"Star Trek" Shield May Protect Astronauts

Richard A. Lovett

A powerful magnetic shield may be able to deflect dangerous solar radiation from spacecraft traveling to the moon and other planets, a new study says.

Magnets tested in a recent laboratory experiment could divert radiation safely, a discovery that's "like Star Trek coming to life," said lead author Ruth Bamford, a plasma physicist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the U.K.
On Earth, humans are protected from radiation partly by the atmosphere. But our planet's magnetic field, called the magnetosphere, repels many of the harmful particles before they reach us.

"Life might not have been possible on Earth without a magnetic field as this first line of defense," Bamford said.

"With a journey to Mars, [radiation] is the most difficult problem," she said. "So the idea is, Why don't we just bring a magnetosphere with us?"

The idea of using magnetic fields as radiation shields was first proposed in the 1960s, but the concept languished until a resurgence of interest in manned expeditions to the moon and Mars.

Little Earthlings

One of the greatest dangers facing future astronauts is radiation, much of which comes from the sun via solar wind, a stream of particles from the sun's atmosphere.

Solar flares can be as deadly to life on Earth, and prolonged exposure to lower doses can cause cancer.
Until recently, however, scientists thought shielding spacecraft would require an impractically large magnet—one capable of generating a field 60 miles (100 kilometers) or more across.

We said, Hang on," Bamford explained. "People are small. We only need to make a little hole in the solar wind."

To test the idea, her team borrowed laboratory equipment used for work in fusion power, a process that also involves magnets. The scientists placed a small magnetized object—a simulated "spaceship"—into a flow of supersonic plasma, which consists of charged particles.
"You don't expect experiments to work first time," she said of the research, which is published today in the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion.

"But this did. It was very clear that it was doing its job."

Magnetic Bubble

Erika Harnett, a space physicist at the University of Washington in Seattle, isn't surprised that the magnetic shield worked.

A few years ago, Harnett and colleagues researched an idea for a spaceship-propulsion system called mini-magnetosphere plasma propulsion (M2P2) and saw similar results.

M2P2 creates a magnetic bubble, then fills it with plasma. In space, the bubble would be battered by the same solar radiation particles that pose a hazard to astronauts. (See sun photos.)

"The solar wind would sort of push this bubble away from the sun," she said.

Not only would this reaction protect the spacecraft from radiation, "[but] we thought it was a practical means of propulsion."

But the concept has only been tested in laboratories at a small scale, she added.

Exposure Concern

Lead author Bamford notes that her team's work is restricted to the laboratory. "We're [just] working on the physics of what would be possible," she said.

One of the problems is making sure a space crew isn't exposed to the magnetic field.

"One would have to make sure the field doesn't enter the ship itself," said Carl Frederick, a physicist and science fiction writer in Ithaca, New York.

"But the idea of having a ship, in effect, carrying its own magnetosphere with it is appealing," he added by email.

Bamford agrees that it may be necessary to protect the crew from magnetic forces.

But she believes this could be solved by careful engineering: for instance, balancing fields on the inside of a spacecraft so that the magnetic field is canceled out.

Alternatively, two spacecraft might fly in formation, with astronauts living on one and the magnetic field being generated on another.

Oldest Shaman Grave Found; Includes Foot, Animal Parts

Israel
Archaeologists in northern Israel say they have discovered the world's oldest known grave of a shaman. The 12,000-year-old grave holds an elderly female of the mysterious Natufian culture, animal parts, and a human foot.

The immediate area contains several burials, but the shaman's grave is unique in its construction, contents, and arrangement.
"From the standpoint of the status of the grave and its contents, no Natufian burial like this one has ever been found," lead archaeologist Leore Grosman said.

"This indicates the woman had a distinct societal position."

The Hilazon Tachtit site—9 miles (14 kilometers) inland from Israel's Mediterranean coastline—is associated with the Natufian culture, which flourished in the eastern Mediterranean between 11,500 and 15,000 years ago.

Hundreds of Natufian graves have been excavated in Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. But only the one uncovered by Grosman contains a woman believed to have been a shaman.

The term "shaman" originated in Siberia, but these magic-invoking priest-doctors are common in cultures around the globe.

The 1.5-meter-tall (nearly 5-foot-tall), 45-year-old woman was relatively old for her time. After her death, she was placed in a mud-plastered and rock-lined pit in a cave and was buried beneath a large stone slab.

She was not buried with everyday items and tools, as hunters, warriors, or political leaders were. Instead, her grave contained 50 arranged turtle shells and parts of wild pigs, eagles, cows, leopards, martens, and a human foot, among other artifacts.

Shedding Light on Strange Rites

During this period Natufian culture changed from a nomadic, hunting-and-gathering culture to a sedentary, agriculture-based lifestyle, according to Grosman, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Grosman received partial funding from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration for her work on the Natufian site.

This transition was likely accompanied by an evolution of the culture's social structure as well as new rules, rituals, and belief systems.

The artifacts found in the woman's grave shed light on some of the specifics of Natufian rituals from this period, said Grosman, whose study was published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For example, the turtles appear to have been eaten as part of the burial ceremony. Their shells were then placed around the deceased woman. Pig bones were cracked open and their marrow was removed before the bones were placed beneath the woman's hand. The grave was closed with the slab perhaps to prevent damage caused by animals.

"Like Finding Napolean's Grave"

Harvard University anthropologist Ofer Bar-Yosef said the shaman grave is a rare find. For every 50 Natufian hunter-gatherers, only one would have been a shaman, he said.

"Finding a shaman's burial is like finding Napolean's grave," said Bar-Yosef, who was not involved in the study but who served with a group of fellow scientists who reviewed the report for inclusion in the journal.

"I've spent many years digging other Natufian sites, and I've found a bunch of graves, but I've never found anything like this."

The shaman's grave and its contents "finally give another view into a society that didn't leave behind a written record. … It's almost equivalent to a textual record."

Grosman's findings can assist researchers investigating shamanistic societies in other parts of the world, Bar-Yosef said. Though burial rituals differ from culture to culture, the graves of shamanic or religious leaders generally stand out from those of the general public, he added.

Oldest Hebrew Text Is Evidence for Bible Stories?

Mati Milstein in Elah Valley, Israel

What may be the oldest known Hebrew text, found on a hilltop above the valley where David is said to have battled Goliath, could lend historical support to some Bible stories, archaeologists say.

The 3,000-year-old pottery shard with five lines of text was found during excavations of the Elah Fortress, the oldest known biblical-period fortress, which dates to the tenth century B.C.
It is the most important archaeological discovery in Israel since the Dead Sea Scrolls, according to lead researcher Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology.

His team believes the text may provide evidence for a real-life King David and his vast kingdom, the existence of which has been long doubted by scholars.

Carbon-14 dating of olive pits found at the archaeological site, as well as analysis of pottery remains, also place the text to between 1000 and 975 B.C., the time King David, head of the Kingdom of Israel, would have lived.

"This means that historical knowledge of King David could pass from generation to generation in writing—and not just as oral tradition."

The exact nature of the text— believed to be Hebrew written in Proto-Canaanite script, a type of early alphabet—has yet to be determined, but a number of root words have already been translated, including "judge," "slave," and "king."

But the archaeologist's claims are disputed by an Israeli colleague, who says there is not enough scientific information to reach definitive conclusions.

