Apple and Google have been attempting for years to entice customers to ditch cable television for set top boxes that deliver TV shows, movies and more via the internet. For the past year or so, Intel has also quietly been working on a top-secret set-top box that could not only be better than what Apple, Google, and even Microsoft offer today, but also kill the cable industry as we know it.
This set-top box, said by industry insiders to be available to a limited beta of customers in March, will offer cable channels delivered “over the top” to televisions anywhere there is an Internet connection regardless of provider. (Microsoft Mediaroom, for example, requires AT&T’s service, and Xbox has limited offerings for Comcast and FiOS customers). For the first time, consumers will be able to subscribe to content per channel, unlike bundled cable services, and you may also be able to subscribe per show as well. Intel’s set-top box will also have access to Intel’s already existing app marketplace for apps, casual games, and video on demand. Leveraging the speed of current broadband, and the vast shared resources of the cloud, Intel plans to give customers the ability to use “Cloud DVR”, a feature intended to allow users to watch any past TV show at any time, without the need to record it ahead of time, pause live tv, and rewind shows in progress.
Intel had hoped that GoogleTV and AppleTV would spur demand for Intel chips, but that having failed they poached much of Microsoft’s Mediaroom team. Much of the direction of Mediaroom came from the leadership of Jim Baldwin, who is now VP of this Intel initiative.
At Microsoft, Jim demonstrated that the technology to enable customers to watch TV over the internet using any device was feasible, but content licensing, the goals of ISP’s and bandwidth limitations previously stood in the way.
“In creating Mediaroom, we brought together key emerging technologies to create the world’s most modern television system: better video compression, higher access network bandwidth, lower cost single-chip devices, cloud computing; and added to it some great software to make it all work together seamlessly with a great user experience. Our goal was to provide technology to operators that will continue to delight consumers as the world of internet-delivered content unfolds.”
According to an Intel job posting, Jim joined Microsoft in 1997 as a part of the WebTV acquisition, and Jim has been a key architect of digital video technology for various products including the WebTV Plus, Echostar Dishplayer, DirecTV UltimateTV and Microsoft TV.
Along with hiring the right key players with the expertise needed to develop a revolutionary set-top box, Intel also has the technology to create a product unlike its competitors. Intel has been providing chips for set top boxes since the days of Akimbo, which had a similar vision as far back as 2005. Back then, though, no one had digital rights to content – and up until now, no one wanted to risk unbundling the channels. This is clearly the biggest barrier for Intel – but since Intel is used to betting billions on chip design, it has allocated a budget significantly larger than Apple or Google’s. While Silicon Valley measures investments in tens of millions, Hollywood often drops more than $100 million into a single movie. Intel came to the table knowing this, and so was able to negotiate the licensing agreements with Hollywood that other tech giants have never been able to.
Intel has made it clear to Hollywood they are serious about this product and dedicated to its longevity. Intel is also prepared to invest heavily in making it a success. In contrast, Apple, Google, and Microsoft have always viewed Hollywood as something of a hobby. (Steve Jobs even said as much of Apple TV). As Intel has approached Hollywood with much more dedication (and dollars), this is likely the single reason that Intel, more than any company before it, has the potential to really bring to consumers the things we have never seen in online content before, such as live sports, release schedules that match broadcast, and first episode through current libraries for video on demand.
Intel is scheduled to hold a press event at CES, where Intel will likely officially announce this new product. However, while industry insiders say a working version is scheduled to be ready for CES, it will likely be only for limited demos.
Why Intel's New IPTV Service Will Do What Google, Apple, and Microsoft Can't - Forbes
Monday, December 31, 2012
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Google Apps Moving Onto Microsoft’s Business Turf
SAN FRANCISCO — It has taken years, but Google seems to be cutting into Microsoft’s stronghold — businesses.
But his prime motive in choosing Google, he said, was online collaboration. “As people in their daily lives become more electronically social, they want to bring that into the office,” Mr. Nielsen said. “Video is more appealing than a written letter.”
Google, he said, is “constantly making it better for teams to work, inside and outside the company, with controlled access.”
By QUENTIN HARDY
Google Apps Moving Onto Microsoft’s Business Turf - NYTimes.com
Virginie Drujon-Kippelen for The New York Times
Jim Nielsen, center, of Shaw Industries calculated that using Google instead of similar Microsoft products would cost, over seven years, about one-thirteenth Microsoft’s price.
Google’s software for businesses, Google Apps, consists of applications for document writing, collaboration, and text and video communications — all cloud-based, so that none of the software is on an office worker’s computer. Google has been promoting the idea for more than six years, and it seemed that it was going to appeal mostly to small businesses and tech start-ups.
But the notion is catching on with larger enterprises. In the last year Google has scored an impressive string of wins, including at the Swiss drug maker Hoffmann-La Roche, where over 80,000 employees use the package, and at the Interior Department, where 90,000 use it.
One big reason is price. Google charges $50 a year for each person using its product, a price that has not changed since it made its commercial debut, even though Google has added features. In 2012, for example, Google added the ability to work on a computer not connected to the Internet, as well as security and data management that comply with more stringent European standards. That made it much easier to sell the product to multinationals and companies in Europe.
Many companies that sell software over the cloud add features without raising prices, but also break from traditional industry practice by rarely offering discounts from the list price.
Microsoft’s Office suite of software, which does not include e-mail, is installed on a desktop PC or laptop. In 2013, the list price for businesses will be $400 per computer, but many companies pay half that after negotiating a volume deal.
At the same time, Microsoft has built its business on raising prices for extra features and services. The 2013 version of Office, for example, costs up to $50 more than its predecessor.
“Google is getting traction” on Microsoft, said Melissa Webster, an analyst with IDC. “Its ‘good enough’ product has become pretty good. It looks like 2013 is going to be the year for content and collaboration in the cloud.”
Microsoft has also jumped on the office-in-the-cloud trend. In June 2011, it released Office 365, and now offers its software in both a cloud version and a hybrid version that uses cloud computing and conventional servers. Office 365 starts at a list price of $72 a year, per person, and can cost as much as $240 a person annually, in versions that offer many more features and software development capabilities. Microsoft says it offers more than Google for the money, but the product has not won many converts from Google.
In a recent report, Gartner, the information technology research company, called Google “the only strong competitor” to Microsoft in cloud-based business productivity software, though it warned that “enterprise concerns may not be of paramount importance to the search giant.”
Google is tight-lipped about how many people use Google Apps, saying only that in June more than five million businesses were using it, up from four million in late 2011. Almost all these companies are tiny, but in early December Google announced that even companies with fewer than 10 employees, which used to get Google Apps free, would have to pay.
Google’s revenue from Apps, according to a former executive who asked not to be named in order to maintain good relations with Google, amounted to perhaps $1 billion of the $37.9 billion Google earned in 2011.
Shaw Industries, a carpet maker in Dalton, Ga., with about 30,000 employees, switched to Google Apps this year for communication tools like e-mail and videoconferencing. Jim Nielsen, the company’s manager of enterprise technology, calculated that using Google instead of similar Microsoft products would cost, over seven years, about one-thirteenth Microsoft’s price.
Shaw is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, run by Warren E. Buffett, but the close friendship of Mr. Buffett and Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates, did not sway Mr. Nielsen. “When you add it up, the numbers are pretty compelling,” he said.
In addition to the lower price, Google has simplicity in pricing. Mr. Nielsen said he had to sort through 11 pricing models to figure out what he would pay Microsoft.
But his prime motive in choosing Google, he said, was online collaboration. “As people in their daily lives become more electronically social, they want to bring that into the office,” Mr. Nielsen said. “Video is more appealing than a written letter.”
Google, he said, is “constantly making it better for teams to work, inside and outside the company, with controlled access.”
Microsoft says it does not yet see a threat. Google “has not yet shown they are truly serious,” said Julia White, a general manager in Microsoft’s business division. “From the outside, they are an advertising company.” In 2011, 96 percent of Google’s revenue came from advertising.
Even though Microsoft sells a similar product, she said most companies did not want to depend exclusively on clouds for documents and communication. Microsoft now has some of its own workers entirely online, she said, while others use both local computers and the cloud, to get a feel for how various companies work.
