Free Republic

Until recently, only 10 leaves of the oldest manuscript prepared by Abraham Lincoln were thought to have survived. However, Nerida Ellerton and Ken Clements, professors in Illinois State University’s Department of Mathematics, have determined that a fragment in the archives in Houghton Library at Harvard University is in fact an 11th leaf from the oldest surviving manuscript written by the future president... The young Lincoln prepared his arithmetic manuscript -- known as a cyphering book in Lincoln’s time -- when attending schools in Indiana between 1820 and 1826. The Harvard University leaf was probably completed by Lincoln when he was...

Explanation: Sharp telescopic views of magnificent edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 3628 show a puffy galactic disk divided by dark dust lanes. Of course, this deep galactic portrait puts some astronomers in mind of its popular moniker, The Hamburger Galaxy. The tantalizing island universe is about 100,000 light-years across and 35 million light-years away in the northern springtime constellation Leo. NGC 3628 shares its neighborhood in the local Universe with two other large spirals M65 and M66 in a grouping otherwise known as the Leo Triplet. Gravitational interactions with its cosmic neighbors are likely responsible for the extended flare and warp...

The first-century quarry, which fits into the Second Temple Period (538 B.C. to A.D. 70), would've held the huge stones used in the construction of the city's ancient buildings, the researchers noted. Archaeologists also uncovered pick axes and wedges among other artifacts at the site in the modern-day Ramat Shlomo Quarter, a neighborhood in northern East Jerusalem... In total, the team uncovered an area of around 11,000 square feet (1,000 square meters) where the ancient quarry would've existed. The quarry connects with other previously identified quarries, all of which seem to be situated in Jerusalem's so-called "city of quarries" dating...

Explanation: How many different astronomical phenomena have come together to create the above vista? Several. First, in the foreground, is Crater Lake -- a caldera created by volcanism on planet Earth about 7,700 years ago. Next, inside the lake, is water. Although the origin of the water in the crater is melted snowfall, the origin of water on Earth more generally is unclear, but possibly related to ancient Earthly-impacts of icy bodies. Next, the green glow in the sky is airglow, light emitted by atoms high in the Earth's atmosphere as they recombine at night after being separated during the...

According to historians, the Viking Age began on June 8, A.D. 793, at an island monastery off the coast of northern England. A contemporary chronicle recorded the moment with a brief entry: "The ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God’s church on Lindisfarne, with plunder and slaughter." ...In the centuries that followed, the Vikings' vessels carried them deep into Russia and as far south as Constantinople, Sicily, and possibly even North Africa. They organized flotillas capable of carrying warriors across vast distances, and terrorized the English, Irish, and French coasts with lightning-fast raids. Exploratory voyages to the west took them...

Explanation: Is that a cloud or an alien spaceship? It's an unusual and sometimes dangerous type of thunderstorm cloud called a supercell. Supercells may spawn damaging tornados, hail, downbursts of air, or drenching rain. Or they may just look impressive. A supercell harbors a mesocylone -- a rising column of air surrounded by drafts of falling air. Supercells could occur over many places on Earth but are particularly common in Tornado Alley of the USA. Pictured above are four time lapse sequences of a supercell rotating above and moving across Booker, Texas. Captured in the video are new clouds forming...

Salima Ikram, an expert in tombs and mummification who heads the Egyptology unit at American University in Cairo, gasps in horror in her home while examining Tribune-Review photographs of the site. "These scattered remains … brutally pulled apart in search of one shiny piece of metal," Ikram says in disgust... The Tribune-Review first reported in February that the looting had become a free-for-all after a 2011 revolution toppled one government and introduced continuing turmoil. The tomb raiding threatens some of Egypt's -- and the world's -- most revered and valuable heritage sites, many of which have never been properly studied...

Explanation: What creates these long and nearly straight grooves on Mars? Dubbed linear gullies, they appear on the sides of some sandy slopes during Martian spring, have nearly constant width, extend for as long as two kilometers, and have raised banks along their sides. Unlike most water flows, they do not appear to have areas of dried debris at the downhill end. A leading hypothesis -- actually being tested here on Earth -- is that these linear gullies are caused by chunks of carbon dioxide ice (dry ice) breaking off and sliding down hills while sublimating into gas, eventually completely...

