Huge underground city discovered in Turkey--by accident

A view of a village in Nevsehir province, Turkey; that's the province where the new city is located. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

It's a stunning find uncovered by accident: Construction workers demolishing homes in Turkey's Nevsehir province in 2013 ended up discovering entrances to what could be the largest ancient underground city ever found in the region.

The country's Hurriyet Daily News reported on its existence just days before the end of 2014, calling it "potentially the year’s biggest" such discovery. "Tunnel passages of seven kilometers are being discussed," said a construction official at the time.

And while the precise size isn't yet know, an estimate from geophysicists now puts it at about 5 million square feet and extending as far as 371 feet below ground.

National Geographic reports that would make it roughly 30% larger than Derinkuyu, the largest excavated underground city found in the historical Cappadocia region so far; Derinkuyu's capacity is thought to be 20,000 people.

The retreat, carved from soft ash rock as many as 5,000 years ago, would have been used in case of invaders; artifacts found at the site suggest its occupation stretched through the Ottoman conquest, says National Geographic.

The multi-level complex was a developed one, complete with staircases, kitchens, wineries, chapels, grindstones, air shafts, water channels, corridors, and even lamp-oil presses. (Derinkuyu was 18 stories, notes the Washington Post, and also included stores and escape routes.) The city's current mayor wants to build walking trails and a museum showcasing the underground spectacle and even "re-open the underground churches," he says—though, for now, even further exploration is risky.

As such, the Daily News reports a geo-radar machine is being used to gather information that's then handed to the excavators. (Also recently found underground: a secret Nazi factory.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: Found in Turkey: Huge Underground City

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Astronaut twins make space history as NASA launches landmark experiment

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (R), and his twin brother Mark pose after a news conference at Baikonur cosmodrome March 26, 2015. (REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev)

If we are going to fly humans to Mars one day, we’ve got to learn more about how being in space affects astronauts. So Friday, NASA begins a landmark, human experiment.

“That would be me. I think I'm the lab rat,” Mark Kelly told Fox News, during a recent interview in Houston.  His twin brother Scott followed, “he's the controlled lab rat. I'm the other lab rat."

Identical twin astronauts Mark - now retired - and Scott Kelly are embarking on space, and earth, history.

Scott, who’s spent six months living aboard the International Space Station before, is now doubling down.   In a landmark study, he’ll live in space for one year - 342 days, to be exact - all to see what happens.  As in, what happens to HIM.

It’s all about going to Mars and beyond. “To have this unique opportunity to be the first American to do this -- and I do feel grateful and feel like I am in a privileged position -- even though you know it's going to be a tough flight being in space for that long," he said.

To get from Earth to Mars, under current rocket technology, it would take 6 months.  Then there’s the 6 month return trip.  And perhaps you’d spend 3 months on Mars doing research.  That’s about 500 days away from Earth.

We’ve all seen the weakened astronauts being helped into chairs upon landing in Kazakhstan. And that’s after 6 months in space.

Microgravity causes bone loss, muscle loss, vision problems and psychological effects due to the loneliness and isolation in small, space compartments.

So, much more must be learned about the physiological drain, mental effects and health issues caused by near-zero gravity and interstellar radiation.

"My hope is that we discover that the mitigation steps that we came up with for the bone and muscle loss are effective and they work,” said Kelly. “The vision problem we have is much different. I mean we really don't understand why that's happening.”

Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will also live the next year in space.  But since Scott Kelly has a genetic replica in Mark, scientists will study him, too.

Scientists from 12 universities will monitor Mark’s blood samples, his exercise and his overall health, comparing it with brother Scott’s data sent 250 miles down from the space station.

Scott will spend about a third of his day exercising at the Station, mandatory to keep the muscle atrophy at bay.  Mark will continue doing his regular exercise routine in Houston.  He says everything the twins do during this year doesn’t have to be exactly the same.  And that includes what they eat and drink, as well, which - for Mark - is fortunate.

“I live about a mile from an In And Out Burger,” he joked.

“It’s a long time, you know, it really is,” said Mark.  “A year of doing anything is a really long time.”

No walks in the park, no restaurants, no beach.  For 12 months. So, what does Scott think that he’ll miss the most?  Well, he knows what it’s like to be gone for 6 months, as he spent a 6 month assignment on the Space Station back in 2010/2011.

"I do miss the weather and the seasons, but the things you miss the most are the human relationships you have with your friends and family and people you love on the ground.”

Scott Kelly and Kornienko will participate in more than 400 scientific experiments during their 12 months in space.

Kelly has a long-term girlfriend, and two kids from a previous marriage. Kornienko has a wife and a grown daughter.   They won’t see their loved ones for a long time, but both will be able to email from the Space Station and make occasional phone calls, all while looking out the porthole as they see “home” revolving beneath them, 16 times a day.