Although she would not break out numbers, Ms. White said Office 365 was “on track to be our fastest-growing business.” She said that Google, to be a threat, would need to “provide a quality enterprise experience” in areas like “privacy, data handling and security.”
But according to the General Services Administration, out of 42 federal government contracts for which Google and Microsoft competed in 2012, Google won 23 deals, and Microsoft 10. The rest went to another company, Zimbra, which is owned by VMware, a maker of cloud software.
Microsoft’s biggest and most profitable sector, its business division, brought in nearly $24 billion in the 2012 fiscal year that ended in June. Almost none of that came from Office 365, but from the familiar older-style software that depends on computers located within the corporation.
As the two behemoths slug it out in the enterprise market, their cloud-computing software is changing the way businesses operate. Internet-based computing makes it easier to communicate both within and outside a company. Fixing software and adding features can be done automatically, the way consumers get the latest version of Facebook when they go to its site.
“People were looking for cheap e-mail at first, but now it’s about collaboration, calendaring and data storage online,” said Ms. Webster of IDC. Over time, her firm says, software revenue will be at least 50 percent from the cloud, which could challenge the complex way Microsoft prices and discounts its products.
Ms. White, the Microsoft manager, said Google “helped amplify a lot of the conversation around cloud productivity.” That is a far cry from last February, when Microsoft put a video on Google’s YouTube Web site lampooning Google with a parody of the old television show “Moonlighting.”
Google, the video suggested, would automatically change around a buyer’s software. But cloud-based software is supposed to issue automatic updates and feature changes. Microsoft has issued several updates to Office 365, though, unlike Google, it lets customers delay the changes for up to a year.
By QUENTIN HARDY
Google Apps Moving Onto Microsoft’s Business Turf - NYTimes.com
World's Longest High-Speed Rail Line Opens in China
HONG KONG — China began service on Wednesday on the world’s longest high-speed rail line, covering a distance in eight hours roughly equal to New York to Key West, Florida, or from London across Europe to Riga or Belgrade.
By KEITH BRADSHER
World's Longest High-Speed Rail Line Opens in China - NYTimes.com
Bullet trains traveling 300 kilometers an hour, or 186 miles an hour, began regular service between Beijing and Guangzhou, the main metropolis in southeastern China. Older trains still in service on a parallel rail line take 21 hours; Amtrak trains from New York to Miami, a shorter distance, still take nearly 30 hours.
Completion of the Beijing-Guangzhou route is the latest sign that China has resumed rapid construction of one of the world’s largest and most ambitious infrastructure projects, a network of four north-south routes and four east-west routes that span the country.
Lavish spending on the project has helped jump-start the Chinese economy twice: in 2009 during the global financial crisis and again this autumn, after a brief but sharp economic slowdown over the summer.
The hiring of as many as 100,000 workers per line has kept a lid on unemployment even as private sector construction has slowed down because of limits on real estate speculation. And the national network has helped reduce toxic air pollution in Chinese cities and curb demand for imported diesel, by freeing up a lot of capacity on older rail lines for freight trains to carry goods instead of heavily polluting trucks.
But the high-speed rail system has also been controversial in China. Debt to finance the construction has reached nearly 4 trillion renminbi, or $640 billion, making it one of the most visible reasons why total debt has been surging as a share of economic output in China, and approaching levels in the West.
The high-speed trains are also considerably expensive than the heavily subsidized older passenger trains. A second-class seat on the new bullet trains from Beijing to Guangzhou costs 865 renminbi, or $138, compared with 426 renminbi, or $69, for the cheapest bunk on one of the older trains, which also have narrow, uncomfortable seats for as little as 251 renminbi.
Worries about the high-speed network peaked in July 2011, when one high-speed train system plowed into the back of another near Wenzhou in southeastern China, killing 40 people.
A subsequent investigation blamed the crash on flawed signaling equipment. China had been operating high-speed trains at 350 kilometers an hour, or 217 miles an hour, and cut the top speed to the current rate in response to that crash.
The incident crystallized worries about the haste with which China has built its high-speed rail system. The first line, from Beijing to Tianjin, opened a week before the 2008 Olympics; a little over four years later, the country now has 9,349 kilometers, or 5,809 miles, of high-speed lines.
China’s aviation system has a good international reputation for safety, and its occasional deadly crashes have not attracted nearly as much attention. Transportation safety experts attribute the public’s fascination with the Wenzhou crash partly to the novelty of the system and partly to a distrust among many Chinese of what is perceived as a homegrown technology, in contrast with the Boeings and Airbus jets flown by Chinese airlines.
Japanese rail executives have complained, however, that the Chinese technology is mostly copied from them, an accusation that Chinese rail executives have strenuously denied.
The main alternative to trains for most Chinese lies in the country’s roads, which have a grim reputation by international standards. Periodic crashes of intercity buses kill dozens of people at a time, while crashes of private cars are frequent in a country where four-fifths of new cars are sold to first-time buyers, often with scant driving experience.
By KEITH BRADSHER
World's Longest High-Speed Rail Line Opens in China - NYTimes.com
Monday, December 17, 2012
Twin NASA spacecraft deliberately crash into moon
Associated Press/NASA - This graphic provide by NASA shows the projected paths into the moon by spacecraft Ebb and Flow. The twin craft on Monday, Dec. 17, 2012, is expected to slam into a lunar mountain near
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — A pair of NASA spacecraft tumbled out of orbit around the moon and crashed back-to-back into the surface on Monday, ending a mission that peered into the lunar interior.
Engineers commanded the twin spacecraft, Ebb and Flow, to fire their engines and burn their remaining fuel. Ebb plunged first, slamming into a mountain near the moon's north pole. Its twin, Flow, followed about a half minute later and aimed for the same target.
By design, the final resting place was far away from the Apollo landing sites and other historical spots on the moon.
After the double impacts, mission chief scientist Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said the spot has been named after team member Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, who died earlier this year.
"It's really cool to know that when you look up now at the moon there's this little corner of the moon that's named after Sally," said Ride's sister, Rev. Bear Ride, adding that she hoped schoolchildren will be inspired.
Since the crash site was in darkness, the final act was not visible from Earth. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter circling the moon will pass over the mountain and attempt to photograph the skid marks left by the washing machine sized-spacecraft as they hit the surface at 3,800 mph.
After rocketing off the launch pad in September 2011, Ebb and Flow took a roundabout journey to the moon, arriving over the New Year's holiday on a gravity-mapping mission.
More than 100 missions have been flung to Earth's nearest neighbor since the dawn of the Space Age including NASA's six Apollo moon landings that put 12 astronauts on the surface.
The demise of Ebb and Flow comes on the same month as the 40th launch anniversary of Apollo 17, the last manned mission to the moon.
Ebb and Flow focused exclusively on measuring the moon's lumpy gravity field in a bid to learn more about its interior and early history. After flying in formation for months, they produced the most detailed gravity maps of any body in the solar system.
Secrets long held by the moon are spilling out. Ebb and Flow discovered that the lunar crust is much thinner than scientists had imagined. And it was severely battered by asteroids and comets in the early years of the solar system — more than previously realized.
Data so far also appeared to quash the theory that Earth once had two moons that collided and melded into the one we see today.
Besides a scientific return, the mission allowed students to take their own pictures of craters and other lunar features as part of collaboration with a science education company founded by Ride, who died in July of pancreatic cancer at age 61.
Scientists expect to sift through data from the $487 million mission for years.
Obtaining precise gravity calculations required the twins to circle low over the moon, which consumes a lot of fuel. During the primary mission, they flew about 35 miles above the lunar surface. After getting bonus data-collecting time, they lowered their altitude to 14 miles above the surface.
With their fuel tanks almost on empty, NASA devised a controlled crash to avoid contacting any of the treasured sites on the moon. Mission control at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory applauded when controllers lost signal from the spacecraft.
