In the News

At last the Toba super volcano catastrophe idea has been squelched - see www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22355515 The idea that humans almost became extinct at 75,000 years ago

At http://phys.org/print286532235.html ... a lake in Iberia, in the Sierra Nevada, over 3000m above sea level, has revealed evidence of atmospheric polution around 2000BC. The

An intriguing and very good piece at http://phys.org/print286551435.html ... a discovery at Uunortoq in Greenland over 50 years ago, thought to be a Viking sea

This one goes back to 2008. At http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/15dec_solarfla... ... Richard Mewaldt of CalTech describes what was discovered after a huge solar flare in 2006 as

I've logged this story before, I think, but here it goes again - from a different source (www.sloughobserver.co.uk/news/roundup/articles/2013/03/12/87456-horton-q...). The newspaper cutting I have is dated

At www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/04/dark-matter-is-the-tip-of-an-icebe... ... ten years ago many astronomers or particle physicists disagreed that dark matter was important but now, that has changed. The post is

There are lots of sites and articles on the web devoted to Charles Hapgood's Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings. We now have another site

At www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/uog-nei042613.php ... the study of a Neolithic community at Karleby in Sweden has come up with some interesting results after scientists from the University

Tim Cullen, in a post at Tall Bloke's Talk Shop, 'The Other Big Bang Theory', raises an interesting set of issues, not least another example

Water from Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 which spectacularly struck Jupiter way back in 1994 appears to have left behind millions of gallons of water, it is

At www.nature.com/news/first-australians-may-have-been-migrants-rather-than... .. we have news of a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B (doi:10.1038/nature.2013.12865) that has used C14 methodology to seek

At the height of the Late Glacial Maximum, 22,000 years ago, humans were living in NE Brazil, according to a new evaluation of the disputed

Another new book. French intellectual and philosopher Pascal Bruckner, The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse - see the review at www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/4/25/bruckners-opus.html

A third millennium BC rich burial has been found near Windsor, reputed to be 4400 years old - see www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/fourthousand-years-old-go... The woman, wearing a knecklace

The notion that slaves, or the lower orders of society, from any origin (foreign or inigenous) built the pyramids is given another blow by recent

Is this a bit of Daily Wail fluff or a piece of spin on a string - or is there something important to be learned

At http://phys.org/print285836945.html .... speculates on a supernova explosion in AD1006 as texts from the time mention a space light so bright it cast shadows at

At www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130417092013.htm ... some new work on the early settlement of the Americas by the University of Barcelona (with an emphasis on South America) which

The BBC television had a programme on Stonehenge and environs last week fronted by a very over excited presenter. I lost track of how many

Another important paper put online by George Howard at http://cosmictusk.com/courty-2013/ ... which I will probably get back to later as far as commenting is concerned.