Strategic Valley

The fortress is located southwest of Jerusalem on what was the border between the Israelite-run Kingdom of Judea and the coastal Philistine territories. Philistines, who possibly came from Crete, settled the southern coast of Palestine around the same time as the Israelites in the 12th century B.C.

During the biblical period, the Elah Valley was the main point of passage between the two territories.
It's not known whether the Judeans or the Philistines controlled the strategic fortress overlooking the Elah Valley, which was surrounded by nearly 3,000-foot-long (700-meter-long) fortifications built of massive stones.

But Garfinkel believes the site was most likely the westernmost outpost maintained by the Kingdom of Judea, which controlled land in southwest Asia and Palestine and was a predecessor to the Kingdom of Israel.

For instance, pottery at the fortress is similar to that found at other Israelite sites, and there are no pig remains—an indicator that often distinguishes Israelite from Philistine sites.

The newfound Hebrew text has also added new evidence of Judean rule, since key words indicate the text is most likely Hebrew.

Proving the Bible?

Garfinkel believes the Elah site and newfound writing could provide historic evidence of the United Monarchy in the tenth century B.C.

That's when King David is said to have united Judea and Israel, establishing a large kingdom that stretched between the Nile River in present-day Egypt and the Euphrates in Iraq, according to the Bible.

Though most researchers don't believe this kingdom existed, evidence from the site and pottery shard seems to support the idea of a strong central administration based in nearby Jerusalem, as detailed in the Bible, Garfinkel said.
"There is a big debate if the biblical tradition is accurate history or mythology written hundreds of years later … But this is the first time in the archaeology of Israel we have evidence that in the time of King David such heavily fortified cities were built."

ABC Evolution

The ancient text may also shed light on the evolution of the world's alphabetic languages.

"This is the first time that we have a Proto-Canaanite inscription dated in [the context of] an archaeological site from the tenth century B.C.," Garfinkel said.

"This is a major contribution to the understanding of writing in the world."

The evolution of alphabetic scripts, which had their origins in Proto-Canaanite some 3,700 years ago, was one of humankind's greatest intellectual achievements, experts say.

"This allowed everyone to read and write. Before this, Sumerian scripts and Egyptian hieroglyphs were very complicated writing techniques … only trained scribes could read and write in the ancient Near East," Garfinkel said.

Archaeological Doubts

Tel Aviv University archaeologist Israel Finkelstein, who is not involved in the Elah excavations, agreed the site is very important, but has significant concerns with Garfinkel's interpretations of the findings.

Immediately drawing ties between the site and the Kingdom of Judea is a mistake, he said—and it might well have been Philistine in origin.

Also, due to the small number of samples, the carbon-14 dating of the site is also not as precise as it should be, he added.

"We need to wait for more samples. It's not enough to date the site based on two [olive pits]," he said.

He also expressed doubts about the centerpiece of Garfinkel's findings—the text.

"I am prepared to predict that it will be very difficult to determine whether the text is, in fact, Hebrew. There will be evidence indicating various possibilities," he said.

"In the nature of its discovery, this [piece of pottery] is also not unusual. There is a group of late Proto-Canaanite [pottery shards] from the same chronological phase that have been found in various sites on the coastal plain—none of them were discovered in Judea proper."

Top 10 Most Overlooked Mysteries in History

This mystery may even be a problem for those legendary investigators from CSI and the like! The bog bodies are hundreds of ancient corpses found buried around the northern bogs and wetlands of Northern Europe. These bodies are remarkably well preserved, some dating back 2,000 years. Many of these bodies have tell-tale signs of torture and other medieval “fun”, which have made some researchers postulating that these unfortunate victims were the result of ritual sacrifices.



The Minoans are best known for the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur, but it is in fact the demise of this once-great civilisation that is more interesting. While many historians concentrate on the fall of the Roman Empire, the fall of the Minoans, who resided on the island of Crete, is an equal, if not greater mystery. Three and a half thousand years ago the island was shaken by a huge volcanic eruption on the neighbouring Thera Island. Archeologists unearthed tablets which have shown that the Minoans carried on for another 50 years after the eruption, before finally folding. Theories of what finally ended them have ranged from volcanic ash covering the island and devastating harvests to the weakened society eventually getting taken over by invading Greeks.





Everyone has heard of Stonehenge, but few know the Carnac Stones. These are 3,000 megalithic stones arranged in perfect lines over a distance of 12 kilometers on the coast of Brittany in the North-West of France. Mythology surrounding the stones says that each stone is a soldier in a Roman legion that Merlin the Wizard turned in to stone. Scientific attempts at an explanation suggests that the stones are most likely an elaborate earthquake detector. The identity of the Neolithic people who built them is unknown.



The historical search for the legendary thief Robin Hood has turned up masses of possible names. One candidate includes the Yorkshire fugitive Robert Hod, also known as Hobbehod or Robert Hood of Wakefield. The large number of suspects is complicated further as the name Robin Hood became a common term for an outlaw. As literature began to add new characters to the tale such as Prince John and Richard the Lionheart the trail became more obscure. To this day no one knows who this criminal really was.



After the Parthians defeated underachieving Roman General Crassus’ army, legend has it that a small band of the POWs wandered through the desert and were eventually rounded up by the Han military 17 years later. First century Chinese historian Ban Gu wrote an account of a confrontation with a strange army of about a hundred men fighting in a “fish-scale formation” unique to Roman forces. An Oxford historian who compared ancient records claims that the lost roman legion founded a small town near the Gobi desert named Liqian, which in Chinese translates to Rome. DNA tests are being conducted to answer that claim and hopefully explain some of the residents’ green eyes, blonde hair, and fondness of bullfighting.



The Voynich Manuscript is a medieval document written in an unknown script and in an unknown language. For over one hundred years people have tried to break the code to no avail. The overall impression given by the surviving leaves of the manuscript suggests that it was meant to serve as a pharmacopoeia or to address topics in medieval or early modern medicine. However, the puzzling details of illustrations have fueled many theories about the book’s origins, the contents of its text, and the purpose for which it was intended. The document contains illustrations that suggest the book is in six parts: Herbal, Astronomical, Biological, Cosmological, Pharmaceutical, and recipes.




While many people know of the Moai of Easter Island, not that many people know of the other mystery associated with Easter Island. ‘Rongorongo’ is the hieroglyphic written language of the region’s earlier inhabitants. Rongorongo is strange in that no other neighbouring oceanic people used a written language. It appeared around the 1700s, though was unfortunately lost after the early European colonizers banned it because of its ties to the native islanders’ pagan roots.



The ancient Indus Valley people, India’s oldest known civilization had a culture that stretched from Western India to Afghanistan and a populace of over 5 million. le—India’s oldest known civilization—were an impressive and apparently sanitary bronze-age bunch. The scale of their baffling and abrupt collapse rivals that of the great Mayan decline. They were a hygienically advanced culture with a highly sophisticated sewage drainage system, and immaculately constructed baths. There is to date no archaeological evidence of armies, slaves, conflicts, or other aspects of ancient societies. No one knows where this civilization went.




In the late 2nd century AD, the Greek writer Pausanias wrote an account of how (4-500 years earlier?) in one night a powerful earthquake destroyed the great city of Helike, with a Tsunami washing away what remained of the once-flourishing metropolis. The city, capital of the Achaean League, was a worship centre devoted to the ancient god Poseidon, god of the sea. There was no trace of the legendary society mentioned outside of the ancient Greek writings until 1861, when an archeologist found some loot thought to have come from Helike - a bronze coin with the unmistakable head of Poseidon. In 2001, a pair of archeologists managed to locate the ruins of Helike beneath the mud and gravel of the coast, and are currently trying to peice together the rise and sudden fall of what has been called the “real” Atlantis.



