WASHINGTON - When viewed from the rest of the galaxy, the edge of our solar system appears slightly dented as if a giant hand is pushing one edge of it inward, far-traveling NASA probes reveal.
Information from Earth's first space probes to hit the thick edge of the solar system — called the heliosheath where the solar wind slows abruptly — paint a picture that is not the simple circle that astronomers long thought, according to several studies published Thursday in the journal Nature. Surprised astronomers said they will have to change their models for what the solar system looks like.
In 1977, NASA launched two space probes on missions beyond the solar system. Voyager 1 went north and Voyager 2 went south. What startled astronomers is that when the two of them hit the heliosheath they did so at different distances from the sun.
Voyager 2 hit the southern edge of the solar system nearly 1 billion miles closer to the sun than Voyager 1 did to the north. Voyager 2 hit the edge at 7.8 billion miles from the sun.
"We used to assume that it's all symmetric and simple," said Leonard Burlaga, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It's literally like a hand pushing."
That push is from the magnetic field that lies between star systems in the Milky Way. The magnetic field hits the solar system at a different angle on the south than on the north, probably because of interstellar turbulence from star explosions, said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone.
Both spacecraft still have several more years before they completely exit the solar system and continue deeper into the space between stars, said Stone, former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
___
On the Net:
Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Monday, March 31, 2008
Researchers: Asteroid Destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah
A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness's account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that it recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across.
The tablet, found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the royal place at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, is thought to be a 700 B.C. copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky.
He referred to the asteroid as a "white stone bowl approaching" and recorded it as it "vigorously swept along."
Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, scientists have pinpointed his sighting to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123 B.C.
About half the symbols on the tablet have survived and half of those refer to the asteroid. The other symbols record the positions of clouds and constellations. In the past 150 years scientists have made five unsuccessful attempts to translate the tablet.
Mark Hempsell, one of the researchers from Bristol University who cracked the tablet's code, said: "It's a wonderful piece of observation, an absolutely perfect piece of science."
He said the size and route of the asteroid meant that it was likely to have crashed into the Austrian Alps at Köfels. As it traveled close to the ground it would have left a trail of destruction from supersonic shock waves and then slammed into the Earth with a cataclysmic impact.
Debris consisting of up to two-thirds of the asteroid would have been hurled back along its route and a flash reaching temperatures of 400 Centigrade (752 Fahrenheit) would have been created, killing anyone in its path.
About one million sq kilometers (386,000 sq miles) would have been devastated and the impact would have been equivalent to more than 1,000 tons of TNT exploding.
Dr Hempsall said that at least 20 ancient myths record devastation of the type and on the scale of the asteroid's impact, including the Old Testament tale of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the ancient Greek myth of how Phaeton, son of Helios, fell into the River Eridanus after losing control of his father's sun chariot.
The findings of Dr. Hempsall and Alan Bond, of Reaction Engines Ltd., are published in a book, "A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels Impact Event."
The researchers say that the asteroid's impact would explain why at Köfels there is evidence of an ancient landslide 3 miles wide and a quarter of a mile thick.
Tale of devastation
"Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven; and he overthrew those cities and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities ... [Abraham] looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace."
Source: Genesis 19:24-28
By Lewis Smith
Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that it recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across.
The tablet, found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the royal place at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, is thought to be a 700 B.C. copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky.
He referred to the asteroid as a "white stone bowl approaching" and recorded it as it "vigorously swept along."
Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, scientists have pinpointed his sighting to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123 B.C.
About half the symbols on the tablet have survived and half of those refer to the asteroid. The other symbols record the positions of clouds and constellations. In the past 150 years scientists have made five unsuccessful attempts to translate the tablet.
Mark Hempsell, one of the researchers from Bristol University who cracked the tablet's code, said: "It's a wonderful piece of observation, an absolutely perfect piece of science."
He said the size and route of the asteroid meant that it was likely to have crashed into the Austrian Alps at Köfels. As it traveled close to the ground it would have left a trail of destruction from supersonic shock waves and then slammed into the Earth with a cataclysmic impact.
Debris consisting of up to two-thirds of the asteroid would have been hurled back along its route and a flash reaching temperatures of 400 Centigrade (752 Fahrenheit) would have been created, killing anyone in its path.
About one million sq kilometers (386,000 sq miles) would have been devastated and the impact would have been equivalent to more than 1,000 tons of TNT exploding.
Dr Hempsall said that at least 20 ancient myths record devastation of the type and on the scale of the asteroid's impact, including the Old Testament tale of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the ancient Greek myth of how Phaeton, son of Helios, fell into the River Eridanus after losing control of his father's sun chariot.
The findings of Dr. Hempsall and Alan Bond, of Reaction Engines Ltd., are published in a book, "A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels Impact Event."
The researchers say that the asteroid's impact would explain why at Köfels there is evidence of an ancient landslide 3 miles wide and a quarter of a mile thick.
Tale of devastation
"Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven; and he overthrew those cities and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities ... [Abraham] looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace."
Source: Genesis 19:24-28
By Lewis Smith
Friday, March 07, 2008
The Universe Is 13.73 Billion Years Old
"Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer has summarized for his readers the new results released by NASA from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which has been surveying the 3K microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang.
Some of the most interesting results: The age of the universe is now known to unprecedented accuracy: 13.73 billion years old, +/- 120 million. Spacetime is flat to within a 2% error margin.
And ordinary matter and energy account for only 4.62% of the universe's total. Plait's comment on the age result: 'Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.'"
CaptainCarrot writes
Some of the most interesting results: The age of the universe is now known to unprecedented accuracy: 13.73 billion years old, +/- 120 million. Spacetime is flat to within a 2% error margin.
And ordinary matter and energy account for only 4.62% of the universe's total. Plait's comment on the age result: 'Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.'"
CaptainCarrot writes
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Scientists find fossil of enormous bug
LONDON - This was a bug you couldn't swat and definitely couldn't step on. British scientists have stumbled across a fossilized claw, part of an ancient sea scorpion, that is of such large proportion it would make the entire creature the biggest bug ever.
How big? Bigger than you, and at 8 feet long as big as some Smart cars.
The discovery in 390-million-year-old rocks suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were far larger in the past than previously thought, said Simon Braddy, a University of Bristol paleontologist and one of the study's three authors.
"This is an amazing discovery," he said Tuesday.
"We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies. But we never realized until now just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were," he said.
The research found a type of sea scorpion that was almost half a yard longer than previous estimates and the largest one ever to have evolved.
The study, published online Tuesday in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, means that before this sea scorpion became extinct it was much longer than today's average man is tall.
Prof. Jeorg W. Schneider, a paleontologist at Freiberg Mining Academy in southeastern Germany, said the study provides valuable new information about "the last of the giant scorpions."
Schneider, who was not involved in the study, said these scorpions "were dominant for millions of years because they didn't have natural enemies. Eventually they were wiped out by large fish with jaws and teeth."
Braddy's partner paleontologist Markus Poschmann found the claw fossil several years ago in a quarry near Prum, Germany, that probably had once been an ancient estuary or swamp.
"I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realized there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab. After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw," said Poschmann, another author of the study.
"Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out. The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilize it," he said.
Eurypterids, or ancient sea scorpions, are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of today's scorpions and possibly all arachnids, a class of joint-legged, invertebrate animals, including spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks.
Braddy said the fossil was from a Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae, a kind of scorpion that lived only in Germany for about 10 million years, about 400 million years ago.
He said some geologists believe that gigantic sea scorpions evolved due to higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past. Others suspect they evolved in an "arms race" alongside their likely prey, fish that had armor on their outer bodies.
Braddy said the sea scorpions also were cannibals that fought and ate one other, so it helped to be as big as they could be.
"The competition between this scorpion and its prey was probably like a nuclear standoff, an effort to have the biggest weapon," he said. "Hundreds of millions of years ago, these sea scorpions had the upper hand over vertebrates — backboned animals like ourselves."
That competition ended long ago.
But the next time you swat a fly, or squish a spider at home, Braddy said, try to "think about the insects that lived long ago. You wouldn't want to swat one of those."
By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer
How big? Bigger than you, and at 8 feet long as big as some Smart cars.
The discovery in 390-million-year-old rocks suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were far larger in the past than previously thought, said Simon Braddy, a University of Bristol paleontologist and one of the study's three authors.
"This is an amazing discovery," he said Tuesday.
"We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies. But we never realized until now just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were," he said.
The research found a type of sea scorpion that was almost half a yard longer than previous estimates and the largest one ever to have evolved.
The study, published online Tuesday in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, means that before this sea scorpion became extinct it was much longer than today's average man is tall.
Prof. Jeorg W. Schneider, a paleontologist at Freiberg Mining Academy in southeastern Germany, said the study provides valuable new information about "the last of the giant scorpions."
Schneider, who was not involved in the study, said these scorpions "were dominant for millions of years because they didn't have natural enemies. Eventually they were wiped out by large fish with jaws and teeth."
Braddy's partner paleontologist Markus Poschmann found the claw fossil several years ago in a quarry near Prum, Germany, that probably had once been an ancient estuary or swamp.
"I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realized there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab. After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw," said Poschmann, another author of the study.
"Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out. The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilize it," he said.
Eurypterids, or ancient sea scorpions, are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of today's scorpions and possibly all arachnids, a class of joint-legged, invertebrate animals, including spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks.
Braddy said the fossil was from a Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae, a kind of scorpion that lived only in Germany for about 10 million years, about 400 million years ago.
He said some geologists believe that gigantic sea scorpions evolved due to higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past. Others suspect they evolved in an "arms race" alongside their likely prey, fish that had armor on their outer bodies.
Braddy said the sea scorpions also were cannibals that fought and ate one other, so it helped to be as big as they could be.
"The competition between this scorpion and its prey was probably like a nuclear standoff, an effort to have the biggest weapon," he said. "Hundreds of millions of years ago, these sea scorpions had the upper hand over vertebrates — backboned animals like ourselves."