The last time the space agency intentionally fired manmade objects at the moon was in 2009, but it was for the sake of science. The crash was a public relations dud — spectators barely saw a faint flash — but the experiment proved that the moon contained water.
| Associated Press
Twin NASA spacecraft deliberately crash into moon
Tuesday, December 04, 2012
Voyager 1 probe leaving solar system reaches "magnetic highway" exit
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - NASA's long-lived Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is heading out of the solar system, has reached a "magnetic highway" leading to interstellar space, scientists said on Monday.
Voyager 1 will be the first manmade object to leave the solar system.
Scientists believe Voyager 1 is in an area where the magnetic field lines from the sun are connecting with magnetic field lines from interstellar space. The phenomenon is causing highly energetic particles from distant supernova explosions and other cosmic events to zoom inside the solar system, while less-energetic solar particles exit.
"It's like a highway, letting particles in and out," lead Voyager scientist Ed Stone told reporters at an American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.
Scientists don't know how long it will take for the probe to cross the so-called "magnetic highway," but they believe it is the last layer of a complex boundary between the region of space under the sun's influence and interstellar space.
"Our best guess is it's likely just a few months to a couple years away," Stone said.
Voyager 1 hit the outer sphere of the solar system, a region called the heliosphere, in 2004 and passed into the heliosheath, where the supersonic stream of particles from the sun - the so-called "solar wind" - slowed down and became turbulent.
That phase of the journey lasted for 5.5 years. Then the solar wind stopped moving and the magnetic field strengthened.
Based on an instrument that measures charged particles, Voyager entered the magnetic highway on July 28, 2012. The region was in flux for about a month and stabilized on August 25.
Each time Voyager re-entered the highway, the magnetic field strengthened, but its direction remained unchanged. Scientists believe the direction of the magnetic field lines will shift when the probe finally enters interstellar space.
Other clues that Voyager has reached interstellar space could be the detection of low-energy cosmic rays and a dramatic tapering of the number of solar particles, Stone said.
Voyager 1 and a sister spacecraft, Voyager 2, were launched 16 days apart in 1977 for the first flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Voyager 2, traveling on a different path out of the solar system, has experienced similar, though more gradual changes in its environment than Voyager 1. Scientists do not believe Voyager 2, which is about 9 billion miles (14.5 billion km) from Earth, has reached the magnetic highway.
(Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
By Irene Klotz | Reuters
Voyager 1 probe leaving solar system reaches "magnetic highway" exit
Thursday, November 22, 2012
China To Build Tallest Skyscraper In 90 Days
A company in China is preparing to build the world's tallest skyscraper in just 90 days.
From the foundations upwards, the whole construction will be erected within three months at a rate of five floors a day.
Work will start at the end of this month and it should all be finished by the end of February.
It is a challenge only China could attempt to take on and it will be built in a city most people will have never heard of - Changsha in Hunan Province.
The building will be called Sky City and its statistics are quite remarkable. It will be 838 metres high, with 220 floors and a construction area of one million square metres.
To achieve that, 200,000 tons of steel will be used.
There will be space for 31,000 people inside, who will be able to move up and down with the help of 104 high speed lifts.
Some 83% of the building will be for residential use, with room for 17,400 people.
It will also contain a hotel with a capacity for 1,000.
There will be schools educating up to 4,600 children and a hospital which will treat 1,400 patients.
Only 3% of the building will be for office use. Any remaining space will be shops and restaurants.
The building will be just a few metres taller than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai but will be constructed at a fraction of the cost.
The company behind it, Broad Sustainable Building (BSB), specialises in prefabricated modular technology which allows them to cut costs significantly.
The Burj in Dubai cost £9,500 per square metre, whereas Sky City will cost just £950 per square metre.
Some of the same team who built the Burj will work on this new project.
It is not the first seemingly impossible, fast construction project by the company. In January, they built a 30-story hotel in just 15 days and it is still standing.
Any concerns that the speed of construction will seriously jeopardise the safety of Sky City have been refuted by the company.
BSB claim that the building will be state-of-the-art in every respect. It will be resistant to fire for up to 15 minutes and will, they claim, even be able to withstand magnitude nine earthquakes.
By Mark Stone, China Correspondent | Sky News
China To Build Tallest Skyscraper In 90 Days
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
First map produced of universe 11 billion years ago
Reuters/Reuters - An illustration showing how SDSS-III was able to measure the distant universe. Light rays from distant quasars (dots at left) are partially absorbed as they pass through clouds of intergalactic
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Enlarge PhotoA graph showing how the universe’s …
LONDON (Reuters) - An international team of astronomers has produced the first map of the universe as it was 11 billion years ago, filling a gap between the Big Bang and the rapid expansion that followed.
The study, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, shows the universe went through a phase roughly three billion years after the Big Bang when expansion actually started to slow, before the force of so-called 'dark energy' kicked in and sent galaxies accelerating away from each other.
Much is known about the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang from studies of its afterglow in the cosmic background radiation, and its accelerating expansion over several billion years can be seen with a look at the way distant galaxies are moving. "Only now are we finally seeing its adolescence... just before it underwent a growth spurt," said Mat Pieri at the University of Portsmouth in Britain, one of the authors of the study.
Little is known about dark energy, and its counterpart dark matter, but astronomers argue the force must exist to account for the speed at which the universe is expanding. Together, dark energy and dark matter are believed to make up about 96 percent of the universe.
The new study supports the theory that dark energy was somehow created as the universe expanded, by detailing a period when gravity was winning the tussle and slowing the expansion.
"If we think of the universe as a roller coaster, then today we are rushing downhill, gaining speed as we go," said Pieri. "Our new measurement tells us about the time when the universe was climbing the hill - still being slowed by gravity."
The map, the work of 63 scientists from nine countries, was compiled using a novel technique for studying the intense light from 50,000 distant quasars as it passes through clouds of hydrogen in space on its way to Earth.
They produce a picture of the ancient universe in same way thousands of flashlight beams would light up a bank of fog.
"The quasars are back-lights," Pieri told Reuters, and the way the gas in front of them absorbs some of the light allows astronomers to get a detailed picture of these distant clouds of gas known as the intergalactic medium.
The study is the first fruit from a five-year project started in 2009. The team, from the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey, expect to expand the survey with light from about 160,000 quasars by the end of the project.
"We're essentially measuring the shadows cast by gas along a series of lines, each billions of light-years long," said Will Percival, a cosmology professor the University of Portsmouth.
"The tricky part is combining all those one-dimensional maps. The problem is like trying to recognize an object from a picture that's been painted on the quills of a porcupine," he said.
(Editing by Michael Roddy)
By Chris Wickham | Reuters
First map produced of universe 11 billion years ago
Monday, November 12, 2012
Good Night, Exoplanet: Baby Name Book to Raise Science Funds
When new planets are discovered beyond the solar system, they often get boring designations such as HD 85512b or Gliese 667Cc. A startup hoping to liven up these names has launched a project to create a Baby Planet Name Book full of more colorful suggestions.
But Uwingu hopes astronomers might use the names from the project to refer to the new planets they keep finding, at least informally. The current tally of confirmed planets is almost 800 and growing, so that's a lot of worlds that need good names.
"This is a whole new way for the people of Earth, of every age, of every nation, of every walk of life to creatively connect to space!" said Uwingu cofounder Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute. "You can nominate planet names for your favorite town, state, or country, your favorite sports team, music artist, or hero, your favorite author or book, your school, your company, for your loved ones and friends, or even for yourself. And tell your friends about the names you nominate, so they can help vote them to the top! It's fun, it’s social, and it's for a great cause." [Planetary Science Takes a Hit in 2013 (Infographic)]
Uwingu will use the money raised from the project to support research efforts like SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)'s Allen Telescope Array in California, as well as space launches and science outreach. The company has also released a suite of planet-related educational materials for teachers to go along with the new project.
By SPACE.com Staff | SPACE.com
Good Night, Exoplanet: Baby Name Book to Raise Science Funds
The planet name project is the first official product from Uwingu, a new company that aims to raise money for space research, exploration and education.
Now, for 99 cents apiece, you can nominate any name you like to join the new planet name registry, and you can also vote for your favorites among the current list.
