No list of this sort would be complete without a nod to Area 51. The secret military base about 75 miles (120 km) northwest of Las Vegas has been fodder for many a tale — which is only natural, considering the rumors of secret alien experiments carried out there. But when CIA veterans who are finally relieved of their secrecy vows recount their time at Area 51, they make clear that extraterrestrials are not a part of the job. What they have said is that in the 1960s, the site was the testing ground for spy planes like the A-12 and its record-breaking speedy successor the SR-71 Blackbird. A group of people called Roadrunners, who count themselves among those who have worked at Area 51, recall that they were paid either in cash or by checks issued from seemingly unrelated companies like Pan American World Airways. The base likely still tests super-top-secret planes and weapons systems, which is why it continues to be shrouded in mystery. But we can all go on pretending there are recovered bodies of aliens stored there, like the ones depicted in the popular film Independence Day. It's more fun that way.
2. CIA MIND-CONTROL EXPERIMENTS
Laura Macgruder / Overture Films / AP
At the height of the Cold War, the CIA conducted covert, illegal scientific research on human subjects. Known as Project MK-ULTRA, the program subjected humans to experiments with drugs such as LSD and barbiturates, hypnosis and (some reports indicate) radiological and biological agents. In 1973, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all documents from Project MK-ULTRA destroyed. Nevertheless, late the following year, the New York Times reported on the illegal activities. In 1975, the Church Committee, headed by Senator Frank Church, and a commission headed by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller investigated the project. They found that over more than two decades, the CIA spent nearly $20 million, enlisted the services of researchers at more than 30 universities and conducted experiments on subjects without their knowledge. Some of the research was performed in Canada. Some historians argue that the goal of the program was to create a mind-control system by which the CIA could program people to conduct assassinations. In 1953, Richard Condon dramatized the idea in the thriller The Manchurian Candidate, which was adapted into a film starring Frank Sinatra. Such ultimately wacky ideas were also dramatized in the recent George Clooney filmThe Men Who Stare at Goats.
New Delhi: Kali-5000 is India’s answer to any uninvited incoming missiles and planes. Moreover, the beam can also be used to cripple the enemy satellite and UAVs in no time.KALI stands for Kilo Ampere Linear Injector. It is a linear electron accelerator being developed by the Defence Research Development Organization (DRDO) and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).
Earlier the Kali system was developed for industrial applications and that the defence use was a recent spinoff.
The machine essentially generated pulses of highly energetic electrons. Other components in the machine down the line converted the electrons into flash x-rays (for ultra high-speed photography) or microwaves. The electron beam itself can be used for welding.The KALI project was first mooted in 1985 by the then Director of the BARC, Dr. R. Chidambaram. Work on the Project began in 1989, being developed by the Accelerators & Pulse Power Division of the BARC.
The project was designed to produce electron pulses of about 100 ns with an energy of about 1 MeV, current 40 kA and a power of 40 GW. This Relativistic Electron Beams (REB) thus generated will be used for the generation of High Power Microwaves (HPM) & Flash X Rays (FXR).This has fueled hopes that the KALI could, one day be used in a High-Power Microwave gun, which could destroy incoming missiles and aircraft through soft-kill (destroying the electronic circuitry on the missile).
The KALI’s potential for a military role as a beam weapon has made it, in the eyes of China a threat. The KALI-5000 was commissioned for use in late 2004.However, weaponisation of the KALI will take some time. The system is still under development, and efforts are being made to make it more compact, as well as improve its recharge time, which, at the present, makes it only a single use system.
The oceans cover more than 70 percent of the earth's surface, yet their depths remain largely unknown. It's a frontier that scientists are racing to explore using tools such as the deep-ocean submersible Alvin, shown here. Click the "Next" arrow above to learn about 10 deep-ocean secrets that have come to light.
Deep-ocean octopuses have Antarctic origins
Census of Marine Life
Many deep ocean octopuses trace their origins back to relatives that swam in the waters around Antarctica. The migration began about 30 million years ago when the continent cooled and large ice sheets grew, forcing octopuses there into ever deeper waters. The climate shift also created a northbound flow of deep, cold water that carried the cephalopods to new habitats. As they adapted to new niches, new species evolved. Many lost their defensive ink sacs because the pitch-black ocean depths required no camouflage screen. The species known as Megaleledon setebos, shown here, is the closest living relative of the deep-sea octopuses' common ancestor.
