The 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts

The Bible tells us that God created Adam and Eve just a few thousand years ago, by some fundamentalist interpretations. Science informs us that this is mere fiction and that man is a few million years old, and that civilization just tens of thousands of years old. Could it be, however, that conventional science is just as mistaken as the Bible stories? There is a great deal of archeological evidence that the history of life on earth might be far different than what current geological and anthropological texts tell us. The Grooved Spheres Over the last few decades, miners in South Africa have been digging up mysterious metal spheres. The Dropa Stones In 1938, an archeological expedition led by Dr. The Ica StonesBeginning in the 1930s, the father of Dr. The Antikythera MechanismA perplexing artifact was recovered by sponge-divers from a shipwreck in 1900 off the coast of Antikythera, a small island that lies northwest of Crete. Ancient Model Aircraft Impossible Fossils

Warp Drives Might Be More Realistic Than Thought | Wired Science A ring-shaped warp drive device could transport a football-shape starship (center) to effective speeds faster than light. Image: Harold White/NASA By Ian Steadman, Wired UK NASA scientists now think that the famous warp drive concept is a realistic possibility, and that in the far future humans could regularly travel faster than the speed of light. [partner id="wireduk" align="right"]A warp drive would work by “warping” spacetime around any spaceship, which physicist Miguel Alcubierre showed was theoretically possible in 1994, albeit well beyond the current technical capabilities of humanity. However, any such Alcubierre drive was assumed to require more energy — equivalent to the mass-energy of the whole planet of Jupiter – than could ever possibly be supplied, rendering it impossible to build. But now scientists believe that those requirements might not be so vast, making warp travel a tangible possibility. In the universe of Star Trek, the warp drive was invented in 2063.

Space Sugar Discovered Around Sun-Like Star What a sweet cosmic find! Sugar molecules have been found in the gas surrounding a young sun-like star, suggesting that some of the building blocks of life may actually be present even as alien planets are still forming in the system. The young star, called IRAS 16293-2422, is part of a binary (or two-star) system. It has a similar mass to the sun and is located about 400 light-years away in the constellation of Ophiuchus. The sugar molecules, known as glycolaldehyde, have previously been detected in interstellar space, but according to the researchers, this is the first time they have been spotted so close to a sun-like star. In fact, the molecules are about the same distance away from the star as the planet Uranus is from our sun. [Slideshow: Stunning earth features seen from space] Glycolaldehyde can react with a substance called propenal to form ribose, which is a major component of RNA, or ribonucleic acid. View gallery [Slideshow: Dazzling distant planets]

Mysterious Polar Bear Death Linked to Zebra Herpes In 2010 at the Wuppertal Zoo in Germany, brain inflammation killed one female polar bear, Jerka, and sickened her male companion, Lars, whom veterinarians were able to save. Brain-swelling disease, or encephalitis, can be caused by many pathogens. But after investigating samples from Jerka, Lars and nine other polar bears researchers believe they have identified the culprit: a mishmash virus that originated in zebras. The bear-killing virus appears to have emerged when a portion of equine herpes virus transferred a portion of its genetic code — one known for its role in causing disease that affects the nervous system — into a second equine herpes virus, researchers say. This conclusion raises many questions. And, of course, how did the polar bears at Wuppertal Zoo catch the virus? The zebras are housed 223 feet (68 meters) from polar bears and are not cared for by the same zookeepers.