Cavalier Zee

~  The Dreadnoughtus ~

A supermassive dinosaur that would have weighed as much as 60 small cars has been found in Argentina, where it likely perished in a bog some 77 million years ago, paleontologists said Thursday, September 4.

Dubbed Dreadnoughtus schrani (the 'Dreadnoughtus' part coming from "fear nothing" in old English), the long-necked lizard would have measured 26 meters (85 feet) from nose to tail and weighed some 60 tons – about as much as seven Tyrannosaurus rex put together.

And the giant wasn't even fully grown when it got bogged down in a flooded plain, where it died next to a smaller companion, researchers reported in the journal Scientific Reports.

MASSIVE ANIMAL. Rendering of the massive Dreadnoughtus schrani in life. Dreadnoughtus had a 37-foot-long neck, 30-foot tail, and weighed an estimated 65 tons, making it the most massive land animal whose size can be confidently calculated. Illustration by Jennifer Hall/Drexel University

The fossilized skeleton is the most complete yet found in the category of super-sized, plant-eating dinosaurs called Titanosaurs– which makes it the largest land animal for which a weight has been calculated with such a degree of accuracy.

The find comprised over 70% of the types of bones in the dinosaur's body – 45% of its total skeleton. There were no skull bones.

Paleontologists uncovered most of the vertebrae from the lizard's tail, a neck vertebra with a diameter of over one yard (0.9 meters), ribs, toes, a claw, a section of jaw and a tooth, and nearly all the bones from its four limbs, including a humerus (upper arm bone) and a femur (thigh bone) over six feet tall.

The femur and humerus are key to calculating the mass of extinct four-legged animals.

"Because the Dreadnoughtus type specimen includes both these bones, its weight can be estimated with confidence," said a Drexel University statement.

"It is by far the best example we have of any of the most giant creatures to ever walk the planet," added Lacovara, who discovered the skeleton in southern Patagonia in 2005 and oversaw its four-year excavation.

Dino Misfortune, Science's Luck

To sustain its massive bulk, Dreadnoughtus would have had to eat vast quantities of plants growing in the temperate forest on the continent's southern tip.

"I imagine their day consists largely of standing in one place," said Lacovara.

The dimensions of all previously discovered supermassive dinosaurs had been pieced together from relatively fragmentary fossil remains.

Prior to Dreadnoughtus, another Patagonian giant, Elaltitan, held the title for the dinosaur with the greatest calculable weight, at 43 tons.

MEGA DINO. Dreadnoughtus schrani was substantially more massive than any other supermassive dinosaur for which mass can be accurately calculated. Image courtesy Lacovara Lab/Drexel University; Size and weight comparisons citations at http://bit.ly/1oI5acS

Argentinosaurus, also from Argentina, was thought to be of a comparable or even greater mass than Dreadnoughtus, and longer, at about 37m.

But Argentinosaurus is known only from a half-dozen vertebrae in its mid-back, a shinbone and a few other fragments but no upper limb bones, said the researchers.

An adult Dreadnoughtus would likely have been too large to fear any predators, but would have made a great feast for scavengers after their death, the team added.

They discovered several teeth of small predatory and scavenging dinosaurs at the excavation site, which also included a secondDreadnoughtus skeleton, though smaller and much less complete.

From the preservation of the skeletons, the team concluded theDreadnoughtus pair was buried soon after death, but not before their carnivore cousins took a few bites.

"These two animals were buried quickly after a river flooded and broke through its natural levee, turning the ground into something like quicksand," said Lacovara.

"The rapid and deep burial of the Dreadnoughtus type specimen accounts for its extraordinary completeness.

"It's misfortune was our luck."

Source: Rappler

~ Massive Underground Ocean Exists Beneath Earth's Crust ~

Summary: The first terrestrial discovery of Ringwoodite confirms the presence of massive amounts of water 400 to 700 kilometers beneath Earth's surface. Ringwoodite is a form of the mineral peridot, believed to exist in large quantities under high pressures in the transition zone. Ringwoodite has been found in meteorites but, until now, no terrestrial sample has ever been unearthed because scientists haven't been able to conduct fieldwork at extreme depths.

Scientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean.

The discovery marks the first time such a large body of water has found in the planet's deep mantle. [The World's Biggest Oceans and Seas]

  Water covers 70 percent of Earth's surface and one of its many functions is to act like a lubricant for the movement of continental plates.

The crust thickness averages about 18 miles (30 kilometers) under the continents, but is only about 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the oceans. It is light and brittle and can break. In fact it's fractured into more than a dozen major plates and several minor ones. It is where most earthquakes originate. The Earth’s radius is about 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers). The main layers of its interior are in descending order: crust, mantle and core.

  The mantle is more flexible – it flows instead of fractures. It extends down to about 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) below the surface.

  The core consists of a solid inner core and a fluid outer core. The fluid contains iron, which, as it moves, generates the Earth’s magnetic field. The crust and upper mantle form the lithosphere, which is broken up into several plates that float on top of the hot molten mantle below.

  SOURCE: LiveScience

~ The Godzilla Of Earths ~

The "Godzilla of Earths!" is in the foreground. Behind it is the smaller 'lava world'. Their sun, in the back, appears to have been created only 3 billion years after the Big Bang.

Based on what we know about how solar systems form, researchers thought that a giant rocky planet could not exist. But they just found one that's 17 times Earth's mass. They're calling it the Mega-Earth.

Scientists say the new planet may have "profound implications for the possibility of life" on extra-solar planets, according to a press release from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. They announced the finding in a talk at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Boston.

Researchers have always thought Mega-Earths were impossible since any planets that big would attract hydrogen gas, forming a gas planet like Jupiter.

Meet The Mega-Earth

Mega-Earth, also known as Kepler-10c, is 18,000 miles in diameter and 2.3 times as large as Earth. It appears to be as solid as the planet beneath our feet.

Kepler-10c was previously known to astronomers, but they had not yet measured its mass. Due to its size — 2.3 times that of Earth — it was assumed to be a "mini-Neptune," a planet encased in thick gas. But the new observations have confirmed that it is rocky, not gassy.

It orbits an 11 billion-year-old star named Kepler-10 located 560 light years away from Earth. Its year lasts only 45 days.

Interestingly, this solar system is more than twice as old as our own — it was born less than 3 billion years after the Big Bang.

A Mysterious System

Researchers had previously thought that this kind of planet impossible.

Not only did they think something that big would be a gas giant, but they didn't even think the elements that make up a rocky planet existed in our universe when this solar system was born: The early universe had only the lighter elements of hydrogen and helium. Heavier elements were forged from these lighter ones in stars over billions of years.

Because of this, many scientists hadn't been looking for rocky planets in these very old solar systems.

The mega-Earth isn't the only weird planet in its solar system. There's also a 'lava-world' 1.5 times Earth's size whose year lasts only 20 hours.

By David A. Aguilar

~ Fantastic Voyage ~

WallPaper Quote by: Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space Quote provided by: CZ Note: The title is mine

