NASA solves mystery of 'jelly donut' on Mars

This before-and-after pair of images of the same patch of ground in front of NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity 13 days apart documents the arrival of a strange, bright rock at the scene. The rock, called "Pinnacle Island," is seen in the right imagNASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

Feb. 4, 2014: This image from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows where a rock called "Pinnacle Island" had been -- before it appeared in front of the rover in early January 2014.NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

A comparison of two raw Pancam photographs from sols 3528 and 3540 of Opportunity's mission (a sol is a Martian day). Notice the "jelly doughnut"-sized rock in the center of the photograph to the right. Minor adjustments for brightness and contNASA/JPL-Caltech

Steve Squyres, lead scientist for NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, points at a strange rock found by the rover on Jan. 8, 2014, where earlier there had been nothing, during a Jan. 16 presentation. The rock has been named "Pinnacle Island."NASA/JPL

It was a complete unknown -- it was a rolling stone.

A mystery rock that appeared before NASA's Opportunity rover in late January -- and bore a strange resemblance to a jelly donut -- is no more than a common piece of stone that bounced in front of the cameras, NASA said Friday.

The strange rock was first spied on Jan. 8, in a spot where nothing had sat a mere two weeks earlier. Dubbed "Pinnacle Island" by NASA scientists, it was only about 1.5 inches wide. But the rock's odd appearance -- white-rimmed and red-centered, not unlike a jelly donut -- made many sit up and take notice.

'We drove over it. We can see the track. That's where Pinnacle Island came from.'

- Opportunity Deputy Principal Investigator Ray Arvidson

Now researchers with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology have finally cleared up the mystery.

Yep. It's a rock.

"Once we moved Opportunity a short distance, after inspecting Pinnacle Island, we could see directly uphill an overturned rock that has the same unusual appearance," said Opportunity Deputy Principal Investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis. "We drove over it. We can see the track. That's where Pinnacle Island came from."

Examination of Pinnacle Island revealed high levels of elements such as manganese and sulfur, suggesting these water-soluble ingredients were concentrated in the rock by the action of water. 

"This may have happened just beneath the surface relatively recently," Arvidson said, "or it may have happened deeper below ground longer ago and then, by serendipity, erosion stripped away material above it and made it accessible to our wheels."

Now that the rover is finished inspecting this rock, the team plans to drive Opportunity south and uphill to investigate exposed rock layers on the slope.

Opportunity has trolled the Martian surface since Jan. 24, 2004, far outlasting its original 90-day mission. 

Steve Squyres, the rover's lead scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y said the Red Planet keeps surprising scientists, even 10 years later.

"Mars keeps throwing new things at us," he said.

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Can new clues solve mystery of Roanoke's Lost Colony?

It's the coldest case in American history.

The settlers who inhabited the 16th century North Carolina colony of Roanoke mysteriously disappeared centuries ago, leaving behind only two clues: the words "Croatoan" and "Cro" carved into a fort's gatepost and a nearby tree.

Many conspiracy theories have been concocted as to what happened in 1590, a mere three years after the colonists arrived in North America, but none have proven fruitful. Until now. Technological advances and the discovery of a cover-up on an ancient map have let researchers unearth new clues that may help bring an end to the mystery of America's lost colony.

Researchers began reinvestigating the mysterious disappearance after they noticed two strange patches on a long-forgotten map of the area called "La Virginea Pars" drawn by the colony's governor John White. Researchers at the First Colony Foundation in Durham, N.C., believed the two patches might be covering up something revealing. 

The map was analyzed by scientists at the British Museum, who discovered a small red-and-blue symbol.

"Our best idea is that parts of [Sir Walter] Raleigh's exploration in North America were a state secret, and the map 'cover-up' was an effort to keep information from the public and from foreign agents," historian and principal investigator Eric Klingelhofer of Mercer University in Macon, Ga., told National Geographic, which partially funded the effort.

we get the oldest maps we can find—so we can get a historic sense of what was there and what's there now—and orient them,"

- Malcolm LeCompte, research associate at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina

Historians believe that the symbol may have been the location of a fort the settlers fled to, running from violence or disease.

"It's obvious that that's the only way they could have survived. No single Indian tribe or village could have supported them ... They were over a hundred people," Klingelhofer said.

The current theory is that the colonists fled 50 miles south to Hatteras Island, then known as Croatoan Island. Klingelhofer suggests they may have gone in a different direction.

