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Messaggi di Giugno 2017
Post n°1422 pubblicato il 29 Giugno 2017 da diegobaratono
DA: "scfh.ru"
 : 26.06.2017
The apparition from a frozen grave on the Ukok PlateauBy Natalia V. Polosmak With each successive thawed layer of the ice tomb, the time was going backwards taking us further and further away from the modern age. Ukok contributed to this feeling through its solitude, aloofness from everything that was important on the mainland and strange, Indian-like names of mountains, rivers and settlements: Ak-Alakha, Chindagatuy, Bertek, Moinak…The silence around us was pristine, disturbed only by the remote drone of the engine at the frontier post. At night everything froze: the lake had an ice skin, small flowers and grass blades were covered with ice… With sunrise, however, everything went back to life. This daily return of life after the night’s cold was a stunning feature of Ukok! 
I understood just recently why it is so difficult for me to recall that time: it appears that I can hardly remember any events. Evidently, something did happen in the camp: people would come and go, every day we ate something, slept some time and talked to somebody. Nevertheless, it did not go deep or left any trace in the memory; rather, it seemed a vexing distraction from the main thing that commanded full attention. When they tell me something about the events of those years, I can recollect that, indeed, there was a helicopter that brought us a fridge and gas masks and then took them back. Also, a doctor with a ludicrous (given the situation) specialization flew in, and some other amusing things happened, which now touch me deeply because I understand that it was because people cared about us, worried about us and wanted to save us God knows from what. 
Photo by V. Novikov Elena Shumakova, an artist, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography (Novosibirsk), participant of Ukok expeditions:
“During our first season Ukok seemed to be another planet, huge and unexplored. We had a haunting feeling of an alien presence, of being watched. I think it was partly because we there were so few of us on that immense “serving plate” – the mountainous plateau with nothing but stars above it. The border guards, with their sudden apparition and just as surreal vanishing in the local scenery and the beam of the searchlight going along the barbwire contributed to the mysteriousness and made us think of the Zone from Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky.
I was deeply impressed when, having placed the clothes and fragments of clothes lifted up from the tomb into photo cuvettes, we (Natalia Polosmak and the author –Ed.) rinsed them in the water of the nearby lake to get rid of the marks of decay. In fact, we just did some washing for a person who had lived a couple of millennia before us. Could that person (or we) imagine such a thing happening? The time reduced to nothing, and millennia became an instant.
For a long time, this story remained my “inner experience”: anticipating the restorers’ displeasure, we kept it to ourselves. One day, however, having mentioned this episode in Abegg-Stiftung, a well-known restoration center in Switzerland, I received surprising support. It turned out that it was the water of the glacier lakes of the plateau that had preserved and “brought” to our days the unique content of Ukok’s frozen burials.”
Drawing by Anastasia Abdulmanova Continue reading : 26.06.2017
Post n°1421 pubblicato il 27 Giugno 2017 da diegobaratono
DA: "space.com"
ESISTE LA POSSIBILITA' CHE IL PIANETA A 39 ANNI LUCE DAL SOLE DENOMINATO TRAPPIST-1 SIA VEICOLATORE DI VITA?
Life on TRAPPIST-1 Planets? Rock-Swapping May Boost OddsBy Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | June 23, 2017 06:57am ET
Post n°1420 pubblicato il 22 Giugno 2017 da diegobaratono
DA: "news.yale.edu" Yale archaeologists discover earliest monumental Egyptian hieroglyphs 
The newly discovered panel of signs
features images of a bull’s head on a short pole followed by two back-to-back saddlebill storks with a bald ibis bird above and between them. This arrangement of symbols is common in later Egyptian representations of the solar cycle and with the concept of luminosity. A joint Yale and Royal Museums of Art and History (Brussels) expedition to explore the the ancient Egyptian city of Elkab has uncovered some previously unknown rock inscriptions, which include the earliest monumental hieroglyphs dating back around 5,200 years.
These new inscriptions were not previously recorded by any expedition and are of great significance in the history of the ancient Egyptian writing systems, according to Egyptologist John Coleman Darnell, professor in Yale's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale, who co-directs the Elkab Desert Survey Project.
“This newly discovered rock art site of El-Khawy preserves some of the earliest — and largest — signs from the formative stages of the hieroglyphic script and provides evidence for how the ancient Egyptians invented their unique writing system,” says Darnell.
The researchers also discovered rock art depicting a herd of elephants that was carved between 4,000-3,500 B.C.E. One of the elephants has a little elephant inside of it, which, according to Darnell, “is an incredibly rare way of representing a pregnant female animal.”
 Yale Egyptologist John Darnell examines the hieroglyphs from atop a tall scaffold.
Darnell says that the team was “absolutely flabbergasted” by the find because of the immense size of not just the individual tableaus, but the individual elements as well.