~ Drain The Ocean ~ By The Discovery Channel

~ Last Shark Standing ~ Shark Cannibalism and Early Life Ovoviviparous shark pups depend on yolk for nutrition, and when an embryo has expended its own yolk sac, it turns to the eggs around it. Some species practice intrauterine cannibalism, or eating the other fertilized or unfertilized eggs in the womb. The best-known intrauterine cannibal is the sand tiger shark. Although the sand tiger shark has two uteri and produces many eggs, each litter yields just two pups -- one from each uterus. That's because as the sharks develop their embryonic teeth, they start to eat the other embryos, killing their unborn brothers and sisters, as well as the unfertilized eggs. It's survival of the fittest in the womb, until only one shark remains. Because of their pre-birth diet, sand tiger pups enter the world bigger than other pups; they measure approximately three feet (one meter) long [source: National Aquarium]. The sand tiger's cannibalism is known as adelphophagy, which literally means "eating one's brother" [source: Martin]. But other sharks practice cannibalism as well, albeit in a slightly more subdued form known as oophagy, which is the eating of eggs that haven't been fertilized. Approximately 14 species of sharks are thought to practice some form of intrauterine cannibalism [source: Martin]. The swell shark as an embryo...and as a two-month-old pup.­ The number of shark pups in a litter varies among species; the sand tiger shark gives birth to one or two, while the viviparous blue shark has been known to give birth to 134 pups in one litter [source: Cooper]. The whale shark has given birth to 300, but such high numbers are rare [sources: Conrath, Greven]. But whether hatched from an egg or born live, shark pups emerge as miniature versions of the sharks they will become. Shark pups are also very independent, and those that are born live swim away from their mothers as soon as they're born, perhaps to avoid being eaten. Even the tiniest sharks face the world on their own. Shark pups don't receive any further nourishment or support from their parents. It's up to the pup to find food and evade predators. A shark pup's success in life is largely determined by its size at birth and whether the female shark has used a nursery area, or a shallow part of the sea with fewer predators than the open sea. Some shark species grow very slowly, putting them in danger of being eaten by bigger sharks for longer. If few pups survive to maturity and reproduce themselves, shark species could be in danger, particularly those subject to other pressures, such as fishing. Via: Discovery

~ Asteroid Discovery From 1980 - 2010 ~

This is a view of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids starting in 1980, as asteroids are discovered they are added to the map and highlighted white so you can pick out the new ones.  The final colour of an asteroids indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system.  Earth Crossers are Red Earth Approachers (Perihelion less than 1.3AU) are Yellow All Others are Green Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video. As the video moves into the mid 1990's we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you'll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner. At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that's tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths.  The scale of the video at 1080P resolution is roughly 1million kilometers per pixel, and each second of video corresponds to 60 days. Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates show no sign that we're running out of undiscovered objects, scientific estimates suggest that there are about a billion asteroids larger than 100metres (about the size of a football field) . Orbital elements were taken from the 'astorb.dat' data created by Ted Bowell and associates at ftp://ftp.lowell.edu/pub/elgb/astorb.htm­l Music is 'Transgenic' by Trifonic: http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Trifo... - they're awesome guys, give them some love. Check out todays asteroid map at: http://szyzyg.arm.ac.uk/~spm/neo_map.... Quite a few journalists, bloggers and tweeters are attributing this to NASA or Arecibo Observatory - while they do fine work they had nothing to do with this. If you write a story you can credit it to Scott Manley.  Video Created by Scott Manley

~ The Super SuperCapacitor ~ Ric Kaner set out to find a new way to make graphene, the thinnest and strongest material on earth. What he found was a new way to power the world. THE SUPER SUPERCAPACITOR is a Finalist in the $200,000 FOCUS FORWARD Filmmaker Competition. Learn more about the Competition and FOCUS FORWARD at focusforwardfilms.com

~ 'Quadruple Helix' DNA Discovered In Human Cells ~ In 1953, Cambridge researchers Watson and Crick published a paper describing the interweaving 'double helix' DNA structure - the chemical code for all life. Now, in the year of that scientific landmark's 60th Anniversary, Cambridge researchers have published a paper proving that four-stranded 'quadruple helix' DNA structures - known as G-quadruplexes - also exist within the human genome. They form in regions of DNA that are rich in the building block guanine, usually abbreviated to 'G'. The findings mark the culmination of over 10 years investigation by scientists to show these complex structures in vivo - in living human cells - working from the hypothetical, through computational modelling to synthetic lab experiments and finally the identification in human cancer cells using fluorescent biomarkers.  The research, published today in Nature Chemistry and funded by Cancer Research UK, goes on to show clear links between concentrations of four-stranded quadruplexes and the process of DNA replication, which is pivotal to cell division and production.  By targeting quadruplexes with synthetic molecules that trap and contain these DNA structures - preventing cells from replicating their DNA and consequently blocking cell division - scientists believe it may be possible to halt the runaway cell proliferation at the root of cancer.  "The research indicates that quadruplexes are more likely to occur in genes of cells that are rapidly dividing, such as cancer cells. For us, it strongly supports a new paradigm to be investigated - using these four-stranded structures as targets for personalised treatments in the future." Physical studies over the last couple of decades had shown that quadruplex DNA can form in vitro - in the 'test tube', but the structure was considered to be a curiosity rather than a feature found in nature. The researchers now know for the first time that they actually form in the DNA of human cells.  "This research further highlights the potential for exploiting these unusual DNA structures to beat cancer – the next part of this pipeline is to figure out how to target them in tumour cells," said Dr Julie Sharp, senior science information manager at Cancer Research UK.  "We have found that by trapping the quadruplex DNA with synthetic molecules we can sequester and stabilise them, providing important insights into how we might grind cell division to a halt," said Balasubramanian.  The study showed that if an inhibitor is used to block DNA replication, quadruplex levels go down - proving the idea that DNA is dynamic, with structures constantly being formed and unformed.  The researchers also previously found that an overactive gene with higher levels of Quadruplex DNA is more vulnerable to external interference.  "The possibility that particular cancer cells harbouring genes with these motifs can now be targeted, and appear to be more vulnerable to interference than normal cells, is a thrilling prospect.  Info via: Phys Image via: Gizmodo.com

