Friday, November 14, 2008
The Chicken or the Egg? Which Came First?
So the age old question all kids have been asked growing up.....Which came first the chicken or the egg? The answer is slightly complicated but we do know this: That the egg came before the chicken. Not necessarily the chicken egg, but definitely the egg. Interpreted literally, the answer to the riddle is clear. Dinosaurs were forming birdlike nests and laying eggs long before birds (including chickens) ever evolved.
Friday, October 31, 2008
The Great Dallas Flood of 1908
Like Chicago or San Francisco, Dallas was remade by disaster. The Great Flood of May 26, 1908 was the town's largest natural catastrophe. It was not nearly as deadly as San Francisco's earthquake or as destructive as Chicago's fire and is far less known than either, but it had much the same effect on the city's history. The flood served to end arguments that had been stirring for a decade over how to turn a sprawling boomtown into a modern metropolis. The result was the so-called Kessler Plan.
"It was the beginning of when people started looking at the city as a real object rather than a collection of individuals trying to make a living," Dr. Robert Fairbanks, professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington, said of the Kessler Plan. "For the first time, Dallas became more than about just attracting jobs or attracting industry. People thought about the city as a whole."
The ideas of George Kessler form a major part of Dallas to this day. The Trinity River levee system built decades later opened up sections of the upriver floodplain for commercial use, resulting in the Stemmons Corridor, one of the region's principal economic engines. His proposal for a "great thoroughfare" became what is now Central Expressway, which in turn spurred growth in towns almost as close to the Red River as to the Trinity.
Other ideas, though less sweeping, are part of the city's identity, Union Station, Ferris Plaza, White Rock Lake Park, Turtle Creek Boulevard and, if we all live long enough, the Trinity River Corridor Project. In 1908, however, the flood's most immediate effect was to dampen local celebrations of the first nationwide commemoration of Mother's Day.
That Sunday morning, May 24, dawned rainy. Over the course of the day, 15 inches fell on the city, according to After the Deluge, the Impact of the Trinity River Flood of 1908, by Dallas writer Jackie McElhaney. Such a torrent would have overwhelmed the Trinity's channel in any case, but the downpour came at the worst possible time. For three previous days, counties upriver had sustained cloudbursts, and the watershed around Dallas was still sodden from a major flood a month earlier.
On May 26, the river crested at 52.6 feet, a record that still stands. Only a handful of people were killed (accounts vary, but historian Darwin Payne, author of Big D, settles on five). Four thousand people were left homeless, and property damage was estimated at $2.5 million, about $55 million today. But its most lasting effect was to demonstrate how poorly the city had been built.
The waterworks and electric plants were in areas that proved to be vulnerable to flooding, leaving the city without basic utilities. Telephone and telegraph lines went down. Rail lines were washed out. Every bridge near downtown was swept away, isolating the business district from the newly annexed neighborhood of Oak Cliff.
"Dallas wasn't prepared because no one in Dallas thought to be prepared," Ms. McElhaney said. "The growth of the city had been very haphazard. It just grew wherever it grew."
One aspect of the flood's timing was fortunate, it occurred during the Progressive Era, when local leaders across the country were rethinking how their cities were governed and structured. A beautification movement was trying to soften the raw industrial look of the 19th century. In Dallas, a group of city leaders led by Dallas Morning News publisher George Bannerman Dealey had four years before hired Mr. Kessler, one of the nation's leading planners, to design Fair Park. In 1910, on the second anniversary of the flood, he was hired again, this time to bring order to the entire city.
The German-born Kessler had lived in Dallas as a boy, but studied landscape design in Europe. In 1904, the same year he designed Fair Park, he was appointed landscape architect for the St. Louis World's Fair, according to Dr. Fairbanks' book For the City as a Whole: Planning, Politics and the Public Interest in Dallas, Texas. City leaders were punching above their weight. Most municipal planning was in much larger metropolitan areas such as New York, Dr. Fairbanks said. Dallas in 1910 had a population of 92,000.
"Dallas desperately wanted to be seen as a progressive city. Planning was very much the in thing of that day, and planning was almost a booster thing," she said. "Dallas got a lot of favorable publicity nationally out of the Kessler Plan."
