Hello, Tiffanys? Astronomers discover gigantic diamond planet

From REUTERS Last Updated: 3:23 PM, October 11, 2012 LONDON — Forget the diamond as big as the Ritz. This one's bigger than planet Earth. Orbiting a star that is visible to the naked eye, astronomers have discovered a planet twice the size of our own made largely out of diamond. The rocky planet, called '55 Cancri e', orbits a sun-like star in the constellation of Cancer and is moving so fast that a year there lasts a mere 18 hours. Discovered by a U.S.-Franco research team, its radius is twice that of Earth's but it is much more dense with a mass eight times greater. It is also incredibly hot, with temperatures on its surface reaching 3,900 degrees Fahrenheit. "The surface of this planet is likely covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and granite," said Nikku Madhusudhan, the Yale researcher whose findings are due to be published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters. The study — with Olivier Mousis at the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie in Toulose, France — estimates that at least a third of the planet's mass, the equivalent of about three Earth masses, could be diamond. Diamond planets have been spotted before but this is the first time one has been seen orbiting a sun-like star and studied in such detail. "This is our first glimpse of a rocky world with a fundamentally different chemistry from Earth," Madhusudhan said, adding that the discovery of the carbon-rich planet meant distant rocky planets could no longer be assumed to have chemical constituents, interiors, atmospheres, or biologies similar to Earth. David Spergel, an astronomer at Princeton University, said it was relatively simple to work out the basic structure and history of a star once you know its mass and age. "Planets are much more complex. This 'diamond-rich super-Earth' is likely just one example of the rich sets of discoveries that await us as we begin to explore planets around nearby stars." "Nearby" is a relative concept in astronomy. Any fortune-hunter not dissuaded by "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz", F.Scott Fitzgerald's jazz age morality tale of thwarted greed, will find Cancri e about 40 light years, or 230 trillion miles, from Park Avenue.

Skeleton found beneath English parking lot may belong to King Richard III

King Richard III's burial grounds may no longer be a royal secret. Researchers at the University of Leicester say they may have located the English monarch's remains beneath a parking lot in England — though it will be weeks before they can say for sure. "Clearly we are all very excited by these latest discoveries," Richard Taylor, director of corporate affairs at the University of Leicester, told reporters Wednesday. "Our focus is shifting from the archaeological excavation to laboratory analysis. This skeleton certainly has characteristics that warrant extensive further detailed examination." The fully intact skeleton was found within the choir area at the site of the ancient Grey Friars church, which was demolished in 1538 at the order of Henry VIII during the Dissolution of Monasteries. King Richard, the last English monarch to die in battle, is believed to have been buried at the church after he was killed during the Battle of Bosworth Field in August 1485. The adult male skeleton showed signs of trauma to its head and had a barbed arrow head lodged between the vertebrae of the skeleton's upper back — injuries consistent with those sustained in battle. "A bladed implement appears to have cleaved part of the rear of the skull," researchers said in a statement. The skeleton also had spinal abnormalities, suggesting that the person suffered from severe scoliosis. This abnormality would have made the person's right shoulder seem visibly higher than his left — a physical description that matches contemporary accounts of King Richard. Peter Soulsby, Leicester's City Mayor, said that if the remains do belong to the late monarch, the findings will have "enormous implications" for the city. "The discovery of King Richard's final resting place — if this is what we have — will enhance the telling of that story in a way we could never have planned," Soulsby said. This is not the team's first discovery related to King Richard. The archeologists announced last week that they had come across medieval paving stones that may have adorned a garden built in honor of the king by a 17th-century mayor of Leicester, Robert Herrick. In 1612, Christopher Wren, father of the famous architect, visited Herrick and described seeing a three-foot pillar, bearing the inscription, "Here lies the body of Richard III sometime King of England," in the garden. The possible remains of King Richard will now undergo DNA tests. But it will be as much as 12 weeks before researchers can confirm that they belong to the English monarch.

Renoir Painting Found at W.Va Flea Market

By BRETT ZONGKER Associated Press WASHINGTON September 12, 2012 (AP) A woman who paid $7 for a box of trinkets at a West Virginia flea market apparently acquired an original painting by French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir in the purchase. Anne Norton Craner, fine arts director for the Potomack Co. auction house in Alexandria, Va., says the woman made an appointment in July to see if it might be real. She says the woman is from Virginia but stopped at the flea market two years ago in the neighboring state. Craner says the painting was verified through a close look at the colors and brushwork along with the help of the French publisher of a catalog of Renoir's work. Craner said the painting is "Paysage Bords de Seine." It's set for auction Sept. 29. Craner says it's worth at least $75,000.

Discovery of living mammoth cells claimed

YAKUTSK, Russia, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- Researchers with an expedition in Russia's northeastern republic of Yakutia say they've found the "living cells" of a mammoth frozen in permafrost. "In a unique area at the depth of about 100 meters (330 feet) we discovered some rich material for research -- soft and adipose tissues, fur and bone marrow of a mammoth," expedition leader Semyon Grigoryev told a meeting at a university in the region's capital city, Yakutsk. The discovery has attracted the attention of controversial South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk, who has already announced his intention to clone a woolly baby mammoth from a specimen discovered in permafrost on the coast of the Laptev Sea last year, RIA Novosti reported Tuesday. Hwang, the leader of Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, was hailed as a national hero in South Korea until some of his research on human embryos was declared fraudulent in 2006. He received a suspended jail term in 2009 for embezzlement and accepting millions of dollars in grants under fraudulent circumstances. Responding to the reports of the latest discovery, experts from the Institute of Paleontology of the Russian Academy of Sciences said the discovery of living mammoth cells is unlikely. "The cell structure with nucleus can be preserved [only] under special conditions in deep-freeze," Alexander Agadzhanyan, the chief of the Institute's mammal laboratory, said. Cells needed a stable exchange with the environment to stay alive, he said Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2012/09/12/Discovery-of-living-mammoth-cells-claimed/UPI-68251347486709/#ixzz26uu7qGV4