~ Eternal Embrace ~ It could be humanity's oldest story of doomed love. Archaeologists have unearthed two skeletons from the Neolithic period locked in an eternal embrace and buried outside Mantua, Italy, just 25 miles south of Verona, the city where Shakespeare set the star-crossed tale of Romeo and Juliet. After being found at the site where a factory is planned, people worldwide have speculated on the circumstances surrounding the couple's deaths. They are thought to have died young because they both had all their teeth intact. But beyond that, the skeletons are a mystery. Archaeologists announced Monday that they will move the entire block of earth the skeletons are resting in for further study and eventual display in a museum. Photo by: NewsCom/Gamma Presse February 12, 2007 3:14 PM PST Via: C|net

2200 years ago, some Egyptians voluntarily signed up to become temple slaves.

Not only that, they even paid a monthly fee for the “privilege.”

The revelation comes from the work of Egyptologist Kim Ryholt of the University of Copenhagen, who has been studying papyrus slave contracts found in a rubbish dump in the ancient Egyptian temple city of Tebtunis.

This is part of the translation of 100 of these papyrus slave contracts that Ryholt has spent years trying to collect and analyse. The documents were scattered in fragments across Egypt, Europe and the US after they were illicitly excavated. In one example, a contract was divided between Copenhagen and the British Museum.

Ryholt is the first to analyze these papyri collectively, publishing his findings in a recent article titled: A Self-Dedication Addressed to Anubis – Divine Protection against Malevolent Forces or Forced Labour?

Among his findings was that these voluntary slaves also signed up their descendants.

While these contracts bound them as slaves, they also protected them from being subject to forced labours such as digging canals and other harsh and often fatal projects. However, as temple slaves, they were mainly engaged in agriculture and were exempt from forced labour.

This loophole for escaping forced labour was likely only open during a 60 year period from around 190 BC to 130 BC, with no other evidence that this practice existed during other periods in ancient Egypt. Ryholt speculates that this is because reigning monarchs could not afford losing too many potential labourers to temples in the long-run.

Image via: StuffPoint.com

Via: "Nature"

~ A Message From ISS To All Humankind ~

Courtesy of: NASA-TV

The pygmy right whale, a mysterious and elusive creature that rarely comes to shore, is the last living relative of an ancient group of whales long believed to be extinct, a new study suggests.

The findings, published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, may help to explain why the enigmatic marine mammals look so different from any other living whale.

"The living pygmy right whale is, if you like, a remnant, almost like a living fossil," said Felix Marx, a paleontologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand. "It's the last survivor of quite an ancient lineage that until now no one thought was around."

The relatively diminutive pygmy right whale, which grows to just 21 feet long, lives out in the open ocean. The elusive marine mammals inhabit the Southern Hemisphere and have only been spotted at sea a few dozen times. As a result, scientists know almost nothing about the species' habits or social structure.

