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Post by theshee on Jan 17, 2017 8:20:25 GMT 10
How unnatural does that look? Although its most likely a natural formation, it looks so out of place compared to the rest of the landscape.
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Post by theshee on Jan 17, 2017 8:18:54 GMT 10
As Coronation Glacier on Canada's Baffin Island retreats, it has left behind a new island. The island, detected with satellite imagery, is made of loose dirt and rocks deposited by the slow-moving river of ice. Typically, a glacial island like this will erode away after the glacier stops feeding it with new sediment (embedded in the flowing ice), glaciologist Mauri Pelto wrote in the American Geophysical Union blog, "From a Glacier's Perspective." The new island, however, might endure, according to research by Pelto, of Nichols College in Massachusetts, and his colleagues. "The size of the island gives it potential to survive, based on satellite imagery," Pelto wrote. The Coronation Glacier is on the Cumberland Peninsula of Baffin Island, most of which sits in the Arctic Circle. The glacier is the largest outlet for the Penny Ice Cap, according to Pelto. For decades, the glacier has been on the retreat. Researchers reported in a 1992 study published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences that the terminus (the end, or toe, of a glacier) of the Coronation Glacier retreated an average of 39 feet (12 meters) per year between 1890 and 1989. (When a glacier retreats, its terminus doesn't extend as far as it did previously, and can result when more ice melts than is replaced by snow accumulations, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.) Pelto and his colleagues were interested in how the glacier had been faring since then. Using satellite imagery from 1989 to 2016, they found that the glacial retreat has been speeding up rapidly. In those 27 years, they reported, the average loss, or retreat, has been 98 feet (30 m) each year. Satellite images from 1989 (Landsat) 2016 (Sentinel) show the retreat of Coronation Glacier and the formation of a new island at the glacier's terminus (yellow arrow). The red arrows indicate the end of the glacier in 1989. The total retreat since 1989 has been 3,609 feet (1,100 m) on the north side of the fjord into which the glacier empties, Pelto wrote. On the south side, the retreat has been 1,640 feet (500 m). This uneven retreat has changed the landscape sporadically over time. In 1989, for example, there were two islands of glacial sediment at the terminus of the glacier on the north side of the fjord. By 1998, the retreating glacier had pulled away from those islands, and the more northerly of the two was already eroded away, Pelto wrote. By 2000, the more southerly island was gone, too. Permanent feature? In 2016, the dynamics of the glacier had created a new island near the southern edge of the glacier's terminus. This position indicates that the glacier's outflow has shifted from the center of the slow-moving river of ice to the south, Pelto wrote. The island is bigger than the ones that disappeared in 1998 and in 2000, he wrote, so it might be a more- lasting feature in the fjord. "A visit to the island would be needed to shed light on its potential for enduring," Pelto wrote of the island. The spit of land may persist, but there is increasing evidence that much of the glacier and the Penny Ice Cap will not. The researchers found that the snowpack is decreasing near the glacier, following a trend that scientists have been recording since at least 2004. The Arctic has been heating up twice as quickly as the rest of the planet. In November 2016, parts of the region experienced temperatures 36 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) above normal. With such heat, Arctic sea ice formation stalled and briefly retreated. In 2008, researchers reported that Baffin Island's ice cover was at its lowest extent in 1,600 years and might vanish entirely by the middle of the 21st century. link
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Post by theshee on Jan 13, 2017 9:40:51 GMT 10
I don't like them but I'm sure some would have a place. Being known as "electronic persons" what's that all about??? "Person - a human being regarded as an individual."!!! Shee,i wonder if battery powers dildo's will soon take people to court for being abused lol LMAO In all honesty... nothing would surprise me anymore hahaha
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Post by theshee on Jan 13, 2017 9:32:25 GMT 10
