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Iron Age Copper Reveals Earth’s Stronger, Faster Magnetic Field | Wired Science. SAN FRANCISCO — Slag left over from Iron Age copper smelting shows the Earth’s magnetic field was stronger and more variable than scientists ever imagined. “This is a very challenging result,” said geomagnetist Luis Silva of the University of Leeds, who was not involved in the new work. “It’s completely outside of anything we thought could be happening in the core.” The Earth’s magnetic field comes from the movement of molten iron in the core. The field’s strength and structure are constantly changing. But paleomagnetists (scientists who study the history of the Earth’s magnetic field) thought the changes were usually small and slow, fluctuating by about 16 percent over the course of a century.

But a new study of ancient copper mines in southern Israel found that the strength of the magnetic field could double and then fall back down in less than 20 years. When melted iron cools rapidly, it freezes with a signature of the Earth’s magnetic field at that instant. Image: Flickr/Chadica. Cultural Evolution Could Be Studied in Google Books Database | Wired Science. Missing Black Holes Cause Trouble for String Theory | Wired Science. By John Timmer, Ars Technica The results continue to pour out of the Large Hadron Collider's first production run. This week, the folks behind the CMS, or compact muon solenoid, detector have announced the submission of a paper to Physics Letters that describes a test of some forms of string theory.

If this form of the theory were right, the LHC should have been able to produce small black holes that would instantly decay (and not, as some had feared, devour the Earth). But a look at the data obtained by CMS shows that a signature of the black holes' decay is notably absent. [partner id="arstechnica" align="right"] String theory is an attempt to deal with the fact that the two major theories in physics, quantum mechanics and relativity, are fundamentally incompatible.

In one form of string theory -- the paper calls it the ADD model because Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos and Dvali proposed it -- this unification has consequences for gravity. This decay would be visible as jets of particles. One-Fourth of DNA Born by 2.8 Billion Years Ago | Wired Science. Using the genetic equivalent of the Hubble telescope, researchers have peered into the distant past and witnessed an explosion of new genes that happened more than 3 billion years ago.

About 27 percent of all gene families that exist today were born between 3.3 billion and 2.8 billion years ago, two researchers from MIT reported online Dec. 19 in Nature. The surge of gene births — which the scientists have dubbed the Archean expansion — predate some important changes in Earth’s early chemistry, including the appearance of large amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere, say evolutionary biologists Eric Alm and Lawrence David. The study may show how early organisms responded to and helped alter the planet’s chemistry. Daniel Segrè, a computational biologist at Boston University, says that the work provides “insight into really ancient metabolic events.” Fossils of organisms billions of years old are difficult to find. Image: Flickr/A Hermida See Also: Black Ghost Knifefish Robot Unmasks Movement Secrets | Wired Science. Borrowing biological designs from the black ghost knifefish, engineers have built a swimming robot that reveals how the animal’s trick of vertical movement works.

Called GhostBot, the robot copies the real fish’s undulating, ribbon-like ventral fin to propel itself through the water. New high-speed experiments show how, when waves travel along the robot’s ribbon from head to tail and meet in the middle, mushroom-cloud-like jets can push it upward. “These fish are extremely maneuverable, and we knew how they move forward and backward with their fins,” said bioengineer Malcolm MacIver of Northwestern University, who led GhostBot’s design.

“What we didn’t know was how they move vertically.” The black ghost knifefish lives in the rivers of the Amazon Basin, using a self-generating electric field to see through the murky waters. “I don’t agree that nature always has the best designs, but this is a place where it’s way ahead of human technology,” MacIver said. See Also: Rare Cambodian Elephant Captured on Video | Wired Science. A rare Cambodian elephant has finally been caught on video. The footage was taken in August by photographer Allan Michaud for the Wildlife Conservation Society, who say it’s the first high-quality video of an Asian elephant in Cambodia. Michaud filmed the adult male in the Seima Forest, a Rhode Island–sized sanctuary along the country’s border with Vietnam. Newly protected by Cambodia’s government and the WCS, the forest is home to some of Asia’s rarest creatures: tigers, forest bison, langurs and, of course, elephants. But decades of war and instability, followed by contemporary threats from poaching and development, have spooked the gentle, highly social creatures.

