M.J. Rose

I would love to go back in time to visit Gobekli Tepe…

‘World’s oldest temple’ was a happenin’ place

Ancient blades of volcanic rock hint that people came from far and wide 11,000 years ago

Gobekli Tepe is in southern Turkey near the modern-day city of Urfa. It contains at least 20 stone rings (circles within a circle) that date back more than 11,000 years. T-shaped limestone blocks line the circles and reliefs are carved on them. Long ago, people would fill in the outer circle with debris before building a new circle within.

By Owen Jarus (msnbc.com)

Ancient blades made of volcanic rock that were discovered at what may be the world’s oldest temple suggest that the site in Turkey was the hub of a pilgrimage that attracted a cosmopolitan group of people some 11,000 years ago.

The researchers matched up about 130 of the blades, which would have been used as tools, with their source volcanoes, finding people would have come from far and wide to congregate at the ancient temple site, Gobekli Tepe, in southern Turkey. The blades are made of obsidian, a volcanic glass rich with silica, which forms when lava cools quickly.

The research was presented in February at the 7th International Conference on the Chipped and Ground Stone Industries of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic in Barcelona, Spain. [ Photos of Gobekli Tepe ]…

For the complete article click here.

It continues to be one of the most puzzling questions in science – why is the universe made of matter and not equal amounts of matter and antimatter?

Physicists are closing in on how matter differs from antimatter

(From The Economist)

HOT on the heels of results from Fermilab, in America, which reported last week on an esoteric phenomenon called charge-conjugation/parity (CP) violation involving equally esoteric subatomic particles known as D0-mesons, a second research group, the Daya Bay Collaboration of more than 40 institutions, mainly from China and America, has found a related result involving neutrinos. CP violation is an asymmetry between matter and antimatter and the experiment, based at a complex of nuclear reactors 50km (30 miles) north of Hong Kong, has settled a longstanding puzzle that bears on the question of whether neutrinos, too, experience it. That, in turn, is related to the deeper question of why the universe is made of matter rather than having originally had equal amounts of matter and antimatter. If such a primordial equity had prevailed, the two would have annihilated each other, leaving a universe filled only with energy…

For the complete article click here.

In celebration of M.J.’s pub date for her book The Book of Lost Fragrances, we are posting something beautiful, mysterious and delicate – much like the scents described in M.J.’s new book.

Little Big Berlin. Beauty.

Little Big Berlin from pilpop on Vimeo.