LIDAR scan reveals a network of roads, canals, corrals, pyramids and terraces at El Mirador.Few ancient civilizations have left us evidence of the roads they built to maintain effective communication and transportation within their sphere of influence. Until recently, the model for effective road creation and maintenance was ancient Rome. However, the recent discovery of a system of superhighways that once connected pyramidal complexes over a distance of 150 miles (240 km) in Guatemala, means that the Maya civilization may now rival the Romans. The finding was made last month by researchers of the Mirador Basin (Archaeological) Project. In the Mirador Basin there are many pre-classic Maya sites including El Mirador, Nakbe, El Pesquero, El Tintal, Wakna, and Xulnal. A pyramid covered in vegetation at El Mirador Researchers found the 2000-year-old superhighway using LIDAR mapping technology. Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) is an aerial surveying technology that uses lasers to make high-resolution 2D and 3D maps. LIDAR technology enabled researchers to have a 3D view of the Mirador Basin without the dense jungle obscuring it. LIDAR scan reveals a network of roads in the Guatemala jungleLed by Richard D. Hansen, an archaeologist and anthropologist of the University of Utah, the results of the team’s research is providing us with keen insight into the innovations of the ancient Maya civilization. El Mirador was the largest Mayan city-state in Guatemala, and contains the largest known pyramid in Central America. Situated in the Peten jungle of northern Guatemala, Mirador stretched over an area of 2,158 sq km/833 sq m, and included a population of around a million people. Dr. Hansen said El Mirador was “the first state of all the Americas”. Using LIDAR, the researchers discovered that hidden beneath the thick canopy of the jungle below, were canals, corrals, pyramids, dikes, and terraces alongside the extensive network of roads. LIDAR scan reveals a network of roads, canals, corrals, pyramids, and terraces at El Mirador.Researchers believe that the animal pens or corrals may have been established first by the inhabitants of El Mirador. Hansen maintains that the sophisticated system of corrals is evidence that meat production in the Mirador Basin may have existed on an industrial level. But he made it clear there needs to be more research to confirm this theory. The discovery of the Mirador ancient network of roads and new pyramids will provide the Mirador Basin Project researchers with more Maya sites to investigate. Upcoming findings at these sites may help to shed light on why the Mirador Basin civilization declined after 150 AD. linkIt will be interesting to see what they can unearth.
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Post by theshee on Jan 13, 2017 9:00:40 GMT 10
Not only are bullets a physical hazard, but they're an environmental hazard, too. At US Armytraining facilities around the world, hundreds of thousands of spent shells litter proving grounds. Because there is no efficient way to clean up the shells, they're left where they fall. But that's a problem. The shells, which contain metal and other chemicals, can rust and pollute soils and groundwater. The DoD wants to do something about it, though. They're soliciting proposals for biodegradable bullets "loaded with specialized seeds to grow environmentally beneficial plants that eliminate ammunition debris and contaminants." Such materials best suited for these bullets could include the same biodegradable plasticsused to make water bottles or plastic containers. Or it could be some other material altogether. According to the request for proposal, the US Army Corps of Engineers' Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory has already developed and tested seeds that can be embedded into a biodegradable composite. They've been bioengineered to germinate only after they've been in the ground for several months. Proposals are being solicited until February 8, after which time, the chosen contractors will produce the biodegradable bullets as part of a three-phase process. In phase one, the contractor will focus on making 40 mm to 120 mm training rounds. "Bullets" might be a bit of an understatement here. Even the smaller 40 mm rounds, which are essentially grenades, are pretty hefty (see image below). The 120 mm rounds are even bigger; they're used in tanks. Phase II includes developing a prototype and the means to manufacture it and phase III has the biodegradable round transitioning to use at the Army training facilities. The plants that grow from the seeds could also help remove soil contaminants or feed local wildlife. According to the proposal, "Animals should be able to consume the plants without any ill effects." link
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Post by theshee on Jan 13, 2017 8:57:02 GMT 10
I don't like them but I'm sure some would have a place. Being known as "electronic persons" what's that all about??? "Person - a human being regarded as an individual."!!!
