Unusual News 3 June 2021 The oldest human burial was found in Africa. If you ever wondered if we had anything in common with our ancient ancestors, there was at least one thing and that was love. The burial was from 75,000 years ago and it was a toddler. When he was buried, a pillow was placed behind his head. I think that says it all, he was loved and his death was devastating to at least one or both of his parents. There are exceptions, but most of us today would experience that same sorrow at the death of a child. We have found out we won’t have to ship water to Mars if we set up a base there. Glaciers have been found at mid-latitudes. You won’t know this by looking at the planet because almost everything you would see would look dry and desolate. That is because the glaciers and water are under the surface. One old movie which hit this right on the head was “Robinson Crusoe on Mars.” It was about an astronaut who crashed on Mars with only very little supplies but found huge oceans when he went into a cave along with rocks which when burned released oxygen. Now all we need are the oxygen loaded rocks. There might be a clue to finding oxygen on Mars however. Scientists have used the Curiosity rover to measure the atmosphere above the Gale Crater. Oxygen has been found in that atmosphere and it increases at certain times of the Martin year. There may be more to Mars than we suspect. The next planet we discovered to be putting out radio waves is Venus. Scientists say they are natural and not being created by any intelligent life on the planet. The discovery was made by the Parker Solar Probe as it swung by the planet. Scientists are studying both Venus and Earth to see why they are so different and they now think it might have something to do with the sun. One of the puzzles is why does Venus lack a magnetic field. It is thought both Venus and Earth began as almost identical planets but changed over time from each other. As China flexes its muscles in many different areas, it has launched the first part of its new space station as of the writing of this article. The world is holding its breath waiting for a huge chunk of rocket debris to fall back to earth. The fall is uncontrolled and what is left of the piece could hit anywhere. No one has any idea where it might come down. By the time this article is posted you will have the answer and we can only hope it lands in the water somewhere. The new space station will be one sixth the mass of the International Space Station and weigh 66 metric tons. One of the most important periods in humanity was the advent of the Iron Age. It allowed humans to make superior weapons for hunting and eventually create taller buildings, along with many other uses for the iron and then steel they produced. Recently a stash of early iron weapons was found along with other iron objects. In those days these objects were valuable and very desirable. The stash included many Spear heads made to fit over long poles along with other objects which are yet to be identified except for one which was a complex object which seemed to clip to another object. The dates of manufacture are unknown but scientists are sure they are all B.C. and think most likely 45 to 1 B.C. because that is when the Romans took over parts of Germany and that is where the stash was found. The stash could be much older however and date back to the Early Iron Age which dated from 800 to 45 B.C. One of the things most people don’t know is when Apollo 14 reached the moon in 1971, the astronaut Stuart Roosa was orbiting the moon and had hundreds of tree seeds with him. They were from the Forest Service and Roosa was a former smoke jumper. When the astronauts came back to earth, the seeds were thought to be damaged when their plastic bags were torn open during the decontamination process. There were seeds of five different types of trees. The seeds were Loblolly Pine, Sycamore, Sweetgum, Redwood and Douglas Fir. When the bags ripped the seeds fell and all got mixed together. It turned out they were still viable and they were planted in different parts of the country for the bicentennial in 1976. They gained the name Moon Trees. Turkey is famous for having the most ancient ruins of any country. So many ancient armies have been through that country and left signs of their presence. The latest has to do with the Romans. The province of Diyarbakir is conducting an excavation of an ancient Roman street which was found under the soil. The site is in the center of the province in a mound known as Amida Hoyuk. What is really interesting is the number of different ancient civilizations which have lived in the area. They are the Hurri-Mitannis, Urartians, Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Tigranes the Great's Kingdom of Armenia, Romans, Sassanids, Byzantines, Umayyads, Abbasids, Safavids, Ayyubid dynasty, Marwanids, Seljuks, Artuqids and Ottomans. American streets and roads need to be constantly repaired but some ancient Roman ones have withstood the test of time. Scientists have successfully cooled antimatter to just about absolute zero. They feel this is an important step in studying the universe. They discovered they could do this by capturing antimatter in a magnetic trap and then blasting it with a laser. The scientists believe this will help them learn how antimatter is affected by gravity and also prove or disprove some fundamental theories in physics. Antimatter was discovered in 1932 and can be produced in the Large Hadron Collider, but only in miniscule amounts. A new type of artificial eye has been invented. It can mimic the structure of the human eye. It has the potential of helping the blind to see. One of the other uses being talked about by scientists and engineers is using it for robotics. This could give the robotic devices a view of exactly what an object looks like to us which could be very handy in certain applications. Perhaps some day it will be used in medical devices which are used in surgery. It is being said the artificial eye can react to what it sees in only 30 to 40 milliseconds, while a human eye takes between 150 to 300 milliseconds to react to what it sees.
|