“This discovery isn’t new in the sense that this is the first time that anyone has seen these hieroglyphs; this is the first time that anyone has seen them on such a massive scale. These individual hieroglyphs each measure just over a half meter in height, and the entire tableau is about 70 centimeters (27.5 inches) in height. Previously found signs were only one or two centimeters in size,” says Darnell.
He continues: “In the modern world this would be akin to seeing smaller text on your computer screen and then suddenly seeing very large ones made the same way only on a billboard.”
The area where the researchers located the inscriptions is in the northern desert hinterland of Elkab. This area, along with Hierakonpolis, located across the river and known as its twin city, were very important centers in ancient Egypt, says Darnell, and demonstrate that the communicative system in these areas is not limited to the more commonly found small tokens or labels.
Darnell explains that these discoveries reveal that there was not a slow development of writing primarily for bureaucratic use as previously believed, but that hieroglyphic writing was more geographically widespread and topically diverse at the time of or shortly after its development.
“This also suggests that there is a much more expansive use of the early writing system than is indicated from other surviving archaeological material,” says Darnell.
 The site of the inscriptions is near two important cities in ancient Egypt.
Using a new recording technique pioneered at Yale, Darnell and Alberto Urcia, a digital archaeologist and associate research scientist in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, created a series of 3D images of the inscriptions from photographs taken in the field.
“This new technology makes it possible to record sites at a level of accuracy and detail that was absolutely impossible before,” says Darnell, adding, “It also means that we can record the site as a place, or a location, and not just as a series of inscriptions.”
“This was not what I was expecting to find when I set out on this period of work on the expedition,” says Darnell. “It was completely shocking to me.”
The team members this season also include Colleen Darnell, Egyptologist and curatorial affiliate, Yale Peabody Museum; Massimilliano Montanari, digital archaeology and 3D modeling specialist; and Elizabeth Hines ’17 and Reed Morgan ’17.
The expedition, which was directed by Darnell and Dirk Huyge, was undertaken in cooperation with the Ministry of Antiquities and the Aswan and Edfu inspectorates.
Post n°1419 pubblicato il 22 Giugno 2017 da diegobaratono
DA: "livescience.com"
Humanity should focus its efforts on exploring other worlds that we might inhabit, and to get there, Earthlings may need to ride on a beam of light, famed physicist Stephen Hawking says. Hawking made his remarks today (June 20) at Starmus, an arts and science festival in Norway whose advisory board he sits on. In his speech, he reiterated his belief that humans need to explore space to avoid the dangers of our own finite world. And then he described how humans could one day travel on a beam of light, harnessing the power of Einstein's theory of relativity to reach mind-bogglingly distant planets. [8 Shocking Things We Learned from Stephen Hawking's Book] Earth in perilThe human imagination has led us to peer ever deeper into the universe with scientific tools, Hawking said. Yet despite this ability to investigate the most distant reaches of the universe without leaving our backyards, humans shouldn't be content with this sedentary approach. "Shouldn't we be content to be cosmic sloths, enjoying the universe from the comfort of Earth? The answer is, no," Hawking said in his address. "The Earth is under threat from so many areas that it is difficult for me to be positive." What's more, humans are naturally curious explorers who are driven to push into the unknown. Hawking described the looming threats of a too-crowded world facing climate change, the collapse of animal species and the draining of physical resources. (Hawking has previously mentioned his conviction that humanity is doomed in the next millennium unless people can come up with an escape plan.) "When we have reached similar crises in our history, there has usually been somewhere else to colonize. Columbus did it in 1492 when he discovered the New World. But now there is no new world. No Utopia around the corner," Hawking said. Explore the unknownThe easiest targets are the places closest to home: the moon and Mars, Hawking said in his Starmus address. The moon is nearby, but it's small, has no liquid water and lacks a magnetic field to shield people from radiation. Mars may once have had liquid water and an atmosphere, but no longer. But an even more promising idea is to explore some of the planets in the vicinity of our nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri, at a distance of about 4.5 light-years from Earth, where 1 light-year is nearly 6 trillion miles (10 million kilometers). A planet circling Proxima Centauri, called Proxima Centauri b, may be somewhat similar to Earth, at least in a few respects, Hawking said. However, we'll never know how hospitable Proxima b is unless we can get there. At current speeds, using chemical propulsion, it would take 3 million years to reach the exoplanet, Hawking said. [Interstellar Space Travel: 7 Futuristic Spacecraft to Explore the Cosmos] Thus, space colonization requires a radical departure in our travel technology. "To go faster would require a much higher exhaust speed than chemical rockets can provide — that of light itself," Hawking said. "A powerful beam of light from the rear could drive the spaceship forward. Nuclear fusion could provide 1 percent of the spaceship's mass energy, which would accelerate it to a tenth of the speed of light." Going faster than that would require harnessing matter-antimatter annihilation or as-yet-undreamed-of technology, he added. (When matter and antimatter come into contact, they annihilate, releasing gobs of energy.) Tiny space probesTo bring these seeming pipe dreams closer to reality, Hawking, along with physicist and billionaire Yuri Milner, has founded a company called Breakthrough Starshot, which aims to make interstellar travel a reality. As an early prototype, the team is creating a teensy space probe, just a few centimeters wide, attached to a miniscule light sail. The plan is to send 1,000 of these "StarChips" and their sails into the void, with arrays of lasers uniting to form one powerful light beam to propel the tiny sails with gigawatts of power, Hawking said. The energy imparted to the tiny space probes could zoom them to speeds reaching about 100 million mph (160 million km/h), which would mean they would reach Mars in a day (as opposed to 260 days using propulsion). At one-fifth the speed of light, the probes would reach Alpha Centauri in just 20 years and send images of any possible planets back on another light beam, Hawking said. Another physicist, Claudius Gros has proposed using these tiny space explorers to colonize far-flung planets with a biosphere of unicellular organisms, Hawking said "Human colonization on other planets is no longer science fiction. It can be science fact. The human race has existed as a separate species for about 2 million years. Civilization began about 10,000 years ago, and the rate of development has been steadily increasing. If humanity is to continue for another million years, our future lies in boldly going where no one else has gone before," Hawking said. Originally published on Live Science.