An amazing discovery of 2,000 year old mummies in the Tarim basin of Western China occurred in the early 90s. But more amazing than the discovery itself was the astonishing fact that the mummies were blond haired and long nosed. In 1993, Victor Mayer a college professor collected DNA from the mummies and his tests verified that the bodies were all of European genetic stock. Ancient Chinese texts from as early as the first millennium BC do mention groups of far-east dwelling caucasian people referred to as the Bai, Yeuzhi, and Tocharians. None, though, fully reveal how or why these people ended up there.

Mexico City's 'water monster' nears extinction

An Axolotl salamander, or Ambystoma mexicanum, swims to the surface for air in a tank at the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City, Sept. 27, 2008. Scientists warn that the roughly foot-long amphibian is just a few years away from extinction, a victim of the draining of its lake habitat, deteriorating water quality, and what is perhaps the final stake in its heart: the invasion of non-native fish species that are eating its eggs and larva, and competing with it for food. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

MEXICO CITY - Beneath the tourist gondolas in the remains of a great Aztec lake lives a creature that resembles a monster — and a Muppet — with its slimy tail, plumage-like gills and mouth that curls into an odd smile.
The axolotl, also known as the "water monster" and the "Mexican walking fish," was a key part of Aztec legend and diet. Against all odds, it survived until now amid Mexico City's urban sprawl in the polluted canals of Lake Xochimilco, now a Venice-style destination for revelers poled along by Mexican gondoliers, or trajineros, in brightly painted party boats.
But scientists are racing to save the foot-long salamander from extinction, a victim of the draining of its lake habitat and deteriorating water quality. In what may be the final blow, nonnative fish introduced into the canals are eating its lunch — and its babies.
The long-standing International Union for Conservation of Nature includes the axolotl on its annual Red List of threatened species, while researchers say it could disappear in just five years. Some are pushing for a series of axolotl sanctuaries in canals cleared of invasive species, while others are considering repopulating Xochimilco with axolotls bred in captivity.
"If the axolotl disappears, it would not only be a great loss to biodiversity but to Mexican culture, and would reflect the degeneration of a once-great lake system," says Luis Zambrano, a biologist at the Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM.
The number of axolotls (pronounced ACK-suh-LAH-tuhl) in the wild is not known. But the population has dropped from roughly 1,500 per square mile in 1998 to a mere 25 per square mile this year, according to a survey by Zambrano's scientists using casting nets.
It has been a steep fall from grace for the salamander with a feathery mane of gills and a visage reminiscent of a 1970s Smiley Face that inspired American poet Ogden Nash to pen the witticism: "I've never met an axolotl, But Harvard has one in a bottle."
Millions once lived in the giant lakes of Xochimilco and Chalco on which Mexico City was built. Using four stubby legs to drag themselves along lake bottoms or their thick tails to swim like mini-alligators, they hunted plentiful aquatic insects, small fish and crustaceans.
Legend has it that Xolotl — the dog-headed Aztec god of death, lightning and monstrosities — feared he was about to be banished or killed by other gods and changed into an axolotl to flee into Lake Xochimilco.
The axolotl's decline began when Spanish conquerors started draining the lakes, which were further emptied over time to slake the thirst of one of the world's largest and fastest-growing cities. In the 1970s, Lake Chalco was completely drained to prevent flooding. In the 1980s, Mexico City began pumping its wastewater into the few canals and lagoons that remained of Xochimilco.
About 20 years ago, African tilapia were introduced into Xochimilco in a misguided effort to create fisheries. They joined with Asian carp to dominate the ecosystem and eat the axolotl's eggs and compete with it for food. The axolotl is also threatened by agrochemical runoff from nearby farms and treated wastewater from a Mexico City sewage plant, researchers say.
Local fisherman Roberto Altamira, 32, recalls when he was a boy, and the axolotl was still part of the local diet.
"I used to love axolotl tamales," he says, rubbing his stomach and laughing.
But he says people no longer eat axolotls, mainly because fishermen almost never find them.
"The last one I caught was about six months ago," says Altamira, a wiry gondolier with rope-like muscles from years of poling through Xochimilco's narrow waterways.
Meanwhile, the axolotl population is burgeoning in laboratories, where scientists study its amazing traits, including the ability to completely re-grow lost limbs. Axolotls have played key roles in research on regeneration, embryology, fertilization and evolution.
The salamander has the rare trait of retaining its larval features throughout its adult life, a phenomenon called neoteny. It lives all its life in the water but can breathe both under water with gills or by taking gulps of air from the surface.
On a 9-foot-wide canal covered by a green carpet of "lentejilla" — an aquatic plant that resembles green lentils — Zambrano's researchers test water quality and search for axolotls. The air smells of sulfur and sewage.
A team member suddenly points to the trademark water ripple of an axolotl, and the crew hurls its net. But they only come up with two tilapia in a sopping-wet mass of lentejilla.
So far, scientists disagree on how to save the creature. But a pilot sanctuary is expected to open in the next three to six months in the waters around Island of the Dolls, so-called because the owner hangs dolls he finds in the canals to ward off evil spirits.
Zambrano proposes up to 15 axolotl sanctuaries in Xochimilco's canals, where scientists would insert some kind of barrier and clear the area of nonnative species.
Without carp, the water would clear, and plants the axolotl needs to breed could flourish again, said Bob Johnson, the curator of amphibians and reptiles at the Toronto Zoo.
"If you take the insults away, the lake has an amazing latent potential to heal itself," he said.
Veterinarian Erika Servin, who runs the Mexico City government's axolotl program at Chapultepec Zoo, is studying the possibility of introducing axolotls from the lab into the canals. But more study is needed to make sure the process doesn't lead to diseases and genetic problems from inbreeding.
Xochimilco residents could be another source of resistance.
Hundreds of people make a living pulling tilapia from canals or growing flowers, lettuce and vegetables on nearby land. Efforts to remove the fish or shut down polluting farms could face stiff opposition.
But while the debate goes on, time is running out.
Given its role in research alone, Johnson says, "We owe it to the axolotl to help it survive."

Air Cars: A New Wind for America's Roads?

A new carmaker has a plan for cheap, environmentally friendly cars to be built all over the country
An air-powered car? It may be available sooner than you think at a price tag that will hardly be a budget buster. The vehicle may not run like a speed racer on back road highways, but developer Zero Pollution Motors is betting consumers will be willing to fork over $20,000 for a vehicle that can motor around all day on nothing but air and a splash of salad oil, alcohol or possibly a pint of gasoline.

The expertise needed to build a compressed air car, or CAV, is not rocket science, either. Years-old, off-the-shelf technology uses compressed air to drive old-fashioned car engine pistons instead of combusting gas or diesel fuel to create a burst of air to do the same thing. Indian carmaker Tata has no qualms about the technology. It has already bought the rights to make the car for the huge Indian market.
The air car can tool along at a top speed of 35 mph for some 60 miles or so on a tank of compressed air, a sufficient distance for 80% of consumers to commute to work and back and complete daily chores.

