Neptune and Uranus May Have Oceans of Liquid Diamond Future humans won't have to wait to travel to Pandora for the chance to mine unobtanium, because Neptune and Uranus may have diamond icebergs floating atop liquid diamond seas closer to home. The surprise finding comes from the first detailed measurements of the melting point of diamond, Discovery News reports. Scientists zapped diamond with a laser at pressures 40 million times greater than the Earth's atmosphere at sea level, and then slowly reduced both temperature and pressure. They eventually found that diamond behaves like water during freezing and melting, and that chunks of diamond will float in the liquid diamond. Diamond oceans could explain why the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune appear tilted so far off their north-south axes, given that they could deflect or tilt the magnetic fields. Both planets may consist of up to 10 percent carbon, the elemental building block of diamond. [via Discovery News]
BBC News | SOUTH ASIA | Lost city 'could rewrite history' By BBC News Online's Tom Housden The remains of what has been described as a huge lost city may force historians and archaeologists to radically reconsider their view of ancient human history. Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 36 metres (120 feet) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be over 9,000 years old. The vast city - which is five miles long and two miles wide - is believed to predate the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than 5,000 years. The site was discovered by chance last year by oceanographers from India's National Institute of Ocean Technology conducting a survey of pollution. Using sidescan sonar - which sends a beam of sound waves down to the bottom of the ocean they identified huge geometrical structures at a depth of 120ft. Lost civilisation The city is believed to be even older than the ancient Harappan civilisation, which dates back around 4,000 years. Chronological problem
Architecture Imagine the renovation dilemmas. A huge penthouse of a converted 1930s office building in TriBeCa, New York, is to be turned into a functioning home for a family with three teenagers. In fact, we can not quite imagine the issues that faced Steven Harris Architects when the family showed up, literally, at the doorstep of the celebrated architect and asked if he’d like to work on their home. The scale of the apartment is huge and the freedom from budget constraints allowed for some spectacular solutions. Harris’s work is often distinguished by clarity and light, by the use of glass, by the maximization of views and, above all, bold solutions. What emerged as a result of the TriBeCa Penthouse project, is a multi-level (27th and 28th floors) nearly 8,000 square-foot (743 square meter) family-friendly residence that includes self-contained guest quarters and a new glass-and-teak-beam rooftop pavilion that functions as a recreation room. One of our favourites in this apartment are the stairs.
Lost World under the North Sea It also serves as a warning for the scale of impact that climate change can cause, Professor Gaffney says. Human communities would have lost their homelands as the rising water began to encroach upon the wide, low-lying plains. "At times this change would have been insidious and slow - but at times, it could have been terrifyingly fast. [Some of the advances by the sea would have been similar to the widespread flooding of the English East Coast in 1953. That happened overnight as a result of strong winds and a particularly high tide, but in the case of the North Sea plains the floodwaters would not have receded - at least not completely, and not permanently.] "It would be a mistake to think that these people were unsophisticated or without culture... they would have had names for the rivers and hills and spiritual associations - it would have been a catastrophic loss," says Professor Gaffney. "In 10,000 BC, hunter-gatherers were living on the land in the middle of the North Sea.
15 Fascinating Facts About Ancient Egypt History Ever since my childhood I have been fascinated with all things relating to Ancient Egypt. I have tried for a long time to come up with a good idea for a list relating to it and this is the first (of what I hope will be many!) These facts should serve as a good introduction to Ancient Egyptian culture and society – and hopefully many will be things you did not know. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Sources: National Geographic, James’ Interesting Facts Jamie Frater Jamie is the founder of Listverse.
Teleportation Teleportation is the name given by science fiction writers to the feat of making an object or person disintegrate in one place while a perfect replica appears somewhere else. How this is accomplished is usually not explained in detail, but the general idea seems to be that the original object is scanned in such a way as to extract all the information from it, then this information is transmitted to the receiving location and used to construct the replica, not necessarily from the actual material of the original, but perhaps from atoms of the same kinds, arranged in exactly the same pattern as the original. A teleportation machine would be like a fax machine, except that it would work on 3-dimensional objects as well as documents, it would produce an exact copy rather than an approximate facsimile, and it would destroy the original in the process of scanning it. In 1993 an international group of six scientists, including IBM Fellow Charles H. C.H. Experimental Articles D.
Theories about the Lost City of Atlantis If you like this story feel free to share... Ever since the famed Greek philosopher Plato first wrote of a fabled continent called Atlantis more than two thousand years ago, scholars have been locked in fierce debate as to whether such a place truly existed. While a few rare individuals have taken Plato’s words seriously, most scoff at the idea that an advanced civilization could vanish as completely as if it had never existed. Such is a bit like imagining an elephant could walk through a snowdrift without leaving footprints, making it easy to ignore the entire subject and write it off as yet another example of New Age pseudo-science or, at best, an fantastic and historically indefensible fable. Accounts of Atlantis are fictional Atlantis was fictional but the accounts of a world-wide Deluge were true Atlantis was a continent that existed in the mid-Atlantic Plato was referring to the ancient Minoans Atlantis was a mythical retelling of the Black Sea flood Atlantis was in Southeast Asia
Victorian Era Names, A Writer's Guide circa 1840's-1890's Being a compilation drawn from old census and vital statistic records. A large part of creating a good set of characters in fiction writing is giving your imaginary populace good names. The same holds true for writing stories set in the 1800's. Nor was it unusual for parents to look closer to home, borrowing from close friends or people they admired. In a few places on this list, I have enumerated certain first and middle names together, (such as Sarah Ann,) because I find them joined thus so many times on old public records, that it is apparent those name-pairings enjoyed great popularity. Special thanks to Christine/Sevenstars, for her comments and assistance with this collection. Compiled by G. Old West Slang Writer's Guide ~ Colorful sayings for colorful characters, and links for research and study of the Old West.