Society for Interdisciplinary Studies

Every now and again Tall Bloke's Work Shop posts a piece to set the commenters tapping at their keyboards and their brains go into overdrive, and this post by astrophysicist Ian Wilson seem to fall into that bracket - see http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/ian-wilson-solar-system-timing... ... which began life as a long comment to an earlier post by Tall Bloke.

Armagh Observatory has an image of Comet 2011 44 (Pan-STARRS), a bright comet that will be visible in the northern hemisphere this week - see http://phys.org/print281792029.html .... It is a bright comet and in November will be followed by Comet ISON, which will be even brighter.

A year or so back a local archaeologist reinvestigated a Roman villa at Yewdon, near Hambleden, Buckinghamshire, after coming across several dozen infant remains in the County Museum in Aylesbury. These had been carefully put away in an archive by an archaeologist who had dug at the Roman site in the early 20th century - without much of a comment. Presumably he didn't know why so many infant burials had been made and left it for others to interpret. The villa was at Mill End within yards from the Hambleden weir and lock, on the Thames, a few mile from Henley.

At www.io9.com/5988736/has-the-milky-way-devoured-other-galaxies?utm ... a study in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society claims the Milky Way has absorbed smaller galaxies - but millions of years ago. Not only that, speculation is that the two black holes of the two galaxies became a single black hole. Old stars were blasted from the core region at hypervelocity speeds. Two giant lobes of energetic diffuse gamma-ray light are at the heart of our galaxy, straight above and below the galactic plane. The edges of the bubbles are super sharp - like teeth.

More on the story of horses in Arabia before horses arrived from the Russian steppes. This is at www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21538969 ... and concerns a recent archaeology in the heart of Arabia's desert which has revealed evidence that an early farming community existed there when the desert was a lush green valley, around 9000 years ago. Various stone tools, arrow heads, and the like were found but what intrigues everyone are the stone replicas of animals such as sheep, goats, ostriches, and a horse.

At http://phys.org/print281345356.html ... bacteria from the middle and upper troposphere are being studied in a laboratory, micro-organisms that live 6 miles above the surface of the Earth. Long distance transport of bacteria may play a role in disease transmission it is being suggested while the bacteria, and carbon compounds, could play a role in weather. Published by PNAS Feb 28th 2013, the study suggests the bacteria get there from the surface as a result of wind and air movements. No mention is made of diseases and microbes from space.

This story goes back to last year's transit of Venus. Phil Plait focussed on some dodgy Chinese science - rather, one maverick Chinese scientist, and he made a meal out of it. The story is at www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/venus_flood.html ... and picks up on something said by Geng Guoqing (Chinese Geophysics Society) preceding the transit of Venus, and that is that he had noticed a correlation between such events and flooding incidents along the Yellow River.

On March 3rd, the BBC2 Horizon programme, aired 'The Truth About Meteors' provoked by the recent Russian meteor light show on February 15th, as it exploded over the Ural Mountains with the force of 20 Hiroshima bombs. The meteor was off the radar of astronomers who had eyeballs trained on another space rock that passed between the Moon and the Earth, but way above the amosphere. Therefore, there was some surprise when this one popped out of the woodwork, and at first we were told it was just a meteor.

At http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/december-2012/article/maize-was-a-k... ... it is claimed that maize was the key to the first civilisations known from Peru, in the third millennium BC. This discovery, by painstaking probing of the ground, seems to overturn the otherwise popular assumption that civilisation started on the coast in cultures where marine resources were the prime focus, and only later adopted farming, which caused their populations to escalate.

At http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/march-2013/article/the-egyptian-for... ... it seems the archaeology does not fit the monuments and the history. This is a fairly long read and concerns the ancient port of Jaffa which had an Egyptian fortress during the New Kingdom period. The problem is that it was attacked and burnt down on a number of occasions. After the expulsion of the Hyksos from the delta region the pharaohs of dynasty 18 conducted regular military campaigns against communities in Canaan.