Some lava flows may not have been as thick as they appear

Stars ’ - Have They Been Discovered ?

Recently there is a suggestion about the star RXJ1856.5−3754, being a possible candidate for quark star. While from the estimates of the radiation radius, given by the authors, it does not seem to fit with any of the known models for such stars, the mass radius diagram admits the possibility of this being a quark star of mass M ⊙ < M < 1.4M ⊙ , provided the radius mentioned is the actual radius...

Strange Stars ’ - have they been discovered ?

Recently there have been controversial claims about the nature of the isolated compact star RXJ1856.5−3754, with one group claiming it to be a strange star (Drake et al., 2002) while the other asserting it to be a normal neutron star (Walter & Lattimer, 2002). The controversy arises mainly due to the distance estimate, which in turn is used to resolve the measured angular diameter, and thus the...

Apes have culture but may not know that they do

There is good evidence that some ape behaviors can be transmitted socially and that this can lead to group-specific traditions. However, many consider animal traditions, including those in great apes, to be fundamentally different from human cultures, largely because of lack of evidence for cumulative processes and normative conformity, but perhaps also because current research on ape culture i...

Asking photons where they have been.

We present surprising experimental evidence regarding the past of photons passing through an interferometer. The information about the positions through which the photons pass in the interferometer is retrieved from modulations of the detected signal at the vibration frequencies of mirrors the photons bounce off. From the analysis we conclude that the past of the photons is not represented by c...

Stone tools have been used as cognitive/chronological, cultural