Published in 1912 and refined over the years, the Kessler Plan called for rechanneling the Trinity a mile from downtown and building a levee system to contain future floods. But it went much further than solving flood problems. It sought to consolidate a rail system that was choking downtown and advocated straightening and standardizing the city's often chaotic streets. The plan also recommended a system of parks, boulevards and playgrounds.
To Mr. Kessler's frustration, much of his plan was incompletely executed or never implemented at all. His plan to turn Dallas into an inland port came to nothing, although it was still actively discussed as late as the 1970s. His vision of a "great thoroughfare" linking what was then known as the Highland Park Addition to the city's southern precincts was only partly realized.
The northern part was built and eventually became Central Expressway. But a land dispute with the railroad companies blocked construction to the south. Decades later, the street that he intended to knit the city together carried commuters ever farther from the city's southern neighborhoods. Not all results were so divisive. Even before floodwaters receded, and independent of the Kessler Plan, business leaders proposed a flood-proof "Great Causeway" linking downtown and Oak Cliff.
The bridge was built in only 17 months, in part because the Great Flood of 1908 preceded a long dry spell. Not a single day of construction was lost because of rain, according to Ms. McElhaney's article in Legacies magazine. At 5,480 feet, what is now known as the Houston Street Viaduct was the longest concrete structure in the world. The bridge guaranteed that flooding would never again disrupt commerce between the two sides of the river. It also had the effect of binding the older neighborhoods of Dallas with the formerly independent city of Oak Cliff, which had been annexed less than five years before the flood.
"It was the beginning of when people started looking at the city as a real object rather than a collection of individuals trying to make a living," Dr. Robert Fairbanks, professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington, said of the Kessler Plan. "For the first time, Dallas became more than about just attracting jobs or attracting industry. People thought about the city as a whole."
The ideas of George Kessler form a major part of Dallas to this day. The Trinity River levee system built decades later opened up sections of the upriver floodplain for commercial use, resulting in the Stemmons Corridor, one of the region's principal economic engines. His proposal for a "great thoroughfare" became what is now Central Expressway, which in turn spurred growth in towns almost as close to the Red River as to the Trinity.
Other ideas, though less sweeping, are part of the city's identity, Union Station, Ferris Plaza, White Rock Lake Park, Turtle Creek Boulevard and, if we all live long enough, the Trinity River Corridor Project. In 1908, however, the flood's most immediate effect was to dampen local celebrations of the first nationwide commemoration of Mother's Day.
That Sunday morning, May 24, dawned rainy. Over the course of the day, 15 inches fell on the city, according to After the Deluge, the Impact of the Trinity River Flood of 1908, by Dallas writer Jackie McElhaney. Such a torrent would have overwhelmed the Trinity's channel in any case, but the downpour came at the worst possible time. For three previous days, counties upriver had sustained cloudbursts, and the watershed around Dallas was still sodden from a major flood a month earlier.
On May 26, the river crested at 52.6 feet, a record that still stands. Only a handful of people were killed (accounts vary, but historian Darwin Payne, author of Big D, settles on five). Four thousand people were left homeless, and property damage was estimated at $2.5 million, about $55 million today. But its most lasting effect was to demonstrate how poorly the city had been built.
The waterworks and electric plants were in areas that proved to be vulnerable to flooding, leaving the city without basic utilities. Telephone and telegraph lines went down. Rail lines were washed out. Every bridge near downtown was swept away, isolating the business district from the newly annexed neighborhood of Oak Cliff.
"Dallas wasn't prepared because no one in Dallas thought to be prepared," Ms. McElhaney said. "The growth of the city had been very haphazard. It just grew wherever it grew."
One aspect of the flood's timing was fortunate, it occurred during the Progressive Era, when local leaders across the country were rethinking how their cities were governed and structured. A beautification movement was trying to soften the raw industrial look of the 19th century. In Dallas, a group of city leaders led by Dallas Morning News publisher George Bannerman Dealey had four years before hired Mr. Kessler, one of the nation's leading planners, to design Fair Park. In 1910, on the second anniversary of the flood, he was hired again, this time to bring order to the entire city.
