Archaeologists have found evidence of mass cannibalism at a 7,000-year-old human burial site in south-west Germany, the journal Antiquity reports.

Read the rest here.

The Venus Project presents a bold, direction for humanity that entails nothing less than the total redesign of our culture. There are many people today who are concerned with the serious problems that face our modern society: unemployment, violent crime, technological unemployment, over-population and the destruction of the Earth’s ecosystems. As you will see, The Venus Project is dedicated to confronting all of these problems by actively engaging in the research, development, and application of workable solutions. Through the use of innovative approaches to social awareness, educational incentives, and the consistent application of the best that science and technology can offer directly to the social system, The Venus Project offers a comprehensive plan for social reclamation in which human beings, technology, and nature will be able to coexist in a long-term, sustainable state of dynamic equilibrium.

Designing the Future by Jacque Fresco of the Venus Project [PDF]

Venus Project FAQ

Activist Orientation Toolkit

During the 2009 Leonid meteor shower, you may see anywhere from 30 to 300 shooting stars an hour, depending on whether you’re in the right place to see the showy peak on November 17, experts predict.

With the highest number of meteors streaking across the skies around 4:45 p.m. ET, the Leonids peak will be effectively invisible for viewers in North America and Europe. In those regions, sky-watchers are advised to venture out away from bright city lights between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. on the 17th, when they should see 30 to 50 meteors an hour. [source: National Geographic]

Those in the eastern U.S. and Canada are especially favored because Leo will be high in the southeast sky between 3:30 and 5:30 a.m. EST, just before Earth is expected to exit the meteor cloud. [source: space.com]

Kind of old news though:

An Indian space mission claims to have found water on the moon, raising hopes that a manned base could be established there within the next two decades.

It has been widely believed that the moon was dry, but data from India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission allegedly found clear evidence of water there, apparently concentrated at the poles and possibly formed by the solar wind.

What’s more, water appears to still be forming, advancing the possibility that human life could be sustained there. Scientists hope that astronauts could one day not only drink the water but extract oxygen from it to breathe and hydrogen to use as fuel.

This ‘discovery’ kind of reminds me of that ole tale about some European sailing the ocean blue in 1492. You may have heard of it.

In this spectacular image, observations using infrared light and X-ray light see through the obscuring dust and reveal the intense activity near the galactic core. Note that the center of the galaxy is located within the bright white region to the right of and just below the middle of the image. The entire image width covers about one-half a degree, about the same angular width as the full moon. Credit: NASA, ESA, SSC, CXC, and STScI

A never-before-seen view of the turbulent heart of our Milky Way galaxy [was unveiled by] NASA on Nov. 10. This event [commemorated] the 400 years since Galileo first turned his telescope to the heavens in 1609.

In celebration of this International Year of Astronomy, NASA is releasing images of the galactic center region as seen by its Great Observatories to more than 150 planetariums, museums, nature centers, libraries and schools across the country.

A previously undiscovered asteroid came within 14,000 km of Earth last week, and astronomers noticed it only 15 hours before closest approach. On Nov. 6 at around 16:30 EST a 7 meter asteroid, now called 2009 VA, came only about 2 Earth radii from impacting our home planet. This is the third-closest known non-impacting Earth approach on record for a cataloged asteroid.

Early on Nov. 6 the asteroid was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey and was quickly identified by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge MA as an object that would soon pass very close to the Earth. JPL’s Near-Earth Object Program Office also computed an orbit solution for this object, and determined that it was not headed for an impact.

Well, I don’t know about you all, but I’m willing to be taken out if this makes another go-around and lands on the NYS legislature.

It seems that a SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) experiment happened decades before the Project Ozma occurred in 1960. The historians at the blog Letters of Note have uncovered a telegram sent in 1924 by then Chief of Naval Operations Edward W. Eberle instructing the United States Navy to listen for radio transmissions from the planet Mars.