Ancient papyrus fragment refers to Jesus' 'wife'

A papyrus fragment from the fourth century contains a phrase in which Jesus refers to "My wife," which a U.S. scholar says is the first evidence supporting the belief among early Christians that he was married, The New York Times reports. The fragment consists of eight lines of black ink, written in Coptic, which include the phrase. "Jesus said to them, 'My wife ...' " Below it is what the Times calls "a second provocative clause" that reportedly says, "she will be able to be my disciple." Karen King, a Christian scholar at the Harvard Divinity School, presented the finding today in Rome at the International Congress of Coptic Studies. She said in a statement that the earliest claim that Jesus did not marry is from 200 A.D. Early Christians did not always agree on whether they should marry or be celibate. The fragment does not prove that Jesus was married or that if he was that it was to Mary Magdalene, according to the draft paper. Based on the faded papyrus and handwriting, the fragment is likely authentic, Roger Bagnell, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in New York, said in a statement from Harvard, Bloomberg reports. King did not identify the owner of the fragment, which is about the size of a business card. King showed the fragment, enclosed in glass, to the Times,The Boston Globe and Harvard Magazine on Thursday. In an interview, the Times writes, King "repeatedly cautioned that this fragment should not be taken as proof that Jesus, the historical person, was actually married. The text was probably written centuries after Jesus lived, and all other early, historically reliable Christian literature is silent on the question," she said. "This fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married," King told the Times. "There was, we already know, a controversy in the second century over whether Jesus was married, caught up with a debate about whether Christians should marry and have sex." The Times adds: The provenance of the papyrus fragment is a mystery, and its owner has asked to remain anonymous. Until Tuesday, Dr. King had shown the fragment to only a small circle of experts in papyrology and Coptic linguistics, who concluded that it is most likely not a forgery. But she and her collaborators say they are eager for more scholars to weigh in and perhaps upend their conclusions. Even with many questions unsettled, the discovery could reignite the debate over whether Jesus was married, whether Mary Magdalene was his wife and whether he had a female disciple. These debates date to the early centuries of Christianity, scholars say. But they are relevant today, when global Christianity is roiling over the place of women in ministry and the boundaries of marriage. Princeton University religion professor AnneMarie Luijendijk, who co-authored the paper with King, said the fragment's poor condition suggests it was found in a garbage heap, Bloomberg writes. The Smithsonian Channel will air a special on the discovery Sept. 30, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

When did modern humans first arrive in Asia? Skull pieces could hold clues.

By Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor / August 20, 2012 Newfound pieces of human skull from "the Cave of the Monkeys" in Laos are the earliest skeletal evidence yet that humans once had an ancient, rapid migration to Asia. Anatomically modern humans first arose about 200,000 years ago in Africa. When and how our lineage then dispersed out of Africa has long proven controversial. Archaeological evidence and genetic data suggest that modern humans rapidly migrated out of Africa and into Southeast Asia by at least 60,000 years ago. However, complicating this notion is the notable absence of fossil evidence for modern human occupation in mainland Southeast Asia, likely because those bones do not survive well in the warm, tropical region. Now a partial skull from Tam Pa Ling, "the Cave of the Monkeys" in northern Laos helps fill in this mysterious gap in the fossil record. [See Photos of "Monkey Cave" Fossils] "Most surprising is the fact that we found anything at all," researcher Laura Lynn Shackelford, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Illinois, told LiveScience. "Most people didn't think we'd find anything in these caves, or even in the region where we're working in mainland Southeast Asia. But we're stubborn, gone where no one's really looked before, or at least in almost a century." Rough terrain, persistent scientists The fossils were discovered in 2009 in the limestone cave, which is located at the top of the Pa Hang Mountain 3,840 feet (1,170 meters) above sea level. "The cave is surrounded by lots of papaya and banana trees, so a troop of monkeys likes to come and forage there, therefore its name," Shackelford said. There were many challenges working in this area. "It's incredibly difficult to access the site — it's only 150 miles (240 kilometers) from the capital, but it takes us two days to drive there because of the rough terrain," Shackelford said. "We have to hike up the side of a cliff, do a bit of rock-climbing to get to the mouth of the cave, and then going in, we have to go 60 meters (200 ft) down a slope of wet clay. We also have to carry a generator and lights with us to see in the cave. We have to push pigs out of the way to get through the jungle — there are just pigs wandering around there." [Amazing Caves: Photos of Earth's Innards] "Every bit of clay has to be removed and taken back up by hand, trowel and bucket, so work is incredibly slow," she added. "We only go in the dry season in the winter, so we don't really have to deal with insects and snakes — well, we did have snakes fall into the pit while excavating. And in the cave, we've had more than our fair share of spiders and Oldest bones of modern humans No artifacts were found at the site, nor were signs of human occupation. "We think this fossil was outside with other fauna and flora, and during the rainy season, rain washed it into the cave," Shackelford said. "In subsequent seasons, more sediment washed into the cave and covered it." The shape of the bone and teeth is distinctly anatomically modern human, not like those of an extinct lineage such as the Neanderthals. A variety of dating techniques of the sediments surrounding the fossils suggests they are at least 46,000 to 51,000 years old, and direct dating of the bone suggests a maximum age of about 63,000 years. This makes these fossils the earliest skeletal evidence for anatomically modern humans east of the Middle East. These findings "change the thinking regarding modern human migration routes into Asia, that there were more routes of dispersal than previously thought," Shackelford said. "The typical thinking was that once modern humans hugged the coastline to go from India to Southeast Asia, they went southward into Indonesia and Australasia (the region comprising Australia, New Zealand and neighboring Pacific islands)," she explained. "We think they absolutely did that, but we're also suggesting other populations probably went north or northeast toward China, and some went through the mountains into mainland Southeast Asia, taking advantage of river systems. Beforehand, no one thought they would have gone into the mountains of Laos, Vietnam and Thailand." The researchers are now attempting to extract DNA from these fossils to see how related they may or may not be to later humans that once lived or currently live in the area. In the future, "the work we have is pretty boundless — there are literally thousands of limestone caves we can work on in this area to look for early modern humans," Shackelford said. "We can work here for the rest of our careers or lives and not see all the caves." The scientists detailed their findings online Aug. 20 in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Archaeologists a step closer to finding King Richard III's grave