The Amarna Royal Tombs Project's GPR (ground-penetrating radar) survey of the Valley of the Kings, undertaken in August 2000 by Hirokatsu Watanabe, was an experimental exercise carried out with the intention that it would be tested in due course by supplementary survey and actual excavation. Since ARTP was denied the opportunity of seeing through that vital second stage, the initial results, though promising, remained unproven. We could responsibly do little beyond keep the data on file, with a view to their eventual publication as an intriguing though sadly speculative annexe to ARTP's final report. In 2005, however, this impasse was...

Within an hour of a warning from Erdogan that central Istanbul would be cleared by Sunday whether or not protesters left voluntarily, security forces using loudspeakers told people in Taksim and Gezi Park to leave, the report said. Hundreds of black-clad riot police wearing gas masks started to rush the park, using tear gas and water cannons to chase protesters from the area. Remaining was a mess of soggy tents, banners and debris that sanitation workers quickly moved to clear. Opposition leaders said Saturday that Erdogan had destroyed his chances for a dialogue, according to the Washington Post. Erdogan had...

The race between the deteriorating security situation north of Israel’s border, and the need to complete the border fence, is tightening. But the fence and systems are nearly in place. As the raging civil war between loyalists to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and various rebel factions continues to spill over into the Golan Heights, workers are moving to replace border installations. Several countries have pulled their troops out of the United Nations peacekeeping force in the Golan demilitarized buffer zone as the situation has become increasingly dangerous, including Austria, which began withdrawal of its troops last week. Elbit Systems' "MSS...

Assad is winning with Iran's help, Mideast expert says. He warns Israel not to rely on the 'corrupt, ineffective' UN. Syrian President Bashar Assad now has the upper hand in his ongoing war with Syrian rebels, according to Dr. David Bukai of Haifa University, an expert in Middle East affairs. Iran and Hizbullah are helping Assad win, Bukai told Arutz Sheva. "This increases his weakness vis-a-vis Iran," he warned. "Syria will be more dependent on Iran, and that will affect our border, because if Assad is not independent and is open to Iranian and Hizbullah influence, there will be attempts...

Explanation: The first APOD appeared eighteen years ago today, on 1995 June 16. Although garnering only 14 pageviews on that day, we are proud to estimate that APOD has now served over one billion space-related images over the past eighteen years. That early beginning, along with a nearly unchanging format, has allowed APOD to be a consistent and familiar site on a web frequently filled with change. Many people don't know, though, that APOD is now translated daily into many major languages. We again thank our readers, astrophotographers, and NASA for their continued support, but ask that any potentially congratulatory...

A peace treaty sealed in Runnymede in 1215, signalling the end of a conflict between King John and barons who were in revolt, has once again got passions running high in Surrey. ...a debate is raging on what to do in the place where the charter -- hailed by some as the foundation of English democracy -- was sealed. Plans to build an £8m visitor centre in Runnymede as a legacy of the anniversary were dropped earlier this year because of lack of funds. Surrey County Council, Runnymede Borough Council and the National Trust have all said they are now...

Weekend Edition Saturday Host Scott Simon talks to award winning Turkish novelist Elif Shafak about the nature and deeper causes of the protests in Turkey, which erupted two weeks ago.

A small figurine depicting a slim, naked woman was recently found in a Danish field. Strangely, this is the fifth in a series of tiny golden human figurines found recently in the area... The small, heavily arched figurine is only 4.2 cm tall and weighs 3 grams, has many details and bears the mark of quality craftsmanship. Stretched arms and sagging breasts The woman has a long and slender body, which may have been made out of a thin bar of gold. The head is elongated with a protruding jaw and incised hair. The breasts are sagging and below both...

