M.J. Rose

Happy New Year!

The New Year often inspires both a reflection on the past and wishes and hopes for the future – it is a marker of time that is set with an extra bright beacon. Self-reflective and hopeful, we approach January 1st with the assumption that we will live to experience another year and then we ask ourselves, how can we experience this revolution around the sun just a little better this time?

Being so aware of the passage of time, perhaps it is also interesting to imagine where we are in SPACE as well?

A new study in Nature finds that the Milky Way is part of a broader supercluster of 100,000 galaxies known as Laniakea.

From Vox,

This is the most detailed map yet of our place in the universe
by Brad Plumer

“We know that the Earth and the solar system are located in the Milky Way galaxy. But how, exactly, does the Milky Way fit in among the billions of other galaxies in the known universe?

In a fascinating 2014 study for Nature, a team of scientists mapped thousands of galaxies in our immediate vicinity, and discovered that the Milky Way is part of a jaw-droppingly massive “supercluster” of galaxies that they named Laniakea.
This structure is much, much, much bigger than astronomers had previously realized. Laniakea contains more than 100,000 galaxies, stretches 500 million light years across…”

For more, and an incredible video from Nature, click here.

The most monumental of the ancient sites: Baalbek. And by monumental we mean this place has the largest building blocks that have ever existed in the world.

From Ancient Origins,

The Monumental Baalbek – The largest building blocks on Earth

“In Lebanon, at an altitude of approximately 1,170 meters in Beqaa valley stands the famous Baalbek or known in Roman times as Heliopolis. Baalbek is an ancient site that has been used since the Bronze Age with a history of at least 9,000 years, according to evidence found during the German archaeological expedition in 1898.

Baalbek was an ancient Phoenician city that was named by the name of the sky God Baal. The name ‘Baal’ in the Phoenician language meant ‘lord’ or ‘god’. Legends abound around Baalbek with some of them mentioning that Baalbek was the place where Baal first arrived on Earth and thus ancient alien theorists suggest that the initial building was probably built as a platform to be used for sky God Baal to ‘land’ and ‘take off’.

Part of this suggestion is because Heliopolis was built on a massive platform that probably was built in pre-roman times for the initial temple or city of Baal – Baalbek. If you look at the picture it becomes obvious that different civilizations have built different parts of what is now known as Heliopolis. However beyond theories, the actual purpose of this structure as well as who has built it are completely unknown. Massive stone blocks have been used with the largest of the stones to be approximately 1,500 tons and a size of 68x14x14 feet. Those are the largest building blocks that have ever existed in the whole world…”

Read more here.

You never know what you may find…

From Little Things dot com,

“This pot was unearthed on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin, where it had laid buried for the past 800 years.

Inside, archaeologists found a stash of seeds. The seeds were probably buried in the pot as a method of storing food supplies. They were determined to be an old, now-extinct species of squash.

Now, seven years after making this stunning discovery, students in Winnipeg decided to plant the 800-year-old seeds — and, to everyone’s amazement, something grew…”

For the rest click here.