"The many, many planets discovered across the galaxy in past 20 years are a tribute to our natural human desire to explore beyond the horizon," planet-hunting astronomer Geoff Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley said in a statement. "Now people all over the world can participate in these discoveries in a new way, giving identities and even personality to billions of planets in our galaxy for the first time."
To be clear, Uwingu officials say the names won't be official, and won't be attached to particular planets — yet. The only body authorized to officially name celestial objects is the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which hasn't so far expressed an interest in changing the status quo of planet naming.
But Uwingu hopes astronomers might use the names from the project to refer to the new planets they keep finding, at least informally. The current tally of confirmed planets is almost 800 and growing, so that's a lot of worlds that need good names.
"This is a whole new way for the people of Earth, of every age, of every nation, of every walk of life to creatively connect to space!" said Uwingu cofounder Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute. "You can nominate planet names for your favorite town, state, or country, your favorite sports team, music artist, or hero, your favorite author or book, your school, your company, for your loved ones and friends, or even for yourself. And tell your friends about the names you nominate, so they can help vote them to the top! It's fun, it’s social, and it's for a great cause." [Planetary Science Takes a Hit in 2013 (Infographic)]
Uwingu will use the money raised from the project to support research efforts like SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)'s Allen Telescope Array in California, as well as space launches and science outreach. The company has also released a suite of planet-related educational materials for teachers to go along with the new project.
"At Uwingu, we think that it’s important that kids learn, as well as play," said Uwingu education officer Emily CoBabe. "So we want to make Uwingu a place where teachers can stop by to get the best and most up-to-date space education materials."
- The Top 5 Potentially Habitable Alien Planets
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- Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets
By SPACE.com Staff | SPACE.com
Good Night, Exoplanet: Baby Name Book to Raise Science Funds
Thursday, November 08, 2012
'Super-Earth' Alien Planet May Be Habitable for Life
Astronomers have detected an alien planet that may be capable of supporting life as we know it — and it's just a stone's throw from Earth in the cosmic scheme of things.
Finding new signals in the data
The star HD 40307 is slightly smaller and less luminous than our own sun. Astronomers had previously detected three super-Earths — planets a bit more massive than our own — around the star, all of them in orbits too close-in to support liquid water.
In the new study, the research team re-analyzed observations of the HD 40307 system made by an instrument called the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS.
HARPS is part of the European Southern Observatory's 11.8-foot (3.6 meters) telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The instrument allows astronomers to pick up the tiny gravitational wobbles an orbiting planet induces in its parent star.
The researchers' new analysis techniques enabled them to spot three more super-Earths around the star, including HD 40307g, which is thought to be at least seven times as massive as our home planet.
"If I had to guess, I would say 50-50," Tuomi told SPACE.com via email. "But the truth at the moment is that we simply do not know whether the planet is a large Earth or a small, warm Neptune without a solid surface."
A jam-packed extrasolar system
HD 40307g is the outermost of the system's six planets, orbiting at an average distance of 56 million miles (90 million kilometers) from the star. (For comparison, Earth zips around the sun from about 93 million miles, or 150 million km, away.)
The other two newfound exoplanets are probably too hot to support life as we know it, researchers said. But HD 40307g — which officially remains a "planet candidate" pending confirmation by follow-up studies — sits comfortably in the middle of the star's habitable zone.
Further, HD 40307g's orbit is distant enough that the planet likely isn't tidally locked to the star like the moon is to Earth, researchers said. Rather, HD 40307g probably rotates freely just like our planet does, showing each side of itself to the star in due course.
The lack of tidal locking "increases its chances of actually having Earth-like conditions," Tuomi said.
The new study has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
A candidate for direct observation
Super-Earths have been spotted in other stars' habitable zones before. For example, a team using NASA's prolific Kepler Space Telescope announced the discovery of the potentially habitable world Kepler-22b in December 2011.
Kepler-22b lies 600 light-years away, which is not terribly far considering that our Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light-years wide. But HD 40307g is just 42 light-years from us — close enough that future instruments may be able to image it directly, scientists say.
"Discoveries like this are really exciting, and such systems will be natural targets for the next generation of large telescopes, both on the ground and in space," David Pinfield of the University of Hertfordshire, who was not involved in the new study, said in a statement.
Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.
By Mike Wall | SPACE.com
'Super-Earth' Alien Planet May Be Habitable for Life
The newfound exoplanet, a so-called "super-Earth" called HD 40307g, is located inside its host star's habitable zone, a just-right range of distances where liquid water may exist on a world's surface. And the planet lies a mere 42 light-years away from Earth, meaning that future telescopes might be able to image it directly, researchers said.
"The longer orbit of the new planet means that its climate and atmosphere may be just right to support life," study co-author Hugh Jones, of the University of Hertfordshire in England, said in a statement. "Just as Goldilocks liked her porridge to be neither too hot nor too cold but just right, this planet or indeed any moons that it has lie in an orbit comparable to Earth, increasing the probability of it being habitable."
HD 40307g is one of three newly discovered worlds around the parent star, which was already known to host three planets. The finds thus boost the star's total planetary population to six. [Video: Super Earth May Have Liquid Water]
Finding new signals in the data
The star HD 40307 is slightly smaller and less luminous than our own sun. Astronomers had previously detected three super-Earths — planets a bit more massive than our own — around the star, all of them in orbits too close-in to support liquid water.
In the new study, the research team re-analyzed observations of the HD 40307 system made by an instrument called the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS.
HARPS is part of the European Southern Observatory's 11.8-foot (3.6 meters) telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The instrument allows astronomers to pick up the tiny gravitational wobbles an orbiting planet induces in its parent star.
The researchers' new analysis techniques enabled them to spot three more super-Earths around the star, including HD 40307g, which is thought to be at least seven times as massive as our home planet.
HD 40307g may or may not be a rocky planet like Earth, said study lead author Mikko Tuomi, also of the University of Hertfordshire.
"If I had to guess, I would say 50-50," Tuomi told SPACE.com via email. "But the truth at the moment is that we simply do not know whether the planet is a large Earth or a small, warm Neptune without a solid surface."
A jam-packed extrasolar system
HD 40307g is the outermost of the system's six planets, orbiting at an average distance of 56 million miles (90 million kilometers) from the star. (For comparison, Earth zips around the sun from about 93 million miles, or 150 million km, away.)
The other two newfound exoplanets are probably too hot to support life as we know it, researchers said. But HD 40307g — which officially remains a "planet candidate" pending confirmation by follow-up studies — sits comfortably in the middle of the star's habitable zone.
Further, HD 40307g's orbit is distant enough that the planet likely isn't tidally locked to the star like the moon is to Earth, researchers said. Rather, HD 40307g probably rotates freely just like our planet does, showing each side of itself to the star in due course.
The lack of tidal locking "increases its chances of actually having Earth-like conditions," Tuomi said.
The new study has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
A candidate for direct observation
Super-Earths have been spotted in other stars' habitable zones before. For example, a team using NASA's prolific Kepler Space Telescope announced the discovery of the potentially habitable world Kepler-22b in December 2011.
Kepler-22b lies 600 light-years away, which is not terribly far considering that our Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light-years wide. But HD 40307g is just 42 light-years from us — close enough that future instruments may be able to image it directly, scientists say.
"Discoveries like this are really exciting, and such systems will be natural targets for the next generation of large telescopes, both on the ground and in space," David Pinfield of the University of Hertfordshire, who was not involved in the new study, said in a statement.
Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.
- Super-Earth Planet: Potentially Habitable Alien World Explained (Infographic)
- The Top 5 Potentially Habitable Alien Planets
- Planets Large and Small Populate Our Galaxy (Infographic)
By Mike Wall | SPACE.com
'Super-Earth' Alien Planet May Be Habitable for Life
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Monster galaxy may have been stirred up by black-hole mischief
The giant elliptical galaxy in the centre of this image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is the most massive and brightest member of the galaxy cluster Abell 2261. Spanning a little over one million light-years, the galaxy is about 20 times the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. The bloated galaxy is a member of an unusual class of galaxies with a diffuse core filled with a fog of starlight. Normally, astronomers would expect to see a concentrated peak of light around a central black hole. The Hubble observations revealed that the galaxy's puffy core, measuring about 10 000 light-Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3 to measure the amount of starlight across the galaxy, catalogued as 2MASX J17222717+3207571 but more commonly called A2261-BCG (short for Abell 2261 brightest cluster galaxy). Abell 2261 is located three billion light-years away. The observations were taken between March and May 2011. The Abell 2261 cluster is part of a multi-wavelength survey called the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH). Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Postman (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA), T. Lauer (National Optical Astronomy Observatory, USA), and the CLASH team.years, is the largest yet seen. The observations present a mystery, and studies of this galaxy may provide insight into how black hole behavior may shape the cores of galaxies. Astronomers used Hubble's Advanced .