The skeletel remains of ancient warriors with spears and daggers have been uncovered in an archeological site during the construction of the Corridor 10 highway project in south-east Serbia. According to experts the remains date back 2,500 years and were found in the ancient district of Pirot named Suburbium where the ancient Roman road, Via Militaris, headed to what is now the border of modern day Bulgaria. ''We have found three skeletal remains of warriors with spears, daggers and bronze ornaments, and decorations of various kinds,'' said Mirjana Blagojevic, archeologist from Serbia's institute for the protection of cultural patrimony. Predrag...

The study, led by Caleb Everett, associate professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami, reveals that languages containing ejective consonants are spoken mainly in regions of high elevation. Ejectives are sounds produced with an intensive burst of air. The findings also indicate that as elevation increases, so does the likelihood of languages with ejectives. "Ejectives are produced by creating a pocket of air in the pharynx then compressing it." Everett says. "Since air pressure decreases with altitude and it takes less effort to compress less dense air, I speculate that it's easier...

Contrary to their hunting reputation, Stone Age Siberians killed mammoths only every few years when they needed tusks for toolmaking, a new study finds. People living between roughly 33,500 and 31,500 years ago hunted the animals mainly for ivory, say paleontologist Pavel Nikolskiy and archaeologist Vladimir Pitulko of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Hunting could not have driven mammoths to extinction, the researchers report June 5 in the Journal of Archaeological Science. On frigid tundra with few trees, mammoth tusks substituted for wood as a raw material for tools, they propose. Siberian people ate mammoth meat after hunts, but food...

JOHN DICKERSON: ...Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, has this 90/10 rule that I keep being told about, which is spend 90 percent of your time on the things that are important to this White House, 10 percent on the scandals. That's wise for any White House. The problem is, if they miss the one scandal that's important – and I think the one they're most worried about is still these IRS allegations. That's what people in the public really seem to care the most about, and it's the one that can affect the other things the White...

#ObamaMiddleClassVacationIdeas My President spent $100 million to go on vacation in Africa and all I got wat this lousy IRS Audit. #tcot Keith Fisher (@crusherfish) June 14, 2013 As Twitchy reported, the Obamas are gearing up for an African excursion that could wind up costing taxpayers a cool $100 million. It’s really important, you guys: "The president's not going to retreat from an entire continent," White House defends #POTUS trip to #Africa bit.ly/10iNE9j lesley clark (@lesleyclark) June 14, 2013 Chances are, though, that if you’re one of those taxpayers, you’d have trouble affording such an expensive vacay. But don’t worry...

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has spotted 503 new potential alien worlds, some of which may be capable of supporting life as we know it... The latest haul brings Kepler's tally of exoplanet candidates to 3,216. Just 132 of them have been confirmed by follow-up observations to date, but mission scientists expect at least 90 percent will end up being the real deal. The new finds were pulled from observations Kepler made during its first three years of operation, from May 2009 to March 2012, researchers said. The telescope hasn't done any planet hunting since being hobbled by a failure in its...

Explanation: Over a five hour period last Tuesday morning, exposures captured this tantalizing view of meteor streaks and the Milky Way in dark skies above Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. During that time, astronomers had hoped to see an outburst from the gamma Delphinid meteor shower as Earth swept through the dust trail left by an unknown comet. Named for the shower's radiant point in the constellation Delphinus, a brief but strong outburst was reported in bright, moonlit skies on June 10, 1930. While no strong Delphinid meteor activity was reported since, an outburst was tentatively predicted to occur again...

The astronomers made Hubble Space Telescope observations over a wide range of wavelengths from visible to near infrared and modeled the color and structure of the disk in a way that has not been done before. They found a deficit of disk material, or partial gap, at about 80 astronomical units (AU) (1 AU is the Earth/Sun distance). Their models indicate that the depression is about 20 AUs wide, just slightly wider than necessary for a planet-opening gap and consistent with a planet of between 6 and 28 Earth masses. The feature is seen at all wavelengths indicating it is...

