Intriguing Mysteries

The Carnac Stones

If erecting Stonehenge seemed to have been a tremendous groan, think about how backbreaking it must have been for the folks responsible for the Carnac stones. On the coast of Brittany in northwestern France are over 3,000 megalithic standing stones arranged in perfect lines and spread out over 12 kilometers. The local myth is that a Roman legion was on the march when the wizard Merlin turned them into stone. A more rational stab at an explanation by a researcher who studied the stones purported that the stones may have been an elaborate earthquake detector. The identity of the Neolithic people who built them is unknown.

The Bog Bodies

Even CSI's best efforts wouldn't go very far in solving the mystery of the bog bodies. Hundreds of these ancient corpses have been discovered buried around the northern wetlands of Europe. Researchers who inspected the remains have reported tell-tale signs of torture and medieval foul play. Such gruesome clues have some suspecting that the dead were the victims of ritual sacrifice.

Lost City of Helike

Greek writer Pausanias gave an account of how a great earthquake destroyed the city of Helike. Moments later, a tsunami swept away what remained of the once-flourishing metropolis, which had been a worship center devoted to Poseidon, earth shaker and God of the sea. No trace of the legendary society existed outside of ancient Greek texts until 1861 when an archaeologist found a bronze coin with the unmistakable head of Poseidon. In 2001, a pair of archaeologists located the ruins of Helike beneath coastal mud and gravel. They are now working to unearth what some consider the "real" Atlantis.

The Lost Roman Legion

After the Parthians of Persia defeated an underachieving Roman army led by General Crassus, legend has it that a small band of POWs wandered through the desert and were eventually rounded up by the Han military. First century Chinese historian Ban Gu wrote an account of a confrontation with a strange army that fought in a "fish-scale formation" unique to Roman forces. An Oxford historian who compared ancient records claimed that the lost roman legion founded a small town near the Gobi desert named Liqian, which in Chinese translates to Rome. DNA tests are being conducted to settle that claim and hopefully explain some of the residents' green eyes, blond hair, and fondness of bullfighting.

The Tarim Mummies

During an excavation beneath the Tarim Basin in western China, archaeologists were surprised to discover more than 100 mummified corpses that dated back 2000 years. But a college professor named Victor Mair was downright stupefied when he came skull-to-skull with some of the blonde-haired and long nosed Tarim mummies after they were dug up and put on display at a museum. So in 1993, Mair returned to collect DNA samples from the mummies. Test results ultimately validated his hunch that the bodies were of European genetic stock. While Ancient Chinese texts from as early as the first millennium BC describe groups of far-east dwelling Caucasian people, there is no mention of how or why they ended up there.

Disappearance of the Indus Valley Civilization

With a culture that stretched from western India to Afghanistan and a population numbering over five million, the ancient Indus Valley people—India's oldest known civilization—were an impressive and apparently sanitary bronze-age bunch. The scale of their baffling and abrupt collapse rivals that of the great Mayan decline. But it wasn't until 1922 that excavations revealed a hygienically-advanced culture which maintained a sophisticated sewage drainage system and immaculate bathrooms. Strangely, there is no archaeological evidence of armies, slaves, social conflicts or other vices prevalent in ancient societies. Even to the very end, it seems, they kept it clean.

Titanic Baby Finally Identified

Frederick Goodwin with his wife and children. The whole Goodwin family was lost

Five days after the passenger ship the Titanic sank, the crew of the rescue ship Mackay-Bennett pulled the body of a fair-haired, roughly 2-year-old boy out of the Atlantic Ocean on April 21, 1912. Along with many other victims, his body went to a cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the crew of the Mackay-Bennett had a headstone dedicated to the "unknown child" placed over his grave.

When it sank, the Titanic took the lives of 1,497 of the 2,209 people aboard with it. Some bodies were recovered, but names remained elusive, while others are still missing. But researchers believe that they have finally resolved the identity of the unknown child -- concluding that he was 19-month-old Sidney Leslie Goodwin from England.

Though the unknown child was incorrectly identified twice before, researchers believe they have now conclusively determined the child was Goodwin. After his recovery, he was initially believed to be a 2-year-old Swedish boy, Gösta Leonard Pålsson, who was seen being washed overboard as the ship sank. This boy's mother, Alma Pålsson, was recovered with the tickets for all four of her children in her pocket, and buried in a grave behind the unknown child.