That competition ended long ago.
But the next time you swat a fly, or squish a spider at home, Braddy said, try to "think about the insects that lived long ago. You wouldn't want to swat one of those."
By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer
New Method Equalizes Stem Cell Debate
WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — It has been more than six years since President Bush, in the first major televised address of his presidency, drew a stark moral line against the destruction of human embryos in medical research.
Since then, he has steadfastly maintained that scientists would come up with an alternative method of developing embryonic stem cells, one that did not involve killing embryos.
Critics were skeptical. But now that scientists in Japan and Wisconsin have apparently achieved what Mr. Bush envisioned, the White House is saying, “I told you so.”
Conservative Republican presidential hopefuls like former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts are breathing a sigh of relief. And opponents of embryonic stem cell research are congratulating themselves.
The discovery that skin cells can be reprogrammed to mimic embryonic stem cells is likely to transform the sticky political debate over the science, a debate that has pitted Mr. Bush against two-thirds of the American public including prominent Republicans like Nancy Reagan and has even helped decide some elections.
The findings have put people on both sides of the stem cell divide on nearly equal political footing. Each side can now say it has fruitful research to pursue.
Each side can even lay claim to the same scientists. The author of the new skin cell studies is James A. Thomson, the University of Wisconsin researcher who extracted stem cells from human embryos in the first place.
Perhaps no one outside the world of science is as acutely aware of this as Mr. Bush. The president and his aides have been quietly monitoring the Wisconsin experiments for months, receiving briefings from Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health.
On Tuesday, senior aides to Mr. Bush said he drove the experiments by holding his moral ground.
“This is very much in accord with the president’s vision from the get-go,” said Karl Zinsmeister, a domestic policy adviser to Mr. Bush who kept the president apprised of the work. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that the president’s drawing of lines on cloning and embryo use was a positive factor in making this come to fruition.”
Mr. Bush’s critics say he should not be so quick to take credit. They note that the reprogramming method has some kinks to be worked out and say the research would never have proceeded without the initial embryo experiments. The critics say that far from encouraging research, Mr. Bush has stood in its way.
In 2001, in a compromise aimed at discouraging the destruction of embryos, Mr. Bush told federal researchers that they could work just on those stem cell lines, or colonies, already in existence. He has twice vetoed bills to ease those restrictions.
“I really don’t think anybody ought to take credit in light of the six-year delay we’ve had,” said Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the lead Republican sponsor of the bill that Mr. Bush vetoed in July 2006. “My own view is that science ought to be unfettered and that every possible alternative ought to be explored.”
“You’ve got a life-and-death situation here,” Mr. Specter continued, “and if we can find something which is certifiably equivalent to embryonic stem cells, fine. But we are not there yet.”
Embryonic stem cells are attractive to scientists because they have the potential to grow into any cell or tissue in the body and could, theoretically, be used to treat many ailments. Opponents, including Christian conservatives, say it is immoral to destroy embryos to obtain cells.
Early in the controversy, opponents, including Mr. Bush, often said they supported studies using so-called adult stem cells that involve cells extracted from blood and bone marrow. But those cells have more limited potential than embryonic stem cells, and proponents of embryo experiments said it was like comparing apples to oranges. The reprogrammed skin cells, by contrast, appear to hold the same properties as embryonic stem cells, more an apples-to-apples comparison.
“We now have a situation where, ironically, despite an inability to get political consensus, the science has presented opportunities for a variety of moral views to have an outlet,” Arthur L. Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said. “Proponents can no longer say that there aren’t any real options.”
The debate has even been a factor in some elections like the Missouri Senate race last year. In that contest, Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, unseated Jim Talent, a Republican who opposed the research. The race drew national attention after the actor Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson’s disease and has been a vocal advocate for stem cell studies, made a commercial for Ms. McCaskill.
The new findings could defuse the issue in the 2008 campaign, or at least that is the hope of candidates like Mr. Romney.
“This will bolster the arguments of folks like Governor Romney, who look at alternative types of research that they believe are more promising and don’t have those same ethical dilemmas,” Kevin Madden, Mr. Romney’s press secretary, said. At the same time, scientists may well begin pursuing reprogramming with vigor, if only because it is easier to obtain federal money for it, said Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton who is on the president’s Council on Bioethics and opposes embryo experiments.
“I’m sure in their ideal world, we would be pursuing all methods, and that includes embryo-destructive methods,” Professor George said. “Those who want to continue to fight on this will no doubt continue. But the ranks are going to be reduced.”
That is not to say advocates for embryonic stem cell studies plan to give up. Mr. Specter and other supporters of the bill to lift Mr. Bush’s rules say they intend to continue to try to turn that bill into law, if not in this administration, then in the next one.
“None of this feels like it should be one versus the other,” said Representative Diana DeGette, the Colorado Democrat who is sponsoring the bill in the House. “That’s the politicization of science.”
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: November 21, 2007
Since then, he has steadfastly maintained that scientists would come up with an alternative method of developing embryonic stem cells, one that did not involve killing embryos.
Critics were skeptical. But now that scientists in Japan and Wisconsin have apparently achieved what Mr. Bush envisioned, the White House is saying, “I told you so.”
Conservative Republican presidential hopefuls like former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts are breathing a sigh of relief. And opponents of embryonic stem cell research are congratulating themselves.
The discovery that skin cells can be reprogrammed to mimic embryonic stem cells is likely to transform the sticky political debate over the science, a debate that has pitted Mr. Bush against two-thirds of the American public including prominent Republicans like Nancy Reagan and has even helped decide some elections.
The findings have put people on both sides of the stem cell divide on nearly equal political footing. Each side can now say it has fruitful research to pursue.
Each side can even lay claim to the same scientists. The author of the new skin cell studies is James A. Thomson, the University of Wisconsin researcher who extracted stem cells from human embryos in the first place.
Perhaps no one outside the world of science is as acutely aware of this as Mr. Bush. The president and his aides have been quietly monitoring the Wisconsin experiments for months, receiving briefings from Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health.
On Tuesday, senior aides to Mr. Bush said he drove the experiments by holding his moral ground.
“This is very much in accord with the president’s vision from the get-go,” said Karl Zinsmeister, a domestic policy adviser to Mr. Bush who kept the president apprised of the work. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that the president’s drawing of lines on cloning and embryo use was a positive factor in making this come to fruition.”
Mr. Bush’s critics say he should not be so quick to take credit. They note that the reprogramming method has some kinks to be worked out and say the research would never have proceeded without the initial embryo experiments. The critics say that far from encouraging research, Mr. Bush has stood in its way.
In 2001, in a compromise aimed at discouraging the destruction of embryos, Mr. Bush told federal researchers that they could work just on those stem cell lines, or colonies, already in existence. He has twice vetoed bills to ease those restrictions.
“I really don’t think anybody ought to take credit in light of the six-year delay we’ve had,” said Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the lead Republican sponsor of the bill that Mr. Bush vetoed in July 2006. “My own view is that science ought to be unfettered and that every possible alternative ought to be explored.”
“You’ve got a life-and-death situation here,” Mr. Specter continued, “and if we can find something which is certifiably equivalent to embryonic stem cells, fine. But we are not there yet.”
Embryonic stem cells are attractive to scientists because they have the potential to grow into any cell or tissue in the body and could, theoretically, be used to treat many ailments. Opponents, including Christian conservatives, say it is immoral to destroy embryos to obtain cells.
Early in the controversy, opponents, including Mr. Bush, often said they supported studies using so-called adult stem cells that involve cells extracted from blood and bone marrow. But those cells have more limited potential than embryonic stem cells, and proponents of embryo experiments said it was like comparing apples to oranges. The reprogrammed skin cells, by contrast, appear to hold the same properties as embryonic stem cells, more an apples-to-apples comparison.
“We now have a situation where, ironically, despite an inability to get political consensus, the science has presented opportunities for a variety of moral views to have an outlet,” Arthur L. Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said. “Proponents can no longer say that there aren’t any real options.”
The debate has even been a factor in some elections like the Missouri Senate race last year. In that contest, Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, unseated Jim Talent, a Republican who opposed the research. The race drew national attention after the actor Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson’s disease and has been a vocal advocate for stem cell studies, made a commercial for Ms. McCaskill.
The new findings could defuse the issue in the 2008 campaign, or at least that is the hope of candidates like Mr. Romney.
“This will bolster the arguments of folks like Governor Romney, who look at alternative types of research that they believe are more promising and don’t have those same ethical dilemmas,” Kevin Madden, Mr. Romney’s press secretary, said. At the same time, scientists may well begin pursuing reprogramming with vigor, if only because it is easier to obtain federal money for it, said Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton who is on the president’s Council on Bioethics and opposes embryo experiments.
“I’m sure in their ideal world, we would be pursuing all methods, and that includes embryo-destructive methods,” Professor George said. “Those who want to continue to fight on this will no doubt continue. But the ranks are going to be reduced.”
That is not to say advocates for embryonic stem cell studies plan to give up. Mr. Specter and other supporters of the bill to lift Mr. Bush’s rules say they intend to continue to try to turn that bill into law, if not in this administration, then in the next one.
“None of this feels like it should be one versus the other,” said Representative Diana DeGette, the Colorado Democrat who is sponsoring the bill in the House. “That’s the politicization of science.”
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: November 21, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
The Boy King, Tutankhamun, faces the world after 3,000 years
More than 3,000 years after his death, King Tutankhamun went on display to the public yesterday in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings, a slightly bucktoothed boy who died aged 19.
King Tut’s mummified face – which has been seen only by about 50 people since the British archaeologist Howard Carter opened the tomb exactly 85 years ago – was revealed to the world in a climate-controlled glass display case in an antechamber of his own tomb in the valley near Luxor, where generations of Egyptian pharaohs were buried.
“Everyone is dreaming of what he looks like. The face of Tutankhamun is different from any king in the Cairo museum. With his beautiful buck teeth, the tourists will see a little bit of the smile from the face of the golden boy,” said Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s leading expert on the famous boy King.