Post n°1418 pubblicato il 21 Giugno 2017 da diegobaratono
DA: "egitalloyd.blogspot.it"
New Discovery, Nubia: Ancient Tomb of Gold Worker Found Along Nile River Posted: 21 Jun 2017 02:32 AM PDT A 3,400-year-old tomb holding the remains of more than a dozen possibly mummified people has been discovered on Sai Island, along the Nile River in northern Sudan.
Archaeologists discovered the tomb in 2015, though it wasn't until 2017 that a team with the Across Borders archaeological research project fully excavated the site.
The island is part of an ancient land known as Nubia that Egypt controlled 3,400 years ago. The Egyptians built settlements and fortifications throughout Nubia, including on Sai Island, which had a settlement and a gold mine.
The tomb, which contains multiple chambers, appears to hold the remains of Egyptians who lived in or near that settlement and worked in gold production.
The artifacts found in the tomb include scarabs (a type of amulet widely used in Egypt), ceramic vessels, a gold ring, the remains of gold funerary masks worn by the deceased and a small stone sculpture known as a shabti.
The ancient Egyptians believed that shabtis could do the work of the deceased for them in the afterlife. Some of the artifacts bore Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions that revealed the tomb was originally created for a man named Khnummose, who was a "master gold worker."
The remains of Khnummose (which may have been mummified) were found next to those of a woman who may have been his wife. Some of the other people found in tomb may have been relatives of Khnummose, the researchers said, adding that they planned to conduct DNA analyses of the remains.
"We will try to extract ancient DNA from the [bones] of the bodies in question," said Julia Budka, professor for Egyptian Archaeology and Art History at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. "If the [ancient] DNA is preserved, this will help us a lot.
Otherwise, it all remains tentative," said Budka, who noted that the samples are already at the Department for Archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany.
The archaeologists said they aren't sure how many of the bodies were mummified.
 "The state of preservation is very difficult here," Budka said. "I am waiting for the report of my physical anthropologists. For now, the position and also traces of bitumen speak for some kind of mummification for all persons in Tomb 26 who were placed in wooden coffins."
Bitumen is a type of petroleum that the ancient Egyptians sometimes used in mummification.
Many of the coffins are also poorly preserved, and it's uncertain exactly how many of the people were buried in coffins, Budka said.  | News, Giza: Tutankhamun Artifacts Moved to Grand Egyptian Museum Ahead of Soft Opening in 2018 Posted: 20 Jun 2017 03:10 AM PDT  | Zidan During Restoration on The Oars |
Mummified dates, grains and small model boats were among the objects moved in this most recent batch, an operation that required careful packing and essential restoration work. Written By/ Nevine El-Aref.
Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities has transported another batch of items from the Tutankhamun collection to their new home at the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) overlooking the Giza Plateau.
The ancient Egyptian artifacts were moved on Sunday from their current location at the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo to the GEM ahead of its soft opening in early 2018.
 Tarek Tawfik, supervisor general of the GEM, said the new batch of artifacts includes dried and mummified seeds and fruits, as well as several model boats crafted from wood and a small wooden chair painted in white plaster.
Prior to the move, the objects were subjected to essential restoration work, courtesty of the GEM's First Aid Restoration department.
Eissa Zidan, the department's director, said the artifacts – including dried dates, onions, garlic, wheat, barely and doum – were all transported safely.
He said that the restoration staff used scientific methods to pack and transport the items. They also compiled a detailed report on the current condition of all items prior to the move. Zidan said the objects would undergo further restoration at the GEM.
The GEM is due to open in April 2018, with two areas accessible to the public: a large hall containing the entire Tutankhamun collection; and the Grand Staircase collection of major objects and statues from Ancient Egypt.
The process of transporting items from Downtown to the GEM started in the summer of 2016, while the transfer of the Tutankhamun collection began earlier this year. |
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