Jul 31, 2006
After centuries of speculation concerning the existence or otherwise of extraterrestrial intelligence, it has been discovered that a radio signal detected by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico contains artwork broadcast from deep space.
Initially dismissed by scientists as meaningless, the transmission – which originated between the constellations Aries and Pisces thousands of years ago – is now claimed to be the most significant addition to the artistic …
Jul 30, 2006
Raman analysis of South African pottery (shards) dating from the 13th and 14th centuries reveals that the potters used a variety of clays and fired their wares at less than 800 Celsius using open fires rather than kilns. Such details could only be unearthed without damaging the artefacts using this powerful spectroscopic technique.
Chemists Malebogo Legodi and Danita de Waal of the University of Pretoria in South Africa examined samples from four archaeological sites – …
Jul 29, 2006
It might seem like a trivial question, and most people would probably say 28 days. But, it isn’t so simple.
On average it takes 27.322 days (that’s a sidereal month, and a nice number of significant figures for something astronomical, especially when defining the day is not so clear cut) for the Moon to complete one orbit around Earth. However, the number of days between …