The effort to verify the child's identity using genetics began a little over a decade ago, when Ryan Parr, an adjunct professor at Lakehead University in Ontario who has worked with DNA extracted from ancient human remains, watched some videos about the Titanic. "I thought 'Wow, I wonder if anyone is interested or still cares about the unidentified victims of the Titanic,'" Parr said.

In 2001, with permission from the Pålsson family, the unknown child's remains were exhumed from Fairview Lawn Cemetery, one of the Halifax cemeteries where Titanic victims were interred. Parr had hoped to investigate the identities of other victims as well, though decomposition interfered. Two of the coffins held only mud, and only a 2.4-inch-long (6 centimeter) fragment of an arm bone and three teeth remained of the unknown child. But this was enough.

From these remains, Parr and his team extracted DNA from a section of mitochondria (energy-producing centers of the cells) that rapidly accumulates mutations, called HV1. Mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to offspring, so the team compared the unknown child's DNA sequence with samples from the maternal relatives of the Pålsson child. These didn't match.

They broadened their search to include five other boys under age 3 who had died in the disaster. Alan Ruffman, who became involved in the project as a research associate of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, ultimately tracked down the maternal lines of all six children (including the Pålsson child) with help from genealogists, historians, Titanic researchers, translators, librarians, archivists and members of the families.

By comparing the unknown child's HV1 with these other young Titanic victims, the researchers eliminated all but two of the boys -- Eino Viljami Panula, a 13-month-old Finnish boy, and Sidney Goodwin.  An expert analysis of the child's teeth put his age somewhere between 9 months and 15 months -- seeming to eliminate Goodwin, who was older. So, the researchers concluded the boy was Panula and, in 2004, published their results.

But doubts remained. Ultimately, a pair of leather shoes recovered from the unknown child and held in the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic caused the researchers to question the identification. The shoes had been saved by Clarence Northover, a Halifax police sergeant in 1912, who helped guard the bodies and belongings of the Titanic victims. When all the unclaimed belongings of the Titanic victims were burned, he couldn't bring himself to destroy the shoes. In 2002, Earle Northover donated them to the museum. These shoes were too large for a 13-month-old to wear.

Parr and his team attempted the identification again, this time with the help of the U.S. Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. They looked at another, less mutation-prone section of the mitochondrial DNA, where they found a single difference that indicated that Goodwin might actually be the unknown child. The Armed Forces lab confirmed this when they found a second, single difference in another section of the DNA.

Before he died, Sidney Goodwin was traveling on the Titanic with his parents, Frederick and Augusta, and five siblings from England to Niagara Falls, N.Y.  Carol Goodwin, a 77-year-old Wisconsin resident, learned about the ill-fated family when she was growing up  from Frederick Goodwin's sisters, one of whom was Carol's grandmother.

On Aug. 6, 2008, relatives of the Goodwin family held a memorial service in Fairview Lawn Cemetery where they now believe Sidney Goodwin was buried under the unknown child's headstone. A cousin read the names of about 50 children who had also perished when the Titanic went down and a bell was rung for each, she said. A soft, drizzling rain began to fall as the first name was read, and stopped when the list was finished, she recalled. Ultimately, the family left the headstone and the grave as it was.
"The tombstone of the unknown child represents all of the children who perished on the Titanic, and we left it that way," she said.

The remains of the rest of the Goodwin family have never been recovered.

Taliban Inmates Tunnel out of Prison

Some 400 plusTaliban prisoners escaped from an Afghan prison overnight through a massive underground tunnel that inmates had secretly created, officials said Monday. The Taliban said it was behind the operation in Kandahar, the militant Islamist organization’s heartland in the south of the country, and that all of those who escaped were its members, many of them senior commanders, according to Agence-France Presse.

It was the second high-profile escape from the prison in three years, and is likely to be seen as yet more evidence of the country’s chaotic justice system.  “A tunnel hundreds of meters long was dug from the south of the prison into the prison and 476 political prisoners escaped last night,” said prison director General Ghulam Dastageer Mayar. The escapees came from the political section of the prison, he said.

Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar province, said a total of 478 prisoners managed to escape due to “negligence” of Afghan security forces. He told Reuters the start of the tunnel had been traced to a house near the prison. The prison, which is supposed to be one of the country's most secure, sits on the outskirts of Kandahar city and holds both captured insurgents and criminal prisoners.

Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said the militant Islamists were responsible for the mass breakout, claiming that more than 500 prisoners had escaped—106 of whom were commanders—during an operation that lasted several hours. A separate statement by Taliban militants said they started digging the 360-meter-long tunnel to the prison five months ago and that it passed below several government checkpoints.
In 2008, around 1,000 prisoners, including members of the Taliban, escaped after the militants used a truck bomb to blow open the gates.

 Kandahar is seen as the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban movement, and the city and surrounding area is the scene of some of the worst fighting in Afghanistan. The city has a population of around 990,000.
A Taliban suicide bomber dressed in police uniform killed the city’s police chief 10 days ago, dealing a serious blow to security in the province. Western analysts say Afghanistan’s prison and justice system is riddled with corruption. In a report last November, the International Crisis Group said the Afghan justice system was “in a catastrophic state of disrepair".

There are around 130,000 international troops in Afghanistan, two-thirds of them from the United States, battling the Taliban and other insurgents. The brazen jailbreak comes months before the start of a transfer of security responsibilities from foreign to Afghan forces in several areas. This transfer is part of the eventual withdrawal of the US-led troops from the country. Under the transition program, Afghan forces will begin taking over from foreign troops in a few areas, but should have control of the entire country by the end of 2014.

Buried Treasure Found in a Backyard....Austria

 

Vienna -- A man turning dirt in his back yard stumbled onto buried treasure ... hundreds of pieces of centuries-old jewelry and other precious objects that Austrian authorities described Friday as a fairy-tale find.

Austria's department in charge of national antiquities said the trove consists of more than 200 rings , brooches , ornate  belt buckles , gold-plated silver plates and other pieces  or fragments, many encrusted with pearls , fossilized coral and other ornaments . It says the objects are about 650-years old  and are being evaluated for their provenance and worth .

While not assigning a monetary value to the buried bling , the enthusiastic language from the normally staid Federal Office for Memorials reflected the significance it attached to the discovery . "Fairy tales do exist !" said its statement . "Private individual finds sensational treasure in garden." It described the ornaments as "one of the qualitatively most significant discoveries of medieval treasure in Austria."

The statement gave no details and an automated telephone message said the office had closed early on Good Friday . But the Austria Press Agency cited memorials office employee Karin Derler as saying the man came accross the "breaktaking" objects years ago while digging in his back yard to expand a small pond .The  Weekly Profit magazine idenified the man only as Andreas K . from Wiener Neustadt , south of Vienna, and said he asked not to be named.

While he found the ornaments in 2007 , Andreas  K. did not report it to the memorials office until after rediscovering the dirt-encrusted objects in a basement box while packing up after selling his house two years ago  , said Profil . The soil had dried and some had fallen off , revealing precious metels and jewels underneath.

He initially posted photos on the internet , where collectors alerted him to the potential value of the pieces , leading him to pack them in a plastic bag and lug them to the memorials office, the Magazine said in its Friday edition.

Neither Profil nor the memorials office statement said when Andreas K . first alerted Austrian authorities.  Memorials office president Barbara Neubauer told Profil the objects were a "sensational find." The Magazine said the finder was not interested in cashing in on  the trove and was considering loaning the collec tion to one of Austria's museums.

Nanotechnology in Medicine Here and Now

Recovery Slowed by People Searching for Momentos.....Japan

KESENNUMA, Japan - Sakuji Funayama watched intently as a giant steel claw tore chunks off the remains of his two-story home, ripped open like a dollhouse by last month's tsunami and washed up onto a pile of debris. Suddenly, he spied something, waved his arms and pointed. The claw froze and a half dozen construction workers scrambled into the wreckage, emerging a few minutes later with a battered backpack that belonged to Funayama's son, who moved away years ago.  He received it gratefully.

The race to clear the destruction from Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami so rebuilding can begin is a delicate process, with workers taking precautions not to damage bodies buried in the rubble. But the work has been further slowed by clearance crews who feel duty bound to help survivors search the rubble for lost possessions, precious mementos of their former lives. "Everyone has been very nice. They all stop whenever we see anything," the 77-year-old Funayama said.

With more than 10,000 people missing or suspected dead across Japan's eastern coast, demolition crews and teams of soldiers are trying to search through and clear the rotting debris summer's heat and humidity begin in about a month.
More than 90,000 homes were destroyed or heavily damaged in the disasters, according to police. Entire towns were smashed into miles of wreckage, and the government estimates that 250 square miles (650 sq. kilometres) were flooded along the coast.

The damaged neighbourhoods are a hazardous maze of tottering buildings, twisted metal and puddles of murky liquid. Heavy wrecking equipment is in constant use and large dump trucks race along the roads.
Officials said it could take a year to remove the debris, which will be moved to a site for processing and disposal, a project that will take an additional two years.