The German-born Kessler had lived in Dallas as a boy, but studied landscape design in Europe. In 1904, the same year he designed Fair Park, he was appointed landscape architect for the St. Louis World's Fair, according to Dr. Fairbanks' book For the City as a Whole: Planning, Politics and the Public Interest in Dallas, Texas. City leaders were punching above their weight. Most municipal planning was in much larger metropolitan areas such as New York, Dr. Fairbanks said. Dallas in 1910 had a population of 92,000.
"Dallas desperately wanted to be seen as a progressive city. Planning was very much the in thing of that day, and planning was almost a booster thing," she said. "Dallas got a lot of favorable publicity nationally out of the Kessler Plan."
Published in 1912 and refined over the years, the Kessler Plan called for rechanneling the Trinity a mile from downtown and building a levee system to contain future floods. But it went much further than solving flood problems. It sought to consolidate a rail system that was choking downtown and advocated straightening and standardizing the city's often chaotic streets. The plan also recommended a system of parks, boulevards and playgrounds.
To Mr. Kessler's frustration, much of his plan was incompletely executed or never implemented at all. His plan to turn Dallas into an inland port came to nothing, although it was still actively discussed as late as the 1970s. His vision of a "great thoroughfare" linking what was then known as the Highland Park Addition to the city's southern precincts was only partly realized.
The northern part was built and eventually became Central Expressway. But a land dispute with the railroad companies blocked construction to the south. Decades later, the street that he intended to knit the city together carried commuters ever farther from the city's southern neighborhoods. Not all results were so divisive. Even before floodwaters receded, and independent of the Kessler Plan, business leaders proposed a flood-proof "Great Causeway" linking downtown and Oak Cliff.
The bridge was built in only 17 months, in part because the Great Flood of 1908 preceded a long dry spell. Not a single day of construction was lost because of rain, according to Ms. McElhaney's article in Legacies magazine. At 5,480 feet, what is now known as the Houston Street Viaduct was the longest concrete structure in the world. The bridge guaranteed that flooding would never again disrupt commerce between the two sides of the river. It also had the effect of binding the older neighborhoods of Dallas with the formerly independent city of Oak Cliff, which had been annexed less than five years before the flood.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Mars Mission in Trouble?
Will NASA's flagship mission to Mars fly next year? The space agency could decide as early as Friday whether to cancel, delay or proceed with plans to launch a nuclear-powered, SUV-size rover to the red planet. NASA has already sunk $1.5 billion into the Mars Science Laboratory, which is pricier than expected. The megarover will roam the surface and drill into rocks for clues to whether the planet ever possessed an environment capable of supporting primitive life.
Doug McCuistion, who heads the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters, told scientists in recent public meetings that he expects the mission's total cost to run over by more than 30 percent. If it goes over that threshold, Congress would have the right to intervene and use its power to end the project on its own.
Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the project has been plagued by development problems and ballooning costs that caught headquarters' attention. McCuistion told a gathering of Mars scientists last month that NASA was keeping a close eye on the project's progress and costs and participating in weekly reviews with JPL.
From the outset, the Mars Science Lab proved to be an engineering challenge due to its size and capability. The 9-foot-long robot geologist is bigger and can drive farther than its twin predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity, which are still alive after four years. It also carries some of the most sophisticated instruments, including a laser that can zap rocks from afar. The mission's financial woes took many in the science community by surprise who fear that other projects will suffer to pay for the mega-rover.
"The magnitude of the increases has been mind-boggling," said geologist John Mustard of Brown University. "It has sent a shock wave to the Mars program and beyond to the planetary community."
If NASA pushes to launch in 2009 as planned, it will have to find the money to get the rover ready. Any delay until 2010 or 2011 will add at least $300 million to the mission's price tag. Alex Dery Snider, a spokeswoman for the House Science Committee, said members were concerned about the extra cost and want to know how NASA will solve the problem. Some scientists outside the Mars research community said canceling the project does not make sense since so much money has already been invested.
"We've got to continue our exploration of Mars, but in a way that's rational and sensible," said Frances Bagenal of the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Doug McCuistion, who heads the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters, told scientists in recent public meetings that he expects the mission's total cost to run over by more than 30 percent. If it goes over that threshold, Congress would have the right to intervene and use its power to end the project on its own.
Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the project has been plagued by development problems and ballooning costs that caught headquarters' attention. McCuistion told a gathering of Mars scientists last month that NASA was keeping a close eye on the project's progress and costs and participating in weekly reviews with JPL.