Dr Hawass expects a huge influx of tourists to see the mummy, to be displayed in the tomb indefinitely. Only the face can be seen, with the body wrapped in linen. It was badly damaged when Carter tried to pull off the golden mask after discovering the tomb – almost entirely intact with all its treasures – on November 4, 1922.
The discovery set off a craze for King Tut and Ancient Egypt that has endured to this day. The circumstances of the pharaoh’s death at such an early age remain unclear. A bone chip found inside the skull led some archaeologists to speculate that he was murdered, ten years after ascending to the throne.
Egypt’s 18th dynasty was enduring “ turbulent times after Tutankhamun’s predecessor Akhenaten – husband of the famously beautiful Nefertiti – abandoned the country’s pantheon of gods and chose to worship just one, the sun-disk Aten.
After Akhenaten’s death, his vizier, Ay, restored the worship of the gods; and some have speculated that Tutankhamun may have been murdered, in 1323BC, for trying to return Egypt to monotheism.
The murder theory has largely been dismissed, however, since scientists carried out a CT scan two years ago which revealed no trauma to the skull. Experts said that the bone chip could have been the result of the embalming process, when morticians removed all the internal organs and placed them in jars in preparation for the afterlife.
Dr Hawass now believes that the King may have died after he broke his leg and the wound became infected. Until then, the young King had been in good health, with the tests showing that he was a well-fed youth, slightly built and standing at 5ft 6in (1.67m). A recent reconstruction of his face shows a striking looking young man with almond eyes, an aquiline nose and full lips, with his head shaved. He had the pronounced overbite typical of his Royal Family line, and his lower teeth were slightly misaligned.
When the mummy was unwrapped in 1925 it was found to have a wound on the left cheek in the same position as the insect bite that had supposedly killed the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, sponsor of Carter’s excavations, which fuelled speculation that the discovery had unleashed a curse. “Death Shall Come on Swift Wings To Him Who Disturbs the Peace of the King” was the inscription that was claimed to be engraved on the tomb’s exterior.
Over the years the mummy has broken into 18 parts. Dr Hawass was worried that the crush of tourists would have caused irreparable damage had the body been left in the golden sarcophagus. “The humidity and heat caused by . . . people entering the tomb and their breathing will change the mummy to a powder. The only good thing [left] in this mummy is the face. We need to preserve the face,” he said.
The 2005 scan also resolved another mystery: that of the Pharaoh’s missing penis. It had long been thought to have been stolen in 1942, but the scan revealed it to be hidden in sand inside the mummified wrappings.
The public’s unflagging mania for King Tut has been fed by an exhibition that has toured the US and will be opening in the O2 Gallery in Greenwich, London, on November 15. Tutankhamun and the Golden Age, which is partnered by The Times, shows some of the stunning golden artefacts from the tomb that defied looters and the effects of time. It also features the latex reconstruction of the young King’s head based on the scan.
The tale of Tut
- Howard Carter and the 5th Earl Carnarvon, his chief backer, spent six seasons excavating in the Valley of the Kings but found nothing
- Worried about his investment, Lord Carnarvon gave them one final season to dig
- In November 1922 initial reports appeared in The Times, above, announcing that the team had found the tomb of Tutankhamun
- Lord Carnarvon died seven weeks after the tomb was found, probably because of blood poisoning caused by a mosquito bite. Others blamed his death on the “curse of Tutankhamun”
James Hider and Michael Theodoulou
King Tut’s mummified face – which has been seen only by about 50 people since the British archaeologist Howard Carter opened the tomb exactly 85 years ago – was revealed to the world in a climate-controlled glass display case in an antechamber of his own tomb in the valley near Luxor, where generations of Egyptian pharaohs were buried.
“Everyone is dreaming of what he looks like. The face of Tutankhamun is different from any king in the Cairo museum. With his beautiful buck teeth, the tourists will see a little bit of the smile from the face of the golden boy,” said Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s leading expert on the famous boy King.
Dr Hawass expects a huge influx of tourists to see the mummy, to be displayed in the tomb indefinitely. Only the face can be seen, with the body wrapped in linen. It was badly damaged when Carter tried to pull off the golden mask after discovering the tomb – almost entirely intact with all its treasures – on November 4, 1922.
The discovery set off a craze for King Tut and Ancient Egypt that has endured to this day. The circumstances of the pharaoh’s death at such an early age remain unclear. A bone chip found inside the skull led some archaeologists to speculate that he was murdered, ten years after ascending to the throne.
Egypt’s 18th dynasty was enduring “ turbulent times after Tutankhamun’s predecessor Akhenaten – husband of the famously beautiful Nefertiti – abandoned the country’s pantheon of gods and chose to worship just one, the sun-disk Aten.
After Akhenaten’s death, his vizier, Ay, restored the worship of the gods; and some have speculated that Tutankhamun may have been murdered, in 1323BC, for trying to return Egypt to monotheism.
The murder theory has largely been dismissed, however, since scientists carried out a CT scan two years ago which revealed no trauma to the skull. Experts said that the bone chip could have been the result of the embalming process, when morticians removed all the internal organs and placed them in jars in preparation for the afterlife.
Dr Hawass now believes that the King may have died after he broke his leg and the wound became infected. Until then, the young King had been in good health, with the tests showing that he was a well-fed youth, slightly built and standing at 5ft 6in (1.67m). A recent reconstruction of his face shows a striking looking young man with almond eyes, an aquiline nose and full lips, with his head shaved. He had the pronounced overbite typical of his Royal Family line, and his lower teeth were slightly misaligned.
When the mummy was unwrapped in 1925 it was found to have a wound on the left cheek in the same position as the insect bite that had supposedly killed the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, sponsor of Carter’s excavations, which fuelled speculation that the discovery had unleashed a curse. “Death Shall Come on Swift Wings To Him Who Disturbs the Peace of the King” was the inscription that was claimed to be engraved on the tomb’s exterior.
Over the years the mummy has broken into 18 parts. Dr Hawass was worried that the crush of tourists would have caused irreparable damage had the body been left in the golden sarcophagus. “The humidity and heat caused by . . . people entering the tomb and their breathing will change the mummy to a powder. The only good thing [left] in this mummy is the face. We need to preserve the face,” he said.
The 2005 scan also resolved another mystery: that of the Pharaoh’s missing penis. It had long been thought to have been stolen in 1942, but the scan revealed it to be hidden in sand inside the mummified wrappings.
The public’s unflagging mania for King Tut has been fed by an exhibition that has toured the US and will be opening in the O2 Gallery in Greenwich, London, on November 15. Tutankhamun and the Golden Age, which is partnered by The Times, shows some of the stunning golden artefacts from the tomb that defied looters and the effects of time. It also features the latex reconstruction of the young King’s head based on the scan.
The tale of Tut
- Howard Carter and the 5th Earl Carnarvon, his chief backer, spent six seasons excavating in the Valley of the Kings but found nothing
- Worried about his investment, Lord Carnarvon gave them one final season to dig
- In November 1922 initial reports appeared in The Times, above, announcing that the team had found the tomb of Tutankhamun
- Lord Carnarvon died seven weeks after the tomb was found, probably because of blood poisoning caused by a mosquito bite. Others blamed his death on the “curse of Tutankhamun”
James Hider and Michael Theodoulou
Temple built 4,000 years ago unearthed in Peru
LIMA (Reuters) - A 4,000-year-old temple filled with murals has been unearthed on the northern coast of Peru, making it one of the oldest finds in the Americas, a leading archaeologist said on Saturday.
The temple, inside a larger ruin, includes a staircase that leads up to an altar used for fire worship at a site scientists have called Ventarron, said Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva, who led the dig.
It sits in the Lambayeque valley, near the ancient Sipan complex that Alva unearthed in the 1980s. Ventarron was built long before Sipan, about 2,000 years before Christ, he said.
"It's a temple that is about 4,000 years old," Alva, director of the Museum Tumbas Reales (Royal Tombs) of Sipan, told Reuters by telephone after announcing the results of carbon dating at a ceremony north of Lima sponsored by Peru's government.
"What's surprising are the construction methods, the architectural design and most of all the existence of murals that could be the oldest in the Americas," he said.
Lambayeque is 472 miles from Lima, Peru's capital.
Discoveries at Sipan, an administrative and religious center of the Moche culture, have included a gold-filled tomb built 1,700 years ago for a pre-Incan king.
Peru is rich in archaeological treasures, including the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in the Andes.
Until the arrival of the Spanish in the 1500s, the Incas ruled an empire for several centuries that stretched from Colombia and Ecuador in the north to what are now Peru and Chile in the south.
"The discovery of this temple reveals evidence suggesting the region of Lambayeque was one of great cultural exchange between the Pacific coast and the rest of Peru," said Alva.
(Writing by Terry Wade; Editing by Peter Cooney)
By Marco Aquino
The temple, inside a larger ruin, includes a staircase that leads up to an altar used for fire worship at a site scientists have called Ventarron, said Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva, who led the dig.
It sits in the Lambayeque valley, near the ancient Sipan complex that Alva unearthed in the 1980s. Ventarron was built long before Sipan, about 2,000 years before Christ, he said.
"It's a temple that is about 4,000 years old," Alva, director of the Museum Tumbas Reales (Royal Tombs) of Sipan, told Reuters by telephone after announcing the results of carbon dating at a ceremony north of Lima sponsored by Peru's government.
"What's surprising are the construction methods, the architectural design and most of all the existence of murals that could be the oldest in the Americas," he said.
Lambayeque is 472 miles from Lima, Peru's capital.
Discoveries at Sipan, an administrative and religious center of the Moche culture, have included a gold-filled tomb built 1,700 years ago for a pre-Incan king.
Peru is rich in archaeological treasures, including the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in the Andes.
Until the arrival of the Spanish in the 1500s, the Incas ruled an empire for several centuries that stretched from Colombia and Ecuador in the north to what are now Peru and Chile in the south.
"The discovery of this temple reveals evidence suggesting the region of Lambayeque was one of great cultural exchange between the Pacific coast and the rest of Peru," said Alva.