By Stephanie Pappas updated 9/5/2012 4:42:53 PM ET Print Font: The hunt for King Richard III's grave is heating up, with archaeologists announcing Wednesday that they have located the church where the king was buried in 1485. "The discoveries so far leave us in no doubt that we are on the site of Leicester's Franciscan Friary, meaning we have crossed the first significant hurdle of the investigation," Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the dig, said in a statement. Buckley and his colleagues have been excavating a parking lot in Leicester, England, since Aug. 25. They are searching for Greyfriars church, said to be the final resting place of Richard III, who died in battle during the War of the Roses, an English civil war. A century later, Shakespeare would immortalize Richard III in a play of the same name. After his death in the Battle of Bosworth Field, Richard III was brought to Leicester and buried at Greyfriars. The location of the grave, and the church itself, were eventually lost to history, though University of Leicester archaeologists traced the likely location to beneath the parking lot for the Leicester City Council offices. The team announced last week that their first two trenches turned up glazed floor-tile fragments, medieval roof tile and other building fragments, suggesting that they were digging in the right place to find Greyfriars. Now, a third trench has revealed the alignment of the building's walls. "We now think we have evidence for a two-meter-wide (6.5 feet) north-south passageway, which originally had a tile floor — this may be a cloister walk on one side of a cloister garth or courtyard," Buckley said. "At right angles to this is an east-west aligned building some five meters (16 feet) wide, again with evidence for a tiled floor." [ Gallery: Digging for Richard III ] North of the building, there is an open space and then another large building with walls nearly 5 feet (1.5 meters) thick, Buckley said. The archaeologists suspected that the thick wall might be the south wall of the church building, and now the third trench suggests that, indeed, the wall continues and meets up with another wall to the north with a mortar floor in between. "The size of the walls, the orientation of the building, its position and the presence of medieval inlaid floor tiles and architectural fragments make this almost certainly the church of the Greyfriars," Buckley said. The archaeologists now plan to excavate further in search of the church's high alter and choir. The latter spot is recorded in history as the site of King Richard III's grave. If the king's body is found, he will be reinterred in Leicester Cathedral. If he is not discovered, Buckley said, the excavation has been a success in that it has uncovered a medieval church lost for four centuries. "With or without the burial place of Richard III, the investigation has been extremely rewarding and makes a significant contribution in terms of telling the story of medieval Leicester," Buckley said.

600-year-old linen bras found in Austrian castle

(AP) VIENNA - A revolutionary discovery is rewriting the history of underwear: Some 600 years ago, women wore bras. The University of Innsbruck said Wednesday that archaeologists found four linen bras dating from the Middle Ages in an Austrian castle. Fashion experts describe the find as surprising because the bra had commonly been thought to be only little more than 100 years old as women abandoned the tight corset. Instead, it appears the bra came first, followed by the corset, followed by the reinvented bra. One specimen in particular "looks exactly like a (modern) brassiere," says Hilary Davidson, fashion curator for the London Museum. "These are amazing finds." Although the linen garments were unearthed in 2008, they did not make news until now says Beatrix Nutz, the archaeologist responsible for the discovery. Researching the items and carbon dating them to make sure they were genuine took some time. She delivered a lecture on them last year but the information stayed within academic circles until a recent article in the BBC History Magazine. "We didn't believe it ourselves," she said in a telephone call from the Tyrolean city of Innsbruck. "From what we knew, there was no such thing as bra-like garments in the 15th century." The university said the four bras were among more than 2,700 textile fragments - some linen, others linen combined with cotton - that were found intermixed with dirt, wood, straw and pieces of leather. "Four linen textiles resemble modern-time bras" with distinct cups and one in particular looks like today's version, it said, with "two broad shoulder straps and a possible back strap, not preserved but indicated by partially torn edges of the cups onto which it was attached." And the lingerie was not only functional. The bras were intricately decorated with lace and other ornamentation, the statement said, suggesting they were also meant to please a suitor. While paintings of the era show outerwear, they do not reveal what women wore beneath. Davidson, the fashion curator, described the finds as "kind of a missing link" in the history of women's underwear. Women started experimenting with bra-like garments in the late 1800s and the first modern brassiere was patented in the early 19th century. It is thought to have been invented by New York socialite Mary Phelps Jacob, who was unhappy with the look of her gown over a stiff corset. Also found at Lemberg Castle in Tyrol was a linen undergarment that looks very much like a pair of panties. But Nutz said it is men's underwear - women did not wear anything under their flowing skirts back then. "Underpants were considered a symbol of male dominance and power," she said. Medieval drawings often show a man and a woman fighting for a pair of underpants in a symbolic battle to see who "wears the trousers" in the family.