Phil Keating joined Fox News Channel (FNC) in March 2004 and currently serves as FNC's Miami-based correspondent.

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2M-year-old find may be ancient 'playground'

Have archaeologists found an ancient playground? (stock photo) (AP Photo/The Tampa Bay Times, Edmund D. Fountain, Pool)

An investigation into what appears to be a nearly 2 million-year-old site in China's Hebei province suggests the spot served an important purpose: fun. The South China Morning Post compares the dig site to a "playground" for ancient hominids, noting that it was home to some 700 stone objects and 20,000 fragments; some may well have been kids' toys, believes lead researcher Wei Qi.

He speculates that the objects, most less than two inches long, were made by children and their mothers. "You can almost feel the maker’s love and passion," says Wei of one piece he describes as "beautifully shaped." The other bits of evidence supporting his playground theory: The remains of animals or large tools in the area are scarce, suggesting it's not where hominids lived and a limited number of adults toiled there.

The site is part of the Nihewan basin, which has been the source of a vast trove of ancient discoveries since 1921, Ancient Origins reports.

What's also relatively new is the dating of the site, carried out by studying its magnetic properties. Results suggesting it dates to between 1.77 million and 1.95 million years ago could make it older than the Dmanisi site in Georgia, which UNESCO calls the "most ancient" in Eurasia.

But outside researchers have their doubts about the playground theory: "It is difficult to rule out the possibility that (the objects) were just stone fragments created by natural forces," says one.

If the discoveries really were made by hominids more than 1.8 million years ago—when the first hominid is though to have left Africa—it could change the story of human origins, the Week notes.

(A recently discovered jawbone is also challenging such conceptions.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: 2M-Year-Old Stones May Have Belonged to Children

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Astronaut Scott Kelly blasts off on yearlong space station mission

U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly, crew member of the mission to the International Space Station (ISS), gestures before the launch of Soyuz-FG rocket at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. (REUTERS/Dmitry Lovetsky/Pool)

Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft is seen at its launch pad at the Baikonur cosmodrome. (REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev)

Astronaut Scott Kelly has blasted off on his yearlong mission to the International Space Station.

The capsule carrying Kelly and two Russian cosmonauts was launched into space by a Soyuz-FG booster rocket, lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:42 p.m. ET.

The journey to the International Space Station is expected to take 6 hours.

Of the three-man team, American Scott Kelly and Russian Mikhail Kornienko are to stay at the International Space Station until March 2016. Their trip is NASA's first stab at a one-year spaceflight, anticipating Mars expeditions that would last two-to-three years.

“This is an important step forward to start utilizing ISS more effectively in preparation for human missions to Mars,” Chris Carberry, executive director of Explore Mars, a non-profit organization which aims to advance the goal of sending humans to Mars, told FoxNews.com.  “We look forward to more ambitious missions at ISS and beyond that help achieve human landings on Mars in the 2030s.”

During his year orbiting the earth Kelly will take part in a landmark NASA study into the effects of space on the human body, with scientists comparing his data to that of twin brother Mark, a former astronaut, back on earth. Mark Kelly’s blood samples, exercise, and overall health will be monitored by scientists from 12 universities to gain insight into the impact of the yearlong mission on his brother.

At the end of his mission to the International Space Station, Scott Kelly will become the first American to spend 12 consecutive months in space.

Kelly and his Russian counterpart Kornienko have each already logged about 180 days in space, according to Space.com. Kelly has made three previous missions to space and Kornienko spent 6 months aboard the International Space Station in 2010.

Kornienko is the fifth Russian cosmonaut to undertake a one-year space mission.

The third member of the crew, cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, will spend about 6 months on the International Space Station before returning to Earth.

Friday’s mission is Kelly’s second trip to the International Space Station. The former U.S. Navy pilot spent just over 5 months on the space station between October 2010 and March 2011.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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Space station shipment launched from Virginia

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. –  A commercial cargo ship rocketed toward the International Space Station on Sunday, carrying food, science samples and new odor-resistant gym clothes for the resident crew.

Orbital Sciences Corp. launched its Cygnus capsule from the Virginia coast, its third space station delivery for NASA.

Daylight and clouds limited visibility, but observers from North Carolina to New Jersey still had a shot at seeing the rising Antares rocket. It resembled a bright light in the early afternoon sky.

Its destination, the space station, was soaring 260 miles above Australia when the Cygnus took flight. The unmanned capsule should arrive there Wednesday.

This newest Cygnus contains more than 3,000 pounds of supplies, much of it food. Also on board: mini-satellites, science samples, equipment and experimental exercise clothes. NASA said the new type of clothing is resistant to bacteria and odor buildup. So the astronauts won't smell as much during their two hours of daily workout in orbit and they'll require fewer clothing changes.