Courtesy of MDI
On highways, the CAV can cruise at interstate speeds for nearly 800 miles with a small motor that compresses outside air to keep the tank filled. The motor isn't finicky about fuel. It will burn gasoline or diesel as well as biodiesel, ethanol or vegetable oil.
This car leaves the highest-mpg vehicles you can buy right now in the dust. Even if it used only regular gasoline, the air car would average 106 mpg, more than double today's fuel sipping champ, the Toyota Prius. The air tank also can be refilled when it's not in use by being plugged into a wall socket and recharged with electricity as the motor compresses air.
Automakers aren't quite ready yet to gear up huge assembly line operations churning out air cars or set up glitzy dealer showrooms where you can ooh and aah over the color or style. But the vehicles will be built in factories that will make up to 8,000 vehicles a year, likely starting in 2011, and be sold directly to consumers.
There will be plants in nearly every state, based on the number of drivers in the state. California will have as many as 17 air car manufacturing plants, and there'll be around 12 in Florida, eight in New York, four in Georgia, while two in Connecticut will serve that state and Rhode Island.

The technology goes back decades, but is coming together courtesy of two converging forces. First, new laws are likely to be enacted in a few years that will limit carbon dioxide emissions and force automakers to develop ultra-high mileage cars and those that emit minuscule amounts of or no gases linked with global warming. Plug-in electric hybrids will slash these emissions, but they'll be pricey at around $40,000 each and require some changes in infrastructure -- such as widespread recharge stations -- to be practical. Fuel cells that burn hydrogen to produce only water vapor still face daunting technical challenges.
Second, the relatively high cost of gas has expedited the air car's development. Yes, pump prices have plunged since July from record levels, but remain way higher than just a few years ago and continue to take a bite out of disposable income. Refiners will face carbon emission restraints, too, and steeply higher costs will be passed along at the pump.
Tata doesn't plan to produce the cars in the U.S. Instead, it plans to charge $15 million for the rights to the technology, a fully built turnkey auto assembly plant, tools, machinery, training and rights to use trademarks.
The CAV has a big hurdle: proving it can pass federal crash tests. Shiva Vencat, president and CEO of Zero Pollution Motors, says he's not worried. "The requirements can be modeled [on a computer] before anything is built and adjusted to ensure that the cars will pass" the crash tests. Vencat also is a vice president of MDI Inc., a French company that developed the air car.

The inventor of this technology is Mr. Guy Negre, who is the founder and CEO of MDI SA, a company headquartered in Luxembourg with its R and D in Nice, France.

Earliest Known Human Had Neanderthal Qualities

Adam, Is That You?
This is a skeletal recreation of the world's first known modern human, based on fossils found in Ethiopia. The arrows point to the newly found bones

Jennifer Viegas,
The world's first known modern human was a tall, thin individual -- probably male -- who lived around 200,000 years ago and resembled present-day Ethiopians, save for one important difference: He retained a few primitive characteristics associated with Neanderthals, according to a series of forthcoming studies conducted by multiple international research teams.

The extraordinary findings, which will soon be outlined in a special issue of the Journal of Human Evolution devoted to the first known Homo sapiens, also reveal information about the material culture of the first known people, their surroundings, possible lifestyle and, perhaps most startling, their probable neighbors -- Homo erectus.

"Omo I," as the researchers refer to the find, would probably have been considered healthy-looking and handsome by today's standards, despite the touch of Neanderthal.

"From the size of the preserved bones, we estimated that Omo I was tall and slender, most likely around 5'10" tall and about 155 pounds," University of New Mexico anthropologist Osbjorn Pearson, who co-authored at least two of the new papers, told Discovery News.

Pearson said another, later fossil was also recently found. It too belonged to a "moderately tall -- around 5'9" -- and slender individual."

"Taken together, the remains show that these early modern humans were...much like the people in southern Ethiopia and the southern Sudan today," Pearson said.

Building On Leakey's Work

Parts of the Omo I skeleton were first excavated in 1967 by a team from the Kenya National Museums under the direction of Richard Leakey, who wrote a forward that will appear in the upcoming journal.

Leakey and his colleagues unearthed two other skeletons, one of which has received little attention. Two of the three skeletons found at the site have been a literal bone of contention among scientists over the past four decades. Reliable dating techniques for such early periods did not exist in the late 60's, and the researchers could not agree upon the identity of the two skeletons.

From 1999 to the present, at least two other major expeditions to the southern Ethiopian site -- called the Kibish Formation -- have taken place, with the goal of solving the mysteries and learning more about what the area was like 200,000 years ago.

As evidenced by photographs showing the researchers followed by armed guards, work at this location proved challenging.

"It took us five plus days to get there from Addis," paleobiologist Josh Trapani of the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Michigan told Discovery News. "Once there, we had intense heat, hyenas outside camp, crocodiles in the river, many insects and two remarkable and very different groups of people, the Mursi and the Nyangatom on opposite sides of the river who were our partners in some of this work."

Primitive, Yet Still Like Us

The ordeals proved successful, as the scientists have recovered new bones for Omo I, some of which perfectly fit into place with the remains Leakey unearthed over 40 years ago.

Several scientists analyzed the bones, including a very detailed, comparative look at the shoulder bone by French paleontologist Jean-Luc Voisin. They concluded that, without a doubt, Omo I represents an anatomically modern human, with bones in the arms, hands and ankles somewhat resembling those of other, earlier human-like species.

"Most of the anatomical features of Omo are like modern humans. Only a few features are similar to more primitive hominids, including Neanderthals and Homo erectus," explained John Fleagle, distinguished professor in the Department of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University in New York.

"Omo II is more primitive in its cranial anatomy," he added, "and shares more features with Homo erectus and fewer with modern humans."

Unlikely Neighbors

New dating of the finds determined that Omo II lived at around the same time and location as Omo I, indicating that Homo sapiens may have coexisted with Homo erectus, a.k.a. "Upright Man," who is believed to have been the first hominid to leave Africa.

Fleagle explained the detailed nature of the latest dating techniques that place both skeletons at around the 200,000-year-old period.

He said both skeletons were recovered from rocky geological layers, with "Adam" unearthed just above a layer of volcanic rock. Precise dates can then be calculated because "when volcanic rocks form, they start a radiometric clock that ticks at a regular rate."

Fleagle added, "By looking at the ratio of parent minerals and daughter minerals you can calculate when the rocks were initially formed."Material Culture In A Different Environment

Anthropologist John Shea sifted through the Kibish dirt and rocks hoping to find evidence for early material culture.

He found it.

"The assemblages are dominated by relatively high-quality raw materials procured as pebbles from local gravels," Shea determined, adding that he unearthed stone tools flaked on both sides, hand axes, picks and spear-shaped objects. It appears that most were not retouched. So, once the early modern humans crafted their tools, they likely left them as is.

Trapani, who conducted a study on fossil fish at the site, said later-dated barbed bone points recovered from the site look remarkably like catfish spines, which "may be purely coincidental." Or, "alternatively, perhaps the spines impressed early hunters with their potential utility as flesh-piercing hunting implements."

Trapani added, "This may have come about through simple visual inspection or, perhaps -- more likely -- through painful lesson."

Living High on the Hog

Supporting Trapani's findings that large catfish, as well as Nile perch and other fish, were in abundance, studies on the site's geology indicate that conditions were wetter 200,000 years ago.

Yet another study, on the large mammal fauna at Kibish, found the humans were surrounded by big game.

