THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

.

.
Boston artist Steve Mills - realistic painting

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Get ready for decades of Icelandic fireworks

Get ready for decades of Icelandic fireworks
We're not quite back to the pre-plane era, but air travel over and around the north Atlantic might get a lot more disrupted in the coming years.
Volcanologists say the fireworks exploding from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano on Iceland, which is responsible for the ash cloud that is grounding all commercial flights across northern Europe, may become a familiar sight. Increased rumblings under Iceland over the past decade suggest that the area is entering a more active phase, with more eruptions and the potential for some very large bangs.
"Volcanic activity on Iceland appears to follow a periodicity of around 50 to 80 years. The increase in activity over the past 10 years suggests we might be entering a more active phase with more eruptions," says Thorvaldur Thordarson, an expert on Icelandic volcanoes at the University of Edinburgh, UK. By contrast, the latter half of the 20th century was unusually quiet.
Along with increased volcanism, more seismic activity has been recorded around Iceland, including the magnitude-6.1 quake that rocked Reykjavik in May 2008.
Rifting strain
In 1998 Gudrún Larsen from the University of Iceland in Reykjavik and colleagues used 800 years' worth of data from lava layers, ice cores and historical records to show that Iceland's volcanism goes through cycles of high and low activity. The peaks of these cycles seem to be strongly linked to bursts of earthquakes, which release the build-up of strain on tectonic faults near Iceland caused by the rifting of the Atlantic Ocean.
In addition, the periodicity may be linked to pulses of magma coming from the mantle and pressure fluctuations at the surface caused by glaciers melting and geothermal activity.
Larsen and colleagues showed that the Vatnajökull ice cap region – which includes the highly active Grímsvötn and Bárdarbunga volcanoes – experienced between 6 and 11 eruptions every 40 years during phases of high activity, compared with no more than three eruptions per 40 years during low-activity phases. Other regions of Iceland appear to follow a similar pattern to Vatnajökull.
As well as becoming more frequent, eruptions seem to get more intense during the high-activity phases. A number of Iceland's most devastating eruptions – including that of the volcano Laki in 1783 that killed over half of Iceland's livestock and led to a famine that wiped out about a quarter of the human population – have occurred when the Atlantic rift system has been active. "If we are entering a more active phase, these bigger eruptions will become more likely," says Thordarson.
Judging by recent volcanic and earthquake activity, Thordarson and his colleagues believe that Iceland is entering its next active phase and estimate it will last for 60 years or so, peaking between 2030 and 2040.
Journal reference: Geology, vol 26, p 943

Lonely stars born on a bridge between galaxies

Lonely stars born on a bridge between galaxies
  • NEW SCIENTIST
  • 02 April 2010

The Large Magellanic Cloud (pictured) likely stripped gas from its smaller neighbour, forming a bridge between them (Image: C. Smith/S. Points/MCELS Team/NOAO/AURA/NSF)

MOST stars are gregarious, grouping together by the billions in galaxies like our Milky Way. Now evidence is mounting that stars may form in between galaxies.
Vanessa McBride at the University of Southampton in the UK and her colleagues looked at X-rays arriving from the space between two nearby galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic clouds. The energy spectrum and periodic fluctuations of the X-rays, recorded by the INTEGRAL satellite, suggest they are coming from young binary star systems in which a neutron star is stealing matter from its massive companion.
One such system was already known in a stream of gas called the Magellanic Bridge between the two galaxies. McBride identified two more and found tentative signs of three others (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol 403, p 709). The gas was probably stripped from the Small Magellanic Cloud by its larger neighbour's gravity, providing fuel for star formation.
The Magellanic Bridge is ideal for studying such violent interactions in detail because it is so near, says Nicolas Lehner of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