'Brittlestar City' found on undersea mountain
Census Of Marine Life / AP
The orange and red starfish relatives called brittlestars have managed to defy the odds and colonize the flanks of a giant, underwater peak on the Macquarie Ridge, an 870-mile-long underwater mountain range that stretches south from New Zealand to just short of the Antarctic Circle. The peak, known as a seamount, juts up into a swirling circumpolar current that flows by at 2.5 miles per hour, delivering ample food for the brittlestars to grab while sweeping away fish and other would-be predators. Another brittlestar species has settled on the seamount's flat summit, a habitat normally settled by corals and sponges.
Deep Antarctic waters, cradle of marine life
Wiebke Brokeland / GCMB
This pale crustacean from the genus Cylindrarcturus is one of more than 700 species new to science found scurrying, scampering and swimming in the frigid waters between 2,000 and 21,000 feet below the surface of the Weddell Sea off Antarctica. The discoveries were part of a research project to determine how species at different depths are related to each other there, and to other creatures around the world. "The Antarctic deep sea is potentially the cradle of life of the global marine species," team leader Angelika Brandt, an expert from the Zoological Institute and Zoological Museum at the University of Hamburg, said in a statement announcing the discoveries.
Northernmost black smokers discovered
Credit: Center for Geobiology/U. of Bergen
Scientists working deep inside the Arctic Circle have discovered a cluster of five hydrothermal vents, also known as black smokers, which spew out liquid as hot as 570 degrees Fahrenheit. The vents are 120 miles further north than the closest known vents, which tend to occur where the seafloor spreads apart at a quicker pace. This image shows the arm of a remotely operated vehicle reaching out to sample fluids billowing from the top three feet of the tallest vent, which reaches four stories off the seafloor. The chimney is covered with white bacteria that feast on the freshly delivered minerals.
Black smoker fossils hint at life's beginnings
Timothy Kusky / Gondwana Research
The discovery of primitive bacteria on 1.43 billion-year-old black-smoker fossils – a crosscut is shown here – unearthed from a Chinese mine adds weight to the idea that life may have originated in deep-sea hydrothermal vents, according to geologist Timothy Kusky at Saint Louis University. The ancient microbe dined on metal sulfide that lined the fringes of the chimneys. The oldest-known life forms on Earth are 3.5 billion-year-old clumps of bacteria found in Western Australia. That find suggested that shallow seas, not the deep oceans, were the birthplace of life. Neither discovery, however, serves as the definitive answer about life's origins.
Microbes feast on ocean-bottom crust
NOAA/WHOI
Once thought barren and sparsely populated, the deep-ocean floor is home to rich and diverse communities of bacteria. In fact, scientists have found that the seafloor contains three to four times more bacteria than the waters above, raising the question of how the organisms survive. Lab analyses suggest that chemical reactions with the rocks themselves provide the fuel for life. The discovery is another tantalizing hint that life could have originated in the ocean depths. In a statement about the find, the University of Southern California's Katrina Edwards said: "I hope that people turn their heads and notice: There's life down there."
Where do deep-sea fish go to spawn?
Harbor Branch / E.widder
Life in the dark, cold and vast depths of the sea was long thought to be lonely for the few fish that dared eke out an existence there, mostly from organic detritus that sinks from shallower waters. That picture began to change in 2006, when researchers probing the Mid-Atlantic Ridge discovered that fishes may occasionally gather at features such as seamounts to spawn. The evidence for these gatherings comes from the sheer volume of fish collected at seamounts – much higher than would have been expected if the fish were purely nomadic wanderers. What's more, images made from acoustical "scatterings" are suggestive of a massive fish aggregation. The 35-pound anglerfish shown here is one of the rare species hauled up from the deep during the project.
Colossal squid has, well, colossal eyes
Ross Setford / AP
What did you expect? Would a colossal squid have anything but eyes big enough to generate a few over-the-top superlatives? Probably not - but still, when researchers thawed out this squid in New Zealand, the wow factor was undeniable. The creature's eye measured about 11 inches across; its lens was the size of an orange. Scientists suspect the big eye allows the huge squid to capture a lot of light in the dark depths in which it hunts. The squid weighed about 1,000 pounds when caught in the Antarctic's Ross Sea and measured 26 feet long. Scientists believe the species, which can descend to 6,500 feet, may grow as long as 46 feet.