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Post by theshee on Jan 13, 2017 8:46:35 GMT 10
Despite appearances, aliens have not descended upon a snowy scape in Ontario, Canada. Rather, an Earthly phenomenon is the cause of a ring of brilliant shafts of pastel-colored lights, captured in the wee hours of the morning by Timmy Joe Elzinga using his smartphone camera. It was 1:30 a.m. local time in northern Ontario on Jan. 6 when Elzinga spotted the phenomenon. "When I first saw these light beams shooting through the sky from my bathroom window, I was sure they were the northern lights," Elzinga told Live Science in an email. "I was able to capture these images both because the lights were so bright and pronounced and because I'm a bit of an amateur photographer." That experience, he said, led him to use "the manual settings on my phone to adjust the time the aperture was open to 8 seconds." Ice from high altitudes explains the pillars that Elzinga saw, NASA said. During some cold, wintry nights, flat ice crystals that normally reside higher up in the atmosphere come fluttering closer to the ground, according to NASA. These whimsically wobbling ice crystals are sometimes referred to as crystal fog. When the crystals reflect ground lights from nearby cars and other bits of civilization, the result can be glorious: columns of light called "light pillars." "The pillars are not physically over the lights or anywhere else in space for that matter — like all halos, they are purely the collected light beams from all the millions of crystals, which just happen to be reflecting light towards your eyes or camera," said Les Cowley, a retired physicist and atmospheric optics expert, on his site Atmospheric Optics. The light pillars are so strange-looking that people often mistake them for UFOs, according to EarthSky.org. "There are said to be a lot of UFO reports caused by light pillars over Niagara Falls, where the mist from the rush of descending water interacts with the city's many upward-facing spotlights," EarthSky reported. link
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Post by theshee on Jan 13, 2017 8:39:41 GMT 10
Of course it was We would have no chance with the sprinty one's. See how fast they were in World War Z I might as well sacrifice myself to them so my mates can get away LOL
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Post by theshee on Jan 12, 2017 10:23:56 GMT 10
In February 1990, thanks to a 15-year-old boy named Bruno Kowalsczewski, footsteps echoed through the chambers of Bruniquel Cave for the first time in tens of thousands of years. The cave sits in France's scenic Aveyron Valley, but its entrance had long been sealed by an ancient rockslide. Kowalsczewski's father had detected faint wisps of air emerging from the scree, and the boy spent three years clearing away the rubble. He eventually dug out a tight, thirty-meter-long passage that the thinnest members of the local caving club could squeeze through. They found themselves in a large, roomy corridor. There were animal bones and signs of bear activity, but nothing recent. The floor was pockmarked with pools of water. The walls were punctuated by stalactites (the ones that hang down) and stalagmites (the ones that stick up). Some 336 meters into the cave, the caver stumbled across something extraordinary—a vast chamber where several stalagmites had been deliberately broken. Most of the 400 pieces had been arranged into two rings—a large one between 4 and 7 metres across, and a smaller one just 2 metres wide. Others had been propped up against these donuts. Yet others had been stacked into four piles. Traces of fire were everywhere, and there was a mass of burnt bones.