NASA is paying for the delivery service. The space agency hired two companies -- the Virginia-based Orbital Sciences and California's SpaceX -- to keep the space station well stocked once the shuttle program ended. The international partners also make shipments; the European Space Agency, for example, will launch its supply ship in 1 1/2 weeks from French Guiana.

This particular Cygnus delivery was delayed a few months by various problems, including additional engine inspections and, most recently, bad weather at the Wallops Island launch site.

The Cygnus will remain at the space station for about a month. It will be filled with trash and cut loose for a fiery re-entry. Unlike the SpaceX Dragon capsule, the Cygnus is not built to return safely to Earth.

Saturday, meanwhile, marked the 5,000th day of continuous human habitation at the 260-mile-high outpost. Six men currently are on board, representing the United States, Russia and Germany.

"Humans are explorers!" German astronaut Alexander Gerst said via Twitter.

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Why some chimps are smarter than others

Anfisa, a 8-year-old female chimpanzee, washes a window of her enclosure where she lives at the Royev Ruchey zoo in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, January 29, 2013.REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin

Chimpanzees don't just get their smarts by aping others chimps, like humans, inherit a significant amount of their intelligence from their parents, new research reveals.

Researchers measured how well 99 captive chimpanzees performed on a series of cognitive tests, finding that genes determined as much as 50 percent of the animals' performance.

"Genes matter," said William Hopkins, a neuroscientist at Georgia State University in Atlanta and co-author of the study published today (July 10) in the journal Current Biology. [The 5 Smartest Non-Primates on the Planet]

"We have what we would call a smart chimp, and chimps we'd call not so smart," Hopkins told Live Science, and "we were able to explain a lot of that variability by who was related to each other."

Animal 'intelligence'

People don't usually talk about animal intelligence, but rather animal learning or cognition. American psychologists John Watson and B.F. Skinner developed the notion of behaviorism in the early 20th century, which said that scientists should study only the behavior of animals, not their mental processes. This was the dominant approach until about 1985.

But in the last few decades, studies have shown convincingly that animals are capable of cognition. What remained unknown was the mechanism behind it, Hopkins said. Many studies of human twins suggest that intelligence is heritable, but few studies have looked at whether this is true in other primates.

In the new study, Hopkins and his colleagues gave chimpanzees at the Yerkes Primate Center, in Atlanta, a battery of cognitive tests adapted from ones developed by German researchers for comparing humans and great apes. The tests measured a range of abilities in physical cognition, such as the ability to discriminate quantity, spatial memory and tool use. The tests also examined aspects of social cognition, such as communication ability.

The researchers created a genetic pedigree of the chimps, showing how they were related to each other. This would be like taking a group of 300 random people, sticking them on another planet where they could breed and have children, and testing their intelligence 50 years later, Hopkins said.

About half of the variability in the chimps' performance on the cognitive tests could be attributed to their relatedness, the results showed. "I was a little surprised by that. It was higher than I thought would be," Hopkins said.

In addition, neither the sex of the animals nor their rearing history (whether they were raised by their mother or by humans) seemed to affect cognitive performance, the researchers found.

Nature vs. nurture

In humans, some people believe that intelligence is primarily a result of schooling. But for chimps, this can't be a factor, since they don't go to school, Hopkins said. "The fact that we can establish this in an organism that has none of the baggage of our social-cultural systems points strongly to the role that genes play in their intelligence," he said.

Alex Weiss, a psychologist who studies nonhuman primates at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who was not involved in the study, said the findings were "really interesting, particularly as these findings mirror what has been found for decades in studies of human twins and human families." It provides just one more example of the similarities between chimpanzees and humans, Weiss told Live Science.

But while the results suggest that "nature" matters a bit more than "nurture" for intelligence, Hopkins said other findings don't support that interpretation. Environment and experience still have an influence on cognitive performance. For example, if you compare chimps that have been trained to use sign language to ones that haven't, the trained animals do much better on cognitive tests, he said. "So there's a case where nurture really matters."

Curiously, the results of the study support the idea of general intelligence, rather than the theory of multiple intelligences such as mathematical, verbal or musical ability that American psychologist Howard Gardner developed. General intelligence suggests that individuals posses a general learning ability that makes it likely that a person who possesses one form of intelligence will posses others.

Next, the researchers will attempt to replicate their findings in another colony of chimpanzees. They also hope to incorporate brain scans of the chimps, to establish if heritable features of intelligence correlate with specific structures in the brain's cortex. Finally, they aim to look for specific genes correlated with intelligence, to see how those might be passed down in the chimpanzees.