Smithsonian Institution archaeobiologist Zelalem Assefa identified hippos, giraffes, elephants, zebras, rhinos, numerous other hoofed mammals and more.

"In terms of settlement strategy, the early modern humans at Kibish might have practiced some type of seasonal based settlement strategy -- possibly following the movement of big game," Assefa told Discovery News.

Perhaps his two most unusual finds were that very few remains for non-human primates and carnivores were found, which puzzles the researchers, but may suggest that the first known humans didn't have many, if any, animal predators.

Secondly, Assefa was surprised to find duiker (a small, shy antelope that usually prefers forest cover) and giant forest hog remains. The giant forest hog is the largest wild pig on Earth, weighing as much as 600 pounds. Since other parts of the site were probable grasslands, the presence of these two animals suggests a riparian forest must have also been nearby.

An Unfinished Story

Although Omo I may be the world's "Adam" for now, it's possible that modern humans emerged even earlier at some other place in Africa.

"We only have evidence for what we have found," Fleagle said, adding that there "almost certainly were modern individuals before Omo I."

He explained that Ethiopia's geology has deposits suitable to bone preservation and discovery, which is perhaps why so many fossil hominids have been excavated there over the years.

"Paleontology is a very opportunistic science," he concluded. "When we have a record of fossils in one place, we can reconstruct what happened there, but it is impossible to say what was going on in places from which there is no fossil record."

From the Crypt

Archaeologists recently discovered the tomb of an elaborately wrapped, tattooed woman at the top of El Brujo, a ceremonial Moche temple in northwestern Peru. Some experts think the 1,600-year-old mummy's special treatment could indicate she was a warrior queen, a significant break from the common belief that Moche leaders were all men.



The Egyptian tomb complex known as KV5 was built to house the remains of the many sons of Pharaoh Ramses II. Located in the Valley of the Kings, it contains more than 120 chambers and corridors, including the largest room of any tomb in the valley. Here, a skeleton, possibly one of Ramses' sons, lies in an excavated grave.



The pharaohs of Egypt supposedly imbued their ornate burial sites with deadly curses to dissuade would-be looters. For good measure, the Pharaoh Ti had a statue of himself erected in a special chamber to guard his sepulcher in Saqqara.



The walls of the tombs of Egypt's pharaohs were often covered with hieroglyphs that offered, among other things, instructions to the king for navigating the many dangers that lurked in the transit between death and paradise. Here, a man's flashlight illuminates wall writings in a passage in the tomb of Ramses II in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.



The Phoenicians are said to have regularly sacrificed children to appease the gods. These ritual killings and burials allegedly took place at stone sanctuaries called tophets, like this one discovered in the ruins of the colony of Carthage in Tunisia.



An elaborate homage to the dead—and a reminder of mortality to the living—adorns a crypt under Santa Maria della Concezione church in Rome. These macabre ornamentations, constructed from the bones of 4,000 deceased Capuchin friars, “make the people who stacked the bones in Paris’s catacombs look like amateurs,” according to one observer.



Neatly arranged bones sit within a crypt beneath a church in Rome. Burial chambers beneath the Eternal City house the remains of tens of thousands of deceased citizens. One 16th-century church, Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte, used its catacombs to provide proper burials for the poor, taking in some 8,000 bodies over a 300-year period.

More than 400 years ago, the monks at the Capuchin monastery in Palermo, Sicily, discovered that deceased friars interred in catacombs underwent natural mummification. Word got out, and the order began allowing ordinary citizens to be buried there as well. Now, visitors can see thousands of preserved corpses, most wearing the tattered remains of their finest garments, arranged in the macabre museum's narrow halls.

The skulls and bones of some 4,000 Capuchin monks, some of whom died nearly five centuries ago, adorn a six-room crypt beneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione in Rome. More than a mere burial chamber, the friars have arranged the remains of their brethren into bizarre death art, including chandeliers, archways, and wall decorations.

"Spider God" Temple Found in Peru

A 3,000-year-old temple featuring an image of a spider god may hold clues to little-known cultures in ancient Peru. People of the Cupisnique culture, which thrived from roughly 1500 to 1000 B.C., built the temple in the Lambayeque valley on Peru's north coast.

The adobe temple, found this summer and called Collud, is the third discovered in the area in recent years. (Watch a video of the spider-god temple.)

The finds suggest that the three valley sites may have been part of a large capital for divine worship, said archaeologist Walter Alva, director of the Royal Tombs of Sipán Museum.

Alva and colleagues started the dig in November 2007, when they discovered a 4,000-year-old temple and a mural painting at the Ventarrón site in the valley. Both the temple and mural were the oldest ever found in the Americas.

The entire religious complex houses every ancient Peruvian architectural style up to the Inca, Walter Alva said, one of only a few sites in Peru that spans so many cultures.

Several Meanings

The spider-god image appears often in other sites created during Peru's Early Formative Period, 1200 to 400 B.C.

For instance, the Garagay temple in Lima and the Limón Carro site in northern Peru both include the imagery, according to Ignacio Alva, Walter Alva's son and colleague.

At the newfound Collud, the spider god carried several meanings, experts say.

The image combines a spider's neck and head, the mouth of a large cat, and a bird's beak, Ignacio Alva said.

"Spider God" Temple Found in Peru<< Back to Page 1 Page 2 of 2
The spider is also carved with lines radiating from its neck, creating a web-like appearance.

The web symbolizes hunting nets, a sign of human progress and prosperity, Ignacio Alva said. Traps set with nets caught more prey than spear hunting, he added.
The spider figure also had political significance, Ignacio Alva said. "Any emergent political group would have to be associated with this god."

Richard Burger, an expert on the Chavin culture that followed the Cupisnique, first identified the spider deity in stone bowls found at the Limón Carro site.

The importance of spiders owed partly to their connection with life-giving rain, he said.

"They were associated with divination of rainfall because spiders come out before rain," said Burger, an archaeologist at Yale University who was not involved with the Lambayeque excavation.

The spider deity was also associated with textiles, hunting, war, and power, Burger added. "There is an image of spider deities holding nets filled with decapitated human heads, so there was an analogy with successful warriors and claims of power."

(Related: 80 Ancient 'Cloud Warrior' Skeletons Found in Peru Fort" [September 26, 2007].)

Intense Interaction

The Chavin people who came after the Cupisnique built a temple adjacent to Collud, Zarpan, about three hundred years later.

The new temple finds may help explain a cultural shift from Cupisnique to Chavin, said team leader Walter Alva.

"Cupisnique and Chavin shared the same gods and the same architectural and artistic forms, showing intense religious interaction among the cultures of the [Early] Formative Period from the north coast to the Andes and down to the central Andes," he said.

The temples are similar in size, roughly 1,640 feet (500 meters) long and 984 feet (300 meters) wide.

Collud has a monumental clay staircase with 25 steps, perhaps the inspiration for the later Zarpan temple's clay staircase, Ignacio Alva said.

The Chavin did not build clay structures in the Andes, where significant rainfall threatened their stability. (See Andes photos.)

But clay structures were typical of the Cupisnique culture, which developed on the arid north coast.

It's unknown how the two cultures interacted, if at all, experts say.

"This place is the testimony of two cultures overlapping and will help clarify what is Cupisnique and what is Chavin," Walter Alva said.

Mystery Decline

Pieces of structures found at the site may lead to the discovery of a fourth or fifth temple, according to the team.