(Writing by Terry Wade; Editing by Peter Cooney)
By Marco Aquino
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Comet draws scientific, amateur interest
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A comet that unexpectedly brightened in the last couple of weeks and is now visible to the naked eye is attracting professional and amateur interest.
Paul Lewis, director of astronomy outreach at the University of Tennessee, is drawing students to the roof of the Nielsen Physics Building for special viewings of Comet 17P/Holmes.
The comet is exploding and its coma, a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by the sun, has grown to be bigger than the planet Jupiter. The comet lacks the tail usually associated with such celestial bodies but can be seen in the northern sky, in the constellation Perseus, as a fuzzy spot of light about as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper.
"This is truly a celestial surprise," Lewis said. "Absolutely amazing."
Until Oct. 23, the comet had been visible to modern astronomers only with a telescope, but that night it suddenly erupted and expanded.
A similar burst in 1892 led to the comet's discovery by Edwin Holmes.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event to witness, along the lines of when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter back in 1994," Lewis said.
Scientists speculate the comet has exploded because there are sinkholes in its nucleus, giving it a honeycomb-like structure. The collapse exposed comet ice to the sun, which transformed the ice into gas.
"What comets do when they are near the sun is very unpredictable," Lewis said. "We expect to see a coma cloud and a tail, but this is more like an explosion, and we are seeing the bubble of gas and dust as it expands away from the center of the blast."
Experts aren't sure how long the comet's show will last but estimate it could be weeks if not months. Using a telescope or binoculars help bring the comet's details into view, they said.
Paul Lewis, director of astronomy outreach at the University of Tennessee, is drawing students to the roof of the Nielsen Physics Building for special viewings of Comet 17P/Holmes.
The comet is exploding and its coma, a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by the sun, has grown to be bigger than the planet Jupiter. The comet lacks the tail usually associated with such celestial bodies but can be seen in the northern sky, in the constellation Perseus, as a fuzzy spot of light about as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper.
"This is truly a celestial surprise," Lewis said. "Absolutely amazing."
Until Oct. 23, the comet had been visible to modern astronomers only with a telescope, but that night it suddenly erupted and expanded.
A similar burst in 1892 led to the comet's discovery by Edwin Holmes.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event to witness, along the lines of when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter back in 1994," Lewis said.
Scientists speculate the comet has exploded because there are sinkholes in its nucleus, giving it a honeycomb-like structure. The collapse exposed comet ice to the sun, which transformed the ice into gas.
"What comets do when they are near the sun is very unpredictable," Lewis said. "We expect to see a coma cloud and a tail, but this is more like an explosion, and we are seeing the bubble of gas and dust as it expands away from the center of the blast."
Experts aren't sure how long the comet's show will last but estimate it could be weeks if not months. Using a telescope or binoculars help bring the comet's details into view, they said.
Egypt puts King Tut on public display
LUXOR, Egypt - King Tut's buck-toothed face was unveiled Sunday for the first time in public — more than 3,000 years after the youngest and most famous pharaoh to rule ancient Egypt was shrouded in linen and buried in his golden underground tomb.
Archeologists carefully lifted thae fragile mummy out of a quartz sarcophagus decorated with stone-carved protective goddesses, momentarily pulling aside a beige covering to reveal a leathery black body.
The linen was then replaced over Tut's narrow body so only his face and tiny feet were exposed, and the 19-year-old king, whose life and death has captivated people for nearly a century, was moved to a simple glass climate-controlled case to keep it from turning to dust.
"I can say for the first time that the mummy is safe and the mummy is well preserved, and at the same time, all the tourists who will enter this tomb will be able to see the face of Tutankhamun for the first time," Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said from inside the hot and sticky tomb.
"The face of the golden boy is amazing. It has magic and it has mystery," he added.
Hawass said scientists began restoring the badly damaged mummy more than two years ago. Much of the body is broken into 18 pieces — damage sustained when British archaeologist Howard Carter first discovered it 85 years ago, took it from its tomb and tried to pull off the famous golden mask, Hawass said.
But experts fear a more recent phenomenon — mass tourism — is further deteriorating Tut's mummy. Thousands of tourists visit the underground chamber every month, and Hawass said within 50 years the mummy could dissolve into dust.
"The humidity and heat caused by ... people entering the tomb and their breathing will change the mummy to a powder. The only good thing (left) in this mummy is the face. We need to preserve the face," said Hawass, who wore his signature Indiana Jones-style tan hat.
The mystery surrounding King Tutankhamun — who ruled during the 18th dynasty and ascended to the throne at age 8 — and his glittering gold tomb has entranced ancient Egypt fans since Carter first discovered the hidden tomb, revealing a trove of fabulous gold and precious stone treasures and propelling the once-forgotten pharaoh into global stardom.
He wasn't Egypt's most powerful or important king, but his staggering treasures, rumors of a mysterious curse that plagued Carter and his team — debunked by experts long ago — and several books and TV documentaries dedicated to Tut have added to his intrigue.
Archeologists in recent years have tried to resolve lingering questions over how he died and his precise royal lineage. In 2005, scientists removed Tut's mummy from his tomb and placed it into a portable CT scanner for 15 minutes to obtain a three-dimensional image. The scans were the first done on an Egyptian mummy.
The results ruled out that Tut was violently murdered — but stopped short of definitively concluding how he died around 1323 B.C. Experts, including Hawass, suggested that days before dying, Tut badly broke his left thigh, an apparent accident that may have resulted in a fatal infection.
The CT scan also provided the most revealing insight yet into Tut's life. He was well-fed and healthy, but slight, standing 5 feet, 6 inches tall at the time of his death. The scan also showed he had the overbite characteristic of other kings from his family, large incisor teeth and his lower teeth were slightly misaligned.
The unveiling of Tut's mummy comes amid a resurgence in the frenzy over the boy king. A highly publicized museum exhibit traveling the globe drew more than 4 million people during its initial four-city American-leg of the tour. The exhibit will open Nov. 15 in London and later will make a three-city encore tour in the U.S. beginning with the Dallas Museum of Art.
The Egyptian tourism industry is hoping to capitalize on that interest and draw tourists to Luxor to see something they couldn't in traveling exhibit — the mummy itself.
The number of tourists who visit Tut's tomb is expected to double to 700 a day now that the mummy will be on display indefinitely, said Mostafa Wazery, who heads the Valley of the Kings for Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. Most of Egypt's other identified mummies are on display in museums in Luxor and Cairo.
But not every tourist was eager to find out that Tut's mummy was being moved to a modern, see-through case.
"I really think he should be left alone in quiet, in peace," said British tourist Bob Philpotts after viewing Tut's tomb before the mummy was moved on Sunday. "This is his resting place, and he should be left (there)."
Hawass said experts will begin another project to determine the pharaoh's precise royal lineage. It is unclear if he is the son or a half brother of Akhenaten, the "heretic" pharaoh who introduced a revolutionary form of monotheism to ancient Egypt and was the son of Amenhotep III.
Sunday's unveiling ensured the boy pharaoh would remain eternal, said Hawass.
"I can assure you that putting this mummy in this case, this showcase, can make the golden boy live forever," he said.
By ANNA JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
Archeologists carefully lifted thae fragile mummy out of a quartz sarcophagus decorated with stone-carved protective goddesses, momentarily pulling aside a beige covering to reveal a leathery black body.
The linen was then replaced over Tut's narrow body so only his face and tiny feet were exposed, and the 19-year-old king, whose life and death has captivated people for nearly a century, was moved to a simple glass climate-controlled case to keep it from turning to dust.
"I can say for the first time that the mummy is safe and the mummy is well preserved, and at the same time, all the tourists who will enter this tomb will be able to see the face of Tutankhamun for the first time," Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said from inside the hot and sticky tomb.
"The face of the golden boy is amazing. It has magic and it has mystery," he added.
Hawass said scientists began restoring the badly damaged mummy more than two years ago. Much of the body is broken into 18 pieces — damage sustained when British archaeologist Howard Carter first discovered it 85 years ago, took it from its tomb and tried to pull off the famous golden mask, Hawass said.
But experts fear a more recent phenomenon — mass tourism — is further deteriorating Tut's mummy. Thousands of tourists visit the underground chamber every month, and Hawass said within 50 years the mummy could dissolve into dust.
"The humidity and heat caused by ... people entering the tomb and their breathing will change the mummy to a powder. The only good thing (left) in this mummy is the face. We need to preserve the face," said Hawass, who wore his signature Indiana Jones-style tan hat.
The mystery surrounding King Tutankhamun — who ruled during the 18th dynasty and ascended to the throne at age 8 — and his glittering gold tomb has entranced ancient Egypt fans since Carter first discovered the hidden tomb, revealing a trove of fabulous gold and precious stone treasures and propelling the once-forgotten pharaoh into global stardom.
He wasn't Egypt's most powerful or important king, but his staggering treasures, rumors of a mysterious curse that plagued Carter and his team — debunked by experts long ago — and several books and TV documentaries dedicated to Tut have added to his intrigue.
Archeologists in recent years have tried to resolve lingering questions over how he died and his precise royal lineage. In 2005, scientists removed Tut's mummy from his tomb and placed it into a portable CT scanner for 15 minutes to obtain a three-dimensional image. The scans were the first done on an Egyptian mummy.
The results ruled out that Tut was violently murdered — but stopped short of definitively concluding how he died around 1323 B.C. Experts, including Hawass, suggested that days before dying, Tut badly broke his left thigh, an apparent accident that may have resulted in a fatal infection.
The CT scan also provided the most revealing insight yet into Tut's life. He was well-fed and healthy, but slight, standing 5 feet, 6 inches tall at the time of his death. The scan also showed he had the overbite characteristic of other kings from his family, large incisor teeth and his lower teeth were slightly misaligned.
