow anomalies release so much energy that the solar wind is deflected, and can even move back toward the sun. That's a lot of energy when you consider that the solar wind is supersonic – traveling faster than the speed of sound – and the HFA is strong enough to make it turn around."

When discontinuities in the solar wind remain in contact with a planet's bow shock, they can collect a pool of hot particles that becomes a hot flow anomaly (HFA). An HFA on Venus most likely acts like a vacuum, pulling up parts of the planet’s atmosphere.



Observing an HFA on Venus will help scientists tease out how space weather is similar and different at this planet so foreign to our own. With no magnetic field to interact with, space weather at Venus is milder than that at Earth, but occurs much closer to the surface.

"Hot flow anomalies average one a day near Earth," says Goddard scientist Glyn Collinson and the first author on the new paper. "They've been seen at Saturn, they may have been seen at Mars, and now we're seeing them at Venus. But at Venus, since there's no protective magnetic field, the explosion happens right above the surface of the planet."

The search for this kind of space weather on Venus began in 2009 when NASA's Messenger satellite, which is actually a mission to study Mercury, spotted what may well have been an HFA at Venus. But Messenger's instruments could only measure a suggestive magnetic signature, not detect the temperature of the material inside, a necessary measurement to confirm the heat of a "hot" flow anomaly.

For further evidence, Collinson turned to a European Space Agency spacecraft called Venus Express. Venus Express was not designed to study space weather phenomena per se, but it does have instruments that can detect magnetic fields and the charged particles, or plasma, that make up the solar wind. Collinson began to search for the telltale signatures of an HFA through a few days worth of data.

"That may not sound like much," he says. "But a day on Venus is 243 Earth days."

Collinson looked for a pattern of magnetic change that would indicate the spacecraft traveled through one of these gigantic explosions. Envision what a bullet might experience if shot through a hot air balloon – a moment of heat in an otherwise fairly temperature-consistent journey. In this case, the heat comes with other characteristics as well: The boundaries show an abrupt change in the magnetic fields, and the inside is less dense than the outside. Given a set of instruments that were not specifically designed to find this signature, the search turned up quite a long list of potential, but not conclusive, events.

But his work eventually paid off. A combination of magnetic and plasma data shows that a Venusian hot flow anomaly did indeed take place on March 22, 2008.

By taking the Venus Express data and comparing it to the known physics at Earth, the scientists painted a possible picture of how an HFA forms at Venus. The moving solar wind with its attendant magnetic fields harbors discontinuities, areas where the magnetic fields change direction, sharply and abruptly.

Sometimes these discontinuities align with the flow of the solar wind, so they remain in contact with what's called the bow shock – the place where the supersonic solar wind slows down abruptly and diverts around the planet. If such a discontinuity travels slowly across the bow shock it allows time to trap particles, collecting pools of 10 million degree plasma that can expand to be as big as Earth.

"These plasma particles are trapped in place," says Sibeck. "They make a big puddle that gets bigger and bigger, sending out its own shock waves. Everything downstream from that bubble is going to be different than what's upstream."

Those downstream disturbances are what make HFAs interesting. These eruptions create global disturbances far beyond the mere local disruption of a hot plasma explosion. These eruptions of solar material can compress the entire magnetosphere around Earth for minutes at a time, shaking the particles along magnetic lines and causing them to fall into Earth’s atmosphere near the magnetic poles to create dayside aurora.

Understanding what the HFAs do in the non-magnetized Venusian environment, of course, would require direct observations that the current data sets from Venus Express do not provide. However Collinson and his colleagues have made some educated guesses. "At Earth, HFAs have a big effect, but don't necessarily rule the roost," says Collinson. "But at Venus, since the HFA happens right up next to the planet, it is going to have a more dramatic effect on the system."

The bow shock on Venus serves as the boundary between the incoming solar wind, and the planet's own ionosphere – a layer of atmosphere filled with charged particles. This boundary changes in height easily in response to the environment, and so the scientists believe it would also respond strongly in the presence of an HFA. Since the HFA causes material to flow sunward, away from the planet, it may operate almost like a vacuum cleaner, pulling that bow shock further away from Venus. The size of the ionosphere would swell in concert.

That HFAs can occur on a planet without a magnetic field suggests that they may well happen on planets throughout the solar system, and indeed in other solar systems as well.

in the Book, he falls asleep in a cave and wakes up on Mars where he kicks some serious Martian ass and saves the Princess.

hope i didn't spoil it for ya, lol.