He believes the settlers traveled west via the Albermarle Sound to the Chowan River where there might have been a protected inlet occupied by a friendly tribe.

"It's a very strategic place, right at the end of Albemarle Sound," he said. "You can go north up the Chowan River to Virginia or west to the Blue Ridge Mountains. They were big trading partners with other Native American tribes."

Once the researchers uncovered the secrets of the "La Virginea Pars" map, they scheduled a trip to visit the area along with the help of magnetometers and ground-penetrating radar (GPR).

"What we do is we get the oldest maps we can find—so we can get a historic sense of what was there and what's there now—and orient them," said research associate Malcolm LeCompte at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina, who was responsible for the GPR.

He looked for similarities between the old map and the current topography. The researchers than used GPR, which sends radio waves into the ground and measures the echo of the signals that bounce off of objects underground.

LeCompte and his team found a previously undiscovered pattern that indicated the possibility of multiple wooden structures approximately 3 feet underground.

"I don't know if it's one or a group [of structures]," he said, adding that they "could be joined or they could be close together."

The mere presence of the buried structure indicates that there was a colonial presence in the area. However, while the new information has begun to give archaeologists a clearer view as to what might have happened to the Roanoke colony, there are still pieces to the puzzle that remain unfound. What's the next step in solving this age-old mystery? 

"We have to go in and dig some holes, I guess," Swindell said.

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Moon walk or Death Star? China’s lunar plans a mystery

An artist's conception of China's Chang'e 3 robot on the moon.ESA

A Chinese satellite has entered lunar orbit and should drop a robotic probe on the moon as early as Friday -- the first such moon landing in nearly four decades. But China's ultimate plans are unclear, whether simply scientific or the first steps toward a military base on the moon.

The Chang’e 3 satellite was launched from southwest China on Dec. 2 and entered orbit around the moon on Dec. 6. It will deposit a robotic rover on the moon as early as Dec. 14. China’s long range goals are murky, according to Thomas Reiter, director for human spaceflight and operations with the European Space Agency (ESA). Yet militarizing the moon would be a shame, he said.

“I could not imagine that human exploration is getting … pushed by military consideration,” Reiter told FoxNews.com. “It would really be a pity.”

'It could indicate interest in the next decade in bringing humans to the lunar surface.'

- Thomas Reiter, director of human spaceflight and operations at the ESA

The ESA is helping China to the moon, a landing that will be the first controlled descent since Russia’s Luna-24 landed in 1976. The space agency’s worldwide network of satellites are tracking the science mission while expert teams on the ground are lending technical assistance. But not even the ESA knows exactly what China has planned.

“The strategic long-term goals of China in human exploration … are not very clear yet,” Reiter said. China’s goals could include landing men on the moon, a feat only the United States has managed to do, the last time 41 years ago, he said.

“I believe they are taking a clear path with some first steps, and I could imagine yes, this could be interest in the next decade in bringing humans to the lunar surface.”

Russia also has shown interest in the moon, Reiter said. Yet the ESA, like NASA, has no concrete plans to do more than help when it comes to lunar exploration.

“NASA is not going to the moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime,” NASA administrator Charles Bolden said at an April panel in Washington. NASA spokesman David Weaver echoed that sentiment, telling FoxNews.com that it is working with international partners to plan missions to the moon and elsewhere.

“We are deeply involved in lunar science, with two satellites currently orbiting the moon,” he said. “The global community is committed to working together on a unified deep-space exploration strategic plan, with robotic and human missions to destinations that include near-Earth asteroids, the moon and Mars. 

Reiter also put the moon on a short list, including low-Earth orbit and Mars. But due to budgetary restrictions, the ESA has no plans of its own to visit the moon.

“For the moment, we do not have a dedicated lunar exploration program,” he told FoxNews.com. At a recent conference in Naples, the space agency proposed a program for a European lunar landing mission to the south pole.

“Due to the overall economic situation of the member states, this could not be approved,” Reiter said. “We are looking into a cooperative mission with the Russian partners.”

Yet Reiter said the agency remains focused on the moon, despite a decades-long dry spell in lunar landings.

“I believe the moon is still a very important destination,” he said. “If we really intend to take a human mission to Mars … in two decades or maybe a little more, this way leads by the moon.”