From their droppings, a 2006 survey of Seima’s elephants counted 116, but without actually seeing a single animal. And for those people less moved by biodiversity than life, it’s a rare glimpse of a magnificent animal. Video: Allan Michaud, Wildlife Conservation Society. See Also: The Weirdest Indicators of Serious Medical Risks | Wired Science. As databases of information about people’s lifestyles and medical ailments grow, ever-stranger omens of our health seem to emerge. Today’s computer-powered studies allow researchers to look beyond obvious health risks of the past. New analyses show, for example, that finger length, grip strength and even height may be reliable predictors of cancer, longevity and heart disease. But not all statistically-based findings are created equal, said Rebecca Goldin, a mathematician at George Mason University and director of research for STATS.org.

“It’s easy to get results that look impressive by trying a whole bunch of things on large databases of information. Things pop out, but they can be completely spurious because of chance,” Goldin said. “It’s now a fairly common thing to see something published and have someone say that it’s not true.” We recap here some of the weirdest, yet credible, indicators of medical risks ever discovered. Finger Length Grip Strength But correlation is not causation. Top Scientific Breakthroughs of 2010 | Wired Science. Wired Science News for Your Neurons Previous post Next post in Share 170 Top Scientific Breakthroughs of 2010 By Wired Science Staff Email Author December 30, 2010 | 7:00 am | Categories: Miscellaneous << Previous | Next >> In a year full of major advances, over-hyped findings and controversial studies, it was tough for the Wired Science staff to choose which breakthroughs were the biggest in 2010.

From synthetic life and three-parent embryos to the possibility of a new human ancestor and a habitable exoplanet, here are the breakthroughs that made us shout "Science! " Dinosaur Colors For the first time, scientists were able to use direct fossil evidence to make a reasonable interpretation of a dinosaur's color. Building on the discovery of preserved traces of pigment structures in cells in fossilized dinosaur feathers (above), paleontologists compared the dinosaur cells with the corresponding cells in living birds.

View all Top Scientific Breakthroughs of 2009 Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2008. Climate Models Miss Effects of Wind-Shattered Dust | Wired Science. Lost Civilization Seen in Zapotec Thighbones | Wired Science. A newly excavated Zapotec burial has yielded a fresh interpretation of the ancient, grisly Mesoamerican custom of removing thighbones from the dead. Across pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, femurs were believed to contain an individual’s power. Aztecs treated them as war trophies, while Zapotec royalty are thought to have used them like sceptres, as symbols of ancestral political might. The new excavation, in a relatively humble residential dwelling at the ancient community of Mitla, suggests that ancestral thighbone-wielding “may not have been a practice limited to rulers,” wrote researchers led by Field Museum archaeologist Gary Feinman in a study published in December in Antiquity.

Thighbone customs of the Zapotec civilization, which reigned from the late 6th century BC to the early 16th century in what is now the Oaxaca valley of Mexico, are best known from burials at a pair of sites. In the 1970s, an 8th-century tomb was excavated, this time in the smaller town of Lambityeco. See Also: Nanoparticles in Sewage Sludge May End Up in the Food Chain | Wired Science. Plants and microbes can absorb nano-sized synthetic particles that magnify in concentration within predators up the food chain, according to two new studies. Nanoparticles can be made of countless different materials, and their safety isn’t well-understood. Yet the minuscule specks are infused into hundreds of consumer products ranging from transparent suncreens to odor-eating socks. From there, they can wash down drains, ultimately ending up in the sewage sludge of wastewater treatment plants.