Our solar system is full of moons. Of the 8 major planets, 6 of them have at least one natural satellite in tow, and several of those moons are very interesting places. Icy moons in the outer solar system may even be secretly harboring life. But what about moons elsewhere in the galaxy? The Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler (HEK) is an astronomy project intended to try and find exomoons. And not just any exomoons; the kind of moons that could be a haven for life. While the Kepler telescope has, sadly, been forced into retirement, the data it collected...

"The Palestinians are not even negotiation partners because they continuously torpedo attempts to resume peace talks and reject Israel’s repeated calls to meet without preconditions," said Akunis, who is considered a close ally and political protégé of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While asserting that Netanyahu enjoyed the widespread support of his party and the coalition on all matters of state, including diplomacy with the Palestinians, Akunis -- who is deputy minister in charge of government relations with the Knesset -- refused to express support for a two-state solution, which most people see as the basis for a peace agreement and...

The things found in at the burial site certify that the woman was from a distinguished tribe. According to the archaeologists, the golden head wear that looks like Kazakh Saukele (national headgear of women) is the most valuable item for the research. “The pointed golden head wear with zoomorphic ornaments has the top that looks like the arrows and is decorated with a spiral made of golden wire and jewels. A similar head wear used to be part of the official costume of the Saka tribe chieftains. It is quite possible that the woman was a daughter of a king...

Explanation: Sharpless 115 stands just north and west of Deneb, the alpha star of Cygnus the Swan in planet Earth's skies. Noted in the 1959 catalog by astronomer Stewart Sharpless (as Sh2-115) the faint but lovely emission nebula lies along the edge one of the outer Milky Way's giant molecular clouds, about 7,500 light-years away. Shining with the light of ionized atoms of hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen in this Hubble palette color composite image, the nebular glow is powered by hot stars in star cluster Berkeley 90. The cluster stars are likely only 100 million years old or so and...

After 10 years of satellite archaeology research I decided in August of 2012 to seek help for my work from the public with a press release. The goal of this public outreach was to get help ground proofing two sites I had found in Egypt via Google Earth, to see if they were possible pyramid complexes that had remained undiscovered. The Discovery News website was the first news outlet to pick up the press release and publish the full, intact story on August 10th of 2012.

...a team of archaeologists excavating in India then claimed to have found evidence that modern humans were there before the eruption possibly as early as 120,000 years ago, much earlier than Europe or the Near East were colonised. These findings, based on the discovery of stone tools below a layer of Toba ash, were published in Science in 2007. Now Professor Richards working principally with the archaeologist Professor Sir Paul Mellars, of the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh, with a team including Huddersfield University s Dr Martin Carr and colleagues from York and Porto has published his...

[snip] Egyptian Chief of Staff Sedki Sobhi announced the military would prevent the regime from violently dispersing the protesters. "The Egyptian army will be in the streets" if there are millions of people to protect, he was quoted as saying. Egypt’s military has warned the Muslim Brotherhood not to allow armed security personnel to get involved in the demonstrations or try to disperse them, the source said, because "the army will violently intervene." [/snip]

Explanation: You can see four planets in this serene sunset image, created from a series of stacked digital exposures captured near dusk on May 25. The composite picture follows the trail of three of them, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury (left to right) dropping toward the western horizon, gathered close in last month's remarkable triple planetary conjunction. Similar in brightness to planet Mercury, the star Elnath (Beta Tauri) is also tracked across the scene, leaving its dotted trail still farther to the right. Of course, in the foreground are the still, shallow waters of Alikes salt lake, reflecting the striking colors...

Explanation: For the first time, the entire surface of planet Mercury has been mapped. Detailed observations of the innermost planet's surprising crust have been ongoing since the robotic MESSENGER spacecraft first passed Mercury in 2008 and began orbiting in 2011. Previously, much of the Mercury's surface was unknown as it is too far for Earth-bound telescopes to see clearly, while the Mariner 10 flybys in the 1970s observed only about half. The above video is a compilation of thousands of images of Mercury rendered in exaggerated colors to better contrast different surface features. Visible on the rotating world are rays...