Asgalaxy, with a core bigger than any seen before. There are two intriguing explanations for the puffed up core, both related to the action of one or more black holes, and the researchers have not yet been able to determine which is correct.tronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have obtained a remarkable new view of a whopper of an elliptical
Spanning a little over one million light-years, the galaxy is about ten times the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy. The bloated galaxy is a member of an unusual class of galaxies with an unusually diffuse core filled without any a concentrated peak of light around a central black hole. Viewing the core is like seeing a city with no centre, just houses sprinkled across a vast landscape.
An international team of astronomers used Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3 to measure the amount of starlight across the galaxy, catalogued as 2MASX J17222717+3207571 but more commonly called A2261-BCG (short for Abell 2261 Brightest Cluster Galaxy). Located three billion light-years away, the galaxy is the most massive and brightest galaxy in the Abell 2261 cluster.
The Hubble observations revealed that the galaxy's puffy core, measuring about 10 000 light-years, is the largest yet seen. A galaxy's core size is typically correlated with the dimensions of its host galaxy, but in this case, the central region is much larger than astronomers would expect for the galaxy's size. The bloated core is more than three times larger than the centre of other very luminous galaxies.
Astronomers have proposed two possibilities for the puffy core. One scenario is that a pair of merging black holes gravitationally stirred up and scattered the stars. Another idea is that the merging black holes were ejected from the core. Left without an anchor, the stars began spreading out even more, creating the puffy appearance of the core.
Previous Hubble observations have revealed that supermassive black holes, with masses millions or billions times more than the Sun, reside at the centres of nearly all galaxies and may play a role in shaping those central regions. google_protectAndRun("render_ads.js::google_render_ad", google_handleError, google_render_ad);Ads by Google
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Expecting to find a black hole in every galaxy is sort of like expecting to find a pit inside a peach," explains astronomer Tod Lauer of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, USA, a co-author of the Hubble study. "With this Hubble observation, we cut into the biggest peach and we can't find the pit. We don't know for sure that the black hole is not there, but Hubble shows that there's no concentration of stars in the core."
Team leader Marc Postman of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA, said the galaxy stood out in the Hubble image. "When I first saw the image of this galaxy, I knew right away that it was unusual," Postman explained. "The core was very diffuse and very large. The challenge was then to make sense of all the data, given what we knew from previous Hubble observations, and come up with a plausible explanation for the intriguing nature of this particular galaxy."
The paper describing the results appeared in the 10 September issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
The astronomers expected to see a slight cusp of light in the galaxy's centre, marking the location of the black hole and attendant stars. Instead, the starlight's intensity remained fairly even across the galaxy.
One possibility for the puffy core may be due to two central black holes orbiting each other. These black holes collectively could have been as massive as several billion suns. One of the black holes would be native to the galaxy, while the second could have been added from a smaller galaxy that was gobbled up by the massive elliptical.
In this scenario, stars circling in the giant galaxy's centre came close to the twin black holes. The stars were then given a gravitational boot out of the core. Each gravitational slingshot robbed the black holes of momentum, moving the pair ever closer together, until finally they merged, forming one supermassive black hole that still resides in the galaxy's centre.
Another related possibility is that the black hole merger created gravity waves, which are ripples in the fabric of space. According to the theory of general relativity, a pair of merging black holes produces ripples of gravity that radiate away. If the black holes are of unequal mass, then some of the energy may radiate more strongly in one direction, providing the equivalent of a rocket thrust. The imbalance of forces would have ejected the merged black hole from the centre at speeds of millions of kilometres per hour, resulting in the rarity of a galaxy without a central black hole. "The black hole is the anchor for the stars," Lauer explains. "If you take it out, all of a sudden you have a lot less mass. The stars aren't held together very well and they move outwards, enlarging the core even more." The team admits that the ejected black-hole scenario may sound far-fetched, "but that's what makes observing the Universe so intriguing—sometimes you find the unexpected," Postman says.
Lauer adds: "This is a system that's interesting enough that it pushes against a lot of questions. We have thought an awful lot about what black holes do. But we haven't been able to test our theories. This is an interesting place where a lot of the ideas we've had can come together and can be tested, fairly exotic ideas about how black holes may interact with each other dynamically and how they would affect the surrounding stellar population."
The team is now conducting follow-up observations with the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico. The astronomers expect material falling onto a black hole to emit radio waves, among other types of radiation. They will compare the VLA data with the Hubble images to more precisely pin down the location of the black hole, if it indeed exists.
The Abell 2261 cluster is part of a multi-wavelength survey, led by Postman, called the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH). The survey probes the distribution of dark matter in 25 massive galaxy clusters. Journal reference: Astrophysical Journal Provided by ESA/Hubble Information Centre
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-monster-galaxy-black-hole-mischief.html#jCp
Monster galaxy may have been stirred up by black-hole mischief
Asgalaxy, with a core bigger than any seen before. There are two intriguing explanations for the puffed up core, both related to the action of one or more black holes, and the researchers have not yet been able to determine which is correct.tronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have obtained a remarkable new view of a whopper of an elliptical
Spanning a little over one million light-years, the galaxy is about ten times the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy. The bloated galaxy is a member of an unusual class of galaxies with an unusually diffuse core filled without any a concentrated peak of light around a central black hole. Viewing the core is like seeing a city with no centre, just houses sprinkled across a vast landscape.
An international team of astronomers used Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3 to measure the amount of starlight across the galaxy, catalogued as 2MASX J17222717+3207571 but more commonly called A2261-BCG (short for Abell 2261 Brightest Cluster Galaxy). Located three billion light-years away, the galaxy is the most massive and brightest galaxy in the Abell 2261 cluster.
The Hubble observations revealed that the galaxy's puffy core, measuring about 10 000 light-years, is the largest yet seen. A galaxy's core size is typically correlated with the dimensions of its host galaxy, but in this case, the central region is much larger than astronomers would expect for the galaxy's size. The bloated core is more than three times larger than the centre of other very luminous galaxies.
Astronomers have proposed two possibilities for the puffy core. One scenario is that a pair of merging black holes gravitationally stirred up and scattered the stars. Another idea is that the merging black holes were ejected from the core. Left without an anchor, the stars began spreading out even more, creating the puffy appearance of the core.
Previous Hubble observations have revealed that supermassive black holes, with masses millions or billions times more than the Sun, reside at the centres of nearly all galaxies and may play a role in shaping those central regions. google_protectAndRun("render_ads.js::google_render_ad", google_handleError, google_render_ad);Ads by Google
Air Conditioning Repair - Get Better Air Flow with Repair Services from Timothy Off. - www.timothyoffheating.com "
Expecting to find a black hole in every galaxy is sort of like expecting to find a pit inside a peach," explains astronomer Tod Lauer of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, USA, a co-author of the Hubble study. "With this Hubble observation, we cut into the biggest peach and we can't find the pit. We don't know for sure that the black hole is not there, but Hubble shows that there's no concentration of stars in the core."
Team leader Marc Postman of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA, said the galaxy stood out in the Hubble image. "When I first saw the image of this galaxy, I knew right away that it was unusual," Postman explained. "The core was very diffuse and very large. The challenge was then to make sense of all the data, given what we knew from previous Hubble observations, and come up with a plausible explanation for the intriguing nature of this particular galaxy."
The paper describing the results appeared in the 10 September issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
The astronomers expected to see a slight cusp of light in the galaxy's centre, marking the location of the black hole and attendant stars. Instead, the starlight's intensity remained fairly even across the galaxy.