(See photos of an ancient "fire temple" found in Peru.)

Yale's Burger wonders if the ongoing excavations will demonstrate what happened to the site as north-coast cultures declined between 900 and 700 B.C.

"The far north coast in earlier times was very important, but it has been largely ignored because there's so little information," Burger said. "This could change that."

"Does this center continue to be important or does it collapse?" he asked. "Does the Cupisnique continue to flourish independently or in close contact with the Chavin?"

Ignacio Alva predicts the site will show that the temple complex transformed itself, but did not collapse.

Egypt: The Case of King/Queen Hatshepsut

AUB's new president, Peter Dorman, who is also a professor of archeology and an expert on ancient Egypt, gave a presentation on October 22 about Hatshepsut, the only woman to reign as a male pharaoh over Ancient Egypt.

Organized by the Society of the Friends of the AUB Museum and held at the AUB Archeological Museum, the illustrated lecture was titled "Gender Trouble in Ancient Egypt: The Case of King/Queen Hatshepsut.” It attracted a large audience which included Lebanon's Minister of Culture HE Tammam Salam and his wife, AUB Trustee Farouk Jabre, and AUB Acting Provost Wadah Nasr.

Whileintroducing President Dorman, Nora Jumblat, the president of the Society of Friends of the AUB Museum, overviewed Dorman’s biography and academic career, emphasizing his specialty in Ancient Egyptian history and archaeology.
In his talk, Dorman highlighted the uniqueness of the reign of Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut who assumed the role of male king of ancient Egypt, through her garb and title, as depicted in the hieroglyphs contemporary to her time of rule. Hatshepsut is the fifth 'pharaoh' of the eighteenth dynasty (1500 BC) of Ancient Egypt and wife of Thutmose II—also Hatshepsut’s half-brother—who died a few years after becoming king without a direct heir to the throne. Thutmose III, Hatshepsut's stepson and nephew, was too young to assume kingship at the time. As a result, Hatshepsut claimed power as queen regent, and then usurped it, by claiming to be the legitimate heir, by virtue of being the daughter of a king. Seven years into her rule, she also assumed the role of male king.

"Hatshepsut holds a unique place in ancient Egyptian history since she is the only woman to rule in the guise of a male ruler," said President Dorman. While surveying the circumstances that led to her becoming queen then assuming legitimacy for rightful heir for kingship, Dorman supported his observations with archaeological evidence - mostly derived from her funerary temple in Dayr Al-Bahri on the banks of the Nile -- that showed the evolution of her role from queen to king.
"Hatshepsut no longer claimed legality for being wife of a deceased king; rather, by being the eldest surviving heir to the throne, and tracing legitimacy to her father in life and death," said Dorman.

In conclusion, Dorman noted that Hatshepsut’s images were intentionally and meticulously desecrated and destroyed after her death by Thutmose III, and experimented with possible reasons for this fact.

"Hatshepsut may have been forgotten, but with research we have been able to recover important aspects of her life," said Dorman.
President Dorman is an international leader in the study of the ancient near east, and in particular the field of Egyptology, in which he is a noted historiographer, epigrapher and philologist.

He is the author and editor of several major books and many articles on the study of ancient Egypt and is probably best known for his historical work on the reign of Hatshepsut and the Amarna period. His most recent monograph, Faces in Clay: Technique, Imagery, and Allusion in a Corpus of Ceramic Sculpture from Ancient Egypt (2002), examines artisanal craftsmanship in light of material culture, iconography, and religious texts. In 2007, he and Betsy M. Bryan of The Johns Hopkins University came out with an edited volume titled Sacred Space and Sacred Function in Ancient Thebes.

Since 2002 he has chaired with great success the distinguished Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at one of the world's top research universities, the University of Chicago. Prior to that, he spent nine years (1988-1997) heading the epigraphic efforts at Chicago House in Luxor, Egypt. >From 1977 to 1988, he worked in curatorial positions in the Department of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Remains of pharaoh Queen Hatshepsut identified

CAIRO (AP) — The mummy of an obese woman, who likely suffered from diabetes and liver cancer, has been identified as that of Queen Hatshepsut, Egypt's most powerful female pharaoh, Egyptian archaeologists said Wednesday.
Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt in the 15th century B.C., was known for dressing like a man and wearing a false beard. But when her rule ended, all traces of her mysteriously disappeared, including her mummy.

Discovered in 1903 in the Valley of the Kings, the mummy was left on site until two months ago, when it was brought to the Cairo Museum for testing, Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said.

DNA bone samples taken from the mummy's pelvic bone and femur are being compared to the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut's grandmother, Amos Nefreteri, said molecular geneticist Yehia Zakaria Gad, who was part of Hawass' team.

The mummy identified as Hatshepsut shows an obese woman, who died in her 50s, probably had diabetes and is also believed to have had liver cancer, Hawass said. Her left hand is positioned against her chest, in a traditional sign of royalty in ancient Egypt.

The discovery, announced Wednesday at the museum in Cairo, has not been independently reviewed by other experts.

While scientists are still matching those mitochondrial DNA sequences, Gad said preliminary results were "very encouraging."

Hawass also said that a molar found in a jar with some of the queen's embalmed organs perfectly matched the mummy.

"We are 100% certain" the mummy is that of Hatshepsut, Hawass told The Associated Press.

Hawass has led the search for Hatshepsut since a year ago, setting up a DNA lab in the basement of the Cairo Museum with an international team of scientists. The study was funded by the Discovery channel, which is to broadcast an exclusive documentary on it in July.

Molecular biologist Scott Woodward, director of the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation in Salt Lake City, was cautious ahead of Wednesday's announcement.

"It's a very difficult process to obtain DNA from a mummy," said Woodward, who has done such research. "To make a claim as to a relationship, you need other individuals from which you have obtained DNA, to make a comparison between the DNA sequences."

Such DNA material would typically come from parents or grandparents. With female mummies, the most common type of DNA to look for is the mitochondrial DNA that reveals maternal lineage, Woodward said.

"What possible other mummies are out there, they would have to be related to Hatshepsut," he said. "It's a difficult process, but the recovery of DNA from 18th Dynasty mummies is certainly possible."

Molecular biologist Paul Evans of the Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, said the discovery could indeed be remarkable.

"Hatshepsut is an individual who has a unique place in Egypt's history. To have her identified is on the same magnitude as King Tut's discovery," Evans told the AP by phone from Utah.

Hatshepsut is believed to have stolen the throne from her young stepson, Thutmose III. Her rule of about 21 years was the longest among ancient Egyptian queens, ending in 1453 B.C.

Hatshepsut's funerary temple is located in ancient Thebes, on the west bank of the Nile in today's Luxor, a multi-collonaded sandstone temple built to serve as tribute to her power. Surrounding it are the Valley of Kings and the Valley of the Queens, the burial places of Egypt's pharaohs and their wives.

But after Hatshepsut's death, her name was obliterated from the records in what is believed to have been her stepson's revenge.

She was one of the most prolific builder pharaohs of ancient Egypt, commissioning hundreds of projects throughout both Upper and Lower Egypt. Almost every major museum in the world today has a collection of Hatshepsut statuary.