Deep-sea corals record history
Rob Dunba / Stanford University
Some coral reefs are found thousands of feet below the ocean surface, where they have grown amid frigid waters for millennia. Like tree rings, they serve as a faithful archive of global environmental change, according to Robert Dunbar, a professor of geological and environmental sciences at Stanford University. His team travels the world to collect samples of these corals, such as this one from a colony near Easter Island. In 2007, the team published a 300-year archive of soil erosion in Kenya, as recorded by coral samples collected from the bottom of the Indian Ocean. They are now analyzing 4,000-year-old corals discovered off Hawaii to create an archive of climate change.
Hydrogen-Ammonia Cycle. Credit: STFCUK researchers today announced what they believe to be a game changer in the use of hydrogen as a "green" fuel.
A new discovery by scientists at the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), offers a viable solution to the challenges of storage and cost by usingammonia as a clean and secure hydrogen-containing energy source to produce hydrogen on-demand in situ.
Hydrogen is considered by many to be the best alternative fuel for automotive purposes but there are complications with its safe and efficient storage and very significant concerns surrounding the costs of a hydrogen infrastructure for transportation. This new discovery may well have found the answers to both these challenges.
When the components of ammonia are separated (a technique known as cracking) they form one part nitrogen and three parts hydrogen. Many catalysts can effectively crack ammonia to release the hydrogen, but the best ones are very expensive precious metals. This new method is different and involves two simultaneous chemical processes rather than using a catalyst, and can achieve the same result at a fraction of the cost.
Ammonia can be stored on-board in vehicles at low pressures in conformable plastic tanks. Meanwhile on the forecourts, the infrastructure technology for ammonia is as straightforward as that for liquid petroleum gas (LPG).
Professor Bill David, who led the STFC research team at the ISIS Neutron Source, said "Our approach is as effective as the best current catalysts but the active material, sodium amide, costs pennies to produce. We can produce hydrogen from ammonia 'on demand' effectively and affordably.
Prof. Bill David (right) and Dr Martin Jones with the ammonia decomposition reactor. Credit: STFCFew people think of ammonia as a fuel but we believe that it is the natural alternative to fossil fuels. For cars, we don't even need to go to the complications of a fuel-cell vehicle. A small amount of hydrogen mixed with ammonia is sufficient to provide combustion in a conventional car engine. While our process is not yet optimised, we estimate that an ammonia decomposition reactor no bigger than a 2-litre bottle will provide enough hydrogen to run a mid-range family car."
"We've even thought about how we can make ammonia as safe as possible and stop the release of NOx gases," added Professor David. "This fundamental science therefore has immense potential to change the use of hydrogen as a fuel."
Dr. Martin Jones, also from STFC and who with Professor David invented this new process, said "Having developed this new approach to decompose ammonia, we are now in the process of creating a first low-power static demonstrator system. Our technology will no doubt evolve, but our research invites scientists and technologists to address a different set of questions."
David Willetts, the UK Minister for Universities and Science, said "This is exactly the sort of innovation we need UK researchers and engineers to develop to secure our role as a global leader in this field, putting Britain at the forefront of solving modern day transportation problems. This breakthrough could also hugely contribute to our efforts to reduce our greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050."
Ammonia is already one of the most transported bulk chemicals worldwide. It is ammonia that is the feedstock for the fertilisers that enable the production of almost half the world's food. Increasing ammonia production is technologically straightforward and there is no obvious reason why this existing infrastructure cannot be extended so that ammonia not only feeds but powers the planet.
2015 will be a significant year in the development of the car. While there is currently substantial interest and excitement in all-electric vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Model S, next year car manufacturers will begin to roll out a new generation of fuel-cell electric vehicles. Batteries play a significant role in these cars but the vehicle range, which will be equivalent to conventional cars, will be provided by a fuel cell powered by hydrogen.
These hybrid vehicles are touted to be the way ahead but while all-battery cars have issues with driving range, hydrogen provision is a major headache both on-board for the fuel cells and on the forecourt for refuelling. The hydrogen in these 2015 cars will be stored on-board in very high pressure tanks, and at even higher pressures at the forecourts. The safety issues of storing hydrogen on-board at these pressures are substantial while the cost issues of installing a new high-pressure infrastructure at the forecourts across the nation are currently massively prohibitive.