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Scientists seek to solve mystery of Piltdown Man

LONDON (AP) — It was an archaeological hoax that fooled scientists for decades. A century on, researchers are determined to find out who was responsible for Piltdown Man, the missing link that never was.

In December 1912, it was announced that a lawyer and amateur archaeologist named Charles Dawson had made an astonishing discovery in a gravel pit in southern England — prehistoric remains, up to 1 million years old, that combined the skull of a human and the jaw of an ape.

Piltdown Man — named for the village where the remains were found — set the scientific world ablaze. It was hailed as the missing evolutionary link between apes and humans, and proof that humans' enlarged brains had evolved earlier than had been supposed.

It was 40 years before the find was definitively exposed as a hoax, and speculation about who did it rages to this day. Now scientists at London's Natural History Museum — whose predecessors trumpeted the Piltdown find and may be suspects in the fraud— are marking the 100th anniversary with a new push to settle the argument for good.

The goal, lead scientist Chris Stringer wrote in a comment piece published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is to find out "who did it and what drove them" — whether scientific ambition, humor or malice.

Stringer heads a team of 15 researchers — including experts in ancient DNA, radiocarbon dating and isotope studies — examining the remains with the latest techniques and equipment and combing the museum's archives for overlooked evidence about the evidence unearthed at sites around Piltdown.

"Although Charles Dawson is the prime suspect, it's a complex story," Stringer, the museum's research leader in human origins, told The Associated Press. "The amount of material planted at two different sites makes some people — and that includes me — wonder whether there were at least two people involved."

Doubts grew about Piltdown Man's authenticity in the years after 1912, as more remains were found around the world that contradicted its evidence. In 1953, scientists from London's Natural History Museum and Oxford University conducted tests that showed the find was a cleverly assembled fake, combining a human skull a few hundred years old with the jaw of an orangutan, stained to make it look ancient.

Ever since, speculation had swirled about possible perpetrators. Many people think the evidence points to Dawson, who died in 1916.

Other long-dead suspects identified by researchers include Arthur Smith Woodward, the museum's keeper of geology, who championed Dawson's discoveries and gave them vital scientific credibility. The finger has also been pointed at museum zoologist Martin Hinton; Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; and even "Sherlock Holmes" author Arthur Conan Doyle, who lived near Piltdown.

Stringer said the key may lie in a later find nearby — a slab of elephant bone nicknamed the "cricket bat" — that seemed to back up the first Piltdown discovery. It was revealed as a clumsy fake, carved with a steel knife from a fossilized elephant femur.

One theory is that Hinton — skeptical but afraid to openly question Woodward, his boss at the museum — might have planted it thinking it would be spotted as a hoax and discredit the whole find. A trunk with Hinton's initials found in a loft at the museum a decade after his death in 1961 contained animal bones stained the same way as the Piltdown fossils.

Miles Russell, senior lecturer in archaeology at Bournemouth University, thinks the museum's work may shed new light on how the forgery was done. But he thinks there is little doubt Dawson was the perpetrator.

"He is the only person who is always on site every time a find is made," Russell said. "And when he died in 1916, Piltdown Man died with him."

Russell is author of the new book "The Piltdown Man Hoax: Case Closed" — though he doubts speculation about the century-old fraud will stop.

"People love conspiracy theories," he said. "And this is one of the biggest scientific hoaxes of all time."

Whoever was behind it, the hoax delayed consensus on human origins, leading some scientists to question the authenticity of later finds because they did not fit with Piltdown Man.

Stringer said Piltdown Man stands as a warning to scientists always to be on their guard — especially when evidence seems to back up their theories.

"There was a huge gap in evidence and Piltdown at the time neatly filled that gap," he said. "It was what people expected to be found. In a sense you could say it was manufactured to fit the scientific agenda.

"That lesson of Piltdown is always worth learning — when something seems too good to be true, maybe it is."

___

Online:

Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature

Piltdown Man at the Natural History Museum: www.nhm.ac.uk/piltdown

___

Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless

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Radiation hotspot in Tokyo linked to mystery bottles

By Yoko Kubota

TOKYO | Thu Oct 13, 2011 1:59pm EDT

TOKYO (Reuters) - A radiation hotspot has been detected in Tokyo seven months into Japan's nuclear crisis, but local officials said on Thursday high readings appeared to be coming from mystery bottles stored under a house, not the tsunami-crippled Fukushima atomic plant.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, struck by a devastating quake and tsunami in March, has released radiation into the atmosphere that has been carried by winds, rain and snow across eastern Japan.