Mysterious radio waves emitted from nearby galaxy

NEW SCIENTIST
Mysterious radio waves emitted from nearby galaxy

Something in there is producing an unusually regular radio signal (Image: NASA/ESA/STScI/AURA)
There is something strange in the cosmic neighbourhood. An unknown object in the nearby galaxy M82 has started sending out radio waves, and the emission does not look like anything seen anywhere in the universe before.
"We don't know what it is," says co-discoverer Tom Muxlow of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics near Macclesfield, UK.
The thing appeared in May last year, while Muxlow and his colleagues were monitoring an unrelated stellar explosion in M82 using the MERLIN network of radio telescopes in the UK. A bright spot of radio emission emerged over only a few days, quite rapidly in astronomical terms. Since then it has done very little except baffle astrophysicists.
It certainly does not fit the pattern of radio emissions from supernovae: they usually get brighter over a few weeks and then fade away over months, with the spectrum of the radiation changing all the while. The new source has hardly changed in brightness over the course of a year, and its spectrum is steady.
Warp speed
Yet it does seem to be moving – and fast: its apparent sideways velocity is four times the speed of light. Such apparent "superluminal" motion has been seen before in high-speed jets of material squirted out by some black holes. The stuff in these jets is moving towards us at a slight angle and travelling at a fair fraction of the speed of light, and the effects of relativity produce a kind of optical illusion that makes the motion appear superluminal.
Could the object be a black hole? It is not quite in the middle of M82, where astronomers would expect to find the kind of supermassive central black hole that most other galaxies have. Which leaves the possibility that it could be a smaller-scale "microquasar".
A microquasar is formed after a very massive star explodes, leaving behind a black hole around 10 to 20 times the mass of the sun, which then starts feeding on gas from a surviving companion star. Microquasars do emit radio waves – but none seen in our galaxy is as bright as the new source in M82. Microquasars also produce plenty of X-rays, whereas no X-rays have been seen from the mystery object. "So that's not right either", Muxlow told New Scientist.
His best guess is still that the radio source is some kind of dense object accreting surrounding material, perhaps a large black hole or a black hole in an unusual environment. Perhaps the phenomenon also happens occasionally in our galaxy, but is more common in M82 because it is a "starburst" galaxy – a cosmic cauldron where massive stars are forming and exploding at a much higher rate than in the Milky Way, creating a lot of new black holes.
Muxlow will report the discovery at the Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow, UK, today.

Do Dartmoor's ancient stones have link to Stonehenge?



NEW SCIENTIST

Do Dartmoor's ancient stones have link to Stonehenge?

The Cut Hill stones were placed around the same time as Stonehenge (Image: Tom Greeves)


LITTERED across the hills of Dartmoor in Devon, southern England, around 80 rows and circles of stones stand sentinel in the wild landscape. Now, striking similarities between one of these monuments and Stonehenge, 180 kilometres to the east, suggest they may be the work of the same people.
The row of nine stones on Cut Hill was discovered in 2004 on one of the highest, most remote hills of Dartmoor national park. "It is on easily the most spectacular hill on north Dartmoor," says Andrew Fleming, president of the Devon Archaeological Society. "If you were looking for a distant shrine in the centre of the north moor, that's where you would put it."
Ralph Fyfe of the University of Plymouth and independent archaeologist Tom Greeves have now carbon-dated the peat surrounding the stones. This suggests that at least one of the stones had fallen - or been placed flat on the ground - by between 3600 and 3440 BC, and another by 3350 to 3100 BC (Antiquity, vol 84, p 55).
That comes as a surprise to archaeologists, who, on the strength of artefacts found nearby, had assumed that Dartmoor monuments like Cut Hill and Stall Moor (pictured) dated from the Bronze Age, around 2100 to 1600 BC. Instead, Fyfe suggests that Cut Hill is from the Neolithic period, the same period that Stonehenge was built.
Unlike Stonehenge, the 2-metre-tall Cut Hill stones lie flat on the ground, parallel to each other and between 19 metres and 34.5 metres apart, like the sleepers of a giant railway track. Packing stones discovered at the end of one of the megaliths suggest at least one of them stood erect at some point, but the regularity of their current layout makes it likely they were deliberately placed that way, Greeves says.
What's more, the stones' alignment with the summer and winter solstices seems identical to that of Stonehenge, Newgrange in Ireland and Maes Howe in Scotland. "It could be coincidence, but it's striking," says archaeologist Mike Pitts.
***************************************************************

Cut Hill

Cut Hill is either a place you love or detest, it is one Dartmoor's remoter spots and is the fourth highest of Dartmoor's hills. At first glance it consists of nothing but peat hags, boggy pools, tussocks and other such messy things. To reach it will involve a good walk and if wet, a thorough soaking. The 3D map below shows the remoteness and terrain of Cut Hill.




