Free Republic

Minerals help molecules thought to have been essential for early life to form. A team of US scientists may have found the 'primordial womb' in which the first life on Earth was incubated. Lynda Williams and colleagues at Arizona State University in Tempe have discovered that certain types of clay mineral convert simple carbon-based molecules to complex ones in conditions mimicking those of hot, wet hydrothermal vents (mini-volcanoes on the sea bed). Such complex molecules would have been essential components of the first cell-like systems on Earth. Having helped such delicate molecules to form, the clays can also protect them...

In the depths of the cold war, in 1983, a senior at Columbia University wrote in a campus newsmagazine, Sundial, about the vision of “a nuclear free world.” He railed against discussions of “first- versus second-strike capabilities” that “suit the military-industrial interests” with their “billion-dollar erector sets,” and agitated for the elimination of global arsenals holding tens of thousands of deadly warheads.

Climate swings shaped human evolution, researchers claim Ian Sample, science correspondent The Guardian Monday November 19 2007 The evolution of our earliest human ancestors was driven by wild swings in eastern Africa's ancient climate, scientists claim today. The rapidly changing climate reshaped the landscape, leaving once plentiful food and water resources in scarce supply and placing enormous pressure on early humans to adapt. The sustained upheaval drove some species to the brink of extinction, while other better-suited relatives emerged and flourished, the scientists believe. Researchers identified several extreme shifts in climate dating back millions of years to when humans were...

Our solar system flies through space in the shape of a speeding bullet, according to data from NASA's two Voyager spacecraft. The sun and its planets are known to streak through the void of space at approximately 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) an hour. The system travels within a bubble of solar wind—made of charged particles from the sun—called the heliosphere. The edge of this bubble collides with the Milky Way galaxy's magnetic field at a distance some 200 times farther from the sun than Earth is. A research team led by Merav Opher at Virginia's George Mason University found that,...

King Tut's necklace shaped by fireball June 26, 2006 LONDON: Scientists believe they have solved the mystery surrounding a piece of rare natural glass at the centre of an elaborate necklace found among the treasures of Tutankhamun, the boy pharaoh. They think a fragile meteorite broke up as it entered the atmosphere, producing a fireball with temperatures over 1800C that turned the desert sand and rock into molten lava that became glass when it cooled. Experts have puzzled over the origin of the yellow-green glass -- carved into the shape of a scarab beetle -- since it was excavated in...

Last week marked the welcome end to one of the establishment media’s most unfortunate oversights concerning Iraq: the role played by Iran in fueling the insurgency. Mainstream outlets such as the NBC Nightly News and The New York Times have finally begun to highlight this unsettling development, embodied recently by the U.S. military’s interdiction of a truck full of explosive “shaped charges” being smuggled in from Iran. These charges – which use military grade plastic explosives to propel molded steel plates through even the heaviest armored vehicles – are intended for one use and one use only, to kill American...

Teeth show how society was shaped by old age By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 06/07/2004) The lifespan of our ancestors made a dramatic leap 32,000 years ago, allowing people to grow older and wiser, according to a study of hundreds of ancient teeth that is published today. The wear on the teeth suggest that longevity more than quadrupled at that time, a jump that may have been the key factor that shaped modern civilisation. Before then lifespan had increased only steadily. Lifespan extended dramatically in the early Upper Palaeolithic Period, around 30,000bc, when Homo sapiens - modern man -...

Mystery of sacred site shaped by stars Thornborough is the only triple henge complex in the world and the only one to share the same astronomical alignment as the pyramids at Giza in Egypt. A recent theory is that the henges' alignment may follow that of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion. The site, which may have been chosen because of its proximity to the River Ure, was first used about 3500BC and it continued to be a centre for religious ritual worship, drawing pilgrims from across the North, at least until 2500BC. The henges are one of the...