Now we get to guess what is up on the cliff.

Something to do with that piece of gold he had.

This weekend.........

So much for creationism?

lol, delete at will

Couldn't agree more.........

Ever heard of David Bohm?

Once you accept the idea that our science is not absolute then the perspective of the game changes.

Seems kind of doubtful that mankind has figured out everything there is to be known in just the last couple hundred years.

I believe our limited grasp of physics is just a small drop of what reality is really out there.

Interesting article indeed. I'm not sure how the author gets around anything moving quicker than the speed of light, as that's supposedly the ultimate speed limit.

Weird Physics of New Theories of the Origin of Our Universe

Weird Physics of New Theories of the Origin of Our Universe

March 05, 2012

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/03/weekend-feature-the-weird-physics-of-a-new-theory-of-the-origins-of-our-universe.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond+%28The+Daily+Galaxy+--Great+Discoveries+Channel%3A+Sci%2C+Space%2C+Tech.%29

The standard theory of cosmic inflation states that our universe expanded rapidly in the moments after its birth at the Big Bang, which explains why the universe is billions of years old, as well as why the universe is nearly flat. The theory's conclusions about how the universe should look match observations by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).

But University at Buffalo physicists Ghazal Geshnizjani, Will Kinney and Azadeh Moradinezhad Dizgah have challenged the accepted wisdom with their radiocal study: "General Conditions for Scale-Invariant Perturbations in an Expanding Universe," which finds that that while inflation isn't the only viable model of the early universe, other possibilities would require strange physics -- such as a speed of sound faster than the speed of light.

The team found that only three kinds of early universe theories can explain the distribution of matter in today's universe, assuming that the standard theory of gravity is correct and that the universe was expanding in early times (both widely accepted suppositions).

According to the physicists' calculations, viable early universe theories must incorporate either an accelerated cosmic expansion (inflation); a speed of sound faster than the speed of light; or energies so high that scientists would need to invoke a theory of quantum gravity such as string theory, which predicts the existence of extra dimensions of space-time.

"The takeaway result here is that this idea of inflation turns out to be the only way to do it within the context of standard physics," said Kinney, an associate professor of physics who credits UB research scientist Geshnizjani, with formulating the idea for the study. "I think in many ways it puts the idea of inflation on a much stronger footing, because the available alternatives have problems, or weirdnesses, with them.

"It may well be that you can come up with a speed of sound faster than the speed of light, but I think people, as a general rule, would be more comfortable with something that doesn't involve super-luminal propagation," Kinney continued. "Inflation doesn't require any exotic physics. It's just standard particle physics."

Cosmic inflation accounts for the distribution of the matter in the universe by incorporating quantum field theory, which states that under "normal" circumstances, particles of matter and something called antimatter can pop into existence suddenly -- before meeting and annihilating each other almost instantly.

According to cosmic inflation, materializing pairs of matter and antimatter particles flew apart so quickly in the rapidly expanding early universe that they did not have time to recombine. The same principle applied to gravitons and antigravitons, which form gravity waves.

These particles became the basis of all structure in the universe today, with tiny fluctuations in the matter in the universe collapsing to form stars, planets and galaxies. The concept relies on widely studied ideas to explain how the universe began and evolved.

Still, however bizarre alternatives to inflation might seem, Kinney acknowledges that other models are possible. His own work has included exploring other theories, including ones that rely on superluminal sound speeds.

Dark Matter Core Defies Explanation

03/04/12
Source: NASA

http://www.payvand.com/news/12/mar/1037.html

Astronomers using data from NASA's Hubble Telescope have observed what appears to be a clump of dark matter left behind from a wreck between massive clusters of galaxies. The result could challenge current theories about dark matter that predict galaxies should be anchored to the invisible substance even during the shock of a collision.

The team has proposed a half-dozen explanations for the findings, but each is unsettling for astronomers.

"It's pick your poison," said team member Andisheh Mahdavi of San Francisco State University in California, who led the original Abell 520 observations in 2007.

One possible explanation for the discrepancy is that Abell 520 was a more complicated interaction than the Bullet Cluster encounter. Abell 520 may have formed from a collision between three galaxy clusters, instead of just two colliding systems in the case of the Bullet Cluster.

Abell 520 is a gigantic merger of galaxy clusters located 2.4 billion light-years away. Dark matter is not visible, although its presence and distribution is found indirectly through its effects. Dark matter can act like a magnifying glass, bending and distorting light from galaxies and clusters behind it. Astronomers can use this effect, called gravitational lensing, to infer the presence of dark matter in massive galaxy clusters.