Ancient Scripture Discovered in Former Church Employee’s Garage

The Codex Calixtinus, a 12th-Century religious text, was discovered in a locked garage in northern Spain a year after it disappeared from the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral. By Tim Newcomb The search for the Codex Calixtinus, a 12thcentury collection of illustrated sermons and liturgical passages, an item heisted from a church near the northwest coast of Spain last year, has resulted in the arrest of the church’s former caretaker, his wife, his son and another woman. But up until this week there was no sign of the Codex itself. The man, who worked as the caretaker of Santiago de Compostela Cathedral for 25 years before being fired for forging a work contract, came under intense police scrutiny that led officials to locate about $1.5 million in cash, a key to various church buildings, eight copies of the Codex and other medieval-era books and writings hidden among garages, houses and storage rooms on property the man owned near the church. The Codex, , an ancient five-volume work that explained to pilgrims the best route to get to the cathedral, along with songs to sing and passages to read is considered one of Spain’s most important religious and cultural pieces. It was discovered the day after Wednesday’s arrest as police, still searching in outbuildings located near the church, found the “priceless” in a locked garage near the church property. The Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, which is also the final stop in the famous Camino de Santiago pilgrimage and reported home of James the Greater (one of Jesus Christ’s 12 apostles), had kept the Codex in a safe deposit box; it normally displays a replica of the document under glass.

Report: Hitler ordered his Jewish World War I commander protected

By msnbc.com staff and news services Adolf Hitler personally intervened to protect a Jewish man who had been his commanding officer during World War I, according to a letter unearthed by the Jewish Voice from Germany newspaper. The letter, written in Aug. 27, 1940, by Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazis' feared paramilitary SS, said Ernst Hess, a judge, should be spared persecution or deportation and receive “relief and protection as per the Fuhrer's wishes.” Historian Susanne Mauss discovered the letter. "It was a wonderful chance find," she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday. "There had always been rumors, but this was the first written reference to a protection by Hitler." The letter was found in official archives containing files that the Nazi secret police, or Gestapo, kept on Jewish lawyers and judges. Mauss said its authenticity is corroborated by other documents, including one owned by Hess' surviving daughter, Ursula Hess, 86. Hess, a decorated World War I hero who briefly commanded Hitler's company in Flanders, worked as a judge until Nazi racial laws forced him to resign in 1936. The same year he was beaten up by Nazi thugs outside his house, the paper said. Hitler had ordered the genocide of all Europe’s Jews. His orders led to the deaths of 6 million Jews. In a petition to Hitler at that time, Hess wrote: "For us it is a kind of spiritual death to now be branded as Jews and exposed to general contempt." Hess and his family moved for a time to a German-speaking area of northern Italy but were then forced to return to Germany, where he discovered Hitler's protection order had been revoked. He spent the rest of World War II doing slave labor but he escaped death partly thanks to the fact that his wife was a gentile. Hess' sister died in the Auschwitz death camp, but his mother managed to escape to Switzerland. Hess remained in Germany after the war, becoming head of the Federal Railway Authority based in Frankfurt. He died in 1983. Ursula Hess, still living in Germany, told the paper in an interview that her father had benefited from a chance encounter with another World War I comrade, Fritz Wiedemann. He became Hitler's adjutant and used his influence to win concessions for Hess, she was quoted as saying. Ursula Hess also recalled her father saying that as a young corporal in World War I, Hitler had no friends in their regiment and had kept himself very much to himself. The paper's publisher, Rafael Seligmann, said that whether Hitler had helped protect Hess or not didn't change the Nazi leader's genocidal record. "History won't need to be rewritten because of this," he said.