Speaking about this new development from the team at STFC, Professor David MacKay FRS, Chief Scientific Advisor at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said "We believe that there is no single solution to the challenges we face in decarbonising the fuel chain, but this research suggests that ammonia based technologies are worth further consideration and may well play an important part in the future energy landscape."
Five years ago, Professor Steven Chu, Nobel Prize winner and, at that time, the US Secretary of State for Energy in the Obama administration, sounded a death knell for the hydrogen economy with his statement that, while it takes only three miracles to be declared a saint, it would take four miracles to achieve a hydrogen-based energy economy. This work from STFC researchers could well be a turning point.
Kate Ronayne, Head of Innovation at STFC said: "This exciting research has the potential to dramatically influence the static and mobile energy solutions of the future. While still at an early stage, this innovative work offers a very elegant solution to some of the major challenges in harnessing the power of hydrogen as a fuel source."
(Left) 15 video segments; (Right) reconstruction error for each video segment. Credit: researchersSmartphones, GoPro cameras and Google Glass are making it easy for anyone to shoot video anywhere. But, they do not make it any easier to watch the tedious videos that can result. Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists, however, have invented a video highlighting technique that can automatically pick out the good parts. Called LiveLight, this method constantly evaluates action in the video, looking for visual novelty and ignoring repetitive or eventless sequences, to create a summary that enables a viewer to get the gist of what happened. What it produces is a miniature video trailer. Although not yet comparable to a professionally edited video, it can help people quickly review a long video of an event, a security camera feed, or video from a police cruiser's windshield camera. A particularly cool application is using LiveLight to automatically digest videos from, say, GoPro or Google Glass, and quickly upload thumbnail trailers to social media. The summarization process thus avoids generating costly Internet data charges and tedious manual editing on long videos. This application, along with the surveillance camera auto-summarization, is now being developed for the retail market by PanOptus Inc., a startup founded by the inventors of LiveLight. The LiveLight video summary occurs in "quasi-real-time," with just a single pass through the video. It's not instantaneous, but it doesn't take long—LiveLight might take 1-2 hours to process one hour of raw video and can do so on a conventional laptop. With a more powerful backend computing facility, production time can be shortened to mere minutes, according to the researchers.
Eric P. Xing, professor of machine learning, and Bin Zhao, a Ph.D. student in the Machine Learning Department, will present their work on LiveLight June 26 at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference in Columbus, Ohio. Example videos and summaries are available online athttp://supan.pc.cs.cmu.edu:8080/VideoSummarization/. "The algorithm never looks back," said Zhao, whose research specialty is computer vision. Rather, as the algorithm processes the video, it compiles a dictionary of its content. The algorithm then uses the learned dictionary to decide in a very efficient way if a newly seen segment is similar to previously observed events, such as routine traffic on a highway. Segments thus identified as trivial recurrences or eventless are excluded from the summary. Novel sequences not appearing in the learned dictionary, such as an erratic car, or a traffic accident, would be included in the summary. Though LiveLight can produce these summaries automatically, people also can be included in the loop for compiling the summary. In that instance, Zhao said LiveLight provides a ranked list of novel sequences for a human editor to consider for the final video. In addition to selecting the sequences, a human editor might choose to restore some of the footage deemed worthless to provide context or visual transitions before and after the sequences of interest. "We see this as potentially the ultimate unmanned tool for unlocking video data," Xing said. Video has never been easier for the average person to shoot, but reviewing and tagging the raw video remains so tedious that ever larger volumes of video are going unwatched or discarded. The interesting moments captured in those videos thus go unseen and unappreciated, he added. The ability to detect unusual behaviors amidst long stretches of tedious video could also be a boon to security firms that monitor and review surveillance camera video.
A capuchin monkey of the Cebus variety dines on a bright green katydid grasshopper. A steady diet of abundant ripe fruit and leaf-crawling insects may explain why Cebus can’t hold a stick to their Sapajus capuchin cousins when it comes to tool usage and other higher-level cognitive skills. Credit: A. Melin(Phys.org) —Figuring out how to survive on a lean-season diet of hard-to-reach ants, slugs and other bugs may have spurred the development of bigger brains and higher-level cognitive functions in the ancestors of humans and other primates, suggests research from Washington University in St. Louis.
"Challenges associated with finding food have long been recognized as important in shaping evolution of the brain and cognition in primates, including humans," said Amanda D. Melin, PhD, assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences and lead author of the study.
