Views Of Earth From The Middle Ages To The Space Age

From Earth as the center of the cosmos to just a speck amid the vastness of space, Robert Poole, a historian at the University of Cumbria in the United Kingdom and author of Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth, takes us on a journey of how we’ve imagined our planet through the ages.

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Via: NPR

End of the world?

December 21th, 2012? Check out this great info-graphic that compares both sides of the argument. The Mayans thought the Spanish were Gods and sacrificed virgins. They do not seem to enlightened to me.

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Via: Pixl Monster

10 Book Burnings

This weekend, sadly, marks the anniversary of the bonfire of the vanities. Not that novel from the ‘80s, but the actual bonfire of the vanities, the event in 1497 when thousands of objects that might tempt people to sin were reduced to nothing but ash. Unfortunately, burnings such as this one weren’t that unusual – they have happened many times over the course of history and have cost us countless priceless works of art.

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Mental Floss

Ancient East Asian Found in Roman Empire

The discovery is the first good evidence of an Asian living in Italy during Roman times.

Researchers found his body on an imperial Roman estate and took dental samples. Why examine teeth? Well, the water you drink at birth leaves a distinct signature in your teeth. That water signature is in the form of oxygen isotopes, atoms of oxygen with different numbers of neutrons. Isotopes say something about the latitude and elevation of your birthplace—which in the case of our mystery man definitely wasn’t southern Italy.

Then the researchers tested his mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through your maternal lineage. And this fellow had east Asian genes. The finding appears in the Journal of Roman Archaeology.

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Scientific American

5 Sources of Alternative Energy You May Not Have Heard Of

As fossil fuels increasingly fall out of favor, many are looking into alternative energy sources to help us power our lives with a smaller impact on the environment. You already know about solar power and wind energy, and hydro-electric power and nuclear power have been around for decades. But scientists are increasingly looking to the natural world for additional solutions.

Here are 5 alternative energy sources that you may hearing more of soon:

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Physorg

Ancient Mongolian Tomb Holds Skeleton of Western Man

THE GIST:

* DNA analysis of 2,000-year-old bones found in eastern Mongolia reveal a man of Western heritage.

* At the time, the vast territory in and around Mongolia included ethnically and linguistically diverse nomadic tribes.

* Two other skeletons found at the site show genetic links to people living in northeastern Asia.

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Discovery News

The Real Rules for Time Travelers

Time travel may in fact be possible, but it wouldn't work like in Back to the Future. (For one thing, you don't have worry about your parents failing to create you—you already exist.)

Einstein described our universe in four dimensions: the three dimensions of space and one of time. So traveling back in time is nothing more or less than the fourth-dimensional version of walking in a circle. All you would have to do is use an extremely strong gravitational field, like that of a black hole, to bend space-time. From this point of view, time travel seems quite difficult but not obviously impossible.

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Via: Discover Magazine

Ultra-high-strength composite metal foam

The ultra-high-strength composite metal foam created by Afsaneh Rabiei is a highlight of a well-traveled career during which the researcher has tried to learn everything she can about advanced materials. The result: a brand new material that can save energy and lives.

“Basically, it is a new material for all sorts of safety devices,” said Rabiei, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University.

Rabiei’s invention isn’t the first metal foam, but she says it’s the strongest. The main weakness of existing metal foams is the varying sizes of their cells — tiny pockets of space inside the material. Instead, Rabiei used cells of standard sizes and combined them with a metallic matrix to support the cell walls.

After five years of work —with a group of her students — she has the results. Rough traffic accident calculations show that by inserting two pieces of her composite metal foam behind the bumper of a car traveling 28 mph, the impact would feel the same to passengers as impact traveling at only 5 mph.

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Via: Live Science

15 Big Cheats and Fakers Who Won

There are all sorts of fakers and cheats; many win and get away with it, many others get caught and shunned for their actions. Some are even found out, but walk away as though nothing happened, because the public simply doesn’t care. These are the 15 biggest cheats, fakers and frauds who won. Some kept their winnings, and some are hated and reviled to this day.

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Via:Manolith

15 Cute Animals That Will Cause You Horrible Harm

When we think of animals that will destroy us, rend us limb from limb, and leave us in a bloody mess, we usually thing of the huge and horrifying. Which means we forget about the real threats: the tiny, the cute, the gorgeous. The animals at which we ooh and aaah over, but are deadly, poisonous and generally all around nasty. And, after writing this list, I've come up with two pieces of advice. 1) Never go in the water. 2) Never visit Australia. Combine the two, and it's even more true: never go in the water in Australia! Seriously, terrifyingly deadly critters everywhere.

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Via: Brainz

4 Lost Civilizations (and what might have happened to them)

I’ve been to Pompeii, the Italian town that was buried by the 79 CE eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. To see a town that was abandoned so abruptly, coupled with plaster casts of the victims who weren’t able to evacuate in time, was positively chilling. I can only imagine that visiting the remains of the four civilizations Nathan Johnson from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside dug up for this story would be equally sad and thought-provoking. Nathan is an Economics major who came to UW-P from the University of Minnesota, making me think he has an affinity for below-zero temperatures. – Stacy Conradt

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Via: Mental Floss

6 More Cannibal Killers

In comparison to the worldwide murder rate, cases of cannibalism are rare, but they stand out because of the horror they instill in the rest of us. In addition to the six cases featured in the post 6 Horrifying Modern Cannibals, I found these six cannibal stories from all over the world.

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Via: Mental Floss

10 More Enigmas That Defy Explanation

What is it about the bizarre and mysterious that piques our curiosity? It entertains our sense of wonder and excites our imagination, for sure. Luckily for us, history is marked with strange, logic-defying occurrences to amuse us. Here is a list comprised of 10 more unexplainable and interesting phenomenon and incidents that we crave so much.

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Via: Listverse