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World's oldest erotic 'graffiti' discovered on Greek island

Tourists admire the Aegean, which is home to the island of Astypalaia.AP Photo/Dimitri Messinis

Think phallic graffiti art exclusively belongs to the baseless present? Think again. An archaeologist has uncovered what the Guardian touts as the earliest erotic graffiti on the planet, found in Greece—and predating, in one case, even Athens' Acropolis.

Since 2011, Dr. Andreas Vlachopoulos has been directing fieldwork on the Aegean island of Astypalaia, and the professor may have given the students working with him a little more insight than he'd at first intended when he happened upon extremely explicit erotica chiseled into the limestone rocks that line the cape.

In one instance, dating back to 5th century BC, two gigantic penises are etched next to the name Dion; in another, dating to 6th century BC, one man boasted: "Nikasitimos was here mounting Timiona." "We know that in ancient Greece sexual desire between men was not a taboo," Vlachopoulos tells the Guardian.

"But this graffiti … is not just among the earliest ever discovered. By using the verb in the past continuous [tense], it clearly says that these two men were making love over a long period of time, emphasizing the sexual act in a way that is highly unusual in erotic artwork." One theory is that soldiers were once stationed at this outpost overlooking the bay; other carvings include that of ships, daggers, and wave-symbolizing spirals.

Either way Astypalaia, best known for what Archaeology International called "the largest ancient children’s cemetery in the world," with at least 2,700 infant burials identified in one place, can now add ancient porn among its claims to fame.

(Meanwhile, in Italy, art restorers have been accused of scrubbing away the erotic...)

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Were ancient child skulls gifts to the lake gods?

An illustration of Bronze-Age lake dwellers in Switzerland and Germany, who may have buried children's skulls at the perimeter of their settlements as gifts to lake gods to ward off flooding.Benjamin Jennings et al, Antiquity 2014

Children's skulls found at the edges of Bronze Age settlements may have been a gruesome gift for the local lake gods.

The children's skulls were discovered encircling the perimeter of ancient villages around lakes in Switzerland and Germany. Some had suffered ax blows and other head traumas.

Though the children probably weren't human sacrifices killed to appease the gods, they may have been offered after death as gifts to ward off flooding, said study co-author Benjamin Jennings, an archaeologist at Basel University in Switzerland.

Lake dwellers

Since the 1920s, archaeologists have known that ancient villages dotted Alpine lakes in Switzerland and Germany. However, it wasn't until the 1970s and 1980s that many of the sites were excavated, yielding hunting tools, animal bones, ceramics, jewelry, watchtowers, gates and more than 160 dwellings. Tree rings on wooden artifacts from the sites suggest people lived there at different periods between 3,800 and 2,600 years ago. [Mummy Melodrama: Top 9 Secrets About Otzi the Iceman]

The Bronze Age lake dwellers regularly faced flooding. Whenever lake levels rose, they would pick up and move to dry land, only to return once the waters receded. To adapt to this watery threat, the people built houses on stilts or on sturdy wooden foundations, and created palisades, or fences, made from bog pine, the researchers wrote in the June issue of the journal Antiquity.

But in addition to finding evidence for such architectural adaptations, archaeologists also unearthed more macabre details of life (and death): children's skulls and skeletal remains encircling the villages at the palisade edges. Many of these ancient skulls were placed there long after their initial burial, at a time when the settlements experienced the worst inundation from rising lake levels, the researchers wrote.

Gift to the gods

In the current study, Jennings and his colleagues took a closer look at the fossil skeletons.

Most were from children under age 10, and though the skeletal remains revealed tooth decay and signs of respiratory ailments, those health troubles would not have been severe enough to warrant a mercy killing, the researchers wrote in the journal article.

The skulls showed evidence of head trauma from battle-axes or clubs, though the injuries don't have the uniformity associated with a ritual killing. As a result, it's more likely the youngsters were felled in warfare, rather than killed as a sacrifice for the gods, the researchers wrote.

Either way, it's clear these weren't ordinary burials, he said.

"Across Europe as a whole there is quite a body of evidence to indicate that throughout prehistory human remains, and particularly the skull, were highly symbolic and socially charged," Jennings told Live Science in an email.

At these sites, "the remains are found at the perimeter of the settlement not inside and not outside, but at a liminal position on the border between in and out," Jennings added. And at one of the sites, the remains were placed at the high-water mark of the floodwaters. Taken together, the details of the burial suggest the remains were placed as an offering to protect against flooding, Jennings said.

Still, there are many unanswered questions about these mysterious Alpine people.

"There are very few instance or examples of burials in the vicinity of the lake settlements, and so we really do not know where the majority of the lake dwellers are buried, or how they treated their dead," Jennings said.

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Giant Rubik’s Cube floats on Hudson to celebrate creator's birthday

Beyond Rubik's Cube at Liberty Science Center

New Yorkers were treated to the surreal sight of a giant Rubik’s cube floating on the Hudson river on Friday.