Cleanup crews have tried to respect the feelings of the survivors by telling them when they are beginning work on their neighbourhood, said a disaster management official from the Miyagi prefecture, who only gave his last name, Osamune. "We try to notify residents whenever we can so that they can oversee the operation," Osamune said. "They can stop the crew whenever they spot anything valuable, so that people can recover things before everything gets wiped out."

Crews also try to pick up photos and valuables they find and send them to a lost-and-found centre for survivors to sift through, he said. In Kesennuma, the tsunami lifted houses and buildings from their foundations and piled them in great heaps against inland hills. Six weeks after the disaster, teams a dozen strong work alongside cranes with claw attachments to comb through the vast expanses of rubble.

Emergency worker Katsuya Sasaki said his main concern is finding bodies; he's been told about 1,200 people are still unaccounted for here. When a body is found, work stops completely and special teams of troops or firefighters are called in to carefully extract, cover and carry it to a waiting vehicle.
"If we brought in some heavier machinery and just cleared the whole thing out, we'd be done by now," said Sasaki, whose team has been working on the same plot for over a week, pausing throughout the day for residents to claim belongings from the wreckage. "But we're all human beings, even if this does slow things down."

Eager to clear the wreckage but unsure of the legal implications, local governments in the disaster zone sought advice from the central government on how to proceed. Last month, the Environmental Ministry issued guidelines saying destroyed or badly damaged homes can be cleared without their owners' permission.
But officials in hard-hit areas say that respect for those who have lost their homes come first, especially when they are looking for the bodies of lost loved ones. All along the coast, it is common to see residents wandering their former streets with masks and long sticks, poking among the debris that has yet to be carted away. Hiromitsu Iwama, an official in the local roads and parks department overseeing debris removal in coastal Natori, saw nothing wrong with this. "There are still about 1,000 bodies that haven't been found yet here. It's a kind of an unspoken decency," he said.

'Trillions' of Earths Orbit Red Stars in Older Galaxies

Red sky at night: The view from a planet in our galaxy (left) but planets in older galaxies (right) are bathed in a rosy glow from the many red stars in the night sky (artist's impression) 

Astronomers say the Universe may contain three times the number of stars as is currently thought.
Their assessment is based on new observations showing other galaxies may have very different structures to our Milky Way galaxy. The researchers tell the journal Nature that more stars probably means many more planets as well - perhaps "trillions" of Earth-like worlds.

The Yale University-led study used the Keck telescope in Hawaii." There are possibly trillions of Earths orbiting these stars” says Professor Pieter Van Dokkum. It found that galaxies older than ours contain 20 times more red dwarf stars than more recent ones.  Red dwarfs are smaller and dimmer than our own Sun; it is only recently that telescopes have been powerful enough to detect them.

According to Yale's Professor Pieter van Dokkum, who led the research, the discovery also increases the estimate for the number of planets in the Universe and therefore greatly increases the likelihood of life existing elsewhere in the cosmos.  "There are possibly trillions of Earths orbiting these stars," he said. "Red dwarfs are typically more than 10 billion years old and so have been around long enough for complex life to evolve on planets around them. It's one reason why people are interested in this type of star."

Two-thirds of the observable Universe consists of spiral galaxies (L) like our own Milky Way. The remainder is made up of older elliptical galaxies (R)

The findings also help to account for what astronomers describe as the "missing mass" in the Universe.
The movement of galaxies suggests there is more material in the cosmos than can be observed, so scientists have suggested that some is invisible, referring to it as "dark matter".  Dr Marek Kukula of the Royal Observatory Greenwich (ROG), UK, said: "the discovery of more stars in the Universe means that we might not need quite as much dark matter as we thought to explain how the Universe looks and behaves.

"It also tells us something about how the very first galaxies must have formed from the gas left over from the Big Bang."
And Dr Robert Massey of the Royal Astronomical Society added: "Finding red dwarfs in other galaxies is quite something and shows how far we've come with the latest generation of large telescopes. "If these stars are more common in elliptical galaxies than in our own, it's also consistent with the idea that they have a larger number of older stars than us. The lifespan of red dwarfs is many times longer than that of stars like our Sun."

The probability of life on other planets looms larger. The prospect is exciting and at the same time, very frightening. It's brings a very fundamental belief system crashing down and only imagine how many other ways it would change our world.