The strange creature's arched, frownlike snout makes it look oddly different from other living whales. DNA analysis suggested pygmy right whales diverged from modern baleen whales such as the blue whale and the humpback whale between 17 million and 25 million years ago. However, the pygmy whales' snouts suggested they were more closely related to the family of whales that includes the bowhead whale. Yet there were no studies of fossils showing how the pygmy whale had evolved, Marx said.

To understand how the pygmy whale fit into the lineage of whales, Marx and his colleagues carefully analyzed the skull bones and other fossil fragments from pygmy right whales and several other ancient cetaceans.

The pygmy whale's skull most closely resembled that of an ancient family of whales called cetotheres that were thought to have gone extinct around 2 million years ago, the researchers found. Cetotheres emerged about 15 million years ago and once occupied oceans across the globe.

The findings help explain how pygmy whales evolved and may also help shed light on how these ancient "lost" whales lived. The new information is also a first step in reconstructing the ancient lineage all the way back to the point when all members of this group first diverged, he said.

Via: "MSNBC"

~ Marine Life - Mysteries Of The Deep ~ The oceans cover 70% of Earth's surface, and are almost entirely unexplored. The fact that even in the best-known regions, we have sampled less than 1% of the seafloor - we are now beginning to realise the deep is home to a spectacular diversity of organisms. With technological advances allowing scientists to go deeper and deeper beneath the waves, catch a glimpse of the deep-sea creatures lurking below. Director: Elise Swerhone Producers: Merit Jensen Carr, Sandra Moore Narrator: Peter Harlowe Writer& Editor: Robert Lower One Ocean Productions Inc. © 2010 For National Geographic Channels

~ Cosmic Journeys : The Largest Black Holes In The Universe ~ A supermassive black hole is the largest type of black hole in a galaxy, on the order of hundreds of thousands to billions of solar masses. Most--and possibly all--galaxies, including the Milky Wa y(see Sagittarius A), are believed to contain Supermassive black holes at their centers. Donald Lynden-Bell and Martin Rees hypothetized in 1971 that the center of the Milky Way galaxy would contain a supermassive black hole. Sagittarius A was discovered and named on February 13 and 15, 1974, by astronomers Bruce Balick and Robert Brown using the baseline interferometer of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. They discovered a radio source that emits synchrotronic radiation, also it was found to be dense and immobile because of its gravitation. Therefore, the first discovered supermassive black hole existed in the center of the Milky Way. Supermassive Black Holes Outside The Milky Way It is now widely accepted that the center of nearly every galaxy contains a supermassive black hole.  It is believed that black holes and their host galaxies coevolved between 300-800 million years after the Big Bang, passing through a quasar phase.  The nearby Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light-years away, contains a (1.1–2.3) × 108 (110-230 million) solar mass central black hole, significantly larger than the Milky Way's.  The largest supermassive black hole in the Milky Way's neighborhood appears to be that of M87, weighing in at (6.4 ± 0.5) × 109 (~6.4 billion) solar masses at a distance of 53.5 million light years. On 5 December 2011 astronomers discovered the largest super massive black hole yet found to be that of NGC 4889, weighing in at 21 billion solar masses at a distance of 336 million light-years away in the Coma constellation. Some galaxies, such as Galaxy 0402+379, appear to have two supermassive black holes at their centers, forming a binary system.  Binary supermassive black holes are believed to be a common consequence of galactic mergers. The binary pair in OJ 287, 3.5 billion light years away, contains the previous most massive black hole known (until the December 2011 discovery, with a mass estimated at 18 billion solar masses. A supermassive black hole was recently discovered in the dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10, which has no bulge. The precise implications for this discovery on black hole formation are unknown, but may indicate that black holes formed before bulges. On March 28, 2011, a supermassive black hole (SMBH) was for the first time seen tearing a mid-size star apart. That is, according to astronomers, the only likely explanation of the observations that day of sudden X-ray radiation and the follow-up broad-band observations. The source was previously an inactive galactic nucleus, and from study of the outburst the galactic nucleus is estimated to be a SMBH with mass of the order of a million solar masses. This rare event is assumed to be a relativistic outflow (material being emitted in a jet at a significant fraction of the speed of light) from a star tidally disrupted by the SMBH. A significant fraction of a solar mass of material is expected to have accreted onto the SMBH. Subsequent long-term observation will allow this assumption to be confirmed if the emission from the jet decays at the expected rate for mass accretion onto a SMBH. Info via: Wikipedia