These weren't natural formations, and they weren't the work of bears. They were built by people.Recognizing the site's value, the caver brought in archaeologist Francois Rouzaud. Using carbon-dating, Rouzaud estimated that a burnt bear bone found within the chamber was 47,600 years old, which meant that the stalagmite rings were older than any known cave painting. It also meant that they couldn't have been the work of Homo sapiens. Their builders must have been the only early humans in the south of France at the time: Neanderthals. The discovery suggested that Neanderthals were more sophisticated than anyone had given them credit for. They wielded fire, ventured deep underground, and shaped the subterranean rock into complex constructions. Perhaps they even carried out rituals; after all, there was no evidence that anyone actually lived in the cave, so what else were the rings and mounds for? Rouzaud would never know. In April 1999, while guiding colleagues through a different cave, he suffered a fatal heart attack. With his death, work on the Bruniquel Cave ceased, and its incredible contents were neglected. They've only now re-entered the limelight because Sophie Verheyden went on holiday. A life-long caver, Verheyden works at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, where she specializes in stalagmites. She treats them as time capsules, using the chemicals within them to reconstruct the climate of past millennia. So when she learned about Bruniquel Cave, while visiting the region on holiday and seeing a display at a nearby castle, she had only one thought: Why hadn't anyone dated the broken stalagmites themselves?" She knew that Rouzaud's date of 47,600 years was impressive but suspect. Carbon-dating is only accurate for samples younger than 50,000 years, so the Bruniquel material was hitting the technique's limits. They could well have been much older. To get a better estimate, Verheyden assembled a team including archaeologist Jacques Jaubert and fellow stalagmite expert Dominique Genty. In 2013, they got permission to study the site and crawled into it themselves. "I'm not very big, and I had to put one arm before me and one behind to get through," says Verheyden. "It's kind of magical, even without the structures." After drilling into the stalagmites and pulling out cylinders of rock, the team could see an obvious transition between two layers. On one side were old minerals that were part of the original stalagmites; on the other were newer layers that had been laid down after the fragments were broken off by the cave's former users. By measuring uranium levels on either side of the divide, the team could accurately tell when each stalagmite had been snapped off for construction.
Their date? 176,500 years ago, give or take a few millennia."When I announced the age to Jacques, he asked me to repeat it because it was so incredible," says Verheyden. Outside Bruniquel Cave, the earliest, unambiguous human constructions are just 20,000 years old. Most of these are ruins—collapsed collections of mammoth bones and deer antlers. By comparison, the Bruniquel stalagmite rings are well-preserved and far more ancient. And if Rouzaud's work made it unlikely that modern humans built the rings, Verheyden's study grinds that possibility into the dust. Neanderthals must have been responsible. There simply wasn't any other hominin in that region at that time. "When you see such a structure so far into the cave, you think of something cultural or religious." Why did they build the rings and mounds? The structures weren't foundations for huts; the chamber contains no stone tools, human bones, or any other sign of permanent occupation, and besides, why build shelter inside a cave? "A plausible explanation is that this was a meeting place for some type of ritual social behavior," says Paola Villa from the University of Colorado Museum. "When you see such a structure so far into the cave, you think of something cultural or religious, but that's not proven," adds Verheyden. Indeed, despite some fanciful speculations about cave bear cults, no one really knows. Nor is it clear how the Neanderthals made the structures. Verheyden says it couldn't have been one lone artisan, toiling away in the dark. Most likely, there was a team, and a technically skilled one at that. They broke rocks deliberately, and arranged them precisely. They used fire, too. More than 120 fragments have red and black streaks that aren't found elsewhere in the chamber or the cave beyond. They were the result of deliberately applied heat, at intensities strong enough to occasionally crack the rock. "The Neanderthal group responsible for these constructions had a level of social organization that was more complex than previously thought," the team writes. These discoveries are part of the Neanderthals' ongoing rehabilitation. Since their discovery, scientists have tried to understand why they died out and we did not, with the implicit assumption that they were inferior in some important way. Indeed, to describe someone as a Neanderthal today is to accuse them of unsophisticated brutishness. But we now know that Neanderthals made tools, used fire, made art, buried their dead, and perhaps even had language. "The new findings have ushered a transformation of the Neanderthal from a knuckle-dragging savage rightfully defeated in an evolutionary contest, to a distant cousin that holds clues to our identity," wrote Lydia Pyne in Nautilus. And now, we have Bruniquel Cave with its structures that are unprecedented in their complexity, antiquity, and depth within the darkness. We know that 400,000 years ago, some ancient hominins chucked their dead into a cave at Sima de los Huesos, but there's no evidence of the careful constructions in Bruniquel. There's evidence of painting and sculpture within caves, but none older than 42,000 years. There are signs that Neanderthals used caves, but nothing to suggest that they frequently ventured deeper than sunlight. "I think we have several lines of evidence showing that the cognitive abilities and behaviors of Neanderthals were complex," says Marie Soressi from Leiden University. "But we had no direct evidence of their ability to build. That changes the picture for me. It's puzzling to find such structures so deep inside the cave." To solve these puzzles, Verheyden wants to start cutting into the cave's floor. It has been covered by layers of calcite, which may conceal specimens that hint at the chamber's purpose. Verheyden also notes that the entrance they've been using cannot possibly have been the only one. "We're crawling through this small thing and there are bear hollows in the cave. I don't think the bears went in that way!" she says. "There must have been some other passage that collapsed." link Once again, its something that repeated throughout history.