From the outset, the Mars Science Lab proved to be an engineering challenge due to its size and capability. The 9-foot-long robot geologist is bigger and can drive farther than its twin predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity, which are still alive after four years. It also carries some of the most sophisticated instruments, including a laser that can zap rocks from afar. The mission's financial woes took many in the science community by surprise who fear that other projects will suffer to pay for the mega-rover.
"The magnitude of the increases has been mind-boggling," said geologist John Mustard of Brown University. "It has sent a shock wave to the Mars program and beyond to the planetary community."
If NASA pushes to launch in 2009 as planned, it will have to find the money to get the rover ready. Any delay until 2010 or 2011 will add at least $300 million to the mission's price tag. Alex Dery Snider, a spokeswoman for the House Science Committee, said members were concerned about the extra cost and want to know how NASA will solve the problem. Some scientists outside the Mars research community said canceling the project does not make sense since so much money has already been invested.
"We've got to continue our exploration of Mars, but in a way that's rational and sensible," said Frances Bagenal of the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Ancient Lost Capital of Khazars Found?
A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture. Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his 9 year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital. By law Khazars could use flamed bricks only in the capital, Vasilyev said. The general location of the city on the Silk Road was confirmed in medieval chronicles by Arab, Jewish and European authors.
"The discovery of the capital of Eastern Europe's first feudal state is of great significance," he told The Associated Press. "We should view it as part of Russian history."
Kevin Brook, the American author of "The Jews of Khazaria," e-mailed Wednesday that he has followed the Itil dig over the years, and even though it has yielded no Jewish artifacts, "Now I'm as confident as the archaeological team is that they've truly found the lost city, The Khazars were a Turkic tribe that roamed the steppes from Northern China to the Black Sea. Between the 7th and 10th centuries they conquered huge swaths of what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia as far as the Aral Sea.
Itil, about 800 miles south of Moscow, had a population of up to 60,000 and occupied 0.8 square miles of marshy plains southwest of the Russian Caspian Sea port of Astrakhan, Vasilyev said. It lay at a major junction of the Silk Road, the trade route between Europe and China , which "helped Khazars amass giant profits," he said.
The Khazar empire was once a regional superpower, and Vasilyev said his team has found "luxurious collections" of well-preserved ceramics that help identify cultural ties of the Khazar state with Europe, the Byzantine Empire and even Northern Africa. They also found armor, wooden kitchenware, glass lamps and cups, jewelry and vessels for transporting precious balms dating back to the eighth and ninth centuries, he said. But a scholar in Israel, while calling the excavations interesting, said the challenge was to find Khazar inscriptions.
"If they found a few buildings, or remains of buildings, that's interesting but does not make a big difference," said Dr. Simon Kraiz, an expert on Eastern European Jewry at Haifa University. "If they found Khazar writings, that would be very important."
Vasilyev says no Jewish artifacts have been found at the site, and in general, most of what is known about the Khazars comes from chroniclers from other, sometimes competing cultures and empires.
"We know a lot about them, and yet we know almost nothing: Jews wrote about them, and so did Russians, Georgians, and Armenians, to name a few," said Kraiz. "But from the Khazars themselves we have nearly nothing."
The Khazars' ruling dynasty and nobility converted to Judaism sometime in the 8th or 9th centuries. Vasilyev said the limited number of Jewish religious artifacts such as mezuzas and Stars of David found at other Khazar sites prove that ordinary Khazars preferred traditional beliefs such as shamanism, or newly introduced religions including Islam. Yevgeny Satanovsky, director of the Middle Eastern Institute in Moscow, said he believes the Khazar elite chose Judaism out of political expediency — to remain independent of neighboring Muslim and Christian states. "They embraced Judaism because they wanted to remain neutral, like Switzerland these days," he said.
In particular, the Khazars opposed the Arab advance into the Caucasus Mountains and were instrumental in containing a Muslim push toward eastern Europe. He compared their role in eastern Europe to that of the French knights who defeated Arab forces at the Battle of Tours in France in 732. The Khazars succeeded in holding off the Arabs, but a young, expanding Russian state vanquished the Khazar empire in the late 10th century. Medieval Russian epic poems mention Russian warriors fighting the "Jewish Giant."
