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WEEKLY UPDATE
Sun’s next 11-year cycle could be 50 per cent stronger
WASHINGTON: Sun-spawned cosmic storms that can play havoc with earthly power grids and orbiting satellites could be 50 percent stronger in the next 11-year solar cycle than in the last one, scientists said.
Using a new model that takes into account what happens under the sun’s surface and data about previous solar cycles, astronomers offered a long-range forecast for solar activity that could start as soon as this year or as late as 2008.
They offered no specific predictions of solar storms, but they hope to formulate early warnings that will give power companies, satellite operators and others on and around Earth a few days to prepare.
The prediction, roughly analogous to the early prediction of a severe hurricane season on Earth, involves the number of sunspots on the solar surface, phenomena that have been monitored for more than a century.
The strongest solar cycle in recent memory occurred in the late 1950s, when there were few satellites aloft, no astronauts in orbit and less reliance on electrical power grids than there is now.
If a similarly active period occurred now, the impact would be hard to predict, according to Joseph Kunches of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s Space Environment Center in Colorado.—Reuters
Human quadrupeds discovered in Turkey
LONDON: The discovery of a Turkish family that walks on all fours could aid research into the evolution of humans, scientists said.
Researchers believe the five brothers and sisters, who can walk naturally only on all fours, may provide new information on how humans evolved from four-legged hominids to walk upright.
Nicholas Humphrey, evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Econ-omics, told The Times the discovery opened “an extraordinary window on our past”.
“I do not think they were designed to be quadrupeds by their genes, but their unique genetic make-up allowed them to be,” he said.
“It has produced an extraordinary window on our past. It is physically possible, which no one would have guessed from the [modern] human skeleton.”
The siblings, the subject of a new BBC documentary to be aired on March 17, suffer from a genetic abnormality that may prevent them from walking upright. Instead, they use their palms like heels with their fingers sticking up from the ground.
Humphrey believes the style of walking may be a throwback to a form of behaviour abandoned by humans more than three million years ago.—AFP
Barbie takes human form
EL SEGUNDO (California): Barbie, the doll with an envy-inspiring figure, wardrobe and array of careers, is taking human form for the first time.
Actress Erin Coors will star in Barbie’s first stage show: Barbie Live in Fairytopia, it was announced on Monday.
The 24-year-old Coors called the role “a girl’s dream come true.”
“It’s very personal to me,” Coors said. “It’s not just putting on a character, but remembering everything she was to me when I was little.”
The stage show, inspired by last year’s direct-to-video Barbie Fairytopia film, opens in Columbus, Ohio, on April 1 and is slated to reach 80 American cities over the next two years.—AP
Multi-faith ‘peace climbers’ to scale Everest
SAN FRANCISCO: Followers of different faiths will unite on an international team of “peace climbers” in a bid to scale the world’s highest peak next month, organizers said on Tuesday.
The Mount Everest “peace project” mountaineers come from seven countries and five of the world’s religions — Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism.
The team is to converge in Tibet on April 8 and set about climbing the Tibetan side of Everest.
“We are trying to make a human statement,” said Lance Trumbull, the California man who got the idea for the climb while on a self-imposed odyssey in Asia nearly four years ago.
“The mountain of intolerance, prejudice and ignorance can be surmounted. People of different faiths and cultures can, together, do amazing things.”
The climb team includes Palestinian Ali Bushnaq and Israelis Micha Yaniv and Dudu Yifrah, according to Trumbull. Other members of the team are from India, Nepal, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States.
The peace climb was an unexpected by-product of Trumbull visit to Nepal where he wound up on a “mountain-climbing pilgrimage” throughout the region and Russia.
Trumbull recounted overlooking a valley in India in 2002 when “God or something” whispered to him the idea of a multi-cultural peace climb of Everest.
Trumbull returned to Kathmandu, built the website www.everestpeaceproject.org, and set about recruiting climbers and sponsors.
Plans were in place for an acclaimed documentarian to film the climb, but organizers were still searching for a sponsor to cover the expected $150,000 cost.—AFP
Divers discover new lobster-like animal
PARIS: Divers have discovered a new crustacean in the South Pacific that resembles a lobster and is covered with what looks like silky, blond fur, French researchers said.
Scientists said the animal, which they named Kiwa hirsuta, was so distinct from other species that they created a new family and genus for it.
A team of American-led divers found the animal in waters 2,300 metres deep at a site 1,500 kilometres south of Easter Island last year, according to Michel Segonzac of the French Institute for Sea Exploration.
The new crustacean is described in the journal of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.
The animal is white and 15 cm long. In what Segonzac described as a “surprising characteristic,” the animal’s pincers are covered with sinuous, hair-like strands.
It’s also blind. The resear-chers found it had only “the vestige of a membrane” in place of eyes, Segonzac said.
The researchers said that while legions of new ocean species are discovered each year, it is quite rare to find one that merits a new family.
The family was named Kiwaida, from Kiwa, the goddess of crustaceans in Polynesian mythology.—AP
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Elaborate cave paintings stun scientists SANTIAGO: Chilean and French scientists announced they have discovered for the first time elaborate pre-Colombian cave paintings by indigenous Alacaluf people on an isolated island in Patagonia. More than 40 stunning paintings were located inside the so-called “Pacific Cave” on Madre de Dios island, in Chile’s far south, expedition head Bernard Tourte of France said. The Alacaluf, a nomadic and seafaring people indigenous to the area, were not previously known to have produced such art.—AFP |
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