The unveiling of Tut's mummy comes amid a resurgence in the frenzy over the boy king. A highly publicized museum exhibit traveling the globe drew more than 4 million people during its initial four-city American-leg of the tour. The exhibit will open Nov. 15 in London and later will make a three-city encore tour in the U.S. beginning with the Dallas Museum of Art.
The Egyptian tourism industry is hoping to capitalize on that interest and draw tourists to Luxor to see something they couldn't in traveling exhibit — the mummy itself.
The number of tourists who visit Tut's tomb is expected to double to 700 a day now that the mummy will be on display indefinitely, said Mostafa Wazery, who heads the Valley of the Kings for Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. Most of Egypt's other identified mummies are on display in museums in Luxor and Cairo.
But not every tourist was eager to find out that Tut's mummy was being moved to a modern, see-through case.
"I really think he should be left alone in quiet, in peace," said British tourist Bob Philpotts after viewing Tut's tomb before the mummy was moved on Sunday. "This is his resting place, and he should be left (there)."
Hawass said experts will begin another project to determine the pharaoh's precise royal lineage. It is unclear if he is the son or a half brother of Akhenaten, the "heretic" pharaoh who introduced a revolutionary form of monotheism to ancient Egypt and was the son of Amenhotep III.
Sunday's unveiling ensured the boy pharaoh would remain eternal, said Hawass.
"I can assure you that putting this mummy in this case, this showcase, can make the golden boy live forever," he said.
By ANNA JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Cold spot could be relic of Big Bang
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A cold spot in the oldest radiation in the universe could be the first sign of a cosmic glitch that might have originated shortly after the Big Bang, British and Spanish scientists said on Thursday.
They think this spot -- detected on satellite maps of microwave radiation -- might be a cosmic defect or texture, a holdover from the universe's infancy. But they said their theory would need confirmation.
Such defects or textures, they theorize, reflect a flaw in the pattern of the universe as it formed -- think of a snag in pantyhose or a flaw in a diamond.
"If the cold spot is indeed proven to be a texture, it will completely change our view of how the universe evolved following the Big Bang," said Mike Hobson, of the Astrophysics Group at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, whose study appears in the journal Science.
Hobson, Neil Turok and colleagues at the Institute of Physics at Cantabria based this theory on an analysis of a large cold spot in the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is basically the heat glow left over from the formation of the universe.
The cold spot was discovered in 2003 by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite, and its presence has been the subject of many theories, said Al Kogut of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Kogut, who did not work on the paper, said if this texture theory is proven, it would offer a window into the universe shortly after the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago, showing places where the universe was expanding and cooling.
"If you imagine water cooling down in an ice cube tray, it will make a transition from a liquid state to solid crystal," Kogut said in a telephone interview.
If that occurs very slowly, he said, that transition goes very smoothly, producing crystal clear ice. But if it goes very fast, the crystal aligns in different directions. Where they don't agree, a crack appears, he said.
This paper "is basically saying this cold spot is a relic of high-energy physics that occurred immediately after the Big Bang," Kogut said.
"They're claiming they've found one of these things and it could be the tip of the iceberg," he said.
But Kogut, like the study's authors, said he would like more proof. "The evidence is encouraging, but far from compelling," he said.
By Julie Steenhuysen
They think this spot -- detected on satellite maps of microwave radiation -- might be a cosmic defect or texture, a holdover from the universe's infancy. But they said their theory would need confirmation.
Such defects or textures, they theorize, reflect a flaw in the pattern of the universe as it formed -- think of a snag in pantyhose or a flaw in a diamond.
"If the cold spot is indeed proven to be a texture, it will completely change our view of how the universe evolved following the Big Bang," said Mike Hobson, of the Astrophysics Group at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, whose study appears in the journal Science.
Hobson, Neil Turok and colleagues at the Institute of Physics at Cantabria based this theory on an analysis of a large cold spot in the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is basically the heat glow left over from the formation of the universe.
The cold spot was discovered in 2003 by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite, and its presence has been the subject of many theories, said Al Kogut of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Kogut, who did not work on the paper, said if this texture theory is proven, it would offer a window into the universe shortly after the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago, showing places where the universe was expanding and cooling.
"If you imagine water cooling down in an ice cube tray, it will make a transition from a liquid state to solid crystal," Kogut said in a telephone interview.
If that occurs very slowly, he said, that transition goes very smoothly, producing crystal clear ice. But if it goes very fast, the crystal aligns in different directions. Where they don't agree, a crack appears, he said.
This paper "is basically saying this cold spot is a relic of high-energy physics that occurred immediately after the Big Bang," Kogut said.
"They're claiming they've found one of these things and it could be the tip of the iceberg," he said.
But Kogut, like the study's authors, said he would like more proof. "The evidence is encouraging, but far from compelling," he said.
By Julie Steenhuysen
Friday, October 19, 2007
25 Secrets of Mona Lisa Revealed
New images uncover 25 secrets about the Mona Lisa, including proof that Leonardo da Vinci gave her eyebrows, solving a long-held mystery.
The images are part of an exhibition, "Mona Lisa Secrets Revealed," which will feature new research by French engineer Pascal Cotte and debut in the United States at the Metreon in San Francisco. The Mona Lisa showcase is part of a larger exhibition called "Da Vinci: An Exhibition of Genius."
Cotte, founder of Lumiere Technology, scanned the painting with a 240-megapixel Multi-spectral Imaging Camera he invented, which uses 13 wavelengths from ultraviolet light to infrared. The resulting images peel away centuries of varnish and other alterations, shedding light on how the artist brought the painted figure to life and how she appeared to da Vinci and his contemporaries.
"The face of Mona Lisa appears slightly wider and the smile is different and the eyes are different," Cotte said. "The smile is more accentuated I would say."
Mona Lisa mysteries
A zoomed-in image of Mona Lisa's left eye revealed a single brush stroke in the eyebrow region, Cotte said.
"I am an engineer and scientist, so for me all has to be logical. It was not logical that Mona Lisa does not have any eyebrows or eyelashes," Cotte told LiveScience. "I discovered one hair of the eyebrow."
Another conundrum had been the position of the subject's right arm, which lies across her stomach. This was the first time, Cotte said, that a painter had rendered a subject's arm and wrist in such a position. While other artists had never understood da Vinci's reasoning, they copied it nonetheless.
Cotte discovered the pigment just behind the right wrist matched up perfectly with that of the painted cover that drapes across Mona Lisa's knee. So it did make sense: The forearm and wrist held up one side of a blanket.
"The wrist of the right hand is up high on the stomach. But if you look deeply in the infrared you understand that she holds a cover with her wrist," Cotte said.
Behind a painting
The infrared images also revealed da Vinci's preparatory drawings that lie behind layers of varnish and paint, showing that the Renaissance man was also human.
"If you look at the left hand you see the first position of the finger, and he changed his mind for another position," Cotte said. "Even Leonardo da Vinci had hesitation."
Other revelations include:
-Lace on Mona Lisa's dress
-The transparency of the veil shows da Vinci first painted a landscape and then used transparency techniques to paint the veil atop it.
-A change in the position of the left index and middle finger.
-The elbow was repaired from damage due to a rock thrown at the painting in 1956.
-The blanket covering Mona Lisa's knees also covers her stomach.
-The left finger was not completely finished.
-A blotch mark on the corner of the eye and chin are varnish accidents, countering claims that Mona Lisa was sick.
-And the Mona Lisa was painted on uncut poplar board, contrary to speculations.
In the larger picture, Cotte said when he stands back and looks up at the enlarged infrared image of Mona Lisa, her beauty and mystique are apparent.
"If you are in front of this huge enlargement of Mona Lisa, you understand instantly why Mona Lisa is so famous," Cotte said. He added, it's something you have to see with your own eyes
Jeanna Bryner
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com
The images are part of an exhibition, "Mona Lisa Secrets Revealed," which will feature new research by French engineer Pascal Cotte and debut in the United States at the Metreon in San Francisco. The Mona Lisa showcase is part of a larger exhibition called "Da Vinci: An Exhibition of Genius."
Cotte, founder of Lumiere Technology, scanned the painting with a 240-megapixel Multi-spectral Imaging Camera he invented, which uses 13 wavelengths from ultraviolet light to infrared. The resulting images peel away centuries of varnish and other alterations, shedding light on how the artist brought the painted figure to life and how she appeared to da Vinci and his contemporaries.
"The face of Mona Lisa appears slightly wider and the smile is different and the eyes are different," Cotte said. "The smile is more accentuated I would say."
Mona Lisa mysteries
A zoomed-in image of Mona Lisa's left eye revealed a single brush stroke in the eyebrow region, Cotte said.
"I am an engineer and scientist, so for me all has to be logical. It was not logical that Mona Lisa does not have any eyebrows or eyelashes," Cotte told LiveScience. "I discovered one hair of the eyebrow."
Another conundrum had been the position of the subject's right arm, which lies across her stomach. This was the first time, Cotte said, that a painter had rendered a subject's arm and wrist in such a position. While other artists had never understood da Vinci's reasoning, they copied it nonetheless.
Cotte discovered the pigment just behind the right wrist matched up perfectly with that of the painted cover that drapes across Mona Lisa's knee. So it did make sense: The forearm and wrist held up one side of a blanket.
"The wrist of the right hand is up high on the stomach. But if you look deeply in the infrared you understand that she holds a cover with her wrist," Cotte said.
Behind a painting
The infrared images also revealed da Vinci's preparatory drawings that lie behind layers of varnish and paint, showing that the Renaissance man was also human.
"If you look at the left hand you see the first position of the finger, and he changed his mind for another position," Cotte said. "Even Leonardo da Vinci had hesitation."
Other revelations include:
-Lace on Mona Lisa's dress
-The transparency of the veil shows da Vinci first painted a landscape and then used transparency techniques to paint the veil atop it.
-A change in the position of the left index and middle finger.
-The elbow was repaired from damage due to a rock thrown at the painting in 1956.
-The blanket covering Mona Lisa's knees also covers her stomach.
-The left finger was not completely finished.
-A blotch mark on the corner of the eye and chin are varnish accidents, countering claims that Mona Lisa was sick.