This technique revealed the dark matter in Abell 520 had collected into a "dark core," containing far fewer galaxies than would be expected if the dark matter and galaxies were anchored together. Most of the galaxies apparently have sailed far away from the collision.



This composite image shows the distribution of dark matter, galaxies, and hot gas in the core of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520, formed from a violent collision of massive galaxy clusters. The natural-color image of the galaxies was taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii. Superimposed on the image are "false-colored" maps showing the concentration of starlight, hot gas, and dark matter in the cluster. (view larger image)

Starlight from galaxies, derived from observations by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, is colored orange. The green-tinted regions show hot gas, as detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The gas is evidence that a collision took place. The blue-colored areas pinpoint the location of most of the mass in the cluster, which is dominated by dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible substance that makes up most of the universe's mass. The dark-matter map was derived from the Hubble Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 observations, by detecting how light from distant objects is distorted by the cluster galaxies, an effect called gravitational lensing.

The blend of blue and green in the center of the image reveals that a clump of dark matter resides near most of the hot gas, where very few galaxies are found. This finding confirms previous observations of a dark-matter core in the cluster. The result could present a challenge to basic theories of dark matter, which predict that galaxies should be anchored to dark matter, even during the shock of a collision. Abell 520 resides 2.4 billion light-years away.

Credit: NASA, ESA, CFHT, CXO, M.J. Jee (University of California, Davis), and A. Mahdavi (San Francisco State University)

"This result is a puzzle," said astronomer James Jee of the University of California in Davis, lead author of paper about the results available online in The Astrophysical Journal. "Dark matter is not behaving as predicted, and it's not obviously clear what is going on. It is difficult to explain this Hubble observation with the current theories of galaxy formation and dark matter."

Initial detections of dark matter in the cluster, made in 2007, were so unusual that astronomers shrugged them off as unreal, because of poor data. New results from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope confirm that dark matter and galaxies separated in Abell 520.

One way to study the overall properties of dark matter is by analyzing collisions between galaxy clusters, the largest structures in the universe. When galaxy clusters crash, astronomers expect galaxies to tag along with the dark matter, like a dog on a leash. Clouds of hot, X-ray emitting intergalactic gas, however, plow into one another, slow down, and lag behind the impact.

That theory was supported by visible-light and X-ray observations of a colossal collision between two galaxy clusters called the Bullet Cluster. The galactic grouping has become an example of how dark matter should behave.

Studies of Abell 520 showed that dark matter's behavior may not be so simple. Using the original observations, astronomers found the system's core was rich in dark matter and hot gas, but contained no luminous galaxies, which normally would be seen in the same location as the dark matter. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory was used to detect the hot gas. Astronomers used the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and Subaru Telescope atop Mauna Kea to infer the location of dark matter by measuring the gravitationally lensed light from more distant background galaxies.

The astronomers then turned to the Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, which can detect subtle distortions in the images of background galaxies and use this information to map dark matter. To astronomers' surprise, the Hubble observations helped confirm the 2007 findings.

"We know of maybe six examples of high-speed galaxy cluster collisions where the dark matter has been mapped," Jee said. "But the Bullet Cluster and Abell 520 are the two that show the clearest evidence of recent mergers, and they are inconsistent with each other. No single theory explains the different behavior of dark matter in those two collisions. We need more examples."

The team proposed numerous explanations for the findings, but each is unsettling for astronomers. In one scenario, which would have staggering implications, some dark matter may be what astronomers call "sticky." Like two snowballs smashing together, normal matter slams together during a collision and slows down. However, dark matter blobs are thought to pass through each other during an encounter without slowing down. This scenario proposes that some dark matter interacts with itself and stays behind during an encounter.

Another possible explanation for the discrepancy is that Abell 520 has resulted from a more complicated interaction than the Bullet Cluster encounter. Abell 520 may have formed from a collision between three galaxy clusters, instead of just two colliding systems in the case of the Bullet Cluster.

A third possibility is that the core contained many galaxies, but they were too dim to be seen, even by Hubble. Those galaxies would have to have formed dramatically fewer stars than other normal galaxies. Armed with the Hubble data, the group will try to create a computer simulation to reconstruct the collision and see if it yields some answers to dark matter's weird behavior.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington, D.C.

For images and more information about Abell 520's dark core, visit: http://hubblesite.org/news/2012/10

For more information about dark matter, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/dJzOp1