Official "Science News" Thread

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

As seen in your childhood comic mags, alongside ads for X-ray specs and the Charles Atlas "hey, stop kicking that sand in our faces!" muscle-building-program.

I remember those ads!

A classmate of mine saved up her allowance, bought the money-order, and sent off for the Sea Monkeys.

To paraphrase what she said: "They sent me fscking desiccated shrimp. Just add water. I already have water. And shrimp!

Caveat emptor was taught to us all the following year...

[xilman]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

A dwarf planet between Mars and Jupiter has a salty ocean beneath its surface, making it a contender for alien life

They missed a trick. I would have used "The World Ceres Between Mars and Jupiter ...".

[rogue]

When World War II Started, the U.S. Government Fought Against Victory Gardens

We May Have 'Recycled' a Key Region of Our Brains as Humans Learned to Read

Tales of Type

Math shows how brain stays stable amid internal noise and a widely varying world

Israeli jeweler makes $1.5m gold coronavirus mask

Humans Use the Visual Part of Their Brain When Hearing Sounds in the Dark, Even If They Were Born Without Sight

How toilet paper and avocados help explain the grocery store of the future

How Olivia de Havilland Took on the Studio System and Won

Mitochondria May Hold Keys to Anxiety and Mental Health

Speech Processing Hierarchy in the Dog Brain – Exciting Similarities With Humans

Ready player one: the marriage of video games and medical technology

One Mystery of Stonehenge’s Origins Has Finally Been Solved

Many Writers Say They Can Actually Hear the Voices of Their Characters, Here’s Why

Going in the water again: ‘Jaws’ boat clone supports sharks

5 simple ways to boost your emotional intelligence every day

Scientists pull living microbes, possibly 100 million years old, from beneath the sea

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by rogue

One Mystery of Stonehenge’s Origins Has Finally Been Solved

Very interesting, but was a bit disappointed to see no mention of a search for the quarrying site in the now-identified locale. Any time you carve out 50 slabs of stone that large from a small area, it will leave a clear quarrying site. Even if the quarry is now buried under 4500 years' worth of subsequent overgrowth and forest-detritus accumulation, I would think modern airborne ground-penetrating radar would be able to spot it fairly readily.

[rogue]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Very interesting, but was a bit disappointed to see no mention of a search for the quarrying site in the now-identified locale. Any time you carve out 50 slabs of stone that large from a small area, it will leave a clear quarrying site. Even if the quarry is now buried under 4500 years' worth of subsequent overgrowth and forest-detritus accumulation, I would think modern airborne ground-penetrating radar would be able to spot it fairly readily.

Unless it is under water.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Very interesting, but was a bit disappointed to see no mention of a search for the quarrying site in the now-identified locale. Any time you carve out 50 slabs of stone that large from a small area, it will leave a clear quarrying site. Even if the quarry is now buried under 4500 years' worth of subsequent overgrowth and forest-detritus accumulation, I would think modern airborne ground-penetrating radar would be able to spot it fairly readily.

I would point out that identifying a site as being a quarry is one thing, but identifying it as the source for specific quarried stones is quite another.

According to this article, the site now identified as the source had previously been suspected of being the source.

[ewmayer]

Lost Colony of Roanoke: Researchers say the 'mystery is over' - The Virginian-Pilot

BUXTON, N.C. — The English colonists who settled the so-called Lost Colony before disappearing from history simply went to live with their native friends — the Croatoans of Hatteras, according to a new book.

“They were never lost,” said Scott Dawson, who has researched records and dug up artifacts where the colonists lived with the Indians in the 16th century. “It was made up. The mystery is over.”

Dawson has written a book, published in June, that details his research. It is called “The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island,” and echos many of the sentiments he has voiced for years.

A team of archaeologists, historians, botanists, geologists and others have conducted digs on small plots in Buxton and Frisco for 11 years.

Dawson and his wife, Maggie, formed the Croatoan Archaeological Society when the digs began. Mark Horton, a professor and archaeologist from England’s University of Bristol leads the project. Henry Wright, professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, is an expert on native history.

Teams have found thousands of artifacts 4-6 feet below the surface that show a mix of English and Indian life. Parts of swords and guns are in the same layer of soil as Indian pottery and arrowheads.

The excavated earth looks like layer cake as the centuries pass.

“In a spot the size of two parking spaces, we could find 10,000 pieces,” he said.

Pieces found during the project are on display at the Hatteras Library. The rest are in storage.

Dawson’s book draws from research into original writings of John White, Thomas Harriot and others. Most of their writings were compiled at the time by English historian Richard Hakluyt.

Records from Jamestown also helped Dawson understand more about the tribes’ political structure.

The evidence shows the colony left Roanoke Island with the friendly Croatoans to settle on Hatteras Island. They thrived, ate well, had mixed families and endured for generations. More than a century later, explorer John Lawson found natives with blue eyes who recounted they had ancestors who could “speak out of a book,” Lawson wrote.