Towed on a barge, the colorful inflatable cube made its way from Staten Island to Manhattan’s west side and back again, commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the iconic toy and the seventieth birthday of its creator, Erno Rubik.

The cube’s river journey was part of ‘Beyond Rubik’s Cube,' an exhibition running at Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J, in partnership with Google and Erno Rubik. The $5 million exhibition offers 7,000 sq ft of puzzles, history, art and engineering inspired by the famous cube.

“The goal of the exhibition is that it’s interactive and designed to inspire peoples’ creativity – we’re doing things like this (floating cube) to get people thinking,” Liberty Science Center spokeswoman Mary Meluso told FoxNews.com.

The exhibition, which runs at Liberty Science Center until November, will go on an international tour (accompanied by the inflatable cube), for seven years, Meluso told FoxNews.com. “We want this to go out into the world and get peoples’ creative juices flowing,” she added.

Hungarian inventor and architect Rubik, who turns 70 on Sunday, was looking for a model to explain three-dimensional geometry when he created his famous cube in 1974.  Since then, more than 350 million of the cubes have been sold, making it the bestselling toy of all time.

Liberty Science Center is inviting people to celebrate Rubik’s birthday via social media using #RubiksParty.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers

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Lack of nitrogen kills space buffs' hopes for NASA probe

It looks like space buffs' plan to push an aged NASA space probe into a new orbit has come up against a deal-breaker. Weeks after making contact with the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3, or ISEE-3, the group of citizen scientists has learned the tanks on the spacecraft are apparently empty of nitrogen, the New York Times reports.

Since the gas is required to fire the thrusters that would alter the probe's trajectory—the group had planned to boot it out of its heliocentric orbit and into one where it could better communicate with Earth—it's a massive problem.

"Odds are, there is nothing we can do," says Keith Cowing, a leader of the reboot project. "Without that, you don't have a rocket." The group fired the thrusters just last week, but when they tried to activate the thrusters yesterday and Tuesday they just sputtered.

Space.com reports scientists initially thought a "valve malfunction" could be at fault, but Cowing last night wrote they were instead pinning the blame on a lack of nitrogen, which is needed to push the fuel, called hydrazine, to the thrusters.

As for why the thrusters appeared to work last week, that was "probably the result of residual hydrazine that was already in the system that had pressure," says Cowing, per Space News.

He says ISEE-3 is now operating in science mode, meaning it's sending data back to Earth that'll be accessible for the next three months or so.

After that, it'll be so far from us that communicating with it will become cost-prohibitive.

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Researchers explore cursed 450-year-old shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

Researchers have begun exploring the wreckage of the Mars, a Swedish war ship that sank during a naval battle in 1564. 

Johan Rönnby, professor of maritime archeology at Södertörn University in Sweden, was recently awarded a grant from the National Geographic Society for his project, "The Maritime Battlefield of Mars (1964)."

Rönnby spoke to FoxNews.com via Skype from nearby the wreck site, which is located 12 nautical miles southeast of the island of Oland in the Baltic Sea.

"It's a unique ship," Rönnby said. "Maybe the biggest in the world during this time. And when it exploded, because it actually exploded during the fight, it went down to the bottom ... so we are diving on the wreck, but we are also diving on the sunken battlefield."

The ship sank during a bloody battle against a fleet from Denmark and the German city of Lübeck. Mars was rumored to have been cursed because many of its 130 cannons were made from melted church bells.

Rönnby says due to the brackish water and conditions of the Baltic Sea, the ship is remarkably well-preserved.

"The cold and darker water of the Baltic Sea preserves wreck in a fantastic way, and that's really the reason we have Mars on the bottom like this," Rönnby said.

WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH RÖNNBY IN THE VIDEO ABOVE

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Who needs to ‘walk like an Egyptian’ when you can count like one?

Contrary to popular belief, there is not only one way to do a math problem.  Developing in isolation, separated from the rest of the world by desert, the ancient Egyptians created a form of math that was fundamentally different from the math we know and use today.  In his book ‘Count Like An Egyptian: A Hands-on Introduction to Ancient Mathematics’, author David Reimer guides readers through addition, subtraction, multiplication and division done in the Egyptian style.  

David joined Fox’s Tracy Byrnes on set to explain how math problems were solved in the time of the pharaohs and even put her to the test with some math problems of his own.  

David Reimer’s book can be found here.

Check out the interview above and discover how math in Ancient Egypt really worked.

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Mysterious stash of coins found hidden in cave

A cave in Britain may have been the perfect hiding place for a stash of coins … because 2,000 years passed before anyone found them. A climber sheltering from the rain happened upon four coins in Dovedale, Derbyshire, reports the Ashbourne News Telegraph, which led to a National Trust excavation of the site, called Reynard’s Cave.

