M.J. Rose

Our friends at the Long Now Foundation never cease to amaze. You will see what I mean in this segment from Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman…

Long Now on Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman

Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman is a show on Discovery’s Science Channel that features cosmological and metaphysical questions about science and the universe.

Mr. Freeman, as it turns out, is quite the geek.

An episode from the show’s second season recently asked, “Can We Live Forever?” Well known scientists such as Michio Kaku and Aubrey de Grey provided perspective on the challenges and research underlying the the science of human life extension. (Coincidentally, a newly announced DARPA research initiative on the subject, called Biochronicity, was mentioned on Long Views just last month.)…

Click here to watch the segment and to read more from the Long Now blog. Curious about what the Long Now Foundation is? Click here.

We love discoveries like this! And with a name like “the Ness of Brodgar” it can’t help but have an air of mystery and an intriguing long lost history…

Stonehenge Precursor Found? Island Complex Predates Famous Site

by James Owen for National Geographic News

On an island off Britain’s northern tip, new discoveries suggest a huge Stone Age ritual complex is older than Stonehenge.

But age is only the half of it. Researchers say the site may have in fact been the original model for Stonehenge and other later, better-known British complexes to the south.

First discovered in 2002, the waterside site—called the Ness of Brodgar (“Brodgar promontory”)—lies on Mainland, the largest of Scotland’s Orkney Islands (map).

According to recent radiocarbon dating of burned-wood remains, the Ness was first occupied around 3200 B.C. and went on to include up to a hundred buildings within a monumental walled enclosure…

For the complete article click here.