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The "news" about the lost city under the sea is from a BBC story that dates back to 2002, but 1300 Digg users and I dug it all the same. I missed the story, so I'm glad to know about it now. The world just got a little bit bigger and stranger.
[quote begins from "Lost City 'Could Rewrite History' by Tom Housen at BBC Online, 19 Jan 2002]
The remains of what has been described as a huge lost city may force historians and archaeologists to radically reconsider their view of ancient human history.
Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 36 metres (120 feet) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be over 9,000 years old.
The vast city - which is five miles long and two miles wide - is believed to predate the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than 5,000 years....
Debris recovered from the site - including construction material, pottery, sections of walls, beads, sculpture and human bones and teeth has been carbon dated and found to be nearly 9,500 years old. ...
Marine archaeologists have used a technique known as sub-bottom profiling to show that the buildings remains stand on enormous foundations.
[quote ends]
A film-maker who has written extensively on ancient civilizations said that the evidence (of the age of the city, I guess?) is "compelling" and pointed out that, if verified, this city dates as far back from the historical period as the Egyptian pyramids from contemporary civilization. Apparently the earliest known city on this scale dates from about 4500 years ago.
I didn't find much more when I googled it that added much information, other than this article (with an annoying pop up ad, though) here, at a website called "The Hindu Universe." It discusses some of the methods used by the scientists and describes some of the astonishing discoveries.
Although I missed this information the first time around, I'm really glad I found it today. It's more astonishing even than the calendar sculpture recently discovered in Mexico.
What I'm really hoping---but I KNOW WON'T HAPPEN, okay?---that eventually they'll find some science fiction-y evidence that the ancient Indian city was the source of the legends about ancient Indian aircraft---the so-called "vimana aircraft." I just picked that site at random out of many other paranormal-oriented sites; I haven't really looked into it because that way lies tinfoil hats and strange recently-invented alternative religions that would take up all my time.
But you know what? The world can't be too mysterious and too weird for me. So here, according to the author of another website, are some additional pictures, including some recently discovered ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. There's nothing wrong with wishing these things might be true.
Hurray! Unsuspected ancient cities somewhat disconcerting to archaeologists!
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In addition, here is a story about a carnivorous plant in a French botanical garden that caught and digested a mouse. The plant is from the Philippines. I feel bad about the mouse, but you have to hand it to a plant that's willing to try new things.
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Finally, a charming query addressed to physicists that cheers me up immeasurably: Do Electrons have Free Will?
Yes, the world just got a little bigger than sex scandals and the unending battle for the soul of America. It's important, but it isn't everything.
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FINALLY, a story about a teenager in St. Louis who, while participating in an experiment, managed to play a videogame using only neurological firings from his brain.
[quote begins from article by Tony Fitzpatrick at Washington University at St. Louis Website, "Teenager moves video icons just by imagination"]
The boy, a 14-year-old who suffers from epilepsy, is the first teenager to play a two-dimensional video game, Space Invaders, using only the signals from his brain to make movements.
Getting subjects to move objects using only their brains has implications toward someday building biomedical devices that can control artificial limbs, for instance, enabling the disabled to move a prosthetic arm or leg by thinking about it.....
The teenager had a grid atop his brain to record brain surface signals, a brain-machine interface technique that uses electrocorticographic (ECoG) activity - data taken invasively right from the brain surface. It is an alternative to a frequently used technique to study humans called electroencephalographic activity (EEG) - data taken non-invasively by electrodes outside the brain on the scalp. Engineers programmed the Atari software to interface with the brain-machine interface system....
With approval of the patient and his parents and the Washington University School of Medicine Institutional Review Board, Leuthardt and Moran connected the patient to a sophisticated computer running a special program known as BCI2000 (developed by their collaborator Gerwin Schalk at the Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health in Albany) which involves a video game that is linked to the ECoG grid. They then asked the boy to do various motor and speech tasks, moving his hands various ways, talking, and imagining. The team could see from the data which parts of the brain and what brain signals correlate to these movements. They then asked the boy to play a simple, two-dimensional Space Invaders game by actually moving his tongue and hand. He was then asked to imagine the same movements, but not to actually perform them with his hands or tongue. When he saw the cursor in the video game, he then controlled it with his brain.
"He cleared out the whole level one basically on brain control," said Leuthardt. "He learned almost instantaneously. We then gave him a more challenging version in two-dimensions and he mastered two levels there playing only with his imagination."
[quote ends]
Here's a related article.
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