About 3 million tons of dried-out sludge is subsequently mixed into agricultural soil each year. “We wanted to look into the possibility of nanoparticles getting into the food chain in this way,” said environmental toxicologist Paul Bertsch of the University of Kentucky. “What we found really surprised us.” Synthetic nanoparticles are about 1 to 100 nanometers in size (as small as some viruses) and made of silver, titanium dioxide, zinc oxide and other substances. Image: A tobacco hornworm. Ancient Birds Clobbered Rivals With Clubbed Wings | Wired Science. By Mark Brown, Wired UK Paleontologists at Yale University have discovered that a prehistoric bird with club-like bludgeons for hands likely used its powerful wings to beat up monkeys, snakes and other predators. The fowl, named Xenicibis xympithecus, lived in Jamaica about 10,000 years ago, and was first discovered in the 1970s.

The flightless bird was about the size of a chicken, with a long beak and legs. So far, so ibis. But instead of small hands, this ancient bird sported thick, curved hand bones, like two baseball bats, hinged at the wrist joint. The team at Yale analyzed new wing bones from the Xenicibis, and found evidence of combat in fractured hand bones and broken arm bones, giving evidence that his bird could deal extreme force when clobbering each other with their specialized wings. And, outside of Xenicibis-on-Xenicibis battles, it would have proved especially useful for a small, flightless creature in a land teeming with deadly predators. Source: Wired.co.uk. Toxic Oceans May Have Poisoned Early Animals | Wired Science. Soon after complex animals made their first great strides onto the stage of life, the oceans brewed up a toxic chemical mix that put the brakes on evolutionary innovation, suggests a paper in the Jan. 6 Nature.

The culprits? Too little oxygen and too much sulfur dissolved in coastal waters, reports a team led by geochemist Benjamin Gill of Harvard University. Ancient creatures such as trilobites and brachiopods could not cope with the changes, and many of them went extinct. The “remarkable” new data is the first to link a changing ocean environment to some of the extinctions that took place between about 490 million and 520 million years ago, says Graham Shields-Zhou, a geologist at University College London, who was not on the research team.

Perhaps not surprisingly, marine creatures are exquisitely sensitive to their surroundings, suffocating when oxygen levels drop. Most of the toxic waters would have shoaled up along the coasts, where the majority of animals lived. See Also: Drill Close to Reaching 14-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Lake | Wired Science. By Duncan Geere, Wired UK Lake Vostok, which has been sealed off from the world for 14 million years, is about to be penetrated by a Russian drill bit. The lake, which lies 2.5 miles below the icy surface of Antarctica, is unique in that it’s been completely isolated from the other 150 subglacial lakes on the continent for such a long time. It’s also oligotropic, meaning that it’s supersaturated with oxygen: Levels of the element are 50 times higher than those found in most typical freshwater lakes.

Since 1990, the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg in Russia has been drilling through the ice to reach the lake, but fears of contamination of the ecosystem in the lake have stopped the process multiple times, most notably in 1998 when the drills were turned off for almost eight years. The drill bit currently sits less than 328 feet above the lake.

Time is short, however. Updated 5:12 pm ET. Image: Antarctica, with location of Lake Vostok circled in red. See Also: Ancient Mass Extinctions Hint at Possible Ocean Future | Wired Science. In sediment traces and fossil records from one of Earth's most tumultuous periods, geologists have found a narrative linking mass extinctions with planetary biological and geological change. After dramatic oceanic extinctions 250 million and 200 million years ago, the global carbon cycle turned chaotic. Earth's biogeochemistry went boom and bust for millions of years thereafter, as if some regulating mechanism were lost -- which is exactly what happened. "People talk about saving biodiversity, and isn't it good to have a variety of all these creatures. But the reason it matters is because ecosystem function is itself dependent on diversity in the face of normal environmental changes," said geologist Jessica Whiteside of Brown University.

