M.J. Rose

Issues of royal paternity. It was once the stuff of beheadings and intrigue. Now it lives in the realm of DNA testing in a lab…

Richard III DNA shows British Royal family may not have royal bloodline

The University of Leicester has studied the DNA of Richard III and found that there could be a break in the royal bloodline

By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor The Telegraph UK

“When the body of Richard III was discovered in a car park in Leicester in 2012 archaeologists knew it was a momentous find.

But little did they realise that it might expose the skeletons in the cupboard of the British aristocracy, and even call into question the bloodline of the Royal family.

In order to prove that the skeleton really was Richard III, scientists needed to take a DNA sample and match it to his descendants.

Genetic testing through his maternal DNA proved conclusively that the body was the King. However, when they checked the male line they discovered something odd. The DNA did not match showing that at some point in history an adulterous affair had broken the paternal chain.

Although it is impossible to say when the affair happened, if it occurred around the time of Edward III (1312- 1377) it could call into question whether kings like Henry VI, Henry VII and Henry VIII had royal blood, and therefore the right to rule…”

For the rest, and a very interesting video segment, click here.

As it turns out, time travel may be possible. But it will require going really really REALLY fast through outer space…How fast? And how possible? The article below from Gizmodo explains…

Yes, Time Travel Is Possible; Here’s How

(Adam Clark Estes, Gizmodo)

“Time travel’s been one of man’s wildest fantasies for centuries. It’s long been a popular trend in movies and fiction, inspiring everything from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine to the Charlton Heston shrine that is The Planet of the Apes. And with the opening of Interstellar today—n0t to spoil anything—we’re about to fantasize about it even more.

The most fantastic thing? It’s probably possible.

What’s almost impossible –

Let’s start with the bad news. We probably can’t travel back in time and watch the Egyptians build the pyramids. In the last century scientists came up with a number of theories that suggested it is indeed plausible to take a leap into the future; going back in time, unfortunately, is much more complicated. But it’s not necessarily impossible.

Albert Einstein laid the groundwork for much of the theoretical science that governs most time travel research today. Of course, scientists like Galileo and Poincaré that came before him helped, but Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity dramatically changed our understanding of time and space. And it’s because of these well-tested theories that we believe time travel is possible.

One option for would be a wormhole, also known as an Einstein-Rosen bridge. Along with physicist Nathan Rosen, Einstein suggested the existence of wormholes in 1935, and although we’ve yet to discover one, many scientists have contributed their own theories about how wormholes might work. Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne are probably the most well known. Thorne, a theoretical physicist at CalTech, even helped Christopher Nolan with the science behind Interstellar.

So let’s just assume that wormholes do exist. In the late 1980s, Thorne said that a wormhole could be made into a time machine. According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, a wormhole could act like a bridge though space-time by connecting two distant points with a shortcut. Certain types of wormholes, it’s theorized, could allow for time travel in either direction, if we could accelerate one mouth of the wormhole to near-light speed and then reverse it back to its original position. Meanwhile, the other mouth would remain stationary. The result would be that the moving mouth would age less slowly than the stationary mouth thanks to the effect of time dilation—more on this in a second…”

To find out what’s possible, click here.

Our imaginations run wild with the thought that quite a bit of the ship’s cargo is still preserved beneath the sediment….

Archaeologists Make Stunning Discoveries at the Antikythera Shipwreck

(io9.com)

“The international team of divers and archaeologists who are investigating the site of an ancient Greek ship that sank more than 2,000 years ago off the remote island of Antikythera have not been disappointed. Not only is the site bigger than they thought, it also contains a treasure trove of artifacts.

First, an explanation for that awesome image you see above. The ship, a luxury cargo vessel carrying Greek treasures from the coast of Asia Minor west to Rome, sank in bad water around 70 to 60 BC in some rather deep water. The ship is located at a depth unsafe for human divers — 55 meters (180 feet) — so the team at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) utilized a diving exosuit. It uses rebreather technology in which carbon dioxide is scrubbed from the exhaled air while oxygen is introduced and recirculated. This allowed the divers to explore the site for up to three hours at a time…”

For the complete piece and some incredible photos, please click here.