And what exactly did they find? A trove of 26 Roman and Late Iron Age coins and 20 Late Iron Age gold and silver pieces that may have belonged to the Corieltavi Tribe; three of the Roman coins pre-date the 43 AD invasion of Britain, reports the BBC.

The discovery is a triple mystery: Roman coins have never been found in a cave, coins from these two civilizations have never been buried together, and the Corieltavi have long been thought to have occupied areas further east during the Late Iron Age.

The stash was possibly hidden in a cave for protection; Late Iron Age coins were largely symbols of power and status, rather than used to buy goods.

However, it's possible the coins' owner squirreled away his "best stuff," or was awaiting an increase in their value, speculates one archeologist on the dig. The project proved exciting for one participant—a military vet involved in the excavation as part of a rehabilitation program.

"I was working at the back of the cave, in the dark, and I was the first person to find a coin—a silver coin. It was so exciting,” she tells the Telegraph. The coins have been cleaned and will become permanent museum display. (In other ancient news, Rome’s Coliseum was once a condo of sorts.)

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Beach bummer: toxic slime will hit Lake Erie again

Satellite image of a toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie in 2011, one of the worst blooms in recent years.MERIS/ESA, processed by NOAA/NOS/NCCOS

Slimy green mats of toxic algae will again threaten the western shores of Lake Erie later this summer, according to an algae forecast released today July 10.

The predicted Lake Erie algal bloom will be smaller than in the past three years, but still above the average for the past 12 years, according to the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) forecast. The algae are also expected to collect on certain shorelines instead of spreading out evenly across the lake, NOAA said in a statement. In previous years, the toxic algae have clung to the western third of the lake, in Ohio and southern Ontario.

This year's forecast calls for some 24,250 tons (22,000 metric tons) of blue-green algae to overtake Lake Erie's waters, while the average since 2004 is 15,430 tons (14,000 metric tons). [Photos of the Great Lakes: North America's 'Third Coast']

This is the third year the agency has forecast the amount of toxic slime that would choke Lake Erie during the late summer. The forecast is based on models of fertilizer runoff and satellite tracking of precipitation and snowmelt.

The noxious blooms occur when fertilizer runoff feeds the runaway growth of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. The algae are harmful to marine life and to humans. Decaying cyanobacteria suck up oxygen, creating dead zones. Some kinds of algae also emit toxins that damage or irritate the nerves, skin, liver and kidneys of humans and other animals. Lake Erie is the drinking water source for millions of people in the United States and Canada.

The lake suffered from severe algal blooms in the 1960s, but the thick mats disappeared after a water quality agreement was signed in 1972. The toxic algal blooms returned with a vengeance in 2000, due to changes in when and how farmers apply agricultural fertilizer, according to studies by researchers at the University of Michigan and other institutions. Scientists also think climate change is a factor, with Lake Erie's waters becoming warmer and more hospitable to algae.

"The reemergence of harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie is an ecological and economic setback for communities along the coast," U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) said in the statement.

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Russia plans to colonize moon by 2030, report says

May 17, 2011: The moon appears near the earth's horizon in this photograph of an orbital moonset taken from aboard the International Space Station.Reuters

Nearly a half-century after America won the Space Race, Russia apparently wants to take another crack at landing on the moon.

A report in the Russian-language newspaper Izvestia Thursday said the nation is planning to put a manned colony on the moon as soon as 2030, and is racing to dispatch the first robotic rovers to explore the lunar surface two years from now, according to The Moscow Times.

By 2028, Russia would be ready to send manned missions to orbit the moon, and in the program's final stage, humans would be sent to the lunar surface to set up the infrastructure for a colony using local resources.

The first stage of the program is expected to cost around 28.5 billion rubles ($815.8 million), though Russia hopes to attract private investors to help bankroll the project.

Benefits of establishing a moon colony include access to the "treasure trove" of rare and valuable minerals, as well as the strategic importance of using the moon as a launchpad for future missions into deep space, The Moscow Times reports.

The paper adds that China, India and Japan are also developing lunar exploration projects, and a California-based company, Moon Express, is planning to send its first robotic spacecraft to the satellite next year, according to the company's website.

U.S. astronauts first landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, and the United States later made five other landings on the Earth satellite. No humans have visited the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972.

Click here to read more from The Moscow Times.

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Rare megamouth shark caught off Japan

FILE: Fishermen off the coast of japan pulled in a rare megamouth shark, similar to the one pictured, marking only the 58th time one was encountered by humans, Japanese news outlets reported.Reuters

Fishermen off the coast of Japan hauled in a rare megamouth shark recently, marking the 58th time in history one of its kind were seen or caught by man, Japanese news outlets reported.