-And the Mona Lisa was painted on uncut poplar board, contrary to speculations.
In the larger picture, Cotte said when he stands back and looks up at the enlarged infrared image of Mona Lisa, her beauty and mystique are apparent.
"If you are in front of this huge enlargement of Mona Lisa, you understand instantly why Mona Lisa is so famous," Cotte said. He added, it's something you have to see with your own eyes
Jeanna Bryner
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com
Monday, October 15, 2007
3 Americans Win Nobel in Economics
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was awarded to three American economists today for creating and developing a sophisticated explanation of the interaction among individuals, markets and institutions.
Their work, called mechanism design theory, has influenced thinking on a wide range of problems in economics and political science, from the design of government bond auctions to patent systems to voting procedures.
Leonid Hurwicz, 90, a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota, initiated the field of mechanism design theory, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in the award citation. His work was further developed by two 56-year-old economists who are sharing the prize — Roger B. Myerson, a professor at the University of Chicago, and Eric S. Maskin, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.
Mr. Hurwicz, who was born in Moscow, started his work in the postwar years at a time when economists and others were heatedly debating whether socialist reforms were possible without a loss of economic efficiency. Those debates tended to be deeply ideological.
Mr. Hurwicz was a pioneer in trying a more rigorous, mathematical analysis to those kinds of issues. Last year, in a lecture last year to honor Mr. Hurwicz, Mr. Myerson explained, “Over many years and decades, Leo Hurwicz has worked to show how mathematical economic models can provide a general framework for analyzing different economics institutions, like those of capitalism and socialism, as mechanisms for coordinating the individuals of society.”
The field of mechanism design theory strives to take into account the realities of economic life systematically. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is a powerful metaphor that describes how the market, in theory, will always efficiently allocate scarce resources. Yet real-world conditions tend to complicate things. Competition is not completely free, consumers are not perfectly informed, optimizing private production and consumption may have social costs, and institutions can strongly shape economic bargaining.
The work begun by Mr. Hurwicz, and advanced by Mr. Maskin and Mr. Myerson, gave economists and policy makers new intellectual tools to address questions like those listed in the academy’s citation: “How well do different such institutions, or allocation mechanisms, perform? What is the optimal mechanism to reach a certain goal, such as social welfare or private profit? Is government regulation called for, and if so, how is it best designed?”
The institutional focus of this year’s laureates, economists say, is an important contribution. “Economists’ most lasting influence comes from the design of institutions,” said Robert J. Shiller, a professor of economics at Yale University. “It is these mechanisms we use day to day that really matter to our lives.”
The three economists will share the prize money, 10 million Swedish kronor, or about $1.56 million. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was not one of the five original prizes — physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace — that Alfred Nobel specified in his will, and were first awarded in 1901. The first economics prize was awarded in 1969.
By STEVE LOHR
Published: October 15, 2007
Their work, called mechanism design theory, has influenced thinking on a wide range of problems in economics and political science, from the design of government bond auctions to patent systems to voting procedures.
Leonid Hurwicz, 90, a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota, initiated the field of mechanism design theory, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in the award citation. His work was further developed by two 56-year-old economists who are sharing the prize — Roger B. Myerson, a professor at the University of Chicago, and Eric S. Maskin, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.
Mr. Hurwicz, who was born in Moscow, started his work in the postwar years at a time when economists and others were heatedly debating whether socialist reforms were possible without a loss of economic efficiency. Those debates tended to be deeply ideological.
Mr. Hurwicz was a pioneer in trying a more rigorous, mathematical analysis to those kinds of issues. Last year, in a lecture last year to honor Mr. Hurwicz, Mr. Myerson explained, “Over many years and decades, Leo Hurwicz has worked to show how mathematical economic models can provide a general framework for analyzing different economics institutions, like those of capitalism and socialism, as mechanisms for coordinating the individuals of society.”
The field of mechanism design theory strives to take into account the realities of economic life systematically. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is a powerful metaphor that describes how the market, in theory, will always efficiently allocate scarce resources. Yet real-world conditions tend to complicate things. Competition is not completely free, consumers are not perfectly informed, optimizing private production and consumption may have social costs, and institutions can strongly shape economic bargaining.
The work begun by Mr. Hurwicz, and advanced by Mr. Maskin and Mr. Myerson, gave economists and policy makers new intellectual tools to address questions like those listed in the academy’s citation: “How well do different such institutions, or allocation mechanisms, perform? What is the optimal mechanism to reach a certain goal, such as social welfare or private profit? Is government regulation called for, and if so, how is it best designed?”
The institutional focus of this year’s laureates, economists say, is an important contribution. “Economists’ most lasting influence comes from the design of institutions,” said Robert J. Shiller, a professor of economics at Yale University. “It is these mechanisms we use day to day that really matter to our lives.”
The three economists will share the prize money, 10 million Swedish kronor, or about $1.56 million. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was not one of the five original prizes — physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace — that Alfred Nobel specified in his will, and were first awarded in 1901. The first economics prize was awarded in 1969.
By STEVE LOHR
Published: October 15, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
Al Gore and U.N. Panel Win Peace Prize for Climate Work
OSLO, Oct. 12 — The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded today to Al Gore, the former vice president, and to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for their work to alert the world to the threat of global warming.
The award immediately renewed calls from Mr. Gore’s supporters for him to run for president in 2008, joining an already crowded field of Democrats. Mr. Gore, who lost the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, has said he is not interested in running but has not flatly rejected the notion.
Mr. Gore “is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted,” the Nobel citation said, referring to the issue of man-made climate change. The United Nations panel, a network of 2,000 scientists organized in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, has produced two decades of scientific reports that have “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming,” the citation said.
In New Delhi, Rajendra K. Pachauri, an Indian scientist who leads the panel, said he was overwhelmed by the decision, adding it was “not something I would have thought of in my wildest dreams.”
Mr. Gore, who was traveling in San Francisco, said in a statement that he was deeply honored and planned to donate his half of the $1.56 million award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit climate group he serves as board chairman.
“We face a true planetary emergency,” Mr. Gore said in his statement. “The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.”
He said the “award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the world’s pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis — a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years.”
Kalee Kreider, a spokeswoman for Mr. Gore, said he received the news with his wife, Tipper, early this morning in San Francisco, where he spoke on Thursday night at a fund-raising event for Senator Barbara Boxer of California, a fellow Democrat.
Ms. Kreider said Mr. Gore would hold strategy meetings with the Alliance for Climate Protection in San Francisco today and return to his home in Nashville over the weekend.
Dr. Pachauri, in an interview in New Delhi today in his office at the Energy and Resources Institute, where he is director-general, cast the award as a vindication of science over the skeptics on the effects of human activities on climate change.
“The message that it sends is that the Nobel Prize committee realized the value of knowledge in tackling the problem of climate change and the fact that the I.P.C.C. has an established record of producing knowledge and an impartial and objective assessment of climate change,” he said
Dr. Pachauri said he thought the award would now settle the scientific debate on climate change and that governments would now take action.
He said it was “entirely possible to stabilize the levels of emissions but that climate change and its impact will continue to stalk us.”
“We will have to live with climate change up to a certain point of time but if we want to avoid or delay much more serious damage then its essential that we start mitigation quickly and to a serious extent,” he said.
The Nobel award carries political ramifications in the United States, which the Nobel committee tried to minimize after its announcement today.
The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, addressed reporters after the awards were announced and tried to dismiss repeated questions asking whether the awards were a criticism — direct or indirect — of the Bush administration.
He said the committee was making an appeal to the entire world to unite against the threat of global warming.
"We would encourage all countries, including the big countries, to challenge all of them to think again and to say what can they do to conquer global warming,” he said. “The bigger the powers, the better that they come in front of this.”
He said the peace prize was only a message of encouragement, adding, “the Nobel committee has never given a kick in the leg to anyone.”
In this decade, the Nobel Peace Prize has been given to prominent people and agencies who differ on a range of issues with the Bush administration, including former President Jimmy Carter, who won in 2002, and the United Nations’ nuclear monitoring agency in Vienna and its director, Mohamed ElBaradei, in 2005.
In Washington, a White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, was quoted by Reuters as saying: “Of course we’re happy for Vice President Gore and the I.P.C.C. for receiving this recognition.”
Global warming has been a powerful issue all this year, attracting more and more public attention.
The film documenting Mr. Gore’s campaign to increase awareness of the human effect on climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won an Academy Award this year. The United Nations committee has issued repeated reports and held successive conferences to highlight the growing scientific understanding of the problem. Meanwhile, signs of global warming have become more and more apparent, even in the melting Arctic.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said global warming “may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources.”
“Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries,” it said. “There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states."
The Bay Area has been the staging area for an online movement to draft Mr. Gore to mount another campaign for the White House. A Web site, www.draftgore.com, claims more than 165,000 signatures and comments on an online petition, including several placed early this morning congratulating Mr. Gore on his win.
The same group also placed a full-page advertisement in The New York Times on Wednesday, pleading with Mr. Gore to rectify his bitter defeat in 2000, when he won the national popular vote but lost the electoral college after the Supreme Court ended a recount in Florida.
“I’ll actually vote for you this time,” wrote one signee, Joshua Kadel of Virginia, on the Web site this morning. “Sorry about 2000!”
The Gores keep an apartment in San Francisco, where their daughter Kristin lives. The city is also the headquarters of Current TV, Mr. Gore’s Emmy-award winning television and online news venture.
Others dedicated to the fight against global warming said the winners were at the head of efforts to investigate and draw attention to the issue.
Michael Oppenheimer, an atmospheric scientist who has participated in the periodic climate assessments since the early days of the I.P.C.C. panel, described the work of the committee, which includes both scientists and government officials, as “a beautiful example of a largely successful experiment in people coming together to improve government.”
“The reward reminds us that expert advice can influence people and policy, that sometimes governments do listen to reason, and that the idea that reason can guide human action is very much alive, if not yet fully realized,” added Dr. Oppenheimer, who is now at Princeton University and previously worked for Environmental Defense, a private advocacy group.
Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is based in Bonn, Germany, and oversaw negotiations that led to the Kyoto Protocol, said recent moves by political leaders around the world to find ways of reducing emissions would have been hard to imagine without the contributions made by both the I.P.C.C. and Mr. Gore.
“We can recommend ways for policy makers to move forward, but without the I.P.C.C. data being there, this would be next to impossible,” Mr. de Boer said. He said Mr. Gore could use his enhanced stature from winning the Peace Prize to focus on parts of the developing world where politicians need support to spread knowledge about the dangers of climate change. “It’s very difficult to advance on these issues without support from the general public,” he said.
Jan Egeland, a Norwegian peace mediator and former senior United Nations official for humanitarian affairs, called climate change more than an environmental issue.
"It is a question of war and peace," Mr. Egeland, now director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo, told the Associated Press. "We’re already seeing the first climate wars, in the Sahel belt of Africa." He said nomads and herders were in conflict with farmers because the changing climate had brought drought and a shortage of fertile lands.
From the 1980s onward, many scientists and international affairs experts considered the prospect that long-lived gases from human activities could warm the earth to be a threat to global security as well as the environment.
The first large scientific meeting on the issue, the Conference on the Changing Atmosphere, was held in Toronto in 1988. It was also the first meeting to bring together scientists and government officials on a large scale to discuss research pointing to dangerous warming from a buildup of greenhouse gases.
The conference concluded with a statement saying: “Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war.”
Its “call to action” included a recommendation that the main heat-trapping gas, carbon dioxide, be cut by 2005 to 20 percent below 1988 levels — a target far more ambitious than anything later discussed in United Nations climate-treaty talks and missed long ago.
The intergovernmental climate panel was formally convened after the conference.
Its four reports, the first published in 1990, have provided the underpinning for international negotiations leading to the first climate treaty, with only voluntary terms, in 1992 and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first accord with binding terms but with limited support and a 2012 expiration date.
Jesse McKinley contributed reporting from San Francisco, Somini Sengupta from New Delhi, Andrew C. Revkin from New York, and James Kanter from Paris.
By WALTER GIBBS
Published: October 13, 2007
The award immediately renewed calls from Mr. Gore’s supporters for him to run for president in 2008, joining an already crowded field of Democrats. Mr. Gore, who lost the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, has said he is not interested in running but has not flatly rejected the notion.
Mr. Gore “is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted,” the Nobel citation said, referring to the issue of man-made climate change. The United Nations panel, a network of 2,000 scientists organized in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, has produced two decades of scientific reports that have “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming,” the citation said.
In New Delhi, Rajendra K. Pachauri, an Indian scientist who leads the panel, said he was overwhelmed by the decision, adding it was “not something I would have thought of in my wildest dreams.”
Mr. Gore, who was traveling in San Francisco, said in a statement that he was deeply honored and planned to donate his half of the $1.56 million award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit climate group he serves as board chairman.
“We face a true planetary emergency,” Mr. Gore said in his statement. “The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.”
He said the “award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the world’s pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis — a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years.”
Kalee Kreider, a spokeswoman for Mr. Gore, said he received the news with his wife, Tipper, early this morning in San Francisco, where he spoke on Thursday night at a fund-raising event for Senator Barbara Boxer of California, a fellow Democrat.
Ms. Kreider said Mr. Gore would hold strategy meetings with the Alliance for Climate Protection in San Francisco today and return to his home in Nashville over the weekend.
Dr. Pachauri, in an interview in New Delhi today in his office at the Energy and Resources Institute, where he is director-general, cast the award as a vindication of science over the skeptics on the effects of human activities on climate change.
“The message that it sends is that the Nobel Prize committee realized the value of knowledge in tackling the problem of climate change and the fact that the I.P.C.C. has an established record of producing knowledge and an impartial and objective assessment of climate change,” he said
Dr. Pachauri said he thought the award would now settle the scientific debate on climate change and that governments would now take action.
He said it was “entirely possible to stabilize the levels of emissions but that climate change and its impact will continue to stalk us.”
“We will have to live with climate change up to a certain point of time but if we want to avoid or delay much more serious damage then its essential that we start mitigation quickly and to a serious extent,” he said.
The Nobel award carries political ramifications in the United States, which the Nobel committee tried to minimize after its announcement today.
The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, addressed reporters after the awards were announced and tried to dismiss repeated questions asking whether the awards were a criticism — direct or indirect — of the Bush administration.
He said the committee was making an appeal to the entire world to unite against the threat of global warming.
"We would encourage all countries, including the big countries, to challenge all of them to think again and to say what can they do to conquer global warming,” he said. “The bigger the powers, the better that they come in front of this.”
He said the peace prize was only a message of encouragement, adding, “the Nobel committee has never given a kick in the leg to anyone.”
In this decade, the Nobel Peace Prize has been given to prominent people and agencies who differ on a range of issues with the Bush administration, including former President Jimmy Carter, who won in 2002, and the United Nations’ nuclear monitoring agency in Vienna and its director, Mohamed ElBaradei, in 2005.
In Washington, a White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, was quoted by Reuters as saying: “Of course we’re happy for Vice President Gore and the I.P.C.C. for receiving this recognition.”
Global warming has been a powerful issue all this year, attracting more and more public attention.
The film documenting Mr. Gore’s campaign to increase awareness of the human effect on climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won an Academy Award this year. The United Nations committee has issued repeated reports and held successive conferences to highlight the growing scientific understanding of the problem. Meanwhile, signs of global warming have become more and more apparent, even in the melting Arctic.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said global warming “may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources.”
“Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries,” it said. “There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states."
The Bay Area has been the staging area for an online movement to draft Mr. Gore to mount another campaign for the White House. A Web site, www.draftgore.com, claims more than 165,000 signatures and comments on an online petition, including several placed early this morning congratulating Mr. Gore on his win.
The same group also placed a full-page advertisement in The New York Times on Wednesday, pleading with Mr. Gore to rectify his bitter defeat in 2000, when he won the national popular vote but lost the electoral college after the Supreme Court ended a recount in Florida.
“I’ll actually vote for you this time,” wrote one signee, Joshua Kadel of Virginia, on the Web site this morning. “Sorry about 2000!”
The Gores keep an apartment in San Francisco, where their daughter Kristin lives. The city is also the headquarters of Current TV, Mr. Gore’s Emmy-award winning television and online news venture.
Others dedicated to the fight against global warming said the winners were at the head of efforts to investigate and draw attention to the issue.
Michael Oppenheimer, an atmospheric scientist who has participated in the periodic climate assessments since the early days of the I.P.C.C. panel, described the work of the committee, which includes both scientists and government officials, as “a beautiful example of a largely successful experiment in people coming together to improve government.”
“The reward reminds us that expert advice can influence people and policy, that sometimes governments do listen to reason, and that the idea that reason can guide human action is very much alive, if not yet fully realized,” added Dr. Oppenheimer, who is now at Princeton University and previously worked for Environmental Defense, a private advocacy group.
Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is based in Bonn, Germany, and oversaw negotiations that led to the Kyoto Protocol, said recent moves by political leaders around the world to find ways of reducing emissions would have been hard to imagine without the contributions made by both the I.P.C.C. and Mr. Gore.
“We can recommend ways for policy makers to move forward, but without the I.P.C.C. data being there, this would be next to impossible,” Mr. de Boer said. He said Mr. Gore could use his enhanced stature from winning the Peace Prize to focus on parts of the developing world where politicians need support to spread knowledge about the dangers of climate change. “It’s very difficult to advance on these issues without support from the general public,” he said.
Jan Egeland, a Norwegian peace mediator and former senior United Nations official for humanitarian affairs, called climate change more than an environmental issue.
"It is a question of war and peace," Mr. Egeland, now director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo, told the Associated Press. "We’re already seeing the first climate wars, in the Sahel belt of Africa." He said nomads and herders were in conflict with farmers because the changing climate had brought drought and a shortage of fertile lands.
From the 1980s onward, many scientists and international affairs experts considered the prospect that long-lived gases from human activities could warm the earth to be a threat to global security as well as the environment.
The first large scientific meeting on the issue, the Conference on the Changing Atmosphere, was held in Toronto in 1988. It was also the first meeting to bring together scientists and government officials on a large scale to discuss research pointing to dangerous warming from a buildup of greenhouse gases.
The conference concluded with a statement saying: “Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war.”
Its “call to action” included a recommendation that the main heat-trapping gas, carbon dioxide, be cut by 2005 to 20 percent below 1988 levels — a target far more ambitious than anything later discussed in United Nations climate-treaty talks and missed long ago.
The intergovernmental climate panel was formally convened after the conference.
Its four reports, the first published in 1990, have provided the underpinning for international negotiations leading to the first climate treaty, with only voluntary terms, in 1992 and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first accord with binding terms but with limited support and a 2012 expiration date.
Jesse McKinley contributed reporting from San Francisco, Somini Sengupta from New Delhi, Andrew C. Revkin from New York, and James Kanter from Paris.
By WALTER GIBBS
Published: October 13, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
German Wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry
A German scientist whose studies of chemical reactions on solid surfaces have implications for the environment won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry today.
Gerhard Ertl’s work in surface chemistry has applications across a broad array of fields, and helps explain the processes in manufacturing computer chips, in the function of automobiles’ catalytic converters and on the surface of stratospheric ice crystals that have implications for global warming.
The $1.5 million prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Dr. Ertl’s 71st birthday, and he said in remarks broadcast from Stockholm that winning the prize “is the best birthday present that you can give to somebody.”
In an interview with the Associated Press from his office in Berlin, he said, “I am speechless.” He is an emeritus professor at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin. “I was not counting on this,” he said.
In a statement released early today, Catherine T. Hunt, the president of the American Chemical Society, congratulated Dr. Ertl, calling him a “spectacular scientist” working in a field “that often receives little public attention, and yet has transformed lives in so many ways.” She said, “In the future, this research will help us tap new sources of renewable fuels, for instance, and produce smaller, more powerful electronics products.”