The telegram read:

“NAVY DESIRES COOPERATE ASTRONOMERS WHO BELIEVE POSSIBLE THAT MARS MAY ATTEMPT COMMUNICATION BY RADIO WAVES WITH THIS PLANET WHILE THEY ARE NEAR TOGETHER THIS END ALL SHORE RADIO STATIONS WILL ESPECIALLY NOTE AND REPORT ANY ELECTRICAL PHENOMENON UNUSUAL CHARACTER AND WILL COVER AS WIDE BAND FREQUENCIES AS POSSIBLE FROM 2400 AUGUST TWENTY FIRST TO 2400 AUGUST TWENTY FOURTH WITHOUT INTERFERRING WITH TRAFFIC”

Full article here.

From the AFP:

Initial theories set the disaster for May 2003, but when nothing happened the date was moved forward to the winter solstice in 2012 to coincide with the end of a cycle of the ancient Mayan calendar.

But NASA insisted the Mayan calendar in fact does not end on December 21, 2012, as another period begins immediately afterward. And it said there are no planetary alignments on the horizon for the next few decades.

And even if the planets were to line up as some have forecast, the effect on our planet would be “negligible,” NASA said.

Among the other theories NASA has set out to debunk are that geomagnetic storms, a pole reversal or unsteadiness in the Earth’s crustal plates might befall the planet.

Read the rest here.

See also: Mayan Calendar and the End of the World?

As someone addicted to sci-fi, apocalyptic disaster flicks, and amazing special effects, I can’t wait to see the ‘2012′ film this Friday. At the risk of sounding like a 12 year old boy, the trailer looks awesome!

It may sound like a sci-fi vision, but Japan’s space agency is dead serious: by 2030 it wants to collect solar power in space and zap it down to Earth, using laser beams or microwaves.

The government has just picked a group of companies and a team of researchers tasked with turning the ambitious, multi-billion-dollar dream of unlimited clean energy into reality in coming decades.

With few energy resources of its own and heavily reliant on oil imports, Japan has long been a leader in solar and other renewable energies and this year set ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets.

But Japan’s boldest plan to date is the Space Solar Power System (SSPS), in which arrays of photovoltaic dishes several square kilometres (square miles) in size would hover in geostationary orbit outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

“Since solar power is a clean and inexhaustible energy source, we believe that this system will be able to help solve the problems of energy shortage and global warming,” researchers at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, one of the project participants, wrote in a report.

“The sun’s rays abound in space.”

Read the rest of this excellent article here.

There has been a lot of media coverage on the misconception that the ancient Maya calendar is somehow predicting the end of the world (worse case scenario) or at least some major catastrophe in 2012. Part of the confusion stems from a misunderstanding of concepts of time which differ from those held by European cultures.

Let’s start with some background. The ancient Maya were a civilization composed of many different autonomous city states in Mesoamerica (this includes present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras). Maya civilization reached its apex during a period that archaeologists call Classic Maya: a period which begins about 200 CE and lasts until 909 CE.

Classic Maya civilization is characterized by cities, pyramids, kings, and elaborate ceremonies. Above all the Maya were obsessed with sophisticated timekeeping systems. Their painted-bark books, or codices, clearly show that their astronomers had the capacity to predict celestial events, such as eclipses, accurately.

A few hundred years before the beginning of Classic Maya, Maya rulers made a fundamental revision to their calendar that would connect the rise of Maya states with their own origin myths. They invented a mountain of a time cycle—the Long Count. This was a brilliant innovation and connected the Maya and their kings all the way back to creation.

Read the rest of this excellent piece here.

In 2005, a gigantic, 35-mile-long rift broke open the desert ground in Ethiopia. At the time, some geologists believed the rift was the beginning of a new ocean as two parts of the African continent pulled apart, but the claim was controversial.

Now, scientists from several countries have confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world’s oceans, and the rift is indeed likely the beginning of a new sea.

Read the rest here.

See also: Everest and Himalayan Glaciers Could Vanish By 2035, Imperiling a Billion People.

See full interview here.

THERE is a lot of water on Earth, but more than 97% of it is salty and over half of the remainder is frozen at the poles or in glaciers. Meanwhile, around a fifth of the world’s population suffers from a shortage of drinking water and that fraction is expected to grow. One answer is desalination—but it is an expensive answer because it requires a lot of energy. Now, though, a pair of Canadian engineers have come up with an ingenious way of using the heat of the sun to drive the process. Such heat, in many places that have a shortage of fresh water, is one thing that is in abundant supply.

Read the rest of the article here.