"Our work suggests that digging for insects when food was scarce may have contributed to hominid cognitive evolution and set the stage for advanced tool use."
Based on a five-year study of capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica, the research provides support for an evolutionary theory that links the development of sensorimotor (SMI) skills, such as increased manual dexterity, tool use, and innovative problem solving, to the creative challenges of foraging for insects and other foods that are buried, embedded or otherwise hard to procure.
Published in the June 2014 Journal of Human Evolution, the study is the first to provide detailed evidence from the field on how seasonal changes in food supplies influence the foraging patterns of wild capuchin monkeys.
The study is co-authored by biologist Hilary C. Young and anthropologists Krisztina N. Mosdossy and Linda M. Fedigan, all from the University of Calgary, Canada.
It notes that many human populations also eat embedded insects on a seasonal basis and suggests that this practice played a key role in human evolution.
"We find that capuchin monkeys eat embedded insects year-round but intensify their feeding seasonally, during the time that their preferred food – ripe fruit – is less abundant," Melin said. "These results suggest embedded insects are an important fallback food."
Previous research has shown that fallback foods help shape the evolution of primate body forms, including the development of strong jaws, thick teeth and specialized digestive systems in primates whose fallback diets rely mainly on vegetation.
This study suggests that fallback foods can also play an important role in shaping brain evolution among primates that fall back on insect-based diets, and that this influence is most pronounced among primates that evolve in habitats with wide seasonal variations, such as the wet-dry cycles found in some South American forests.
Melin has been investigating the visual and foraging ecology of white-faced capuchins in the tropical dry forests of Guanacas, Costa Rica, since 2004. Credit: A. Melin"Capuchin monkeys are excellent models for examining evolution of brain size and intelligence for their small body size, they have impressively large brains," Melin said. "Accessing hidden and well-protected insects living in tree branches and under bark is a cognitively demanding task, but provides a high-quality reward: fat and protein, which is needed to fuel big brains."
But when it comes to using tools, not all capuchin monkeystrains and lineages are created equal, and Melin's theories may explain why.
Perhaps the most notable difference between the robust (tufted, genus Sapajus) and gracile (untufted, genus Cebus) capuchin lineages is their variation in tool use. While Cebus monkeys are known for clever food-foraging tricks, such as banging snails or fruits against branches, they can't hold a stick to their Sapajus cousins when it comes to the
innovative use and modification of sophisticated tools.
One explanation, Melin said, is that Cebus capuchins have historically and consistently occupied tropical rainforests, whereas the Sapajus lineage spread from their origins in the Atlantic rainforest into drier, more temperate and seasonal habitat types.
"Primates who extract foods in the most seasonal environments are expected to experience the strongest selection in the 'sensorimotor intelligence' domain, which includes cognition related to object handling," Melin said. "This may explain the occurrence of tool use in some capuchin lineages, but not in others."
Genetic analysis of mitochondial chromosomes suggests that the Sapajus-Cebus diversification occurred millions of years ago in the late Miocene epoch.
"We predict that the last common ancestor of Cebus and Sapajus had a level of SMI more closely resembling extant Cebus monkeys, and that further expansion of SMI evolved in the robust lineage to facilitate increased access to varied embedded fallback foods,
An adult female tufted capuchin monkey of the Sapajus lineage using a stone tool and a sandstone anvil to crack a palm nut as her infant hangs on. Credit: E. Visalberghinecessitated by more intense periods of fruit shortage," she said.
One of the more compelling modern examples of this behavior, said Melin, is the seasonal consumption of termites by chimpanzees, whose use of tools to extract this protein-rich food source is an important survival technique in harsh environments.
What does this all mean for hominids?
While it's hard to decipher the extent of seasonal dietary variations from the fossil record, stable isotope analyses indicate seasonal variation in diet for at least one South African hominin, Paranthropus robustus. Other isotopic research suggests that early human diets may have included a range of extractable foods, such as termites, plant roots and tubers.
Modern humans frequently consume insects, which are seasonally important when other animal foods are limited.
This study suggests that the ingenuity required to survive on a diet of elusive insects has been a key factor in the development of uniquely human skills:
It may well have been bugs that helped build our brains.
This is a diagram of quantum dot. Credit: University of TorontoThink those flat, glassy solar panels on your neighbour's roof are the pinnacle of solar technology? Think again.