"In many ways, Russia is a successor of the Khazar state," Vasilyev said.
He said his dig revealed traces of a large fire that was probably caused by the Russian conquest. He said Itil was rebuilt following the fall of the Khazar empire, when ethnic Khazars were slowly assimilated by Turkic-speaking tribes, Tatars and Mongols, who inhabited the city until it was flooded by the rising Caspian Sea around the 14th century. The study of the Khazar empire was discouraged in the Soviet Union. The dictator Josef Stalin, in particular, detested the idea that a Jewish empire had come before Russia's own. He ordered references to Khazar history removed from textbooks because they "disproved his theory of Russian statehood," Satanovsky said. Only now are Russian scholars free to explore Khazar culture. The Itil excavations have been sponsored by the Russian-Jewish Congress, a nonprofit organization that supports cultural projects in Russia.
"The discovery of the capital of Eastern Europe's first feudal state is of great significance," he told The Associated Press. "We should view it as part of Russian history."
Kevin Brook, the American author of "The Jews of Khazaria," e-mailed Wednesday that he has followed the Itil dig over the years, and even though it has yielded no Jewish artifacts, "Now I'm as confident as the archaeological team is that they've truly found the lost city, The Khazars were a Turkic tribe that roamed the steppes from Northern China to the Black Sea. Between the 7th and 10th centuries they conquered huge swaths of what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia as far as the Aral Sea.
Itil, about 800 miles south of Moscow, had a population of up to 60,000 and occupied 0.8 square miles of marshy plains southwest of the Russian Caspian Sea port of Astrakhan, Vasilyev said. It lay at a major junction of the Silk Road, the trade route between Europe and China , which "helped Khazars amass giant profits," he said.
The Khazar empire was once a regional superpower, and Vasilyev said his team has found "luxurious collections" of well-preserved ceramics that help identify cultural ties of the Khazar state with Europe, the Byzantine Empire and even Northern Africa. They also found armor, wooden kitchenware, glass lamps and cups, jewelry and vessels for transporting precious balms dating back to the eighth and ninth centuries, he said. But a scholar in Israel, while calling the excavations interesting, said the challenge was to find Khazar inscriptions.
"If they found a few buildings, or remains of buildings, that's interesting but does not make a big difference," said Dr. Simon Kraiz, an expert on Eastern European Jewry at Haifa University. "If they found Khazar writings, that would be very important."
Vasilyev says no Jewish artifacts have been found at the site, and in general, most of what is known about the Khazars comes from chroniclers from other, sometimes competing cultures and empires.
"We know a lot about them, and yet we know almost nothing: Jews wrote about them, and so did Russians, Georgians, and Armenians, to name a few," said Kraiz. "But from the Khazars themselves we have nearly nothing."
The Khazars' ruling dynasty and nobility converted to Judaism sometime in the 8th or 9th centuries. Vasilyev said the limited number of Jewish religious artifacts such as mezuzas and Stars of David found at other Khazar sites prove that ordinary Khazars preferred traditional beliefs such as shamanism, or newly introduced religions including Islam. Yevgeny Satanovsky, director of the Middle Eastern Institute in Moscow, said he believes the Khazar elite chose Judaism out of political expediency — to remain independent of neighboring Muslim and Christian states. "They embraced Judaism because they wanted to remain neutral, like Switzerland these days," he said.
In particular, the Khazars opposed the Arab advance into the Caucasus Mountains and were instrumental in containing a Muslim push toward eastern Europe. He compared their role in eastern Europe to that of the French knights who defeated Arab forces at the Battle of Tours in France in 732. The Khazars succeeded in holding off the Arabs, but a young, expanding Russian state vanquished the Khazar empire in the late 10th century. Medieval Russian epic poems mention Russian warriors fighting the "Jewish Giant."
"In many ways, Russia is a successor of the Khazar state," Vasilyev said.