British archaeologist Howard Carter worked on excavating Hatshepsut's tomb before discovering the tomb of the boy-king, Tutankhamun, whose treasure of gold has become a symbol of ancient Egypt's splendor.

http://usatodaytv.feedroom.com/index.jsp?fr_story=FRTHEBRAIN201923
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/06/27/egyptqueen_arc.html

Inca Elite Imported Diverse "Staff" to Run Machu Picchu

José Orozco


Inca nobility at Machu Picchu relied on special, permanent servants from the far corners of the empire to manage the royal estate, according to a new study of human skeletons found buried at the site.

Machu Picchu sits high in the Peruvian Andes about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of the former Inca capital of Cusco (see map).
Royal retainers, known as yanacona, may have been brought to the site from as far away as South America's Pacific Coast, the northern highlands, and the area around Lake Titicaca near Peru's border with Bolivia, the study says.

Determining the geographic origins of yanacona may help researchers better understand how the Inca practice of paying tributes with labor helped shape the empire's social classes.

For some people this work was temporary, but for yanacona it meant leaving home and family behind forever, noted lead study author Bethany Turner, an anthropologist at Georgia State University.

Yanacona candidates probably had little room for negotiation, Turner added.

"It was not necessarily forced, but you wouldn't turn it down lightly," she said.

Bustling City

The Inca Empire lasted from roughly 1430 to 1532, when the Spanish reached Peru, Turner said.

The empire stretched from present-day southern Colombia to what is now central Chile, and the Inca largely allowed their subjects to maintain their languages and cultural traditions.

Many scientists believe the city of Machu Picchu, which was occupied starting around 1450, was built on orders from Inca ruler Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui to serve as a government palace and administrative center.

While nobility were not permanent residents at the estate, visitors would probably have seen a city buzzing with the activity of yanacona, Turner said.

Guillermo Cock, an Andean expert based in Lima who was not involved in the new study, said that taking yanacona from diverse regions probably helped Inca rulers break ties of allegiance between villagers and their local authorities.

"The greater the distance, the greater the rupture between the yanacona and their lords and the greater their dependence on their Inca authority," Cock said.

But evidence suggests the yanacona were treated with honor and privileges to help soften the blow and create new loyalties, he said.

For example, the retainers were given gifts such as textiles and agricultural lands, and their bones showed no signs of hard physical labor.

The servants likely performed agricultural work, administrative jobs, served in defense, and generally maintained the site, study author Turner said.

Machu Picchu seems to have been abandoned after the Spanish conquest, and it was apparently ignored by the invaders. Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham brought Machu Picchu to worldwide attention after local Indians led him to the site in 1911.

During the initial excavations of the site in 1912 and 1913, archaeologists found three cemeteries containing 177 bodies.

Later analysis of the graves and objects found with the bodies suggests the people buried there were not elite, leading experts to theorize that they were yanacona.

(Related: "Rare Mass Tombs Discovered Near Machu Picchu" [September 15, 2008].)

For the new study, Turner and colleagues looked at ratios of oxygen, strontium, and lead isotopes in the teeth of 74 individuals from those graves.

The team looked for the isotopes in tooth layers that develop when a person is three to four years old.

Comparing those results with analyses of food and water sources near Machu Picchu helped determine whether the people were native to the area or were likely immigrants.

The analysis shows "widely different backgrounds in where [the people] lived and what their diets were," Turner said, although she cautions that her team's study is just an initial attempt at uncovering the yanacona's origins.

She and colleagues will publish their work in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Efficient Labor

Cock, the Andean expert, said that as permanent servants, yanacona were extremely useful to the Inca Empire.

If the Inca needed a labor force, they could just pick from the yanacona instead of requesting new temporary workers from communities under their power.

"The yanacona … gave them direct access to labor, making it a much more efficient system," Cock said.

In fact, the state's success owed a great deal to the yanacona, said Fernando Astete, director of the Machu Picchu Archaeological Park.

"Without the work of yanacona, the Inca state would never have developed," Astete said. "Their work was the foundation of Inca productivity."

New Moon Rover Mixes Old-School Smarts With Latest Tech

Victoria Jaggard

With six-wheel drive, active suspension, and computerized navigation, a new battery-powered truck being field tested this week in Arizona sounds like the next generation of sport-utility vehicles
But when the final model rolls out in 2019, only an exclusive group of highly trained professionals will get to drive it—the next astronauts to land on the moon.

The new lunar rover, informally known as the Chariot, is a prototype being developed as part of NASA's Constellation program, which aims to put people back on the moon by 2020.

The current version combines 35 years of technological advances with lessons learned from the original "moon buggies" used during the Apollo missions of the 1970s.

One of the biggest modifications is an optional pressurized cabin that comes fully equipped with beds, a pantry, a waste-management system, and a pair of space suits, allowing astronauts to live and work "on the road" for up to two weeks.

"It's important to keep the crew happy," noted Mike Gernhardt, a veteran NASA astronaut who is helping design the Chariot at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

"As long as the food's good and the seats are comfortable, you can put up with a lot."

Moon Buggy

NASA sent up its first lunar roving vehicle—an open, four-wheeled buggy—as part of the Apollo 15 mission in 1971.

Roving crew members collected a variety of samples to bring back to Earth, including the Genesis rock, a chunk of the lunar crust believed to date back four billion years to the birth of the moon.

NASA ultimately sent four rovers to the moon during the Apollo program, and the hardy vehicles were generally hailed as successes.
But some aspects of the buggies' design proved to be less than ideal.

For example, a T-shaped stick in between the seats was the only steering control. Like an Atari joystick, the system was simple and intuitive: Push forward to go forward, backward to brake, and left or right to turn.
The placement, however, was a tight fit for astronauts in their bulky space suits. (See related photos of a skintight next-generation space suit designed at MIT.)

"Every time Charlie bumped my arm, I moved the steering wheel," said John Young, a retired NASA astronaut who, with colleague Charles Duke, drove a lunar rover during Apollo 16 in 1972.

Also, the rover's range was limited by its two nonrechargeable 36-volt batteries.

"You can't run out of electricity on the moon, that would be a killer," Young said. The farthest any of the four buggies ever got from the lunar module was 4.7 miles (7.6 kilometers).

In addition, the buggy became unstable near its top speed of 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) an hour, noted Robert Ambrose, NASA's lead engineer for mobility of the new lunar rover.

"It started doing something called 'porpoising' and they sorta lost control of it," Ambrose said, referring to the older vehicle's tendency to bounce and tilt wildly.

Does It Come With Leather Seats?

Ambrose and other engineers have been designing the new rover in part based on tips from Apollo astronauts.

To overcome the porpoising problem, for instance, the Chariot has a longer wheelbase and is outfitted with the same automatic stability control used to keep today's sport-utility vehicles from rolling over.

Steering is controlled by a computerized navigation system, and all six wheels can turn in any direction or be individually lifted for greater maneuverability.

The craft also has two gears—first gear tops out at 3 miles (5 kilometers) an hour, while second gear can safely reach 12 miles (20 kilometers) an hour.

Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries allow the craft to venture up to 62 miles (100 kilometers) and back before needing a pit stop at a solar-power station.

One of the more unusual innovations is a pair of slip-on space suits attached to the back of the pressurized cabin.

Rather than taking up room with a full-size airlock, a "plainclothes" astronaut simply slides into an empty suit, pulls a lever to close the hatch and detach, and walks away.

The process can then be done in reverse to re-enter the cabin.

"This is a totally different way of doing business in spacewalking," Ambrose said.

Road Test

The rover will need to pass several rounds of technical tests and budget reviews between now and 2019 before the design is finalized.