The Japan Daily Press reported Thursday that scientists performed an autopsy on the 1,500-pound female shark in front of onlookers at the Marine Science Museum in Shizuoka City. The shark was reportedly caught from a depth of about 2,600 feet. It's unclear precisely when it was nabbed, according to the report.

The first megamouth was discovered in Hawaii in 1976, prompting scientists to create an entirely new family and genus of sharks. The megamouths are docile filter-feeders with wide, blubbery mouths.

RARE GOBLIN SHARK CAUGHT OFF KEY WEST

Others megamouths — considered one of the rarest fish in the world — have been encountered in California, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Brazil, Ecuador, Senegal, South Africa, Mexico and Australia. It's known to inhabit the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History.

"As with the two other filter-feeding sharks, the basking and whale sharks, this species is wide-ranging," according to a profile of the animal on the museum's website. "However, the megamouth is considered to be less active and a poorer swimmer than the basking or whale sharks."

The megamouth primarily feeds on large quantities of krill and its maximum size is at least 17 feet long. The sperm whale is its only known predator, researchers say.

In 2009, fishermen in the Philippines accidentally caught and later ate a megamouth shark. The 1,100-pound, 13-foot megamouth died while struggling in the fishermen's net off Burias island in the central Philippines. It was taken to nearby Donsol in Sorsogon province, where it was butchered and eaten.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Tomb dating back to 1100 B.C. found in Egypt

An Egyptian conservator cleans limestones at a newly-discovered tomb dating back to around 1100 B.C. at the Saqqara archaeological site, 19 miles south of Cairo, Egypt.AP

Archaeologists and journalists gather at a newly-discovered tomb dating back to around 1100 B.C. at the Saqqara archaeological site, 19 miles south of Cairo, Egypt.AP

An Egyptian archeology worker covers limestones at a newly-discovered tomb in Egypt.AP

Lead archaeology workers supervise as their colleagues dig a newly-discovered tomb in Egypt.AP

An Egyptian conservator works at a newly-discovered tomb in Egypt.AP

CAIRO –  Archeologists have found a tomb dating back to around 1100 B.C. south of Cairo, Egypt's Antiquities Ministry said Thursday.

Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said that the tomb belongs to a guard of the army archives and royal messenger to foreign countries. Ibrahim said the Cairo University Faculty of Archaeology's discovery at Saqqara adds "a chapter to our knowledge about the history of Saqqara."

Ola el-Egeizy of Cairo University said the tomb contains "very nice inscriptions" of the funerary procession and the afterlife of the deceased.

The tomb was found near another one dating back to the same period belonging to the head of the army that was discovered in the previous excavation season. That tomb was larger but much of what remains is mud bricks as "most of its stone blocks were stolen and many of them are in museums all over the world," said el-Egeizy. Because of the blocks, archaeologists had long known that the tomb existed though it was not uncovered until recently.

Saqqara was the necropolis for the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis and site of the oldest known pyramid in Egypt.

Egypt's vital tourism industry has suffered in the wake of the 2011 uprising that toppled autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak.

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Space telescope reveals weird star cluster conundrum

NGC 2024 is a star cluster found in the center of the Flame Nebula, approximately 1,400 light-years from Earth. This observation combines X-ray and infrared data from NASA's Chandra and Spitzer space telescopes, respectively.NASA

We thought we had star formation mechanisms pinned down, but according to new observations of two star clusters, it seems our understanding of how stars are born is less than stellar.

PHOTOS: Herschel’s Coolest Infrared Hotshots

When zooming in on the young star clusters of NGC 2024 (in the center of the Flame Nebula) and the Orion Nebula Cluster, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory teamed up with infrared telescopes to take a census of star ages. Conventional thinking suggests that stars closest to the center of a given star cluster should be the oldest and the youngest stars can be found around the edges.

However, to their surprise, astronomers have discovered that the opposite is true.

“Our findings are counterintuitive,” said Konstantin Getman of Penn State University, lead scientist of this new study. “It means we need to think harder and come up with more ideas of how stars like our sun are formed.”

It is thought that stars form after the gravitational collapse of vast clouds of dust and gas, or nebulae. The densest material can be found at the nebula’s center and, as the thinking goes, will be ripe for the first stars in that nebula to appear. After the first stars in the nebula’s center burst to life with fusion burning cores, the leftover gases in the less dense portions of the nebula will generate stars later on.

ANALYSIS: Orion’s ‘Death Stars’ Exterminate Baby Planets

After using Chandra data to gauge the stars’ masses and brightnesses, and then combining that data with infrared observations, stellar ages could be calculated. In the case of NGC 2024, the researchers noticed that the stars in the cluster’s core were 200,000 years old, but the stars on the outer edges were much older — around 1.5 million years old. Likewise, the Orion Nebula Cluster hosts stars in its core that are 1.2 million years old and the ones around the edge were 2 million years old.