One possibility for the puffy core may be due to two central black holes orbiting each other. These black holes collectively could have been as massive as several billion suns. One of the black holes would be native to the galaxy, while the second could have been added from a smaller galaxy that was gobbled up by the massive elliptical.
In this scenario, stars circling in the giant galaxy's centre came close to the twin black holes. The stars were then given a gravitational boot out of the core. Each gravitational slingshot robbed the black holes of momentum, moving the pair ever closer together, until finally they merged, forming one supermassive black hole that still resides in the galaxy's centre.
Another related possibility is that the black hole merger created gravity waves, which are ripples in the fabric of space. According to the theory of general relativity, a pair of merging black holes produces ripples of gravity that radiate away. If the black holes are of unequal mass, then some of the energy may radiate more strongly in one direction, providing the equivalent of a rocket thrust. The imbalance of forces would have ejected the merged black hole from the centre at speeds of millions of kilometres per hour, resulting in the rarity of a galaxy without a central black hole. "The black hole is the anchor for the stars," Lauer explains. "If you take it out, all of a sudden you have a lot less mass. The stars aren't held together very well and they move outwards, enlarging the core even more." The team admits that the ejected black-hole scenario may sound far-fetched, "but that's what makes observing the Universe so intriguing—sometimes you find the unexpected," Postman says.
Lauer adds: "This is a system that's interesting enough that it pushes against a lot of questions. We have thought an awful lot about what black holes do. But we haven't been able to test our theories. This is an interesting place where a lot of the ideas we've had can come together and can be tested, fairly exotic ideas about how black holes may interact with each other dynamically and how they would affect the surrounding stellar population."
The team is now conducting follow-up observations with the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico. The astronomers expect material falling onto a black hole to emit radio waves, among other types of radiation. They will compare the VLA data with the Hubble images to more precisely pin down the location of the black hole, if it indeed exists.
The Abell 2261 cluster is part of a multi-wavelength survey, led by Postman, called the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH). The survey probes the distribution of dark matter in 25 massive galaxy clusters. Journal reference: Astrophysical Journal Provided by ESA/Hubble Information Centre
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-monster-galaxy-black-hole-mischief.html#jCp
Monster galaxy may have been stirred up by black-hole mischief
Monster Galaxy's Core Is Biggest Ever Seen
A faraway galaxy's core is the largest ever seen, and it may have been puffed up by the merger of two black holes, a new study reports.
In the other, the black-hole merger created gravity waves, which are ripples in the fabric of space-time. These waves radiated most strongly in one direction, booting the merged black hole from the galaxy.
"The black hole is the anchor for the stars,"Lauer said. "If you take it out, all of a sudden you have a lot less mass. The stars aren't held together very well and they move outwards, enlarging the core even more."
By SPACE.com Staff
Monster Galaxy's Core Is Biggest Ever Seen
The core of the elliptical galaxy A2261-BCG is about 10,000 light-years across, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope discovered. That's unexpectedly huge, even for a galaxy 10 times wider than our own Milky Way. The core is also strangely diffuse, without a concentrated peak of light around an obvious central black hole.
That last detail is a bit of a surprise, since supermassive black holes are thought to lurk at the core of most, if not all, galaxies.
"Expecting to find a black hole in every galaxy is sort of like expecting to find a pit inside a peach,"study co-author Tod Lauer, of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Ariz., said in a statement. "With this Hubble observation, we cut into the biggest peach and we can't find the pit. We don't know for sure that the black hole is not there, but Hubble shows that there's no concentration of stars in the core." [Photos: Black Holes of the Universe]
A2261-BCG (short for Abell 2261 Brightest Cluster Galaxy) is 1 million light-years wide and is found 3 billion light-years from Earth. Its strangely bloated core is three times larger than the centers of other extremely luminous galaxies, researchers said.
The astronomers think a black hole merger — involving objects containing several billion times the mass of our sun — may have puffed up the galaxy's core. This could have happened in two different ways, they say.
In one scenario, the merger gravitationally stirred up and scattered the stars. The black holes lost momentum in the process and fell into each other, forming a supermassive black hole that resides at A2261-BCG's heart today.
In the other, the black-hole merger created gravity waves, which are ripples in the fabric of space-time. These waves radiated most strongly in one direction, booting the merged black hole from the galaxy.
"The black hole is the anchor for the stars,"Lauer said. "If you take it out, all of a sudden you have a lot less mass. The stars aren't held together very well and they move outwards, enlarging the core even more."
The ejection theory may sound far-fetched,"but that's what makes observing the universe so intriguing — sometimes you find the unexpected," said study lead author Marc Postman, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
The research team is now actively searching for evidence of A2261-BCG's black hole, if it exists. The astronomers expect that material falling onto a black hole should generate radio waves, so they're probing the galaxy with New Mexico's Very Large Aray radio telescope.
The study was published in the Sept. 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
By SPACE.com Staff
Monster Galaxy's Core Is Biggest Ever Seen
Friday, May 11, 2012
Earliest Evidence of Biblical Cult Discovered
For the first time, archaeologists have uncovered shrines from the time of the early Biblical kings in the Holy Land, providing the earliest evidence of a cult, they say.
The discoveries offer a clue to the timing, since they contain none of the human or animal figurines common at other sites. No bones from pigs showed up here or elsewhere in the city.
"This suggests that the population of Khirbet Qeiyafa observed two Biblical bans — on pork and on graven images — and thus practiced a different cult than that of the Canaanites or the Philistines," Garfinkel said in a press release issued by the university. The discoveries also offer support for the Biblical depiction of King David, he said.
Garfinkel suggests some of the features and styles of the structures appear analogous to those described in the Bible. For instance, one of the shrines, the clay one, is decorated with an elaborate façade that includes two guardian lions, two pillars, folded textile and three birds standing on the roof. The two pillars are suggestive, he said, of Yachin and Boaz described in the Bible as belonging to Solomon's Temple.
The announcement was met with some skepticism from scientists such as Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, who has studied the ruins of the nearby Philistine city of Gath. Maeir told the Times of Israel the new finds don't conclusively prove the site was inhabited by Israelites, and that the images of lions and birds also undercut that no animal or human figures were found.
"There's no question that this is a very important site, but what exactly it was — there is still disagreement about that," Maeir said in the Times of Israel, adding that the finding doesn't add dramatic new evidence to the broader debate over whether the Bible is an historical record of events, largely mythical or a mix between fact and fiction.
You can follow LiveScience senior writer Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.
Earliest Evidence of Biblical Cult Discovered - Yahoo! News
Excavation within the remains of the roughly 3,000-year-old fortified city of Khirbet Qeiyafa, located about 19 miles (30 kilometers) southwest of Jerusalem, have revealed three large rooms used as shrines, along with artifacts, including tools, pottery and objects, such as alters associated with worship.
The three shrines were part of larger building complexes, and the artifacts included five standing stones, two basalt altars, two pottery libation vessels and two portable shrines, one made of pottery, the other of stone. The portable shrines are boxes shaped like temples.
The shrines themselves reflect an architectural style dating back as early as the time of King David (of the biblical David and Goliath story), providing the first physical evidence of a cult in the time of King David, according to an announcement by Yosef Garfinkel, an archaeologist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. [Religious Worship: Top 10 Cults]
The research is presented in the book, "Footsteps of King David in the Valley of Elah" (Yedioth Ahronoth, 2012).
Radiocarbon dating on burnt olive pits found in the ancient city of Khirbet Qeiyafa indicate it existed between 1020 B.C. and 980 B.C., before being violently destroyed.
According to Biblical tradition, the ancient Isrealites' belief in one God and their ban on human and animal figures set them apart from their neighbors. However, it hasn't been clear when these distinct practices arose.
The discoveries offer a clue to the timing, since they contain none of the human or animal figurines common at other sites. No bones from pigs showed up here or elsewhere in the city.
"This suggests that the population of Khirbet Qeiyafa observed two Biblical bans — on pork and on graven images — and thus practiced a different cult than that of the Canaanites or the Philistines," Garfinkel said in a press release issued by the university. The discoveries also offer support for the Biblical depiction of King David, he said.