The entire Constellation program, which is slated to cost U.S. $104 billion, has already hit a few roadblocks, including a one-year delay for the first crewed test flight of the launch vehicle and lander, originally slated for 2013.

It also remains to be seen what a new U.S. president will mean for the project.

Last year Senator Barack Obama's campaign announced plans for an $18-billion-a-year education reform that would be paid for, in part, by delaying Constellation for five years.

And while Senator John McCain's campaign says that he has supported funding for a return to the moon, the presidential hopeful recently said he would reduce the federal deficit by freezing for a year all discretionary funding—NASA included.

For now the space agency is holding firm to its 2020 deadline, and projects like the lunar rover are continuing forward with safety and durability as top concerns.

"It'll probably be two or three iterations of design [before] we're going to have it nailed well enough to ask astronauts to risk their lives," Ambrose said.

The field tests underway this weekend will give an astronaut and a geologist a chance to take the current version of the Chariot for a day-long spin in the Arizona desert, simulating the rocky, dusty conditions they would encounter on the moon.

In addition to testing the rover's technology, the road trip will give its passengers a chance to rate the vehicle for comfort—a major safety concern.

"I'm no sociologist," Ambrose said, "but I imagine that if you're cramped and uncomfortable, you're not going to be a very good driver."

Sunlike Star Vibrations Seen for First Time

Anne Minard

A first look at the surfaces of three nearby stars shows that the hot bodies are vibrating faster than our sun and have smoother exteriors, according to new research.

The work could help astronomers get a better picture of minute changes in stellar vibrations, which would improve our understanding of how sunlike stars operate inside.
Also, knowing more about subtle changes in the surfaces of other stars can help scientists better predict sun storms, which can damage orbiting satellites and interrupt power lines on Earth.

Studies of the sun's vibrations, or helio-seismology, have been yielding clues about our star's interior structure for decades. (Related: "Sun Gets Fatter 'Waist' During Magnetic Peaks" [October 2, 2008].)

Granulation, or bubbling, of the stellar surface can reveal how heat is being transported through the uppermost layers of gas.

But until recently, vibrations and surface features in more distant stars have been too hard to detect, so scientists have relied on computer simulations based on data from the sun.

"In the last few years, observers have started to see acoustic spectra from solar-type stars that are comparable in quality to what was seen in the sun nearly 30 years ago," said Rachel Howe, a scientist at the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, who was not involved with the new study.

"These measurements will allow observers to probe the rotation and other properties of stars that are similar to our sun but of different sizes and ages."

Lead study author Eric Michel, a stellar physicist with France's National Center for Scientific Research, said his team's data should help refine previous computer predictions.

"The phenomena we observe are of the order of what we expected, and we will be able to measure them with precision," Michel said via email. "We are now looking into the stars!"

Margin of Error

All three stars observed for the new study are within 200 light-years of Earth. They are similar to the sun but are hotter and slightly more massive.

Using France's Convection Rotation and Planetary Transits (CoRoT) space telescope, Michel and a bevy of colleagues from Europe and South America measured the stars' light output over a 60-day period.

CoRoT reads stellar vibrations as changes in brightness.
The team found that the three stars have vibrations that are 50 percent more energetic than the sun's.

The stars also have surface granulations about three times finer than the sun's.

The observed oscillations are close to what astronomers predicted based on computer models, but are about 25 percent weaker than expected.

"This is not so bad and even gratifying," Michel said, adding that the results fall within the margins of uncertainty built into the models.

The data are described in this week's issue of the journal Science.

The study authors add that the results would not have been possible using observatories on the ground, because Earth's atmosphere obscures minute variations in starlight.

For them, the new data illustrate the importance of continued space-based observations.

(See the first 3-D images of the sun taken in 2007 by a pair of orbiting telescopes.)

Michael Montgomery, a stellar physicist at the University of Texas in Austin, wrote a commentary on the new study that also appears this week in Science.

"This [paper]," he said, "bodes well for the future of space-based seismology programs while simultaneously challenging us to refine our models of these stars."

Drugs Found in Hair of Ancient Andean Mummies

Charles Q. Choi


The first hard evidence of psychoactive drug use in the ancient Andes has been discovered in mummies' hair, a new study says.

The finding confirms that predecessors of the Inca known as the Tiwanaku used mind-altering substances, and hints that the civilization relied on far-reaching trade networks to obtain the drugs.

Scientists recently analyzed 32 naturally mummified Tiwanaku bodies discovered in northern Chile's Azapa Valley, which lies in the Atacama Desert.

The researchers discovered a compound called harmine in hairs from an adult male and a one-year-old baby, who both date to sometime between A.D. 800 and 1200. Harmine can help humans absorb hallucinogens and may be a powerful antidepressant.

"These individuals probably ingested harmine in therapeutic or medicinal practices, some maybe related to pregnancy and childbirth," said study co-author Juan Pablo Ogalde, a chemical archaeologist at the University of Tarapacá in Arica, Chile.

"However, it is possible also that consumption of harmine was involved in religious rituals, said Ogalde, whose research appeared online October 14 in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

X-rays showed that the adult male—who was buried with items of social prestige such as panpipes, a four-pointed hat, and a snuffing tray—had damage near the nose, perhaps from sniffing.

As for the baby, Ogalde speculated that the mother had consumed the drug and passed it on to her offspring during pregnancy or breast-feeding.

"The fact this mind-altering substance was found even with a one-year-old shows how much a part of their life it was," said archaeologist Alexei Vranich of the University of California, Los Angeles, who did not participate in the study.

Habitual Users

The empire of the Tiwanaku once ranged from what is now northern Chile to southern Peru. (See a map of South America.) Between roughly A.D. 500 and 1000, they expanded from their origins on the Bolivian shores of Lake Titicaca via religious control and military might.

Elaborately decorated snuffing kits have been found in hundreds of Tiwanaku tombs. Archaeologists think these trays and tubes were used to inhale herbs, perhaps ceremonially.

Some snuff kits have been found bearing powder from the vilca tree, whose seeds are rich in hallucinogens. Also, X-rays of Tiwanaku skulls have in many cases revealed nasal damage that was likely caused by frequent sniffing.

The incorporation of snuffing imagery into Tiwanaku ceramics, woodwork, stonework, and textiles have been seen to suggest that snuffing rituals played an important role in Tiwanaku culture.

Still, no traces of hallucinogens had been found in Tiwanaku mummies until now, perhaps because the compounds broken down over time.

Drug Trade

The only plant in South America known to contain harmine is the jungle vine Banisteriopsis caapi, which is used by modern-day Amazonian natives to help make an infusion known as ayahuasca for shamanic rituals. (Read more about ayahuasca.)

This rain forest plant does not grow along the Atacama coast, suggesting extensive trade networks that brought the vine from as far as the Amazon rainforest. The Amazon is roughly 300 miles (500 kilometers) from the Azapa Valley, study co-author Ogalde said.

"A lot of people had suggested contact across the Amazon and the Atacama desert, and it's nice to have more hard data for that theory," said UCLA's Vranich.

The Tiwanaku may have actively searched for exotic hallucinogens to draw others to their culture, Vranich said.

"One of the sources of the mystique of the Tiwanaku—one of the reasons a lot of people may have subscribed to their religion—would have been such a mind-altering substance," he explained.

"It would have been a tremendous draw, especially when the rest of normal life in the rural Andes during that period would have been comparatively quite mundane and dull."