Archeologists have unearthed 57 ancient Egyptian tombs, most of which hold an ornately painted wooden sarcophagus with a mummy inside, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities said .
The oldest tombs date back to around 2750 B.C. during the period of Egypt’s first and second dynasties, the council said in a statement. Twelve of the tombs belong the 18th dynasty which ruled Egypt during the second millennium B.C.The discovery throws new light on Egypt’s ancient religions, the council said.
Map of chlorine monoxide, the primary agent of ozone destruction in the Antarctic 'ozone hole,' as measured by the Microwave Limb Sounder instrument on NASA's Aura satellite at an altitude of approximately 18 kilometers (11.2 miles) within the ozone layer. Image credit: (Credit: NASA/JPL)
A team of scientists led by Michelle Santee of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., examined how nighttime temperatures affect chlorine monoxide, a key chemical involved in ozone destruction. Combining NASA satellite measurements with a state-of-the-art chemical model, they found this relationship to be more consistent with recent laboratory work than with some older laboratory and field observational data.
At night, chlorine monoxide molecules combine to form chlorine peroxide, and the balance between these two chemicals is highly temperature-sensitive. Studying this balance quantitatively is challenging. Previous studies in the laboratory and using aircraft and satellites had found significantly different degrees of balance. The Microwave Limb Sounder’s very large number of measurements has quantified this balance far better than before.
The new research contributes to scientific understanding of the phenomenon more commonly known as the “ozone hole.” Each year in late winter and early spring in the southern hemisphere, chlorine and bromine from human-produced compounds cause the nearly total destruction of ozone in Earth’s stratosphere in a layer about 20 kilometers (12 miles) above Antarctica. These source gases that are responsible for the greatest destruction of the ozone layer are now declining in response to the 1985 Montreal Protocol and its amendments.
Since its launch in 2004, the Microwave Limb Sounder has monitored most of the polar regions of both hemispheres daily, compiling tens of thousands of measurements of nighttime chlorine monoxide levels, along with various other chemicals, including ozone. These data are allowing scientists to test their understanding of chlorine-related chemistry on an unprecedented scale.
The hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy may also be its shortest-lived world. The doomed planet is being eaten by its parent star, according to observations made by a new instrument on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The planet may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.
The hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy may also be its shortest-lived world. The doomed planet is being eaten by its parent star, according to observations made by a new instrument on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The planet may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.
J. Craig Venter, the genome pioneer, has created a “synthetic cell” by synthesizing a complete bacterial genome and using it to take over a cell. Venter’s breakthrough, reported in the online edition of Science, represents a preliminary step toward the goal of creating microbes from scratch in the lab and using them to make biofuels, vaccines, and other products.
Venter’s achievement could one day lead to a technology where, though engineering the genome, individual cells could be turned into their own miniature refineries for harvesting carbon dioxide and generating hydrocarbons.
In 2005, Venter — one of the first people to sequence the human genome, doing it faster and cheaper than government scientists — set up a company, Synthetic Genomics, to create synthetic cells, and the advance reported in Science represents a milestone for the company and for so-called synthetic biology.
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