Without doubt it can be described as the Mecca of Letterboxing with literally hundreds of boxes hidden all over it. The Cut Hill aficionados have their own names for various rocks and features which unless you know where they are will literally leave you clueless. Amongst them are; Jude's Table, Terry's Stone, The Rain Gauge, The Guide Stone, The Blocks, The Jew Stone, The Pipe, The Outcrop, The Strewn Timbers, The East Crosses, The West Crosses and at one time there was the rotting corpse of a pony that had boxes placed off it. Not long ago certain letterboxers would literally spend all weekend on Cut Hill searching for boxes. The competition as to who had the most Cut Hill stamps was ferocious and some of the clues nearly impossible to get. There was a special badge awarded to anyone who collected over 100 Cut Hill letterbox stamps which at one time was not difficult. At this time, literally anything that happened on the hill would soon have a stamp sited deep in some peat bank. Maps were drawn of the hill showing all the various names of the features, in fact one boxer drew out the bounds of the hill which consisted of numerous markers. Secret inscriptions would be made on rocks and then boxes sited which alluded to them, again if you did not know where they were you had no chance of finding the boxes. Today the Cut Hill craze has somewhat abated but it still very popular with boxers. Below are just a few examples of some Cut Hill letterbox stamps many of which are excellentrubber cuts.




I have not visited the hill that much but there must be over 100 stamps in my collection, personally speaking I used to find Cut Hill one of the most boring places on the moor. However if the letterboxing aspect of the hill is ignored there are some supposed Bronze Age features to be found along with a nice peat pass or two, a mysterious stone and at one time a glaring mistake by the Ordnance Survey. The map below shows some of the more commoner names and places of Cut Hill, many more remain a 'top secret'. According to Gover et al, 1992, p.193 Cut Hill takes it's name from the nearby 'Cut Lane' as do many of the surrounding geographical features.




Look on any 1:25,000 OS map of Dartmoor (including the latest 2005 issue) and at Grid Reference SX 60850 82521 you will see, clearly labelled, "Cut Hill Stream". Hemery, 1983, p.477, states: "OS, on their 1:25,000 map have in error given this name to the stream now described; it belongs to the neighbouring tributary, unnamed on the maps which is Cut Hill Stream." That statement was published in 1983 and 22 years later the mistake has not been corrected as can be seen below:




Just to confuse things even more, if one wished to be truly pedantic then the correct 'Cut Hill Stream' should in fact be called 'Hangman's Stream' as this is what it was known as by the old moormen.
With regard to the mysterious stone, this is what is known as the 'Jew Stone' because on it is inscribed the letters J E W. Nobody seems to know what the inscription stands for but what has been realised is that it is possibly carved onto a fallen stone from a Bronze Age row.


The Jew Stone -
(my thanks to Sam & Rose Mulligan for the photo.)


It was rumoured that at one time there was also an old wooden OS trig point on Cut Hill, this was removed long ago and never replaced. It is marked on the old 1889 OS map as can be seen below so there may possibly some credence in this fact.




In 2004, Dr, T, Greeves discovered that there are possible unrecorded prehistoric features on Cut Hill in so much that there is a barrow, cairn and a stone row comprising of 6 fallen stones. The row is aligned roughly NE/SW (52º/232º) and is situated on the top of the hill at grid reference SX 59928275. Five of the stones are visible along a 100m strip of ground where the peat has been eroded, they are spaced uniformly between 19m and 29.5m apart as can be seen from the plan below.