German outrage over a U.S. Internet spying program has broken out ahead of a visit by Barack Obama, with ministers demanding the president provide a full explanation when he lands in Berlin next week and one official likening the tactics to those of the East German Stasi. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman has said she will raise the issue with Obama in talks next Wednesday, potentially casting a cloud over a visit that was designed to celebrate U.S.-German ties on the 50th anniversary John F. Kennedy's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech... In a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on...

Explanation: What's happening in the NGC 3582 nebula? Bright stars and interesting molecules are forming. The complex nebula resides in the star forming region called RCW 57. Visible in this image are dense knots of dark interstellar dust, bright stars that have formed in the past few million years, fields of glowing hydrogen gas ionized by these stars, and great loops of gas expelled by dying stars. A detailed study of NGC 3582, also known as NGC 3584 and NGC 3576, uncovered at least 33 massive stars in the end stages of formation, and the clear presence of the complex...

Explanation: Where are the hottest stars in the nearest galaxies? To help find out, NASA commissioned its Earth-orbiting Swift satellite to compile a multi-image mosaic of the neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) galaxy in ultraviolet light. The above image shows where recently formed stars occur in the LMC, as the most massive of these young stars shine brightly in blue and ultraviolet. In contrast, visible in an image roll-over, a more familiar view of the LMC in visible light better highlights older stars. On the upper left is one of the largest star forming regions known in the entire Local...

"Old" might not top the list of the adjectives you'd use to describe water, but that could very well change after reading this story: Scientists say they've found water whose age clocks in at no less than 1.5 billion years, making it the oldest cache to have ever been discovered. (As the BBC explains, the only water to top it is "minute quantities" contained in some rock minerals.) Gold miners in Timmins, Ontario, were the ones who uncovered the water while drilling into bedrock; NPR reports that the team behind the discovery had been requesting such samples from a number...

Explanation: Have you ever seen an aurora? Auroras are occurring again with increasing frequency. With the Sun peaking at its eleven year maximum in aurora-triggering activity, it is exhibiting a greater abundance of sunspots, flares, and coronal mass ejections. Solar activity like this typically expels charged particles into the Solar System, some of which impact Earth's magnetosphere and trigger Earthly auroras. In late 2010, the above timelapse displays of picturesque auroras were captured above Tromso, Norway. Curtains of auroral light, usually green, flow, shimmer and dance as energetic particles fall toward the Earth and excite atoms of air high up...

Explanation: Many bright nebulae and star clusters in planet Earth's sky are associated with the name of astronomer Charles Messier, from his famous 18th century catalog. His name is also given to these two large and remarkable craters on the Moon. Standouts in the dark, smooth lunar Sea of Fertility or Mare Fecunditatis, Messier (left) and Messier A have dimensions of 15 by 8 and 16 by 11 kilometers respectively. Their elongated shapes are explained by an extremely shallow-angle trajectory followed by the impactor, moving left to right, that gouged out the craters. The shallow impact also resulted in two...

The French government is to take steps to break up a far-right group allegedly linked to the death of a left-wing activist. Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has asked the interior minister to take steps "immediately" to dissolve the Revolutionary Nationalist Youth (JNR). Five people are under investigation over the death of Clement Meric, 18. He was badly beaten in a clash between far-right and anti-fascist activists in Paris on Wednesday, and later died. The Paris Prosecutor, Francois Molins said according to witnesses the two groups had run into each other by chance in a busy shopping district near St Lazare...

In the dim light of the Dark Ages, the Irish literary tradition stands out like a beacon. At monastic centres across the island, scribes recorded significant events such as feast days, obituaries and descriptions of extreme cold and heat. These chronicles are generally known as the Irish Annals and in this report, scientists and historians have looked at 40,000 entries in the texts dating from AD431 to 1649. The researchers also looked at the Greenland Ice Sheet Project (GISP2) ice-core data... The scientists in the team identified 48 volcanic eruptions in the time period spanning 1,219 years. Of these, 38...