Whiteside specializes in reading the geological record of past extinctions, teasing from rocks and fossils the story of those times in Earth's history when, for one reason or another, most forms of life ceased to exist. See Also: WikiLeaks Reveals International Intrigue Over Science and Environment | Wired Science. Astronomers Weigh Heaviest Black Hole Yet | Wired Science. SEATTLE — The black hole in the nearby galaxy M87 weighs in at 6.6 billion suns, making it the local universe’s heavyweight champ. “This is the biggest black hole in the nearby universe,” said astronomer Karl Gebhardt of the University of Texas at Austin in a press conference today here at the American Astronomical Society meeting.

The behemoth’s bulk, plus the fact that it lives just 50 million light-years away, makes M87 the best candidate for future efforts to take a direct image of a black hole’s event horizon for the first time. “In terms of the largest galaxies, it really is in our backyard,” Gebhardt said. “Being so close to such a massive black hole allows us a remarkable chance to study what happens around a black hole.” At nearly 6 trillion times the mass of the sun, M87 is the most massive galaxy in the Milky Way’s cosmic neighborhood. But although Hubble “has taken the lead in terms of black hole measures, it can’t do the biggest ones,” Gebhardt said. See Also: Secret Service Study Probes Psyche of U.S. Assassins | Wired Science. With public speculation mounting about what motivated a 22-year-old man to attempt to kill a congresswoman, a little-known study by the Secret Service suggests the truth may be frighteningly mundane.

The study of U.S. assassinations over the last 60 years debunks some key myths about the miscreants behind the attacks. The Exceptional Case Study Project, completed in 1999, covers all 83 people who killed or attempted to kill a public figure in the United States from 1949 to 1996. “We approached a number of people, many in prison,” says forensic psychologist Robert Fein, who co-directed the study with Bryan Vossekuil of the Secret Service.

“We said you’re an expert on this rare kind of behavior. We’re trying to aid prevention of this kind of attack. We’d welcome your perspectives.” Fein interviewed 20 of the attackers who were still living and sifted old evidence from cases. Some hoped to achieve notoriety by killing a well-known person. “Think of people circling the drain,” says Fein. Tiny Silicon Chip Uses Quantum Physics to Slow Light Down | Wired Science. 2,550-Year-Old Celtic Beer Recipe Resurrected | Wired Science. The Mass Extinction of Scientists Who Study Species | Wired Science. Slime Molds Are Earth’s Smallest, Oldest Farmers | Wired Science. To Learn Best, Write an Essay | Wired Science. Quantum Entanglement Could Stretch Across Time | Wired Science. Himalayan Glaciers Shrinking, With Some Exceptions | Wired Science.

New Doubts Raised About Potential Bee-Killing Pesticide | Wired Science. Sleeping Protects Memories From Corruption | Wired Science. Legendary Dinosaur King Didn’t Survive on Fast Food | Wired Science. Ancient Tools May Mark Earlier Path Out of Africa | Wired Science. In the Blink of Bird’s Eye, a Model for Quantum Navigation | Wired Science. Hidden Fractals Suggest Answer to Ancient Math Problem | Wired Science. That Ain’t No Jackal: New African Wolf Species Identified | Wired Science. Scopes Weeps: Evolution Still Struggling in Public Schools | Wired Science. Ultracold Quantum ‘Bullets’ Make Pendulums Speed Up | Wired Science. Meet Titanoceratops, the Hornier Ancestor of Triceratops | Wired Science. Vikings May Have Navigated Using Polarized Skylight | Wired Science. Uncontacted Tribe Photographed in Brazilian Jungle | Wired Science. Today’s Clean Tech Could Power the World by 2050 | Wired Science.

Invisibility Crystals Make Small Objects Disappear | Wired Science. New Mexico Bill Seeks to Protect Anti-Science Education | Wired Science. No Link Between Flu Vaccine and Paralyzing Disorder | Wired Science. Spring-Loaded Heels Gave Extra Step to Early Humans | Wired Science. Universe’s First Stars May Still Shine | Wired Science.

