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Tech billionaire Elon Musk has had a big week, and it’s only Tuesday. In a bizarre speech, delivered to a crowd gathered beside his commercial space ship, known as BFR, Musk warned his guests that Earth needed to become a “multi-planet civilisation”, and we need to do it right now. “There could be some natural event or some man-made event that ends civilization as we know it, and ends life as we know it,?” Musk rambled into a microphone. “And so it’s important that we try to become a multi-planet civilization, extend life beyond earth and to do so as...

Greek archaeologists expressed their concern on Monday over the abandonment by the state of the site of the mid-5th century BC Temple of Artemis Agrotera, which they described as "one of the most historically important archaeological sites in the center of Athens." The Ionic-style temple, dedicated to the Greek virgin goddess of the hunt was constructed of Pentelic marble. It stands on Ardittou street, in the neighbourhood of Mets, surrounded by modern buildings. In a press release titled "A monument in danger," the Association of Greek Archaeologists says that despite numerous decisions published by the Central Archaeological Council since 1964...

I, brother Odoric, a Czech from Turlania,...crossed the sea and visited the land of the unbelievers intending to harvest some of their souls. I will not mention all that I have seen...For I would have not believed it myself, if I had not heard it and seen it with my own ears and eyes. Thus begins the 'The Journey into the Empire of the Great Khan', a book of recollections written in the 14th century by Czech priest, Odoric of Pordenone, who set out for China in 1318, after being commissioned by the Pope to establish contact with the its...

A new analysis of thousands of very small earthquakes that have occurred in the San Bernardino basin near the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults suggests that the unusual deformation of some—they move in a different way than expected—may be due to "deep creep" 10 km below the Earth's surface... ... Michele Cooke say the enigmatic behavior is seen in about one third of the hundreds of tiny quakes recorded during the lull between big damaging quakes, and their possible significance had not been appreciated until now. ... Over the past 36 years... seismic stations have recorded the style of...

Physicists from the Institute for Solid State Physics at the University of Tokyo, Japan, have recorded the largest magnetic field ever generated indoors — a whopping 1,200 T (tesla)“Magnetic fields are one of the fundamental properties of a physical environment,” said lead author Dr. Daisuke Nakamura and colleagues.“They can be controlled with high precision and interact directly with electronic orbitals and spins; this makes them indispensable for research in areas of solid state physics such as magnetic materials, superconductors, semiconductors, strongly correlated electron materials, and other nanomaterials.”The researchers generated ultrahigh magnetic fields using the electromagnetic flux-compression (EMFC) technique.“We developed a...

Scientists delight in devising explanations for the great dinosaur extinctions. But there are several questions which they have failed to even ask, much less tried to answer. Why, for instance, in all of the time claimed to have passed since the dinosaur extinctions, has nothing ever re-evolved to the sizes of the large dinosaurs? If such sizes worked for creatures which ruled the Earth for tens of millions of years, then why would not some species of elephant or rhinoceros have evolved to such a size again? What kinds of problems, if any, would sauropod sizes entail in our world...

Full title: JURASSIC LARK Woolly Mammoths will roam new Jurassic Park-style theme park with cave lions and extinct horses in TEN YEARS, Russian scientists sayThe beasts are set to make a comeback to the plains of Siberia some 14,000 years after going extinct. LONG extinct cave lions may be about to rise from their icy graves and prowl once more alongside woolly mammoths and ancient horses in a real life Jurassic Park. In less than 10 years it is hoped the fearsome big cats will be released from an underground lab as part of a remarkable plan to populate a...

There are three steps in making alga-based yarn...: First, a sugar called alginate is derived from kelp—a multicellular algal seaweed—and powdered. Next the alginate powder is turned into a water-based gel, to which plant-based color (such as carrot juice) is added. Finally, the gel is extruded into long strands of fiber that can be woven into a fabric. ... Materials scientists in China have noted that alga-based fibers are naturally fire-resistant, potentially reducing the need for adding toxic flame retardants to clothing. Also, alga biodegrades faster than cotton—the most common natural clothing fiber—and growing it does not require pesticides or...

Researchers from Monterey bay Aquarium and Stanford University discovered an area the size of Colorado between California and Hawaii that appears to be a “White Shark Café,” but it is unclear if the sharks are there for food or sex. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Monday that authorities are trying to determine why these sharks spend months on an annual pilgrimage in winter and spring to the deep sea. Scientists say that it appears the sharks are out there to feast on the abundant amount of squid and small fish in the region. “They are telling us this incredible...