The Nobel prizes are being announced this week. On Monday, the prize that recognizes achievement in “physiology or medicine” went to Mario R. Capecchi, of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City; Oliver Smithies of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and Sir Martin J. Evans of Cardiff University in Wales, for their work that led to the technique of manipulating the genes of mice.
Tuesday’s award, in the field of physics, went to Albert Fert, of the Université Paris-Sud in Orsay, France, and Peter Grünberg, of the Institute of Solid State Research at the Jülich Research Center in Germany, whose work in magnetics led to the development of the kinds of hard drives that have allowed computers and music players to shrink to tiny dimensions.
The awards are to be handed out by King Carl XVI Gustaf at a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Gerhard Ertl’s work in surface chemistry has applications across a broad array of fields, and helps explain the processes in manufacturing computer chips, in the function of automobiles’ catalytic converters and on the surface of stratospheric ice crystals that have implications for global warming.
The $1.5 million prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Dr. Ertl’s 71st birthday, and he said in remarks broadcast from Stockholm that winning the prize “is the best birthday present that you can give to somebody.”
In an interview with the Associated Press from his office in Berlin, he said, “I am speechless.” He is an emeritus professor at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin. “I was not counting on this,” he said.
In a statement released early today, Catherine T. Hunt, the president of the American Chemical Society, congratulated Dr. Ertl, calling him a “spectacular scientist” working in a field “that often receives little public attention, and yet has transformed lives in so many ways.” She said, “In the future, this research will help us tap new sources of renewable fuels, for instance, and produce smaller, more powerful electronics products.”
The Nobel prizes are being announced this week. On Monday, the prize that recognizes achievement in “physiology or medicine” went to Mario R. Capecchi, of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City; Oliver Smithies of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and Sir Martin J. Evans of Cardiff University in Wales, for their work that led to the technique of manipulating the genes of mice.
Tuesday’s award, in the field of physics, went to Albert Fert, of the Université Paris-Sud in Orsay, France, and Peter Grünberg, of the Institute of Solid State Research at the Jülich Research Center in Germany, whose work in magnetics led to the development of the kinds of hard drives that have allowed computers and music players to shrink to tiny dimensions.
The awards are to be handed out by King Carl XVI Gustaf at a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Physics of Hard Drives Wins Nobel
Two physicists who discovered how to manipulate the magnetic and electrical properties of thin layers of atoms to store vast amounts of data on tiny disks, making iPods and other wonders of modern life possible, were chosen as winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics yesterday.
Albert Fert, of the Université Paris-Sud in Orsay, France, and Peter Grünberg, of the Institute of Solid State Research at the Jülich Research Center in Germany, will share the $1.5 million prize awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
They will receive the money in a ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10.
Dr. Fert, 69, and Dr. Grünberg, 68, each working independently in 1988, discovered an effect known as giant magnetoresistance, in which tiny changes in a magnetic field can produce huge changes in electrical resistance.
The effect is at the heart of modern gadgets that record data, music or snippets of video as a dense magnetic patchwork of zeros and ones, which is then scanned by a small head and converted to electrical signals.
“The MP3 and iPod industry would not have existed without this discovery,” Börje Johansson, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy, said, according to The Associated Press. “You would not have an iPod without this effect.”
In remarks broadcast over a speakerphone at the academy in Stockholm, Dr. Fert said: “I am so happy for my family, for my co-workers. And I am also very happy to share this with a friend.”
Experts said the discovery was one of the first triumphs of the new field of nanotechnology, the science of building and manipulating assemblies of atoms only a nanometer (a billionth of a meter) in size.
The scanning heads in today’s gizmos consist of alternating layers only a few atoms thick of a magnetic metal, like iron, and a nonmagnetic metal, like chromium. At that small size, the strange rules of quantum mechanics come into play and novel properties emerge.
The Nobel citation said Dr. Fert and Dr. Grünberg’s work also heralded the advent of a new, even smaller and denser type of memory storage called spintronics, in which information is stored and processed by manipulating the spins of electrons.
Engineers have been recording information magnetically and reading it out electrically since the dawn of the computer age, but as they have endeavored to pack more and more data onto their machines, they have been forced to use smaller and fainter magnetic inscriptions and thus more and more sensitive readout devices.
It has long been known that magnetic fields can affect the electrical resistance of magnetic materials like iron. Current flows more easily along field lines than across them. The effect was useful for sensing magnetic fields, and in heads that read magnetic disks. But it amounted to only a small change in resistance, and physicists did not think there were many prospects for improvement.
So it was a surprise in 1988 when groups led by Dr. Fert at the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides and by Dr. Grünberg found that super-slim sandwiches of iron and chromium showed enhanced sensitivity to magnetic fields — “giant magnetoresistance,” as Dr. Fert called it. The name stuck.
The reason for the effect has to do with what physicists call the spin of electrons. When the magnetic layers of the sandwich have their fields pointing in the same direction, electrons whose spin points along that direction can migrate freely through the sandwich, but electrons that point in another direction get scattered.
If, however, one of the magnetic layers is perturbed, by, say, reading a small signal, it can flip its direction so that its field runs opposite to the other one. In that case, no matter which way an electron points, it will be scattered and hindered from moving through the layers, greatly increasing the electrical resistance of the sandwich.
As Phillip Schewe, of the American Institute of Physics, explained, “You’ve leveraged a weak bit of magnetism into a robust bit of electricity.”
Subsequently, Stuart Parkin, now of I.B.M., came up with an easier way to produce the sandwiches on an industrial scale. The first commercial devices using giant magnetoresistance effect were produced in 1997.
Dr. Grünberg was born in Pilsen in what is now the Czech Republic and obtained his Ph.D. from the Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany in 1969. He has been asked many times over the years when he was going to win the big prize, and so was not surprised to win the Nobel, according to The A.P.
He said he was looking forward to being able to pursue his research without applying for grants for “every tiny bit.”
Dr. Fert was born in Carcassonne, France, and received his Ph.D. at the Université Paris-Sud in 1970. He told The A.P. that it was impossible to predict where modern physics is going to go.
“These days when I go to my grocer and see him type on a computer, I say, ‘Wow, he’s using something I put together in my mind,’” Dr. Fert said.
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Albert Fert, of the Université Paris-Sud in Orsay, France, and Peter Grünberg, of the Institute of Solid State Research at the Jülich Research Center in Germany, will share the $1.5 million prize awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
They will receive the money in a ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10.
Dr. Fert, 69, and Dr. Grünberg, 68, each working independently in 1988, discovered an effect known as giant magnetoresistance, in which tiny changes in a magnetic field can produce huge changes in electrical resistance.
The effect is at the heart of modern gadgets that record data, music or snippets of video as a dense magnetic patchwork of zeros and ones, which is then scanned by a small head and converted to electrical signals.
“The MP3 and iPod industry would not have existed without this discovery,” Börje Johansson, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy, said, according to The Associated Press. “You would not have an iPod without this effect.”
In remarks broadcast over a speakerphone at the academy in Stockholm, Dr. Fert said: “I am so happy for my family, for my co-workers. And I am also very happy to share this with a friend.”
Experts said the discovery was one of the first triumphs of the new field of nanotechnology, the science of building and manipulating assemblies of atoms only a nanometer (a billionth of a meter) in size.
The scanning heads in today’s gizmos consist of alternating layers only a few atoms thick of a magnetic metal, like iron, and a nonmagnetic metal, like chromium. At that small size, the strange rules of quantum mechanics come into play and novel properties emerge.
The Nobel citation said Dr. Fert and Dr. Grünberg’s work also heralded the advent of a new, even smaller and denser type of memory storage called spintronics, in which information is stored and processed by manipulating the spins of electrons.
Engineers have been recording information magnetically and reading it out electrically since the dawn of the computer age, but as they have endeavored to pack more and more data onto their machines, they have been forced to use smaller and fainter magnetic inscriptions and thus more and more sensitive readout devices.
It has long been known that magnetic fields can affect the electrical resistance of magnetic materials like iron. Current flows more easily along field lines than across them. The effect was useful for sensing magnetic fields, and in heads that read magnetic disks. But it amounted to only a small change in resistance, and physicists did not think there were many prospects for improvement.
So it was a surprise in 1988 when groups led by Dr. Fert at the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides and by Dr. Grünberg found that super-slim sandwiches of iron and chromium showed enhanced sensitivity to magnetic fields — “giant magnetoresistance,” as Dr. Fert called it. The name stuck.
The reason for the effect has to do with what physicists call the spin of electrons. When the magnetic layers of the sandwich have their fields pointing in the same direction, electrons whose spin points along that direction can migrate freely through the sandwich, but electrons that point in another direction get scattered.
If, however, one of the magnetic layers is perturbed, by, say, reading a small signal, it can flip its direction so that its field runs opposite to the other one. In that case, no matter which way an electron points, it will be scattered and hindered from moving through the layers, greatly increasing the electrical resistance of the sandwich.
As Phillip Schewe, of the American Institute of Physics, explained, “You’ve leveraged a weak bit of magnetism into a robust bit of electricity.”
Subsequently, Stuart Parkin, now of I.B.M., came up with an easier way to produce the sandwiches on an industrial scale. The first commercial devices using giant magnetoresistance effect were produced in 1997.
Dr. Grünberg was born in Pilsen in what is now the Czech Republic and obtained his Ph.D. from the Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany in 1969. He has been asked many times over the years when he was going to win the big prize, and so was not surprised to win the Nobel, according to The A.P.
He said he was looking forward to being able to pursue his research without applying for grants for “every tiny bit.”
Dr. Fert was born in Carcassonne, France, and received his Ph.D. at the Université Paris-Sud in 1970. He told The A.P. that it was impossible to predict where modern physics is going to go.
“These days when I go to my grocer and see him type on a computer, I say, ‘Wow, he’s using something I put together in my mind,’” Dr. Fert said.
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)