My Science School

It is located in Ur, Iraq. It was built around 21st century B.C. It is 210 feet (64 m) tall. The Great Ziggurat of Ur was dedicated to the moon god Nanna, who was the patron deity of the city. As the Mesopotamian gods were commonly linked to the eastern mountains, the ziggurat may have functioned as a representation of their homes. Thus, the people of Ur believed that their ziggurat was the place on earth where Nanna chose to dwell. Therefore, a single small shrine was placed on the summit of the ziggurat for the god. The people of ancient Mesopotamia believed that their gods had needs just like their mortal subjects. Hence, a bedchamber was provided for Nanna in the shrine on top of his ziggurat. This chamber was occupied by a maiden chosen to be the god’s companion. On the side stairway of the ziggurat’s north western part is a kitchen, which was likely used to prepare food for this god. The god’s mortal servants had to be provided for as well, and the outer enclosure of the ziggurat contained a temple storehouse, the houses of the priests and a royal ceremonial palace.

 

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It is located in Rome, Italy. It was built around 12 B.C. It is 125 feet (38 m) tall. It was built as a tomb for Roman magistrate Gaius Cestius. The Pyramid of Cestius is constructed of brick and cement, covered in white marble. Originally the interior of his tomb was decorated with lively frescoes, described in detail by early travelers, but now mostly gone. Between 271 and 275 it was built into the fortifications of the Aurelian walls, which likely helped it survive the centuries.

In the interior is the burial chamber, a simple barrel-vaulted rectangular cavity measuring 5.95 metres long, 4.10 m wide and 4.80 m high. When opened in 1660, the chamber was found to be decorated with frescoes, which were recorded by Pietro Santo Bartoli. Only scant traces of these frescoes survive, and no trace of any other contents. The tomb had been sealed when it was built, with no exterior entrance, but had been plundered at some time thereafter, probably during antiquity. Until the end of restoration works in 2015, it was not possible for visitors to access the interior, except by special permission typically only granted to scholars. Since the beginning of May 2015, the pyramid is open to the public every second and fourth Saturday each month. Visitors must arrange their visit in advance.

 

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It is located in Tinum, Mexico.  It was built around A.D. 1000. It measures 98 feet (30 m). It was built as a temple for sacrificial rituals to a Mayan snake god. All legends aside, crafty and mathematically brilliant architecture combined with the natural rotation of the Earth creates an amazing and somewhat eerie image of a giant snake crawling down the temple. For five hours an illusion of light and shadow creates seven triangles on the side of the staircase starting at the top and inching its way down until it connects the top platform with the giant stone head of the feathered serpent at the bottom. For 45 minutes this impressive shadow stays in its entirety before slowing descending the pyramid and disappearing along with the crowd that gathered to see it.

 

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Egyptians built more than a hundred pyramid tombs, but the biggest is the Great Pyramid at Giza. Nearly half as tall as the Empire State Building when finished, the Great Pyramid was built from 23 million limestone blocks assembled by a workforce of 20,000 laborers and craftsmen over two decades of construction. It held the title of world’s tallest building for nearly 4,000 years.

There are three known chambers inside the Great Pyramid. The lowest chamber is cut into the bedrock upon which the pyramid was built and was unfinished. The so-called Queen's Chamber and King's Chamber are higher up within the pyramid structure. The main part of the Giza complex is a set of buildings that included two mortuary temples in honour of Khufu (one close to the pyramid and one near the Nile), three smaller pyramids for Khufu's wives, an even smaller "satellite" pyramid, a raised causeway connecting the two temples, and small mastaba tombs surrounding the pyramid for nobles.

 

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The ancient Egyptians took pyramid construction to new heights along the Nile River in northeastern Africa 5,000 years ago, but they weren’t the only civilization to build massive pyramid-shaped monuments (for even to mummify their dearly departed, which other ancient cultures also practiced). Pyramids were the most structurally sound buildings that could be constructed out of stone – as long as a civilization had sufficient rocks to quarry and the manpower to move them. Cultures all over the world built pyramids throughout history. They came in different forms and functions.