Spacecraft and satellites could in future be launched into space without the need for fuel, thanks to a revolutionary new theory. Dr Mike McCulloch, from the University of Plymouth, first put forward the idea of quantised inertia (QI) – through which he believes light can be converted into thrust – in 2007. He has now received $1.3million from the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a four-year study which aims to make the concept a reality. The QI theory predicts that objects can be pushed by differences in the intensity of so-called Unruh radiation in space, similar...

According to Lovelock and Margulis's Gaia hypothesis, living things are part of a planetary-scale self-regulating system that has maintained habitable conditions for the past 3.5 billion years (1, 2). Gaia has operated without foresight or planning on the part of organisms, but the evolution of humans and their technology are changing that. Earth has now entered a new epoch called the Anthropocene (3), and humans are beginning to become aware of the global consequences of their actions. As a result, deliberate self-regulation—from personal action to global geoengineering schemes—is either happening or imminently possible. Making such conscious choices to operate within...

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a detailed image of a spectacular part of the Coma cluster, a structure of over a thousand galaxies bound together by gravity. The Coma Cluster, also known as Abell 1656, lies in the northern constellation of Coma Berenices, about 300 million light-years away from Earth.Many of the galaxies in the cluster are ellipticals, as is NGC 4860, the brighter of the two galaxies dominating this Hubble image.However, the outskirts of the cluster also host younger spiral galaxies that proudly display their swirling arms.Again, this image shows a wonderful example of such a galaxy...

Archaeologists have discovered a stunning sphinx statue at an ancient temple in southern Egypt. The sandstone statue was discovered during a project to reduce groundwater at Kom Ombo temple in Aswan. The statue likely dates back to the Ptolemaic period, between 305 B.C. and 30 B.C., according to Dr. Mostafa Waziri, general secretary of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. In a Facebook post, Waziri explained that the statue was found in the southeastern side of the temple, where two sandstone reliefs of King Ptolemy V were discovered two months ago. Sphinx statues, which have a lion’s body and a human...

"As the body of research evidence has grown over the last twenty years, psychologists in general have become increasingly skeptical that repressed memories even exist, but a new study, published this week in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that researchers and practitioners hold different beliefs about whether such memories occur and whether they can be accurately recalled."

It's going to be a big night for space tourism. The private spaceflight company SpaceX will reveal its first passenger for a trip around the moon on the company's massive BFR rocket and you can watch it all live online. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has even dropped tantalizing previews of the BFR's new rocket design on Twitter. SpaceX will unveil its BFR rocket passenger (the name stands for Big Falcon Rocket) in a webcast tonight (Sept. 17) at its Hawthorne, California headquarters. You can watch it live here, courtesy of SpaceX, beginning at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 Sept. 18 GMT)....

One of our favorite anomalies over the years has been the ancient "inscribed wall" at Chatata, near Cleveland, in Bradley County, Tennessee. The above quotation marks are intended to warn the reader that said wall may not be man-made, and its inscriptions may be natural rather than artificial... The wall was originally almost completely buried. It attracted attention only because its course was marked on the surface by stones projecting from the ground every 25-30 feet over a gently curving arc about 1,000 feet long. One of these surface stones seemed to be inscribed with strange symbols. Excavations, supported at...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian archaeologists draining water from a temple in the southern city of Aswan have uncovered a sandstone sphinx likely dating to the Ptolemaic era, the antiquities ministry said on Sunday.

Derek Hunter, author of the new book Outrage Inc.: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood, appears with Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, to discuss the book on C-Span2's "After Words" tonight at 9:00 PM EDT, a repeat from earlier this evening and yesterday. Hunter discusses the tactics and maneuvers used by the left to advance their causes, for example rarely talking about the facts of an issue, which are usually too boring and complicated for most people to follow, but rather presenting their arguments in emotional terms and suggesting that following what their opponents...

A band of beluga whales took in a lost narwhal and made it one of their own, researchers said after discovering the lone whale swimming and playing with its new friends. The narwhal was discovered in the St. Lawrence River, more than 620 miles from its normal habitat, swimming with about dozen of St. Lawrence River belugas. Narwhals normally live in the Arctic near Canada, Greenland, Russia and Norway, CBC News reported. GREMM said the narwhal was believed to be a juvenile, swimming with mostly male belugas. "It behaves like it was one of the boys," Robert Michaud, the president...

Two stunningly preserved ice age mammals were unearthed by gold miners in northwest Canada and unveiled in a ceremony on Thursday. A wolf pup and a caribou calf were found by the miners in the Yukon territory in 2016 in the area's melting permaforst. It's exceedlingly rare for fur, skin and muscle tissues to be preserved in the fossil record, but all three are present on these specimens, which have radiocarbon-dated to more than 50,000 years old, reports the Guardian. The wolf pup is reportedly preserved in its entirety, including exceptional details of the head, tail, paws, skin and hair,...