Adapted from T. A. Greeves' original plan
The Prehistoric Society, July 2004


bullet
Stone number 1 measures 2.3 x 0.9m
bullet
Stone number 2 measures 2.4 x 0.8m
bullet
Stone number 3 measures 1.85 x 0.7m and is the 'Jew Stone'.
bullet
Stone number 4 measures 1.9 x 1.2m
bullet
Stone Number 5 measures 2.6 x 0.7m
bullet
Stone number 6 measures 2.1 x 1.05m


It appears that each of the stones had been deliberately selected for the purpose of giving the row the appearance of a thin, 0.20m line of uprights when viewed along the axis of the row but a much wider row when viewed from either side of the axis. The actual length of the row is 123m but there is another possible slab that may also have been part of the line, this would extend the row to 157.5m. The alignment of the row runs to within approximately 22m of the barrow's centre and stone number one lies 58m WSW away. The barrow is 14m in diameter and approximately 1.5m high and consists of a superficially almost stone-free mound. Past the mound there are suggestions of a 1.5m wide berm or flat space which separates the barrow from the surrounding ditch which is 2m wide and defined by an 2m outer ring bank.


Photo - E. Red, The Modern Antiquarian.


Greeves suggests that of the 80 odd recorded stone rows on Dartmoor this particular feature shows several anomalies in so much as:


bullet
 The altitude of the stone row is approximately 100m higher than any previously recorded row on Dartmoor.
bullet
The stone slabs are some of the largest used in a Dartmoor stone row with only Staldon and Piles Hill rows showing anything like the size.
bullet
"Of special interest are the messages potentially contained in the peat associated with the row. It is usually suggested that blanket peat began forming at 600m on Dartmoor in the 4th millennium BC (e.g. Caseldine & Maguire 1981, 8). Could the row be as early as this, or are we to assume that the peat formed later?" This theory is based on the argument used by Greeves that: "the peat has eroded by either natural or human agency, and appears to be on a prehistoric land surface about 1.4m lower than the present top surface of the peat."


This idea would mean that the stone row was erected during the Early Neolithic period. Whilst nobody would dismiss the idea of a 'previously un-recorded' stone row the dating and context is very questionable:

"Stone rows and stone alignments began to be built from the early second millennium..," Darvill, 1996, p.94.

By the end of the Bronze Age deterioration of the soil and pasture forced people from their homes, but the five or six centuries before this had produced not only a pastoral population in the south-west of Dartmoor but also a form of monument that cannot perfectly be matched elsewhere in the British Isles, the well-known stone rows...," Burl, 1981 p.110.

"Environmental evidence suggests that Dartmoor was used on an increasing scale from the mid third millennium BC, and this is consistent with the dating evidence provided by burials from the area. At first it may have been visited seasonally by communities from the surrounding lowlands and it was not until about 1700BC that the land was sub-divided by the reaves. In between, the archaeological evidence is dominated by specialised forms of monument: burial cairns, cists, stone rows...," Bradley, 2002, p.74.

"By about 2500BC, after perhaps a thousand years of small-scale hunting and grazing in the uplands, pressure on this land seems to have intensified. At this time (though the dating evidence is very thin, and the chronology depends partly on the comparisons made with the archaeological sequence in other parts of southern England) over seventy stone rows were built...," Fleming, 1988, p.95.

"Neolithic (c.4500 - 2300BC)... Other types of monuments, some of which may have been built towards the end of this period, are the stone rows...," Gerrard, 1997, p.33.

"Many megalithic rows and menhirs and the stone circles to which they often attach may well date from the end of the second millennium BC (of Beaker and early Bronze Age date)." Malone, 2001, p.188.

Greeves also postulates that the stones were especially selected for their purpose but to confirm this one needs to know what that purpose was. Because every stone row may have had a differing a purpose which required varying shapes and sizes of stone. With regards to the cairn, Greeves states: "The small cairn shown on the plan may be modern."
You certainly meet some strange people around Cut Hill like an oriental gentleman wearing jeans and a t-shirt kitted out with a Tesco's carrier bag in a snowstorm. On another occasion whilst mooching about Cut Lane Stream, which incidentally was about 3 inches deep at the time, I met an fully equipped angler fishing for trout. On several occasions there have been encounters with people asking if they were anywhere near Cranmere Pool because their map shows they should be there, well not bad navigation, only about 2 miles out! In 1984 a grass fire caused by a camping stove caught hold and took out a lot of hill killing many ground nesting birds and melting a multitude of letterbox stamps.

 Bibliography.

Many thanks to Sam and Rose Mulligan for their much appreciated help with this page.