Officials in Setagaya, a major residential area in Tokyo about 235 km (150 miles) southwest of the plant, said this week it found a radioactive hotspot on a sidewalk near schools, prompting concerns in the country's most populated area far from the damaged nuclear plant.

The radiation measured as much as 3.35 microsieverts per hour on Thursday, higher than some areas in the evacuation zone near the Fukushima plant, the center of the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl 25 years ago.

But the local government found several bottles under the floor of a nearby house emitting high levels of radiation.

"A measuring device, when pointed at them, showed very high readings. Radiation levels were even exceeding the upper limit for the device," Setagaya Mayor Nobuto Hosaka told a news conference.

Officials from the Education Ministry are now looking into the matter, including the contents of the bottles.

Public broadcaster NHK said no one had been living in the house in question.

The city of Funabashi, near Tokyo, said that a citizens' group had measured a radiation level of 5.8 microsieverts per hour at a park, but that the city's own survey showed the highest reading at the park was a quarter of that level.

Radiation levels in the 20 km radius evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant ranged from 0.5 to 64.8 microsieverts per hour, government data showed this week.

About 80,000 residents have evacuated this zone. A microsievert quantifies the amount of radiation absorbed by human tissue.

In Yokohama, also near Tokyo, radioactive strontium-90, which can cause bone cancer and leukemia, was detected in soil taken from an apartment rooftop, media reported.

Strontium has been detected within an 80 km zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, but this is the first time it has been found in an area so far away, local media added.

Radiation exposure from natural sources in a year is about 2,400 microsieverts on average, the U.N. atomic watchdog says.

Japan's education ministry has set a standard allowing up to 1 microsievert per hour of radiation in schools while aiming to bring it down to about 0.11 microsievert per hour.

(Additional reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Yoko Nishikawa and Nick Macfie)

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Climate scientists shine new light on methane mystery

Farmers work in a padi field at Khokana village, located south of Nepal's capital Kathmandu July 27, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar

By David Fogarty

SINGAPORE | Thu Aug 11, 2011 7:25am EDT

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Atmospheric levels of methane, 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2) at trapping heat, stayed steady for two decades to 2006 on wider fertilizer use to grow rice or a surge in natural gas demand, according to two separate studies in the journal Nature.

Climate researcher Fuu Ming Kai from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Singapore research center said in one study that methane output from rice fields in the Northern Hemisphere dropped during the period as fertilizers replaced manure and because of reduced water use.

In the second study, Murat Aydin at the University of California, Irvine, concluded that a drop in methane emissions from more efficient burning of fossil fuels and a surge in natural gas demand.

The studies aim to solve a puzzle that has confounded climate scientists for years: why did methane levels in the atmosphere, after rising steadily for many years, taper off in the mid-1980s in a dip lasting two decades?

Solving the puzzle is crucial because methane levels have risen more than 150 percent since the start of the industrial revolution, compared with CO2's 40 percent increase, and are on the rise again.

While the studies reach different conclusions, both studies point to human activities as the reason for the slowdown.

"In general most of the methane sources come from the Northern Hemisphere," Fuu told Reuters.

The main methane sources come from burning fossil fuels, rice paddies, coal mines, livestock and clearing and burning of tropical forests.

"We looked at the isotope data to see how it's changed over the past 20 to 30 years. And what we saw is a trend in the isotope signature and especially in the Northern Hemisphere."

Fuu said long-term data and comparing methane levels between the both hemispheres helped researchers conclude that about half the decrease in Northern Hemisphere methane emissions could be explained by reduced emissions from rice agriculture in Asia over the past three decades.

"It is important to know what the mechanism is behind the slow down. If you know this, you can adopt a suitable policy to reduce methane emissions," Fuu said.

Aydin concluded the drop coincided with rapid natural gas production as the fuel became increasingly price competitive with oil and other fossil fuel, instead of flaring it off. The gains came even though overall fossil fuel use increased as cleaner burning technologies helped keep methane emissions in check, he said.

"We speculate that the rising economic value of natural gas during the late 20th Century and the deployment of cleaner technologies led to sharp reductions in the release of light hydrocarbons into the atmosphere," the study says.

(Editing by Ed Lane)

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