He said his dig revealed traces of a large fire that was probably caused by the Russian conquest. He said Itil was rebuilt following the fall of the Khazar empire, when ethnic Khazars were slowly assimilated by Turkic-speaking tribes, Tatars and Mongols, who inhabited the city until it was flooded by the rising Caspian Sea around the 14th century. The study of the Khazar empire was discouraged in the Soviet Union. The dictator Josef Stalin, in particular, detested the idea that a Jewish empire had come before Russia's own. He ordered references to Khazar history removed from textbooks because they "disproved his theory of Russian statehood," Satanovsky said. Only now are Russian scholars free to explore Khazar culture. The Itil excavations have been sponsored by the Russian-Jewish Congress, a nonprofit organization that supports cultural projects in Russia.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
William Shakespeare's "The Theatre" Uncovered in London
The theater where "The Merchant of Venice" and "Romeo and Juliet" likely debuted and where William Shakespeare himself may have trodden the boards has likely been discovered in east London, archaeologists at the Museum of London said Wednesday. The possible foundations of what is known as simply, The Theatre, were unearthed by builders excavating the site, a vacant garage, for another structure. Museum archaeologists were called to the location to make sure nothing was destroyed, and had a eureka moment.
"We were there, scratching our heads, looking into the trenches, thinking, 'this could be it,'" said Jo Lyon, a senior archaeologist at the museum. "So we did some more research, and then we found the angled walls. And we all went, 'Oh my gosh, this should be it.' "
Other theaters of similar vintage also have angled walls, so the discovery was significant. Archaeologists had known for a long time there was a high probability for The Theatre to be on this particular site. But there are no maps that show its location, no images to show what it might have looked like, and only a vague description of it.
"It's in the right place, it's at the right angle to be a polygonal shape," Lyon said. "It's a pretty high possibility."
The possible discovery of The Theatre, built in 1576 and where Shakespeare's troupe performed in the 1590s, could complete the set of open-air theaters where the Bard's plays were staged. The Rose theater's location was discovered in 1989 in Bankside, just south of the River Thames in central London, and the Globe theater is nearby. A replica of the Globe was built on a site close to the original and opened in 1997.
Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, only moved into The Theatre in the 1590s. Until then, they had been performing at the Rose, but a shake up in the London theater scene necessitated the move, said Martin Wiggins, a fellow at the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham.
And in 1597, a dispute with the landlord forced the company to move again, Wiggins said. The company didn't own the ground The Theatre was built on, but Lord Chamberlain's Men did own the material it was built with, so they simply dismantled the entire theater and moved it south across the River Thames, where it was rebuilt and renamed the Globe. But The Theatre's foundations remained in east London, and that's what archaeologists believe they have found.
"The first thing I want to know about it is what the foundations can tell us about the architecture," Wiggins said. "How big was it? How does it compare with the Rose? How does it compare with the Globe? How similar are they?"
Wiggins said an understanding of what the theater looked like could help Shakespearean scholars understand more about this period in the playwright's history.
"The size of the theater will have an impact on the way the play is written," he said.
Other works that would have been performed during the period Shakespeare's company was at The Theatre would have included "Henry IV," "Richard II," "King John," and "the Merry Wives of Windsor," Wiggins said.
Lyon said it's unlikely The Theatre's complete foundations will ever be fully excavated, but her team intends to examine them further. Fittingly, a new theater is being built on the site, ensuring the foundations below are protected.
"We were there, scratching our heads, looking into the trenches, thinking, 'this could be it,'" said Jo Lyon, a senior archaeologist at the museum. "So we did some more research, and then we found the angled walls. And we all went, 'Oh my gosh, this should be it.' "
Other theaters of similar vintage also have angled walls, so the discovery was significant. Archaeologists had known for a long time there was a high probability for The Theatre to be on this particular site. But there are no maps that show its location, no images to show what it might have looked like, and only a vague description of it.
"It's in the right place, it's at the right angle to be a polygonal shape," Lyon said. "It's a pretty high possibility."
The possible discovery of The Theatre, built in 1576 and where Shakespeare's troupe performed in the 1590s, could complete the set of open-air theaters where the Bard's plays were staged. The Rose theater's location was discovered in 1989 in Bankside, just south of the River Thames in central London, and the Globe theater is nearby. A replica of the Globe was built on a site close to the original and opened in 1997.
Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, only moved into The Theatre in the 1590s. Until then, they had been performing at the Rose, but a shake up in the London theater scene necessitated the move, said Martin Wiggins, a fellow at the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham.