This discovery has caught astrophysicists on the hop and may turn our understanding of star forming regions on its head.

“A key conclusion from our study is we can reject the basic model where clusters form from the inside out,” said coauthor Eric Feigelson, also of Penn State. “So we need to consider more complex models that are now emerging from star formation studies.”

So what’s going on? Is our understanding of stellar mechanics really that wrong? Not necessarily, but star cluster evolution models will certainly need some tweaking.

NEWS: Spitzer Sheds Light on Colony of Baby Stars

The researchers have several possible answers to the conundrum. First, it could be that there’s simply more gas in the center of the star-forming nebula that allows stars to be born long after stars have finished forming in the depleted edges of the cluster. That would make it appear that there are older stars at the edges than in the core. Secondly, stars that formed first in the cluster’s center have more time to gravitationally interact with other stars, causing them to be slingshotted to the cluster’s edges, leaving younger stars behind.

Thirdly, the young stars could be formed in the cluster’s center by filaments of gas and dust that fall into the center of the cluster. This could be envisaged as a sort of “conveyer belt” effect where older stars are replaced in the core by new stars being created by in-falling material.

Whether one of these theories is the correct one (or whether it’s a combination of all three) remains to be seen, but this is certainly a reminder that the physics of star formation is far from being fully understood; it is an exciting and evolving field of study that turns up its fair share of surprises.

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Scientists make new find in photos of freakish shark

A giant deep-sea isopod or Bathynomus giganteus.Reuters

A rare goblin shark was caught last month off the coast of Key West, Fla., in what biologists are calling “an important scientific discovery,”Carl Moore/courtesy of NOAA

Researchers studying photos of a rare goblin shark hauled up in the Gulf of Mexico last month say they've spotted something just as exciting—and just as weird-looking—in the shrimpers' catch.

Mixed in with the shrimp are unusually large numbers of giant isopods, a deep-sea creature that resembles a cat-sized woodlouse, reports the Houston Chronicle, which has a photo gallery of the catch.

Scientists believe their presence, along with that of the goblin shark, indicates that the trawler passed over a "whalefall"—a decaying whale on the ocean floor, perhaps as much as a mile below the surface.

Entire ecosystems can spring up around the dead whales, living off the carcass for decades. "While I think (the) goblin shark is cool and all, look at all those freakin' giant isopods!" tweeted marine biologist Andrew Thaler, who plans to seek funding to send a submersible to the site.

If his team makes it there, they may encounter the same goblin shark: The captain who caught it says he returned the strangest creature he's encountered in his 50 years of shrimping to the Gulf after taking photos.

"Anything that's alive we try to put back in the ocean," he tells CNN. (More on the freakish shark here.)

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Bear in Israel undergoes surgery to repair herniated disc

May 7, 2014: Mango, a 19-year-old male Syrian brown bear, rests on a bed as zoo veterinarians and staff prepare him for surgery in the Ramat Gan Zoological Center's animal hospital near Tel Aviv, Israel.AP

RAMAT GAN, Israel –  Surgery can be a real bear. Even for a bear.

In Israel, a 19-year-old Syria brown bear named Mango underwent surgery Wednesday to repair a herniated disc, said Sagit Horowitz, a spokeswoman for the Ramat Gan Zoological Center near Tel Aviv.

Zoologists first noticed Mango had a problem when he started to show signs of paralysis in his hind legs in the last few weeks, said Dr. Merav Shamir, who led the surgery on the furry patient.

"It started acutely," she said. "He wasn't able to move his right hind limb and it progressively deteriorated over the following 48 hours to become completely paralyzed on the hind limbs."

Horowitz said veterinarians discovered the 550-pound bear had the injured disc during an X-ray taken after noticing his worsening paralysis. That disc compressed Mango's spinal cord and caused the paralysis he had been suffering through, Shamir said.

Veterinarians shaved parts of the bear's furry back to prepare him for surgery Wednesday, as well as intubated him. They propped his head up on a pillow wrapped in a trash bag and put an IV through his snout. They also wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around his right paw.

Such unique procedures aren't uncommon at the Ramat Gan Zoological Center, the premier zoo of Israel. Last year, veterinarians there used acupuncture to cure the chronic ear infection of a 14-year-old Sumatran tiger named Pedang.

Shamir said other bears with a similar disc problem like Mango had been euthanized and that the surgery he underwent was novel for bears — though often performed on small dogs.

"I'm nervous now — I'll be happier in a few hours," Shamir said before the hourslong surgery began. "I wish him luck."

Veterinarians will know in the coming weeks whether Mango makes a full recovery.

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