Caravaggio claims spark Italian art world dispute

ROME – Caravaggio was notorious for his brawling, so it might be fitting that a claim by two Italian art historians that they discovered as many as 100 drawings by the painter in his boyhood has sparked an art world uproar. The researchers say they found dozens of early drawings by Caravaggio in the collection of master Milanese artist Simone Peterzano, the painter's teacher from 1584 to 1588. Many experts have responded with skepticism to the startling claim: Over the centuries, art historians have never definitively attributed any drawings to Caravaggio, who shook up 16th-century art by using models from the lower walks of life for religious scenes and dramatically counterpointing light and dark. On Friday, the curator of the drawings collection at Milan's Sforzesco Castle, where the collection of 1,500 painting generally attributed to Peterzano is kept, challenged the seriousness of the researchers' methods and contended that the pair had never set foot in the room to scrutinize the works. "We would be happy to have a Caravaggio," Francesco Rossi said, cautioning that it's difficult to be sure of the works' provenance. Making it especially difficult to pin works on Caravaggio was the artist's habit of not signing his own work. Attempts at fakes and uncertain claims of authenticity have been frequent. He dismissed the historians' methods as naive. "What surprised us about this thing is the fact that these experts never came here in the drawings department to see the works," Rossi told The Associated Press. "They evaluated (the drawings) using black and white photographs." The researchers defended their claim, which they made public on Thursday in an interview with the Italian news agency ANSA. Adriana Conconi Fedrigolli, told the AP in a phone interview that some of their research team studied the drawings firsthand. When pressed to identify the other researchers, she said she wasn't authorized to reveal their names and passed the phone to the other art historian, Maurizio Bernardelli Curuz. "I saw the originals," Bernadelli Curuz said. The art historian said he was able to visit the collection `'after hours," thanks to his contacts with a high-level city official who was authorized to enter the drawings department. He declined to identify the city official. But he insisted that he and Conconi Fedrigolli worked `'in a very scientific way" using photos of the drawings and comparing details to those in well-known Caravaggio works. He said it was not logical that among the Peterzano collection drawings there wouldn't be any by Caravaggio, a star pupil then known as Michelangelo Merisi. The artist is better known by the name of the Italian town where he was born. He contended they were able to distinguish drawings by Peterzano from those of his pupils, including Caravaggio. Among the prominent skeptics was Antonio Paolucci, the director of the Vatican Museums and one of Italy's most esteemed art historians and restoration experts, who pointed out that many experts have seen the drawing and "not one of those experts had come up with the name of Caravaggio." Paolucci described the claim as "pure inductive optimism" in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano on Friday, though he acknowledged it was always possible that "researchers with lesser credentials but with an especially gifted eye, sensitivity and also luck" had pinpointed something new. Paolucci has experienced first-hand the perils of attributing works to great artists, particularly Caravaggio. Two summers ago, the Vatican Museums director wrote an article under the headline "A New Caravaggio? Not really," a week after the Vatican newspaper first suggested that a painting depicting St. Lawrence could be that of Caravaggio -- but then backtracked. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/07/06/caravaggio-claims-spark-italian-art-world-dispute/#ixzz1zzROzXb0

Napoleon's English homework sells for $415,000

A RARE letter written by Napoleon in English has sold at auction for 325,000 euros ($415,000), five times the predicted price. The standard-sized sheet of paper is a homework exercise Napoleon sent to an English teacher for correction in 1816 and was sealed with the imperial eagle wax stamp. It's one of three such English-language letters by Napoleon in the world, according to the auction organisers, and was bought by Paris's Museum of Letters and Manuscripts in a dramatic bidding war yesterday near the Chateau of Fontainebleau, one of Napoleon's south of Paris. The selling price suggests the document's historic value, as rare proof that Napoleon, who famously dismissed England as a "nation of shopkeepers", learned to speak the language of his opponents late in life. He wrote the letter while a captive of the British in the remote island of Saint Helena following his defeat at Waterloo, according to the Osenat auction house. The house's president, Jean-Pierre Osenat, says Napoleon's English lessons were "very noble, respectful". "He really had a great admiration for England, the rules and history. The English have the wrong idea: Napoleon didn't hate them, he was just a military man, and the French interests were different to the English," he said. But did admiration alone lead the empire-building Frenchman to learn English? It seems that vanity, too, may have played a role - and though he was stranded on the South Atlantic Ocean island, he still cared about what people thought. "Of course, he was always very worried about his image. He wanted to read what was said about him in the English press," added Osenat, with a wry smile. Whatever the reason and despite Napoleon's best efforts - months of hard study, often late into the night - the letter shows he still had some way to go in mastering the language of Shakespeare. It begins: "It's two o'clock after midnight, I have enow sleep, I go then finish the night with you." Napoleon addressed the letter to the Count Las Cases, his teacher, "at his bonk" - thought to be the word "bunk" misspelled. The document offers insight into the historical puzzle of who Napoleon became when imprisoned and in exile. After defeat at Waterloo, under constant watch and allowed only a small entourage, the great leader became depressed and neared death. "It's very moving, since it's one of the last pieces of writings in English before his death," said 19th-century manuscript expert Alain Nicolas. "At the end he's written: 'Four o'clock in the morning,' so he wrote that in two hours. He took some time to write it. ... It shows he couldn't sleep and took his time. He had painful cancer in the stomach. He was an insomniac," Nicolas said. "He had a lot of moments to sit and reflect in Saint Helena. Learning English was a way to fill his time. It was near the end of his life: he used it as a time to think about his life, his campaigns, regrets and remorse," Nicolas added. Napoleon died in island exile on May 5, 1821, aged 52. Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world/napoleons-english-homework-sells-for-415000/story-e6frfkyi-1226390795609#ixzz1xUESlQBZ

Lost Mozart Piece Discovered

A PIANO work experts believe Mozart composed as a child has been performed for the first time since it was found last year after apparently being left in an attic for centuries.

The lively 84-bar passage - marked "allegro molto," or "very quick" - was played on the composer's piano in a room of his Salzburg home by virtuoso Florian Birsak on Friday.

The Mozarteum Salzburg Foundation, which staged the event, said the manuscript was found last summer as part of a 160-page book of handwritten piano music as the musty attic of a house in Tyrol was being cleared from centuries of detritus.

Part of a collection of notes from a village music teacher, the book was dated 1780 - 24 years after Mozart was born - and the manuscript played on Friday bore the name "Del Signore Giovane Wolfgango Mozart," Italian for "Mr Wolfgang Mozart Jr".

Musicologist Hildegard Hermann-Schneider, who traced the composition to Mozart, said the fact that other pieces in the book were known works by Mozart's father, Leopold, strengthened the case that the work was genuine. As well, Leopold Mozart often used "Wolfgango" when labelling works written by his young son, she said.

From the style of the composition, Hermann-Schneider attributed it to Mozart at around the age of 11.