Garfinkel suggests some of the features and styles of the structures appear analogous to those described in the Bible. For instance, one of the shrines, the clay one, is decorated with an elaborate façade that includes two guardian lions, two pillars, folded textile and three birds standing on the roof. The two pillars are suggestive, he said, of Yachin and Boaz described in the Bible as belonging to Solomon's Temple.
The announcement was met with some skepticism from scientists such as Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, who has studied the ruins of the nearby Philistine city of Gath. Maeir told the Times of Israel the new finds don't conclusively prove the site was inhabited by Israelites, and that the images of lions and birds also undercut that no animal or human figures were found.
"There's no question that this is a very important site, but what exactly it was — there is still disagreement about that," Maeir said in the Times of Israel, adding that the finding doesn't add dramatic new evidence to the broader debate over whether the Bible is an historical record of events, largely mythical or a mix between fact and fiction.
You can follow LiveScience senior writer Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.
- History's Most Overlooked Mysteries
- Album: The Seven Ancient Wonders of the World
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By Wynne Parry, Senior LiveScience Writer
Earliest Evidence of Biblical Cult Discovered - Yahoo! News
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
'Jesus Discovery:' Jerusalem Archeology Reveals Birth Of Christianity
The following is an excerpt by James D. Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici, authors of The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find That Reveals the Birth of Christianity
On the morning of Tuesday, June 29, 2010, outside the Old City of Jerusalem, we made an unprecedented archaeological discovery related to Jesus and early Christianity. This discovery adds significantly to our understanding of Jesus, his earliest followers, and the birth of Christianity. In this book we reveal reliable archaeological evidence that is directly connected to Jesus' first followers, those who knew him personally and to Jesus himself. The discovery provides the earliest archaeological evidence of faith in Jesus' resurrection from the dead, the first witness to a saying of Jesus that predates even the writing of our New Testament gospels, and the earliest example of Christian art, all found in a sealed tomb dated to the 1st century CE.
We refer to this tomb as the Patio tomb, since it is now located beneath an apartment patio, eight feet under the basement of a condominium complex. Such juxtapositions of modernity and antiquity are not unusual in Jerusalem, where construction must often be halted to rescue and excavate tombs from ancient times. The Patio tomb was first uncovered by construction work in 1981 in East Talpiot, a suburb of Jerusalem less than two miles south of the Old City.
Our discoveries also provide precious new evidence for evaluating the Jesus son of Joseph's tomb, discovered a year earlier, which made international headlines in 2007. We refer to this 1980 tomb as the Garden tomb, since it is now situated beneath a garden area in the same condominium complex. These two tombs, both dating to around the time of Jesus, are less than two hundred feet apart. Together with a third tomb nearby that was unfortunately destroyed by the construction blasts, these tombs formed a cluster and most likely belonged to the same clan or extended family. Any interpretation of one tomb has to be made in the light of the other. As a result we believe a compelling argument can be made that the Garden tomb is that of Jesus of Nazareth and his family. We argue in this book that both tombs are most likely located on the rural estate of Joseph of Arimathea, the wealthy member of the Sanhedrin who according to all four New Testament gospels took official charge of Jesus' burial.
Who was Joseph of Arimathea and how did he enter the historical picture? The Jesus Discovery explores the answers to this and a series of related questions. The recent discoveries in the Patio tomb put the controversy about the Jesus family tomb in new light. We now have new archaeological evidence, literally written in stone, that can guide us in properly understanding what Jesus' earliest followers meant by their faith in Jesus' resurrection from the dead, with his earthly remains, and those of his family, peacefully interred just yards away. This might sound like a contradiction, but only because certain theological traditions regarding the meaning of resurrection of the dead have clouded our understanding of what Jesus and his first followers truly believed. When we put together the texts of the gospels with this archaeological evidence, the results are strikingly consistent and stand up to rigorous standards of historical evidence.
Accessing the sealed Patio tomb was a tremendous challenge. The technological challenge alone was daunting. Our only access to this tomb was through a series of eight-inch drill holes in the basement floor of the condominium. We were not even positive these probes would open into the tomb. We literally had only inches to spare. Investigating the tomb required getting agreements from the owners of the building over the tomb; the Israel Antiquities Authority, which controls permission to carry out any archaeological work in Israel; the Jerusalem police, whose task is to keep the peace and avoid incitements to riot; and the Heredim, the ultra-Orthodox authorities whose mission is to protect all Jewish tombs, ancient or modern, from any kind of disturbance. None of these parties had any particular motivation to assist us and for various reasons they disagreed with one another about their own interests. Any one of them could have stopped us at any point along the way, and there were many anxious times when we thought the exploration would never happen. Ultimately we were able to persuade each group to support the excavation. That we succeeded at all is more than a minor miracle. At the same time we had no evidence that our exploration of this tomb, if it were possible, would yield anything of importance. But we both agreed it was a gamble worth taking.
At many points the entire operation seemed likely to collapse. We pushed on, however, not because we knew what was inside the tomb, but because we could not bear the thought of never knowing. Since that time we have begun to put the entire story together and a coherent picture is emerging that offers a new understanding of Jesus and his earliest followers in the first decades of the movement.
Archaeologists who work on the history of ancient Judaism and early Christianity disagree over whether there is any reliable archaeological evidence directly related to Jesus or his early followers. Most are convinced that nothing of this sort has survived, not a single site, inscription, artifact, drawing, or text mentioning Jesus or his followers, or witnessing to the beliefs of the earliest Jewish Christians either in Jerusalem or in Galilee.
Jesus was born, lived, and died in the land of Israel. Most scholars agree he was born around 5 BCE and died around 30 CE. We have abundant archaeological evidence from this period related to Galilee, where he began his preaching and healing campaigns, and Jerusalem, where he was crucified. There is evidence related to Herod Antipas, the high priest Caiaphas, and even Pontius Pilate, who had him crucified, but nothing that would connect us to Jesus himself, or even to his earliest followers -- until now. Our hope is that these exciting new discoveries can become the catalyst for reconsidering other archaeological evidence that might well be related to the first Jewish-Christian believers.
The oldest copies of the New Testament gospels date to the early 4th century CE, well over two hundred years after Jesus' lifetime. There are a few papyri fragments of New Testament writings that scholars have dated to the 2nd century CE, but nothing so far in the 1st century. The earliest Christian art is found in the catacomb tombs in Rome, dating to the late 2nd or early 3rd centuries CE. Our discovery effectively pushes back the date on early Christian archaeological evidence by two hundred years. More significantly, it takes us back into the lifetime of Jesus himself.
This has been the most extraordinary adventure of our careers, and we are pleased to be able to share with readers the surprising and profound story of The Jesus Discovery.
'Jesus Discovery:' Jerusalem Archeology Reveals Birth Of Christianity
On the morning of Tuesday, June 29, 2010, outside the Old City of Jerusalem, we made an unprecedented archaeological discovery related to Jesus and early Christianity. This discovery adds significantly to our understanding of Jesus, his earliest followers, and the birth of Christianity. In this book we reveal reliable archaeological evidence that is directly connected to Jesus' first followers, those who knew him personally and to Jesus himself. The discovery provides the earliest archaeological evidence of faith in Jesus' resurrection from the dead, the first witness to a saying of Jesus that predates even the writing of our New Testament gospels, and the earliest example of Christian art, all found in a sealed tomb dated to the 1st century CE.
We refer to this tomb as the Patio tomb, since it is now located beneath an apartment patio, eight feet under the basement of a condominium complex. Such juxtapositions of modernity and antiquity are not unusual in Jerusalem, where construction must often be halted to rescue and excavate tombs from ancient times. The Patio tomb was first uncovered by construction work in 1981 in East Talpiot, a suburb of Jerusalem less than two miles south of the Old City.