The two cultures adapted English earrings into fishhooks and gun barrels into sharp-ended tubes to tap tar from trees.

The Lost Colony stemmed from an 1587 expedition. Just weeks after arriving, White had to leave the group of settlers — including his daughter, Eleanor Dare, and newborn granddaughter, Virginia — to get more supplies from England. White was not able to return for three years. When he arrived at Roanoke Island in 1590 he found “CROATOAN” carved on a post and “cro” on a tree. He found no distress marks.

They literally made a sign. It was expected the colonists would go with their friends, the Croatoans and tribe member, Manteo, Dawson said. Manteo had traveled to England with earlier expeditions and was baptized a Christian on Roanoke Island.

White later wrote of finding the writing on the post, “I greatly joyed that I had found a certain token of their being at Croatoan where Manteo was born ....”

A bad storm and a near mutiny kept White from reaching Hatteras. He returned to England without ever seeing his colony again.

Archaeologists found a flower-shaped clothing clasp belonging to a woman with the other items. Sir Walter Raleigh sent three expeditions to the New World in 1584, 1585 and in 1587. The first two had more military purposes and did not include women. The 1587 group brought 16 women with it, Dawson said.

They also found round post holes where Indians built their long houses 25 feet to 60 feet long and they uncovered square post holes made by English during the same period.

“They were in the Indian village surrounded by long houses,” Dawson said.

Bones of turtle, wildfowl and deer bones indicate good eating. Pigs teeth turn up for generations.

“They never had to eat the last pig,” Dawson said.

Any skeletons uncovered during the digs were left untouched out of respect, Dawson said.

One artifact could depict a recorded event.

A lead tablet and lead pencil found at the dig could have belonged to White himself, Dawson said. White also was part of the 1585 group, working as an artist who drew natives and wildlife. The British Museum has the originals.

He likely used the newly discovered tablet or a similar one to draw the miniature pictures. The uncovered tablet has an impression of an Englishman shooting a native in the back. The paper drawing has never been found.

Wingina, chief of the Secotans, was shot twice in the back by an Englishman in 1586 at a village near what is now Manns Harbor, Dawson said. The Croatoans assisted the English in the ambush, Dawson said.

The Secotans and the Croatoans hated each other, Dawson said. Secotans enslaved Croatoans just a few years before the English arrived. The English had burned a Secotan village in 1585.

The Croatoans befriended the English as powerful friends with guns and armor. White’s colony welcomed their friendship, especially after one of their members, George Howe, was killed by the Secotans.

White was concerned about the danger posed by the Secotans when he left for England. The Croatoans saved the colonists by taking them away from Roanoke Island to their Hatteras Island village, Dawson said.

“You’re robbing an entire nation of people of their history by pretending Croatoan is a mystery on a tree,” he said. “These were a people that mattered a lot.”

White seems to have correctly deduced the fate of the 'lost' colonists on his 1590 return, which begs the question why subsequent expeditions did not pick up where he had been forced to leave off. The Wikipedia article on the Roanoke colony indicates that in the ensuing years Walter Raleigh actively worked against such searches (while pretending the opposite):

Although White failed to locate his colonists in 1590, his report suggested they had simply relocated and might yet be found alive. However, it served Raleigh's purposes to keep the matter in doubt; so long as the settlers could not be proven dead, he could legally maintain his claim on Virginia. Nevertheless, a 1594 petition was made to declare Ananias Dare legally dead so that his son, John Dare, could inherit his estate. The petition was granted in 1597.

During Raleigh's first transatlantic voyage in 1595, he claimed to be in search of his lost colonists, although he would admit this was disinformation to cover his search for El Dorado. On the return voyage, he sailed past the Outer Banks, and later claimed that weather prevented him from landing.

Raleigh later sought to enforce his monopoly on Virginia—based on the potential survival of the Roanoke colonists—when the price of sassafras skyrocketed. He funded a 1602 mission to the Outer Banks, with the stated goal of resuming the search. Led by Samuel Mace, this expedition differed from previous voyages in that Raleigh bought his own ship and guaranteed the sailors' wages so that they would not be distracted by privateering. However, the ship's itinerary and manifest indicate that Raleigh's top priority was harvesting sassafras far south of Croatoan Island. By the time Mace approached Hatteras, bad weather prevented them from lingering in the area. In 1603, Raleigh was implicated in the Main Plot and arrested for treason against King James, effectively ending his Virginia charter.

[ewmayer]

When science-article headlines go wrong:

Australia’s biggest bats fly thousands of kilometers a year—farther than wildebeest and caribou Science

Reader comment: "For info, Australia’s caribou only fly a few hundred kilometers a year. And wildebeest can’t fly at all."

[rogue]

America Has Two Feet. It’s About to Lose One of Them

[retina]

Originally Posted by rogue

America Has Two Feet. It’s About to Lose One of Them

That URL is quite useless.

The original is here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/s...gy-dennis.html

[Dr Sardonicus]

From late 2019, US finally giving boot to official foot measurement