Bradley, R. 2002 The Past in Prehistoric Societies, Routledge, London.
Burl, A. 1976 The Stone Circles of the British Isles, Yale Pub., London.
Darvill, T. 1996 Prehistoric Britain, Routledge, London.
Fleming A. 1988 The Dartmoor Reaves, Batsford, London.
Gerrard, S. 1997, Dartmoor, Batsford, London.
Gover, J. E. B., Mawer, A. & Stenton, F.M. 1998 The Place-Names of Devon. The English Place-Name Society, Nottingham.
Greeves, T. A. 2004 Megalithic Stone Row Found on Dartmoor's Remotest Hill, The Prehistoric Society - on-line source found at
Hemery, E. 1983, High Dartmoor, Hale, London.
Malone, C. 2001 Neolithic Britain and Ireland, Tempus Pub. Stroud.

Benazir Bhutto 'left to mercy of assassins by security chief'




Benazir Bhutto 'left to mercy of assassins by security chief'
Published on 04-16-2010

Source: Telegraph
The former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was left to the mercy of her assassins by her security chief who abandoned her in the minutes before her death, a key witness has told the United Nations inquiry into her death.
Chaudhry Mohummad Aslam, one of Ms Bhutto's protocol officers who was guarding her vehicle when she was shot, said that Pakistan's interior minister Rehman Malik and current law minister Babar Awan were to blame for security lapses which allowed her killers to strike.
Ms Bhutto was killed on December 27, 2007 as she left an election campaign rally in Rawalpindi's Liaqat Bagh. She was standing through the sunroof of her Pajero jeep waving to supporters as she left the venue when she was shot through the head by a marksman. She slumped down into the car and died in the arms of her political secretary Naheed Khan. An explosion which followed the gunfire left more than 20 people dead.
Her death convulsed Pakistan and provoked a series of claims that establishment figures, including then president General Musharraf, one of his intelligence chiefs and Punjab Chief Minister Pervez Elahi were part of a conspiracy to kill her. All have denied the claims.
But according to Mr Aslam, who was himself wounded in the bomb blast, Ms Bhutto's killers were able to get close to her because of the sudden departure of Mr Malik and Mr Awan in a private Mercedes reserved as an alternative car for Ms Bhutto.
The United Nations was on Thursday night due to release a report into the circumstances surrounding Ms Bhutto's assassination and sources close to the investigation have said it is expected to highlight a series of security failings.
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Aslam said there was a car was in front of Ms Bhutto's Pajero as she prepared to leave, and that the two ministers commandeered it in breach of protocol rules and ordered the driver to speed to the home of her husband Asif Zardari, now the country's president.
When the police and private security teams saw the car speed away, they followed quickly behind, he said, leaving Ms Bhutto with no security protection.
"Rehman Malik and Babar Awan forced the driver of the Mercedes to leave immediately. When the [motorbike] pilot saw the car was going at full speed, he drove his bike to lead them. The police security squad and private security also followed them. When the Mitsubishi Pajero in which Benazir Bhutto was sitting came out of the gate there was no police, no private security, nothing was there the security thought she was in the Mercedes," he said.
Mr Aslam said he saw laser beams flash past his party leader's car and that she slumped down inside the car as the sound of bullets flew around. An explosion followed the shots, leaving 35 people dead, he said.
He had been just in front of Ms Bhutto's car when a bomb exploded a few metres away. He was seen in television footage at the time sitting bewildered among dead colleagues and stray shoes with an open leg wound.
Fauzia Wahab, the Pakistan Peoples Party's information secretary and a close aide of President Asif Zardari, confirmed that Mr Malik and Mr Awan had left Ms Bhutto behind in Liaqat Bagh. "Once she [Ms Bhutto] was down [from the stage], they grabbed the car and rushed to Mr Zardari's house to welcome her," she said.
She said on the night before the rally, Ms Bhutto had been visited at her residence by the head of the ISI intelligence agency to warn her there was a threat to her life and that she should cancel the meeting in Liaqat Bagh. It is not clear whether Mr Malik, as her head of security, was aware of the threat when he left Ms Bhutto's convoy.