 

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Eskimos – a broad term for people native to frigid subarctic regions in the United States, Canada, Greenland, and Russia – don’t speak five of them, none of which has a hundred words for snow. The myth of their ice-obsessed vocabulary comes from the way their languages work. Eskimos create larger words (and full sentences) out of smaller “root” words. Their languages have only a few root terms for snow, but to those small terms they add other words to create long one-word descriptions of the snow’s conditions and uses (“the snow is icy and dangerous,” for instance, or “this wet snow is excellent for making a snowman”). The structure of Eskimo language makes it seem like they have hundreds of words for everything, not just snow.

 

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Although it’s crucial in battle, communication is worthless – even dangerous – if it’s intercepted by the enemy. Even messages created by complex “encryption machines,” which convert plain words into secret codes, can be hacked given enough time. Native Americans, however, speak complex languages that are virtually unknown outside their tribes. Since the First World War, they’ve used their unique linguistic abilities in the U.S. military’s signal corps as “code talkers,” translating sensitive communications into their language and transmitting them much faster than any machine. Even if enemies learned to decode Cherokee, Comanche, Navajo, Choctaw, or any of the other code-talker languages, they would still need to figure out the secret terms for words that didn’t exist in those languages. The Navajo word for “iron fish,” for instance, was used to describe submarines. A tank became “turtle” in Comanche.

The code talkers’ mission was so top secret they weren’t even allowed to share details with their loved ones. Their existence was finally made public in 1968 (23 years after the close of the war), but it took several decades before they recognized for their crucial role in winning World War II.

 

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Researchers can only guess when humans first began forming sounds into words to communicate thoughts (there certainly weren’t any books to record the invention of language). Ancestors of the human species possessed the mouth and throat parts necessary to pronounce words nearly two million years ago, but they likely didn’t have much to talk about until they started creating complex tools and building fires more than a million years later. The first system of words might have described tools and fire-making techniques. “Carl blow on fire, fire grow big,” Carl the Homo erectus our immediate evolutionary ancestor – may have explained to his campfire pals 500,000 years ago.

No doubt the earliest members of our species – Homo sapiens – added to the conversation when they appeared around 200,000 years ago. But as they started leaving Africa to explore Asia, Europe, and eventually the rest of the world around 60,000 years ago, our human ancestors began to develop more complicated tools – and probably words to describe them – within their own tribes. Their vocabularies grew and split off from the languages spoken by more far-flung groups. The farther these pockets of humanity moved from southwestern Africa – the point of origin for both Homo sapiens and language – the more their languages changed. And that’s why we have nearly 7,000 languages spoken around the world today.

 

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It is located in Northern Spain. It was painted 15,000 years ago. Using charcoal and the curve of the cave walls to create 3-D effects, ancient artists painted bison, horses, deer, and other animals that looked so realistic, archaeologists thought they were forgeries when the caves were discovered in the late 1800s. They didn’t believe Stone Age artists had the intellectual capacity for such creativity. They were wrong.

The Altamira cave is 270 metres (890 feet) long. In the vestibule numerous archaeological remains belonging to the Aurignacian (Perigordian), upper Solutrean, and lower or middle Magdalenian periods were found, including ceremonial staves and engraved animal shoulder blades. The great lateral chamber that contains most of the paintings measures 18 metres by 9 metres, the height of the vault varying from 1.15 metres to 2.65 metres. The roof of the chamber is covered with paintings, chiefly of bison, executed in a magnificent, vivid polychrome of red, black, and violet tones. There are also two wild boars, some horses, a hind, and some other figures in a simpler style; in addition, there are eight engraved anthropomorphic figures, various handprints, and hand outlines. The other galleries contain numerous black-painted or engraved figures. In many cases, the creator of the designs exploited the natural contours of the rock surface.

 

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It is located in Southwestern France. It was painted 20,000 years ago. Crammed with more masterpieces than any art museum, this cave complex in the French countryside offers a window into the wild world of our Stone Age ancestors. The cavern walls are awash with stunning etchings of horses, bison, birds, humans, and bulls – one of which is 17 feet (5 m) long.

Besides the paintings, many tools were found at Lascaux. Among these are many flint tools, some of which display signs of being used specifically for carving engravings into the walls. Bone tools were also present. The pigments used at Lascaux contain traces of reindeer antler, most likely introduced either because antler was carved right next to the pigments or because it was used to mix the pigments into water. The remains of shellfish shells, some of them pierced, tie in well with other evidence of personal adornment found among humans living in Europe during the Upper Palaeolithic.