~ Saber Tooth ~ This is Smilodon fatals Commonly called a Saber Tooth Tiger. Sadly, this is a very common misconception. There is actually no such thing as a Saber Tooth Tiger. In order to call something a tiger, the remains must be found in Asia. Along with other skeletal characteristics. In fact, a s. fatals looks more like a lion or house cat when you examine its skeleton, more so than any tiger! This skull is HUGE! I am holding it as you can se, and my thumb is about 2.5 inches long. It is a casting from a real s. fatals skull. The teeth are heterodont. Meaning they are different in shape and function according to the position in the mouth. The purpose of those infamous sabers was clearly for hunting, but the method of hunting is still being debated. Originally it was assumed they would go for the belly and eviscerate their prey. But new research has shown this would have been extremely ineffective. By using a metal casting of a saber tooth's skull, and a nice cow cadaver, it was determined the wound inflicted on the stomach would have only been superficial. The jaws did not open wide enough to create a deep puncture. Don't be deceived though, those jaws open almost 90 degrees, or straight down! Using the same cow and skull cast, the next test went for the front of the neck, where all the soft tissue is. When this was done it was shown that the sabers not only cut through the neck completely, but went behind the windpipe and cut that and all the arteries along with it. When looking at modern lions, they do almost the same thing. The problem is, this takes along time for them to do, as they crush the windpipe, not cut it. This attracts alot of attention. By completely severing the windpipe and arteries, the job is finished much quicker, and does not attract as much attention...say from an giant short faced bear. Photo-1, By PaleoClipper Via: Deviant Art

Photo-2, By BunnyPunk

Via: Deviant Art

Astronomers have found a planet whose skies are illuminated by four different suns - the first known of its type.

The distant world orbits one pair of stars and has a second stellar pair revolving around it.

The discovery was made by volunteers using the Planethunters.org website along with a team from UK and US institutes; follow-up observations were made with the Keck Observatory.

A scientific paper has been posted on the Arxiv pre-print server.

The planet, located just under 5,000 light-years away, has been named PH1 after the Planet Hunters site. It is thought to be a "gas giant" slightly larger than Neptune but more than six times the size of the Earth. "All four stars pulling on it creates a very complicated environment. Yet there it sits in an apparently stable orbit. "That's really confusing, which is one of the things which makes this discovery so fun. It's absolutely not what we would have expected." Binary stars - systems with pairs of stars - are not uncommon. But only a handful of known exoplanets (planets that circle other stars) have been found to orbit such binaries. And none of these are known to have another pair of stars circling them. PH1 was discovered by two US volunteers using the Planethunters.org website: Kian Jek of San Francisco and Robert Gagliano from Cottonwood, Arizona. They spotted faint dips in light caused by the planet passing in front of its parent stars. The team of professional astronomers then confirmed the discovery using the Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Founded in 2010, Planethunters.org aims to harness human pattern recognition to identify transits in publicly available data gathered by Nasa's Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler was launched in March 2009 to search for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. Visitors to the Planet Hunters website have access to randomly selected data from one of Kepler's target stars. Volunteers are asked to draw boxes to mark the locations of visible transits - when a planet passes in front of its parent star. Dr Lintott points out: "Computerised attempts to find things [in the data] missed this system entirely. That tells you there are probably more of these that are slipping through our fingers. We've just stuck a load of new data up on Planethunters.org to help people find the next one." Searching for such systems, he said, was "a complicated test to hand a computer", adding: "We're using human pattern recognition, which can disentangle that reasonably well to see the important stuff." Since December 2010, more than 170,000 members of the public have participated in the project. Via: The BBC