The piece exhibits "a series of components that are found repeatedly in other Mozart piano works," said the Mozarteum in a statement.

"Judging by the current level of knowledge, it thus has to be a genuine sonata phrase from Mozart."

Da Vinci's Lost Work

Art sleuths said on Monday they believe they have found traces of a Leonardo Da Vinci masterpiece on a hidden wall in a palace in Florence that has not been seen in over four centuries.

The traces were collected using tiny probes introduced into a wall covering the original surface in a lavish hall in the Palazzo Vecchio and contained a black pigment also used in the "Mona Lisa", historians and officials said.

The research is the result of a decades-long quest using cutting-edge technology by University of California San Diego professor Maurizio Seracini, who was featured in Dan Brown's bestselling novel "The Da Vinci Code".

"The composition of manganese and iron found in the black pigment has been identified exclusively on Leonardo's paintings," Seracini, whose methods have sometimes stirred art world controversy, told reporters in the Italian city.

Seracini also said that Leonardo had painted the "Mona Lisa" at around the same time as the long-lost "Battle of Anghiari" in the 16th century but said more research was needed to unlock one of art history's greatest mysteries.

The probes also discovered red lacquer and brown pigment on the hidden wall, which researchers said indicated the wall had had a fresco painted on it.

The experts pointed to documentary evidence from the period showing that only Leonardo could have been the author of any work on the older wall.

The probes found an air gap of around three centimetres (1.2 inches) in some places between the old wall and the new wall built in front of it.

Da Vinci (1452-1519) began his painting of the 1440 battle between Milanese and Florentine forces in a vast hall in Florence's traditional seat of government in 1505 but never finished it because the colours began to run.

The fresco was nevertheless praised by Da Vinci's contemporaries for what art historian and fellow painter Giorgio Vasari called its "graceful beauty" and Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens drew a famous copy of it.

Renaissance master Benvenuto Cellini said it was "the school of the world."

The Rubens sketch shows a bloody scene of horsemen battling with swords drawn and trampling over infantry men -- their faces contorted with rage and their muscled horses entwined with eyes bulging out with fear.

Da Vinci was a Renaissance polymath and the author of what has become the most famous painting in the world, the "Mona Lisa". But very few of his works survive and there are frequent attempts to find traces of his documented work.

Some historians believe Vasari built a wall in front of the fresco so as to preserve Da Vinci's efforts out of respect for the renowned master and then painted his own work, "The Battle of Marciano", on the new wall in 1563.

Seracini said Vasari himself left a tantalising clue on his painting about the hidden Leonardo with an inscription on a banner held up by one of the soldiers in the battle that reads "Cerca Trova" ("Seek and You Shall Find").

The research has been partly funded by National Geographic and the US group's vice president Terry Garcia said: "I am convinced that it is there."

Florence mayor Matteo Renzi said: "This is very exciting, very emotional and very important for the future of our city.

"This is not a crusade by some crazy guy in love with some mystery but a crucial issue for cultural policy in our country," he said.

Renzi said he had also asked the Italian government for permission to carry out further probes through the Vasari painting in over a dozen areas where the original paint no longer exists and has been touched up over the centuries.

Asked whether public funding would be needed for further research, he said: "We're talking about Leonardo here. The money will come from around the world."

The research in Florence has been controversial however and has been even investigated by art police because the researchers had to bore six small holes into Vasari's work out of the 14 they had requested to reach the hidden wall.

International art scholars and the Italian heritage group "Italia Nostra" last year signed a petition complaining that the search was nothing more than a "Dan-Brown style" publicity stunt which risked damaging Vasari's fresco.

Art historian Tomaso Montanari, who teaches at the University of Naples, said in his blog that the search for the "Battle of Anghiari" was "tragi-comic" adding: "It will not be found but what counts is the mediatic effect."

Seracini said the criticism had "slowed down" and "damaged" the project.

Real Jurassic Park? Scientists to bring back woolly mammoth

by Michael Henrich

Doesn't anybody remember Jurassic Park?

Perhaps a certain group of Japanese and Russian scientists does not.

Thanks to the finding of well-preserved bone marrow in a woolly mammoth thigh bone recovered from Siberia, these scientists believe they can clone the long-extinct species and bring it back into existence, according to published reports.

The researchers plan to produce embryos with mammoth DNA by replacing the nuclei of egg cells from an elephant with those taken from the mammoth's marrow cells, the reports state.

Scientists from Russia's Sakha Republic's mammoth museum and Japan's Kinki University are launching the joint research project next year and hope to clone a woolly mammoth within five years.

Mammoths became extinct roughly 10,000 years ago.

NASA Telescope Confirms Alien Planet in Habitable Zone

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft has confirmed the discovery of its first alien world in its host star's habitable zone — that just-right range of distances that could allow liquid water to exist — and found more than 1,000 new explanet candidates, researchers announced today (Dec. 5).

The new finds bring the Kepler space telescope's total haul to 2,326 potential planets in its first 16 months of operation.These discoveries, if confirmed, would quadruple the current tally of worlds known to exist beyond our solar system, which recently topped 700.

The potentially habitable alien world, a first for Kepler, orbits a star very much like our own sun. The discovery brings scientists one step closer to finding a planet like our own — one which could conceivably harbor life, scientists said.

"We're getting closer and closer to discovering the so-called 'Goldilocks planet,'" Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., said during a press conference today. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]

The newfound planet in the habitable zone is called Kepler-22b. It is located about 600 light-years away, orbiting a sun-like star.