Researchers in the University of Toronto's Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering have designed and tested a new class of solar-sensitive nanoparticle that outshines the current state of the art employing this new class of technology.
This new form of solid, stable light-sensitive nanoparticles, called colloidal quantum dots, could lead to cheaper and more flexible solar cells, as well as better gas sensors, infrared lasers, infrared light emitting diodes and more. The work, led by post-doctoral researcher Zhijun Ning and Professor Ted Sargent, was published this week in Nature Materials.
Collecting sunlight using these tiny colloidal quantum dots depends on two types of semiconductors: n-type, which are rich in electrons; and p-type, which are poor in electrons. The problem? When exposed to the air, n-type materials bind to oxygen atoms, give up their electrons, and turn into p-type. Ning and colleagues modelled and demonstrated a new colloidal quantum dot n-type material that does not bind oxygen when exposed to air.
Maintaining stable n- and p-type layers simultaneously not only boosts the efficiency of light absorption, it opens up a world of new optoelectronic devices that capitalize on the best properties of both light and electricity. For the average person, this means more sophisticated weather satellites, remote controllers, satellite communication, or pollution detectors.
Dr. Zhijun Ning in the lab, holding a film coated with colloidal quantum dots. Credit: Roberta Baker"This is a material innovation, that's the first part, and with this new material we can build new device structures," said Ning. "Iodide is almost a perfect ligand for these quantum solar cells with both high efficiency and air stability—no one has shown that before."
Ning's new hybrid n- and p-type material achieved solar power conversion efficiency up to eight per cent—among the best results reported to date.
This is a photo of co-authors Zhijun Ning (left) and Oleksandr Voznyy (right) examining a film coated with colloidal quantum dots. Credit: Roberta BakerBut improved performance is just a start for this new quantum-dot-based solar cell architecture. The powerful little dots could be mixed into inks and painted or printed onto thin, flexible surfaces, such as roofing shingles, dramatically lowering the cost and accessibility of solar power for millions of people.
"The field of colloidal quantum dot photovoltaics requires continued improvement in absolute performance, or power conversion efficiency," said Sargent. "The field has moved fast, and keeps moving fast, but we need to work toward bringing performance to commercially compelling levels."
Artist rendering of a supermassive black hole. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.There is nothing in the Universe more awe inspiring or mysterious than a black hole. Because of their massive gravity and ability to absorb even light, they defy our attempts to understand them. All their secrets hide behind the veil of the event horizon.
What do they look like? We don't know. They absorb all the radiation they emit. How big are they? Do they have a size, or could they be infinitely dense? We just don't know. But there are a few things we can know. Like how massive they are, and how fast they're spinning.
Wait, what? Spinning?
Consider the massive star that came before the black hole. It was formed from a solar nebula, gaining its rotation by averaging out the momentum of all the individual particles in the cloud. As mutual gravity pulled the star together, through the conservation of angular momentum it rotated more rapidly. When a star becomes a black hole, it still has all that mass, but now compressed down into an infinitesimally smaller space. And to conserve that angular momentum, the black hole's rate of rotation speeds up… a lot.The entire history of everything the black hole ever consumed, averaged down to a single number: the spin rate.
If the black hole could shrink down to an infinitely small size, you would think that the spin rate might increase to infinity too. But black holes have a speed limit.
"There is a speed limit to the spin of a black hole. It's sort of set by the faster a black hole spins, the smaller is its event horizon."
That's Dr. Mark Morris, a professor of astronomy at UCLA. He has devoted much of his time to researching the mysteries of black holes.
"There is this region, called the ergosphere between the event horizon and another boundary, outside. The ergosphere is a very interesting region outside the event horizon in which a variety of interesting effects can occur."
Imagine the event horizon of a black hole as a sphere in space, and then surrounding this black hole is the ergosphere. The faster the black hole spins, the more this ergosphere flattens out.
"The speed limit is set by the event horizon, eventually, at a high enough spin, reaches the singularity. You can't have what's called a naked singularity. You can't have a singularity exposed to the rest of the Universe. That would mean that the singularity itself could emit energy or light and somebody outside could actually see it. And that can't happen. That's the physical limitation of how fast it can spin. Physicists use units for angular momentum that are cast in terms of mass, which is a curious thing, and the speed limit can be described as the angular momentum equals the mass of the black hole, and that sets the speed limit."