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Post by theshee on Jan 12, 2017 9:57:57 GMT 10
On Oct. 26, 2016, a pair of Hornets flying above an empty part of California opened their bellies and released a robotic swarm. With machine precision, the fast-moving unmanned flying machines took flight, then moved to a series of waypoints, meeting objectives set for the swarm by a human controller. The brief flight of 103 tiny drones heralds a new age in how, exactly, America uses robots at war. The Pentagon’s worked with Perdix drones since 2013, with the October flight using the military’s 6th generation of the devices. F/A-18 Hornets, long-serving Navy fighters, carried the drones and released them from flare dispensers. This drone swarm was a product of the Strategic Capabilities Office, and outgoing Secretary of Defense Ash Carter praised the work, saying “This is the kind of cutting-edge innovation that will keep us a step ahead of our adversaries. This demonstration will advance our development of autonomous systems.” Autonomy and swarming are centerpieces in many predictions about the next century of war. The Predator, Reaper, and Global Hawk drones that have so far most embodied how the United States fights wars are big, expensive, and vulnerable machines, with human pilots and sensor operators controlling them remotely. These drones also operate in skies relatively free of threats, without fear that a hostile jet will shoot them down. That’s an approach that’s fine for counterinsurgency battles, an admittedly large part of the wars the Pentagon actually fights, but against a near-peer nation or any foe with sophisticated anti-air or electronic jamming equipment, Reapers are extremely vulnerable targets. Swarms, where several small flying robots work together to do the same job previously done by a larger craft are one way around that. A few $45,000 anti-air missiles are a cost-effective way to shoot down an $18 million Reaper, but firing that same anti-air missile at a smaller, commercial drone isn’t as effective, especially when there are still 102 other drones flying the same mission at the same time. Controlling that swarm is where autonomy comes in. With every Predator drone, there’s an actual joystick and flight controls for a human pilot, whose job it is to direct the uncrewed plane and maneuver it. That one-to-one ratio would be impossible to maintain with a small drone swarm, and given that the perdix drone has a listed flight time of “over 20 minutes,” it would be a lot of effort for a very short excursion. “They are a collective organism, sharing one distributed brain for decision-making and adapting to each other like swarms in nature,” according to Strategic Capabilities Office Director William Roper, before emphasizing that there was a human in the loop. Unlike the Predator, where the machine responds to the pilot’s joystick, this swarm receives objectives from a human controller, and then directs itself to that location. Presumably, the swarm could still fly to a preset list of objectives even if it loses contact with a human controller, giving it the freedom to operate in the face of jamming as well as anti-air weapons. For now, the autonomous decision making appears limited to where it flies. The Pentagon’s Defense Science Board released a study on military uses of autonomy in the summer of 2015, and mostly found nonlethal uses for self-directed machines. Still, it’s not hard to picture a future where similarly small drones with explosive payloads could receive a command to fly to a given point, and then once there crash into the objective. Developing autonomy is the hard part; turning it into a weapon isn’t. The international community is already considering bans on lethal machines, though deadly machines with some degree of autonomy are already here. Perdix, as it is, is a breakthrough for autonomy and for swarms, not for lethality. For now, we can admire the maneuvering buzzing swarm of skybots, while still wondering how much human control, exactly, is in the process. link
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