Video: Uncontacted Tribe in Brazilian Jungle | Wired Science. Dr. Seussian Mystery Fluid Could Have Saved Top Kill | Wired Science. Allergies Linked to Brain Tumor Protection | Wired Science. Study: Math Skills Rely on Language, Not Just Logic | Wired Science. Prehistoric Pregnancy Booster Now Fuels Diabetes | Wired Science. Video: Vacuum Tubes Implode in the Name of Physics | Wired Science. Lucy’s Feet Were Arched and Stiff, Just Like Ours | Wired Science. Gallery: The Last Uncontacted People | Wired Science. World’s Total CPU Power: One Human Brain | Wired Science. Winter Halts Drilling Into 14-Million-Year-Old Lake | Wired Science.

Pasta-Shaped Light From Spinning Black Holes Could Challenge Einstein | Wired Science. Sex Discrimination in Science Continues, But Reasons Unclear | Wired Science. To Talk With Aliens, Learn to Speak With Dolphins | Wired Science. Simple Seaweeds May Be Earth’s First Plants | Wired Science. Heady Brew: Ice Age Mug Made From Skull | Wired Science. Gallery: 10 Stunning Science Visualizations | Wired Science. Physicists Build World’s First Antilaser | Wired Science. The Mystery of the Missing Moon Trees | Wired Science. Mutant Fish Safely Store Toxins in Fat | Wired Science. Alan Turing’s Patterns in Nature, and Beyond | Wired Science. Cellphone Radiation Increases Brain Activity | Wired Science. Video: Secrets of Swimming in Sand Revealed | Wired Science. Mafia’s Corpse-Dissolving Claims Exaggerated | Wired Science. Frontal Cortex | Wired Science. Irrational fears give nuclear power a bad name, says Oxford scie. 2009’s Sleepy Sun Finally Woke Up in December | Wired Science | Classified Recordings of First Fusion Bomb Test Found in Old Saf.

Chinese Coal Formed During Earth’s Greatest Extinction Is Still. Common herbicide might affect frogs - washingtonpost.com. Sublime Sand: Desert Dunes Seen From Space | Wired Science | Wir. How Algal Biofuels Lost a Decade in the Race to Replace Oil | Wi. Hominids Went Out of Africa on Rafts | Wired Science. Age of Solar System Needs to Be Recalculated | Wired Science | W. Accéléromètre. Green Sea Slug Is Part Animal, Part Plant | Wired Science | Wire. Human Genome Is Part Bornavirus | Wired Science. Famous San Francisco Sea Lions Abandon Their Pier 39 Post | Wire. Geeky Math Equation Creates Beautiful 3-D World | Wired Science. Hole in Ionosphere Reveals Clues About North Korean Missile Laun. Elusive Supermassive-Black-Hole Mergers Finally Found | Wired Sc.

Loneliness May Be Contagious | Wired Science. Dung Fungus Provides New Evidence in Mammoth Extinction | Wired. Bones Show Biggest Dinosaurs Had Hot Blood | Wired Science | Wir. Mediterranean Is Scary Laboratory of Ocean Futures | Wired Scien. Bizarre Ancient Fly With Three-Eyed Horn Discovered | Wired Scie. The science and magic of cheesemaking | Andy Connelly | Science. Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Radioactive Longer Than Expected | Wire. Borna Virus Discovered in Human Genome. First Ever Video of Deep-Sea Volcanic Eruption | Wired Science | Feathered Dinosaurs Were Venomous Predators | Wired Science | Wi.

Think Koalas Are Cute? Thank Eucalyptus and Evolution | Wired Sc. 7 Tipping Points That Could Transform Earth | Wired Science | Wi. Findings - Jaron Lanier Is Rethinking the Open Nature of the Int. Observatory - Neanderthal Decorative Shells Found in Southeaster. With Updated Hubble Telescope, Reaching Farther Back in Time - N. Prehistoric Building Found in Tel Aviv. TigerCam: First-Ever Video of Sumatran Tigress and Cubs in the W.