And in 1597, a dispute with the landlord forced the company to move again, Wiggins said. The company didn't own the ground The Theatre was built on, but Lord Chamberlain's Men did own the material it was built with, so they simply dismantled the entire theater and moved it south across the River Thames, where it was rebuilt and renamed the Globe. But The Theatre's foundations remained in east London, and that's what archaeologists believe they have found.
"The first thing I want to know about it is what the foundations can tell us about the architecture," Wiggins said. "How big was it? How does it compare with the Rose? How does it compare with the Globe? How similar are they?"
Wiggins said an understanding of what the theater looked like could help Shakespearean scholars understand more about this period in the playwright's history.
"The size of the theater will have an impact on the way the play is written," he said.
Other works that would have been performed during the period Shakespeare's company was at The Theatre would have included "Henry IV," "Richard II," "King John," and "the Merry Wives of Windsor," Wiggins said.
Lyon said it's unlikely The Theatre's complete foundations will ever be fully excavated, but her team intends to examine them further. Fittingly, a new theater is being built on the site, ensuring the foundations below are protected.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Phoenix Lander finds water on Mars
The Phoenix spacecraft has tasted Martian water for the first time, scientists reported Thursday. By melting icy soil in one of its lab instruments, the robot confirmed the presence of frozen water lurking below the Martian permafrost. Until now, evidence of ice in Mars' north pole region has been largely circumstantial. In 2002, the orbiting Odyssey spacecraft spied what looked like a reservoir of buried ice. After Phoenix arrived, it found what looked like ice in a hard patch underneath its landing site and changes in a trench indicated some ice had turned to gas when exposed to the sun.
Scientists popped open champagne when they received confirmation Wednesday that the soil contained ice. "We've now finally touched it and tasted it," William Boynton of the University of Arizona said during a news conference in Tucson on Thursday. "From my standpoint, it tastes very fine."
Phoenix landed on Mars on May 25 on a three-month hunt to determine if it could support life. It is conducting experiments to learn whether the ice ever melted in the red planet's history that could have led to a more hospitable environment. It is also searching for the elusive organic-based compounds essential for simple life forms to emerge. The ice confirmation earlier this week was accidental. After two failed attempts to deliver ice-rich soil to one of Phoenix's eight lab ovens, researchers decided to collect pure soil instead. Surprisingly, the sample was mixed with a little bit of ice, said Boynton, who heads the oven instrument.
Researchers were able to prove the soil had ice in it because it melted in the oven at 32 degrees — the melting point of ice — and released water molecules. Plans called for baking the soil at even higher temperatures next week to sniff for carbon-based compounds. The latest scientific finding is the first piece of good news for a mission that has been dogged by difficulties in recent weeks.
An electrical short on one of Phoenix's test ovens threatened the instrument, but scientists said the problem has not recurred. The lander, which spent the past several weeks drilling into the hard ice, also had trouble delivering ice shavings into an oven until the success this week. NASA said Phoenix has achieved minimum success thus far. The space agency on Thursday announced that it would extend the mission for an extra two months until the end of September, adding $2 million more to the $420 million price tag, said Michael Meyer, Mars chief scientist at NASA headquarters.
Unlike the twin rovers roaming near the Martian equator, Phoenix's lifetime cannot be extended much more because it likely won't have enough power to survive the Martian winter. The science team also released a color panorama of Phoenix's landing site using more than 400 images taken by Phoenix. The view "was painstakingly stitched together," said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, who headed the effort. The portrait revealed a Martian surface that was coated with dust and dotted with rocks.
Scientists popped open champagne when they received confirmation Wednesday that the soil contained ice. "We've now finally touched it and tasted it," William Boynton of the University of Arizona said during a news conference in Tucson on Thursday. "From my standpoint, it tastes very fine."
Phoenix landed on Mars on May 25 on a three-month hunt to determine if it could support life. It is conducting experiments to learn whether the ice ever melted in the red planet's history that could have led to a more hospitable environment. It is also searching for the elusive organic-based compounds essential for simple life forms to emerge. The ice confirmation earlier this week was accidental. After two failed attempts to deliver ice-rich soil to one of Phoenix's eight lab ovens, researchers decided to collect pure soil instead. Surprisingly, the sample was mixed with a little bit of ice, said Boynton, who heads the oven instrument.