In Alaska, scores of volcanoes and strange lava flows have escaped scrutiny for decades, shrouded by lush forests and hidden under bobbing coastlines... Some of the unusual finds Karl and Baichtal have uncovered include a maar lying 295 feet (90 meters) underwater near Cape Addington, about 40 miles (65 km) west of Craig, Alaska. Maars are bomblike craters blasted out when magma rising underground hits groundwater and explodes. The maar is about 13,800 years old, Baichtal said. Sea level was 394 feet (120 m) lower when the maar formed. The latest find is an underwater volcano in Behm Canal, where...

The earliest known examples of wine-making as we know it are in the regions of modern-day Iran, Georgia, and Armenia -- and researchers believe that modern winemaking slowly spread westward from there to Europe... The Etruscans, a pre-Roman civilisation in Italy, are thought to have gained wine culture from the Phoenicians -- who spread throughout the Mediterranean from the early Iron Age onward -- because they used similarly shaped amphoras... Dr McGovern's team focused on the coastal site of Lattara, near the town of Lattes south of Montpellier, where the importation of amphoras continued up until the period 525-475 BC....

On September 13th 1757, John Childs completed the first flight in America. Tethered to a rope, and attached to a feathered glider, he flew about 700 feet from the steeple of the Old North Church to the ground. He had placed advertisements in the Boston Gazette preceding the event, and many spectators attended. Brandishing pistols on his third flight, and with local business completely disrupted in the area, the town leaders barred him from any more sorties... An account of the flights was published in the September 23rd 1757 issue of the New-Hampshire Gazette: "[Last] Tuesday in the afternoon John...

Explanation: The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often named for flowers or insects. Though its wingspan covers over 3 light-years, NGC 6302 is no exception. With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees C, the dying central star of this particular planetary nebula has become exceptionally hot, shining brightly in ultraviolet light but hidden from direct view by a dense torus of dust. This sharp and colorful close-up of the dying star's nebula was recorded in 2009 by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3, installed during the final shuttle servicing mission. Cutting...

Explanation: How big is our Sun compared to other stars? In a dramatic and popular video featured on YouTube, the relative sizes of planets and stars are shown from smallest to largest. The above video starts with Earth's Moon and progresses through increasingly larger planets in our Solar System. Next, the Sun is shown along as compared to many of the brighter stars in our neighborhood of the Milky Way Galaxy. Finally, some of the largest stars known spin into view. Note that the true sizes of most stars outside of the Sun and Betelgeuse are not known by direct...

Explanation: Except for the rings of Saturn, the Ring Nebula (M57) is probably the most famous celestial band. Its classic appearance is understood to be due to our own perspective, though. The recent mapping of the expanding nebula's 3-D structure, based in part on this clear Hubble image, indicates that the nebula is a relatively dense, donut-like ring wrapped around the middle of a football-shaped cloud of glowing gas. The view from planet Earth looks down the long axis of the football, face-on to the ring. Of course, in this well-studied example of a planetary nebula, the glowing material does...

Explanation: Few astronomical sights excite the imagination like the nearby stellar nursery known as the Orion Nebula. The Nebula's glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud. Many of the filamentary structures visible in the above image are actually shock waves - fronts where fast moving material encounters slow moving gas. The Orion Nebula spans about 40 light years and is located about 1500 light years away in the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as the Sun. The Great Nebula in Orion can be found with the unaided eye just below and...

Explanation: Could life ever have existed on Mars? To help find out, humanity landed the Curiosity rover on Mars last August. To make sure the car-sized explorer survived the interplanetary trip and dramatic landing intact, the above image and others was taken peering at, under, and around Curiosity. Pictured above in this unusual vista are three of Curiosity's six wheels, each measuring about half a meter across. In recent months, Curiosity has been exploring the surroundings of an area dubbed Yellowknife Bay. Analyses of data taken by Curiosity's cameras and onboard laboratories has provided strong new evidence that Mars could...

The magnetic north pole has moved 161 miles in 6 months only, this puts its arrival in Siberia in less that 2 years, and it is when it arrives there that it will have migrated 40 degrees across the northern hemisphere at this point the poles will shift at high speed over the equator until it reaches 40 degrees south, i will tell you what i expect to happen when it goes past the 40 degrees point in the coming uploads...