Kepler-22b's radius is 2.4 times that of Earth, and the two planets have roughly similar temperatures. If the greenhouse effect operates there similarly to how it does on Earth, the average surface temperature on Kepler-22b would be 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius).

Hunting down alien planets

The $600 million Kepler observatory launched in March 2009 to hunt for Earth-size alien planets in the habitable zone of their parent stars, where liquid water, and perhaps even life, might be able to exist.

Kepler detects alien planets using what's called the "transit method." It searches for tiny, telltale dips in a star's brightness caused when a planet transits — or crosses in front of — the star from Earth's perspective, blocking a fraction of the star's light.

The finds graduate from "candidates" to full-fledged planets after follow-up observations confirm that they're not false alarms. This process, which is usually done with large, ground-based telescopes, can take about a year.

The Kepler team released data from its first 13 months of operation back in February, announcing that the instrument had detected 1,235 planet candidates, including 54 in the habitable zone and 68 that are roughly Earth-size.

Of the total 2,326 candidate planets that Kepler has found to date, 207 are approximately Earth-size. More of them, 680, are a bit larger than our planet, falling into the "super-Earth" category. The total number of candidate planets in the habitable zones of their stars is now 48.

To date, just over two dozen of these potential exoplanets have been confirmed, but Kepler scientists have estimated that at least 80 percent of the instrument's discoveries should end up being the real deal.

More discoveries to come

The newfound 1,094 planet candidates are the fruit of Kepler's labors during its first 16 months of science work, from May 2009 to September 2010. And they won't be the last of the prolific instrument's discoveries.

"This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin," Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.

Mission scientists still need to analyze data from the last two years and on into the future. Kepler will be making observations for a while yet to come; its nominal mission is set to end in November 2012, but the Kepler team is preparing a proposal to extend the instrument's operations for another year or more.

Kepler's finds should only get more exciting as time goes on, researchers say.

"We're pushing down to smaller planets and longer orbital periods," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead at Ames.

To flag a potential planet, the instrument generally needs to witness three transits. Planets that make three transits in just a few months must be pretty close to their parent stars; as a result, many of the alien worlds Kepler spotted early on have been blisteringly hot places that aren't great candidates for harboring life as we know it.

Given more time, however, a wealth of more distantly orbiting — and perhaps more Earth-like — exoplanets should open up to Kepler. If intelligent aliens were studying our solar system with their own version of Kepler, after all, it would take them three years to detect our home planet.

"We are getting very close," Batalha said. "We are homing in on the truly Earth-size, habitable planets."

Scientists Solve Puzzle of Black Death’s DNA

By NICHOLAS WADE


After the Black Death reached London in 1348, about 2,400 people were buried in East Smithfield, near the Tower of London, in a cemetery that had been prepared for the plague’s arrival. From the teeth of four of those victims, researchers have now reconstructed the full DNA of a microbe that within five years felled one-third to one-half of the population of Western Europe.

The bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, is still highly virulent today but has different symptoms, leading some historians to doubt that it was the agent of the Black Death.

Those doubts were laid to rest last year by detection of the bacterium’s DNA in plague victims from mass graves across Europe. With the full genome now in hand, the researchers hope to recreate the microbe itself so as to understand what made the Black Death outbreak so deadly.

So far, the evidence points more toward the conditions of the time than to properties of the bacterium itself. The genome recovered from the East Smithfield victims is remarkably similar to that of the present-day bacterium, says the research team, led by Kirsten I. Bos of McMaster University in Ontario and Johannes Krause of the University of Tübingen in Germany.

This is the first time the genome of an ancient pathogen has been reconstructed, opening the way to tracking other ancient epidemics and how their microbes adapted to human hosts.

The bacterium’s genome consists of a single chromosome, about 4.6 million DNA units long, and three small rings of DNA called plasmids. In the 660 years since the Black Death struck, only 97 of these DNA units have changed and only a dozen of these changes occur in genes and therefore would affect the organism’s physical properties, the researchers report in Wednesday’s issue of the journal Nature. Dr. Krause and others reported the DNA sequence of one of the plasmids in August. The changes in the genome will be studied one by one to see how each affects the microbe’s virulence.

The researchers hope eventually to modify a living plague bacterium so that its genome is identical to that of the agent of the Black Death. Such a microbe could be handled only in special secure facilities. But even if it did infect a person, the bacterium would be susceptible to antibiotics, like its living descendants, said Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University, a team member.

If the microbe’s genome is so little changed, the deadliness of the Black Death may reflect the condition of its medieval victims. Harsh as the economic stresses assailing Europe today may be, they are a breeze compared with problems in the mid-14th century. The climate was cooling, heavy rains rotted out crops and caused frequent famines, and the Hundred Years’ War began in 1337. People were probably already suffering from malnutrition and other diseases when the plague arrived like the fourth horseman of the apocalypse. “People honestly thought it was the end of the world,” Ms. Bos said.

Recovery of the medieval plague bacterium’s full genome is a technical tour de force. The DNA had been degraded into millions of small fragments that were overwhelmed in number by DNA from the human host and from the bacteria that consumed the body after death. Dr. Krause’s team fished out the plague DNA by using DNA from the modern bacterium, relying on the fact that DNA strands bind to DNA of complementary sequence.

“This is a major technological step forward, a great advance for the entire field of DNA and pathogens,” said Mark Achtman, an expert on ancient plague at University College Cork in Ireland.