Researchers were able to prove the soil had ice in it because it melted in the oven at 32 degrees — the melting point of ice — and released water molecules. Plans called for baking the soil at even higher temperatures next week to sniff for carbon-based compounds. The latest scientific finding is the first piece of good news for a mission that has been dogged by difficulties in recent weeks.
An electrical short on one of Phoenix's test ovens threatened the instrument, but scientists said the problem has not recurred. The lander, which spent the past several weeks drilling into the hard ice, also had trouble delivering ice shavings into an oven until the success this week. NASA said Phoenix has achieved minimum success thus far. The space agency on Thursday announced that it would extend the mission for an extra two months until the end of September, adding $2 million more to the $420 million price tag, said Michael Meyer, Mars chief scientist at NASA headquarters.
Unlike the twin rovers roaming near the Martian equator, Phoenix's lifetime cannot be extended much more because it likely won't have enough power to survive the Martian winter. The science team also released a color panorama of Phoenix's landing site using more than 400 images taken by Phoenix. The view "was painstakingly stitched together," said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, who headed the effort. The portrait revealed a Martian surface that was coated with dust and dotted with rocks.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Large new Dinosaur Discovery in Utah
A newly discovered batch of well-preserved dinosaur bones, petrified trees and even freshwater clams in southeastern Utah could provide new clues about life in the region some 150 million years ago. The Bureau of Land Management announced the find Monday, calling the quarry near Hanksville "a major dinosaur fossil discovery."
An excavation revealed at least four sauropods, which are long-necked, long-tailed planteating dinosaurs, and two carnivorous ones, according to the bureau. It may have also uncovered an herbivorous stegosaurus. Animal burrows and petrified tree trunks 6 feet in diameter were found nearby. The site doesn't contain any new species but offers scientists the chance to learn more about the ecology of that time, said Scott Foss, a BLM paleontologist.
The fossilized dinosaurs are from the same late Jurassic period as those at Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the Utah/Colorado state line, and the Cleveland-Lloyd quarry near Price. It could be a decade or so before the full importance of the Hanksville quarry is known, Foss said. "It does have the potential to match the other major quarries in Utah," he said.
The site, roughly 50 yards wide by 200 yards long, was excavated by a team from the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Illinois. Museum officials visited the site for about a week last summer and returned this year for a three week excavation. The area has long been known to locals and BLM officials as a dinosaur haven. But no one knew of the site's magnitude until excavation began.
The bones were found in a sandstone channel of an ancient river. "The preservation of these dinosaurs is excellent," Foss said.
The mix of dinosaurs, trees and other species in the area may help scientists piece together what life was like 145 million years to 150 million years ago, including details about the ancient climate, Foss said. BLM plans to close the site to conduct an environmental assessment for continued work in the area. The agency isn't disclosing the exact location of the find because of security concerns.
An excavation revealed at least four sauropods, which are long-necked, long-tailed planteating dinosaurs, and two carnivorous ones, according to the bureau. It may have also uncovered an herbivorous stegosaurus. Animal burrows and petrified tree trunks 6 feet in diameter were found nearby. The site doesn't contain any new species but offers scientists the chance to learn more about the ecology of that time, said Scott Foss, a BLM paleontologist.
The fossilized dinosaurs are from the same late Jurassic period as those at Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the Utah/Colorado state line, and the Cleveland-Lloyd quarry near Price. It could be a decade or so before the full importance of the Hanksville quarry is known, Foss said. "It does have the potential to match the other major quarries in Utah," he said.
The site, roughly 50 yards wide by 200 yards long, was excavated by a team from the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Illinois. Museum officials visited the site for about a week last summer and returned this year for a three week excavation. The area has long been known to locals and BLM officials as a dinosaur haven. But no one knew of the site's magnitude until excavation began.
The bones were found in a sandstone channel of an ancient river. "The preservation of these dinosaurs is excellent," Foss said.
The mix of dinosaurs, trees and other species in the area may help scientists piece together what life was like 145 million years to 150 million years ago, including details about the ancient climate, Foss said. BLM plans to close the site to conduct an environmental assessment for continued work in the area. The agency isn't disclosing the exact location of the find because of security concerns.
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