Scientists measure the spin rates of supermassive black holes by spreading the X-ray light into different colors. Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechJust imagine. The black hole spins up to the point that it's just about to reveal itself. But that's impossible. The laws of physics won't let it spin any faster. And here's the amazing part. Astronomers have actually detected supermassive black holes spinning at the limits predicted by these theories.
One black hole, at the heart of galaxy NGC 1365 is turning at 84% the speed of light. It has reached the cosmic speed limit, and can't spin any faster without revealing its singularity.
For centuries it was thought to be a legend, a city of extraordinary wealth mentioned by Herodotus, visited by Helen of Troy and Paris, her lover, but apparently buried under the sea.
In fact, Heracleion was true, and a decade after divers began uncovering its treasures, archaeologists have produced a picture of what life was like in the city in the era of the pharaohs.
The city, also called Thonis, was found during a survey of the Egyptian shore at the beginning of the last decade.
1,200 years ago the ancient Egyptian city of Heracleion disappeared beneath the Mediterranean. Founded around 8th century BC, well before the foundation of Alexandria in 331 BC, it is believed Heracleion served as the obligatory port of entry to Egypt for all ships coming from the Greek world.
Prior to its discovery in 2000 by archaeologist Franck Goddio and the IEASM (European Institute for Underwater Archaeology), no trace of Thonis-Heracleion had been found (the city was known to the Greeks as Thonis). Its name was almost raised from the memory of mankind, only preserved in ancient classic texts and rare inscriptions found on land by archaeologists.
With his unique survey-based approach utilising sophisticated technical equipment, Franck Goddio and his team from the IEASM were able to locate, map and excavate parts of the city of Thonis-Heracleion, which lies 6.5 kilometres off today’s coastline about 150 feet underwater. The city is located within an overall research area of 11 by 15 kilometres in the western part of Aboukir Bay.
Findings to date include:- The remains of more than 64 ships buried in the thick clay and sand that covers the sea bed- Gold coins and weights made from bronze and stone- Giant 16-ft statues along with hundreds of smaller statues of minor gods- Slabs of stone inscribed in both ancient Greek and ancient Egyptian- Dozens of small limestone sarcophagi believed to have once contained mummified animals- Over 700 ancient anchors for ships.
What Caused the Submergence?
Research suggests that the site was affected by geological and cataclysmic phenomena. The slow movement of subsidence of the soil affected this part of the south-eastern basin of the Mediterranean. The rise in sea level also contributed significantly to the submergence of the land. The IEASM made geological observations that brought these phenomena to light by discovering seismic effects in the underlying geology.
Analysis of the site also suggests liquefaction of the soil. These localized phenomena can be triggered by the action of great pressure on soil with a high clay and water content. The pressure from large buildings, combined with an overload of weight due to an unusually high flood or a tidal wave, can dramatically compress the soil and force the expulsion of water contained within the structure of the clay. The clay quickly loses volume, which creates sudden subsidence. An earthquake can also cause such a phenomenon. These factors, whether occurring together or independently, may have caused significant destruction and explain the submergence of Thonis-Heracleion.
Franck GoddioMaritime Archaeologist
Franck Goddio is a pioneer of modern maritime archaeology. After graduating from the École Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Economique in Paris, Franck Goddio conducted economic and financial counselling missions in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia for the United Nations, and later for the French Foreign Ministry.
In the early 1980’s he decided to dedicate himself entirely to his passion – underwater archaeology – and founded the Institut Européen d’Archéologie Sous-Marine (IEASM), of which he is currently president. Goddio has initiated and directed a number of excavations on shipwrecks including seven junks from the 11th-16th century, two Spanish galleons and two trading vessels of the British East India Company.
Goddio’s most ambitious project is conducted off the coast of Egypt, in Alexandria’s ancient eastern harbour and in the Bay of Aboukir (30km east of Alexandria). In partnership with the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities a vast area the size of Paris has been mapped and investigated since 1992. In 2000, the ancient city of Heracleion and parts of the city of Canopus were discovered. The research is ongoing to this date.
Excavation projects directed by Goddio have a strictly non-commercial purpose and his work is always carried out in cooperation with the national authorities in whose territorial waters the exploration is taking place. The excavation work is founded on legal provisions that regulate underwater excavations and on international archaeological standards (UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage).
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