But Dr. Achtman disagreed with one issue in Dr. Krause’s findings, that of whether Yersinia pestis also caused the outbreak in the sixth century known as the Justinian plague. When the full genome of the medieval bacterium is compared with DNA recovered from other known human outbreaks, a tree of descent can be constructed. The Black Death genome lies so close to the root of the tree that the human pathogen probably did not exist much earlier or, if it did, has vanished without any descendants, Dr. Krause’s team says. This implies that the Justinian plague was caused by some other agent.

Dr. Achtman said this conclusion was incorrect because the Krause team had omitted DNA from several human cases that place the root of the tree much further back in time. Dr. Krause said he had left these cases out because they seemed unreliable.

The modern plague bacterium changes its DNA units slowly, but it does quite often rearrange the order of its genes. Some experts believe gene order can affect pathogenicity. Dr. Krause had available only tiny fragments of DNA, so although he was able to reconstruct all the medieval bacterium’s genes he could not establish the exact order in which the genes were arranged, leaving open the possibility that the bacterium was inherently more pathogenic because its genome was differently organized.

Paul Keim, an expert on infectious bacteria at Northern Arizona University, said that work by Dr. Achtman and Dr. Krause had shown that the Black Death “was really a series of epidemics coming out of China and sweeping across the susceptible ecological situation” created by the culture of medieval Europe. The plague in each outbreak probably did not persist very long and was repeatedly re-established by new infections from East Asia, where the bacterium is still endemic in small rodents like marmots.

“We don’t have a human ecological situation comparable today, plus it is really easy to break the transmission cycle with antibiotics and public health,” Dr. Keim said. There are still small outbreaks, like one in Madagascar in the 1990s, but “a multiyear large human outbreak is inconceivable in this day,” he said.

Besides the Justinian plague and the Black Death, a third great wave of plague swept out of China in 1894, causing an epidemic in San Francisco in 1900 and killing millions of people in India.

All the teeth used in the study will be returned to the skulls from which they were taken, now in a London museum whose archaeologists excavated the East Smithfield cemetery in the 1980s.

Winston Churchill's false teeth go on sale

LONDON – Part of a set of dentures used by Winston Churchill to disguise a lisp is going on sale.

The partial dentures are being put on auction with an estimated value of 4,000 pounds to 5,000 pounds ($6,200 to $7,800.)

A duplicate set is kept by the Royal College of Surgeons of England. The organization says the dentures were a tool that the wartime British Prime Minister relied upon to overcome a childhood lisp.

The set to be auctioned Thursday by Keys Auctioneers is being sold by the son of the dental technician who was commissioned to make them.

Ship lost for more than 150 years is recovered

TORONTO – Canadian archeologists have found a ship abandoned more than 150 years ago in the quest for the fabled Northwest Passage and which was lost in the search for the doomed expedition of Sir John Franklin, the head of the team said Wednesday.

Marc-Andre Bernier, Parks Canada's head of underwater archaeology, said the HMS Investigator, abandoned in the ice in 1853, was found in shallow water in Mercy Bay along the northern coast of Banks Island in Canada's western Arctic.

"The ship is standing upright in very good condition. It's standing in about 11 meters (36 feet) of water," he said. "This is definitely of the utmost importance. This is the ship that sailed the last leg of the Northwest Passage."

The Investigator was one of many American and British ships sent out to search for the HMS Erebus and the Terror, vessels commanded by Franklin in his ill-fated search for the Northwest Passage in 1845.

Environment Minister Jim Prentice said the British government has been notified that one of their naval shipwrecks has been discovered, as well as the bodies of three sailors.

Captained by Robert McClure, the Investigator sailed in 1850. That year, McClure sailed the Investigator into the strait that now bears his name and realized that he was in the final leg of the Northwest Passage, the sea route across North America.

But before he could sail into the Beaufort Sea, the ship was blocked by pack ice and forced to winter-over in Prince of Wales Strait along the east coast of Banks Island.

The following summer, McClure tried again to sail to the end of the Passage, but was again blocked by ice. He steered the ship and crew into a large bay on the island's north coast he called the Bay of Mercy.

There they were to remain until 1853, when they were rescued by the crew of the HMS Resolute. The Investigator was abandoned.

"This is actually a human history," said Bernier. "Not only a history of the Passage, but the history of a crew of 60 men who had to overwinter three times in the Arctic not knowing if they were going to survive."...

18th-Century Ship Found at Trade Center Site

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

In the middle of tomorrow, a great ribbed ghost has emerged from a distant yesterday.

On Tuesday morning, workers excavating the site of the underground vehicle security center for the future World Trade Center hit a row of sturdy, upright wood timbers, regularly spaced, sticking out of a briny gray muck flecked with oyster shells.

Obviously, these were more than just remnants of the wooden cribbing used in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to extend the shoreline of Manhattan Island ever farther into the Hudson River. (Lower Manhattan real estate was a precious commodity even then.)

“They were so perfectly contoured that they were clearly part of a ship,” said A. Michael Pappalardo, an archaeologist with the firm AKRF, which is working for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to document historical material uncovered during construction.

By Wednesday, the outlines made it plain: a 30-foot length of a wood-hulled vessel had been discovered about 20 to 30 feet below street level on the World Trade Center site, the first such large-scale archaeological find along the Manhattan waterfront since 1982, when an 18th-century cargo ship came to light at 175 Water Street.

The area under excavation, between Liberty and Cedar Streets, had not been dug out for the original trade center. The vessel, presumably dating from the mid- to late 1700s, was evidently undisturbed more than 200 years....