Our discoveries also provide precious new evidence for evaluating the Jesus son of Joseph's tomb, discovered a year earlier, which made international headlines in 2007. We refer to this 1980 tomb as the Garden tomb, since it is now situated beneath a garden area in the same condominium complex. These two tombs, both dating to around the time of Jesus, are less than two hundred feet apart. Together with a third tomb nearby that was unfortunately destroyed by the construction blasts, these tombs formed a cluster and most likely belonged to the same clan or extended family. Any interpretation of one tomb has to be made in the light of the other. As a result we believe a compelling argument can be made that the Garden tomb is that of Jesus of Nazareth and his family. We argue in this book that both tombs are most likely located on the rural estate of Joseph of Arimathea, the wealthy member of the Sanhedrin who according to all four New Testament gospels took official charge of Jesus' burial.
Who was Joseph of Arimathea and how did he enter the historical picture? The Jesus Discovery explores the answers to this and a series of related questions. The recent discoveries in the Patio tomb put the controversy about the Jesus family tomb in new light. We now have new archaeological evidence, literally written in stone, that can guide us in properly understanding what Jesus' earliest followers meant by their faith in Jesus' resurrection from the dead, with his earthly remains, and those of his family, peacefully interred just yards away. This might sound like a contradiction, but only because certain theological traditions regarding the meaning of resurrection of the dead have clouded our understanding of what Jesus and his first followers truly believed. When we put together the texts of the gospels with this archaeological evidence, the results are strikingly consistent and stand up to rigorous standards of historical evidence.
Accessing the sealed Patio tomb was a tremendous challenge. The technological challenge alone was daunting. Our only access to this tomb was through a series of eight-inch drill holes in the basement floor of the condominium. We were not even positive these probes would open into the tomb. We literally had only inches to spare. Investigating the tomb required getting agreements from the owners of the building over the tomb; the Israel Antiquities Authority, which controls permission to carry out any archaeological work in Israel; the Jerusalem police, whose task is to keep the peace and avoid incitements to riot; and the Heredim, the ultra-Orthodox authorities whose mission is to protect all Jewish tombs, ancient or modern, from any kind of disturbance. None of these parties had any particular motivation to assist us and for various reasons they disagreed with one another about their own interests. Any one of them could have stopped us at any point along the way, and there were many anxious times when we thought the exploration would never happen. Ultimately we were able to persuade each group to support the excavation. That we succeeded at all is more than a minor miracle. At the same time we had no evidence that our exploration of this tomb, if it were possible, would yield anything of importance. But we both agreed it was a gamble worth taking.
At many points the entire operation seemed likely to collapse. We pushed on, however, not because we knew what was inside the tomb, but because we could not bear the thought of never knowing. Since that time we have begun to put the entire story together and a coherent picture is emerging that offers a new understanding of Jesus and his earliest followers in the first decades of the movement.
Archaeologists who work on the history of ancient Judaism and early Christianity disagree over whether there is any reliable archaeological evidence directly related to Jesus or his early followers. Most are convinced that nothing of this sort has survived, not a single site, inscription, artifact, drawing, or text mentioning Jesus or his followers, or witnessing to the beliefs of the earliest Jewish Christians either in Jerusalem or in Galilee.
Jesus was born, lived, and died in the land of Israel. Most scholars agree he was born around 5 BCE and died around 30 CE. We have abundant archaeological evidence from this period related to Galilee, where he began his preaching and healing campaigns, and Jerusalem, where he was crucified. There is evidence related to Herod Antipas, the high priest Caiaphas, and even Pontius Pilate, who had him crucified, but nothing that would connect us to Jesus himself, or even to his earliest followers -- until now. Our hope is that these exciting new discoveries can become the catalyst for reconsidering other archaeological evidence that might well be related to the first Jewish-Christian believers.
The oldest copies of the New Testament gospels date to the early 4th century CE, well over two hundred years after Jesus' lifetime. There are a few papyri fragments of New Testament writings that scholars have dated to the 2nd century CE, but nothing so far in the 1st century. The earliest Christian art is found in the catacomb tombs in Rome, dating to the late 2nd or early 3rd centuries CE. Our discovery effectively pushes back the date on early Christian archaeological evidence by two hundred years. More significantly, it takes us back into the lifetime of Jesus himself.
This has been the most extraordinary adventure of our careers, and we are pleased to be able to share with readers the surprising and profound story of The Jesus Discovery.
'Jesus Discovery:' Jerusalem Archeology Reveals Birth Of Christianity
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Egypt: Tomb of a Woman Found in Valley of the Kings, Near Tomb of King Tut
In a rare find, Egyptian and Swiss archaeologists have unearthed a roughly 1,100 year-old tomb of a female singer in the Valley of the Kings, an antiquities official said Sunday.
It is the only tomb of a woman not related to the ancient Egyptian royal families ever found in the Valley of the Kings, said Mansour Boraiq, the top government official for the Antiquities' Ministry in the city of Luxor,
The Valley of the Kings in Luxor is a major tourist attraction. In 1922, archaeologists there unearthed the gold funerary mask of Tutankhamun and other stunning items in the tomb of the king who ruled more than 3,000 years ago.
Boraiq told The Associated Press that the coffin of the female singer is remarkably intact.
He said that when the coffin is opened this week, archaeologists will likely find a mummy and a cartonnage mask molded to her face and made from layers of linen and plaster.
The singer's name, Nehmes Bastet, means she was believed to be protected by the feline deity Bastet.
The tomb was found by accident, according to Elena Pauline-Grothe, field director for excavation at the Valley of the Kings with Switzerland's University of Basel.
"We were not looking for new tombs. It was close to another tomb that was discovered 100 years ago," Pauline-Grothe said.
Pauline-Grothe said the tomb was not originally built for the female singer, but was reused for her 400 years after the original one, based on artifacts found inside. Archaeologists do not know whom the tomb was originally intended for.
The coffin of the singer belonged to the daughter of a high priest during the 22nd Dynasty.
Archaeologists concluded from artifacts that she sang in Karnak Temple, one of the most famous and largest open-air sites from the Pharaonic era, according to evidence at the site.
At the time of her death, Egypt was ruled by Libyan kings, but the high priests who ruled Thebes, which is now within the city of Luxor, were independent. Their authority enabled them to use the royal cemetery for family members, according to Boraiq.
The unearthing marks the 64th tomb to be discovered in the Valley of the Kings.
By AYA BATRAWY Associated Press
CAIRO January 15, 2012 (AP)
Egypt: Tomb of a Woman Found in Valley of the Kings, Near Tomb of King Tut - ABC News
It is the only tomb of a woman not related to the ancient Egyptian royal families ever found in the Valley of the Kings, said Mansour Boraiq, the top government official for the Antiquities' Ministry in the city of Luxor,
The Valley of the Kings in Luxor is a major tourist attraction. In 1922, archaeologists there unearthed the gold funerary mask of Tutankhamun and other stunning items in the tomb of the king who ruled more than 3,000 years ago.
Boraiq told The Associated Press that the coffin of the female singer is remarkably intact.
He said that when the coffin is opened this week, archaeologists will likely find a mummy and a cartonnage mask molded to her face and made from layers of linen and plaster.
The singer's name, Nehmes Bastet, means she was believed to be protected by the feline deity Bastet.
The tomb was found by accident, according to Elena Pauline-Grothe, field director for excavation at the Valley of the Kings with Switzerland's University of Basel.
"We were not looking for new tombs. It was close to another tomb that was discovered 100 years ago," Pauline-Grothe said.
Pauline-Grothe said the tomb was not originally built for the female singer, but was reused for her 400 years after the original one, based on artifacts found inside. Archaeologists do not know whom the tomb was originally intended for.
The coffin of the singer belonged to the daughter of a high priest during the 22nd Dynasty.
Archaeologists concluded from artifacts that she sang in Karnak Temple, one of the most famous and largest open-air sites from the Pharaonic era, according to evidence at the site.
At the time of her death, Egypt was ruled by Libyan kings, but the high priests who ruled Thebes, which is now within the city of Luxor, were independent. Their authority enabled them to use the royal cemetery for family members, according to Boraiq.
The unearthing marks the 64th tomb to be discovered in the Valley of the Kings.
By AYA BATRAWY Associated Press
CAIRO January 15, 2012 (AP)
Egypt: Tomb of a Woman Found in Valley of the Kings, Near Tomb of King Tut - ABC News
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