 

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It is located in Santa Cruz, Argentina. It was painted 13,000 years ago. Profiles of human hands, perhaps created in some sort of coming-of-age ritual, join images of birds and beasts on the walls of this cave system in Patagonian wilderness at the tip of South America. Most of the hands are lefties, leading archaeologists to believe the ancient artists created their stencils by blowing paint through hollow bones held in their right hands.

It takes its name (Cave of the Hands) from the stencilled outlines of human hands in the cave, but there are also many depictions of animals, such as guanacos (Lama guanicoe ), still commonly found in the region, as well as hunting scenes that depict animals and human figures interacting in a dynamic and naturalistic manner. The entrance to the Cueva is screened by a rock wall covered by many hand stencils. Within the rock shelter itself there are five concentrations of rock art, later figures and motifs often superimposed upon those from earlier periods. The paintings were executed with natural mineral pigments - iron oxides (red and purple), kaolin (white), and natrojarosite (yellow), manganese oxide (black) - ground and mixed with some form of binder.

 

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Ice Age beasts and geometric designs, hunting parties and herds of horses – the painted imagery of our ancestors took many shapes and styles. As far back as 41,000 years ago, working in the dim light of oil lamps, humans (and possibly our Neanderthal relatives) expressed themselves in caverns across the world with etchings and paintings. But while archaeologists know how Stone Age artists turned cave walls into canvasses – by using chisels, charcoal, berries, and even bat poop as paint applied with straw brushes or blown through hollow bones – no one knows for certain why they did it.

In the age before the written word, cave artists probably painted as a form of communication: to teach other members of their group about animals in the region and how to hunt them. Some archaeologists believe cave art may have served as a sort of magic. By painting animals and hunting scenes on the walls of scared caverns, or special caves used for ceremonies rather than as shelter, ancient artists may have hoped to bring success on the next hunt.

 

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In 2013, NASA announced its “Grand Challenge” to locate any nasty asteroids heading our way and prevent their impact. Rock-stopping options include:

Nuking it: Attack the asteroid with a nuclear missile, smashing it into space dust.

Ramming it: Launch a rocket directly into the asteroid to break it in half or divert its course.

Blasting it: Target the asteroid with a space-based laser to vaporize it before it gets too close.

Redirecting it: Mount rocket engines to the asteroid’s surface to change its course so it misses Earth.

 

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Comets originate far out in the solar system – some from the Kuiper belt of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune, and others from a more distant region known as the Oort Cloud.

Statistics imply that Oort Cloud may contain as many as a trillion comets and may account for a significant fraction of the mass of the solar system. However, since the individual comets are so small and so far away, we have no direct evidence about the actual existence of the Oort Cloud.

The Kuiper Belt is a disk-shaped region past the orbit of Neptune roughly 30 to 100 AU from the Sun. The Belt contains many icy bodies which can become comets. Occasionally the orbit of a Kuiper Belt object will be disturbed by gravitational interactions with the giant planets in such a way as to cause the object to take up an orbit that crosses into the inner solar system.

Although the Oort Cloud is much farther away from the Sun than the Kuiper Belt, it appears that the Oort Cloud objects were formed closer to the Sun than the Kuiper Belt objects. Small objects formed near the giant planets would have been ejected from the solar system by gravitational encounters. Those that didn't escape entirely formed the distant Oort Cloud. Small objects that formed farther out had no such interactions, and remained as the Kuiper Belt objects.

 

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Like asteroids, comets are leftovers from the formation of our solar system, but they’re made of different stuff. Each is an irregular ball of icy slush, frozen gases, and dark minerals just a few miles or kilometers wide. Like planets, some comets orbit the sun on a predictable schedule. Halley’s Comet, the most famous of these weird wanderers, drops by Earth every 76 years or so (it’s not due for its next visit until July 2061)

When the comet gets near the Sun, the Sun's heat warms it, causing the ices to sublimate (turn directly from ice into steam), releasing also dust and rock from the nucleus. This creates both the coma (a thin atmosphere) surrounding the nucleus as well as the tail of material that generally streams from the nucleus away from the Sun. The size of the coma is thousands, hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of kilometers wide and the tail can reach tens of millions of kilometers long. Once the coma and tail form, they outshine and hide the true nucleus.

 

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