M.J. Rose

The conservation process is amazing to watch.

From Atlas Obscura,

Watch a Jacobean Painting Emerge From 200 Years of Grime in Seconds
A mysterious 1618 lady, revealed.

by Natasha Frost

“Two hundred years ago, someone—an aspiring art conservator, perhaps—took a brush and coated a 1618 oil painting of a lady in red with a thick coat of ostensibly protective varnish. Over the decades, the varnish naturally discolored, turning first yellow and then brown, until the whole painting appeared covered in grime. Now—in a flourish—those two centuries of discoloration are gone.

Philip Mould is an art dealer and presenter on the popular BBC art program Fake or Fortune. He bought this painting at auction and posted videos of the dramatic conservation process as it happened. In the videos, Mould applies a substance—a gel-solvent mixture—to the surface of the painting, works it in, and then wipes it back to reveal the painting in its near-original glory…”

Click here for the rest as well as the videos of this in action!

Does it seem a little like the world is having some sort of apocalypse lately? Well, the CERN scientists are taking that thought a little further with the idea that perhaps the universe shouldn’t exist in the first place…

The BASE experiment at the CERN antiproton decelerator in Geneva.
Stefan Sellner, Fundamental Symmetries Laboratory, RIKEN, Japan

From Cosmos Magazine,

Universe shouldn’t exist, CERN physicists conclude

A super-precise measurement shows proton and antiproton have identical magnetic properties, writes Cathal O’Connell.

“One of the great mysteries of modern physics is why antimatter did not destroy the universe at the beginning of time.

To explain it, physicists suppose there must be some difference between matter and antimatter – apart from electric charge. Whatever that difference is, it’s not in their magnetism, it seems.

Physicists at CERN in Switzerland have made the most precise measurement ever of the magnetic moment of an anti-proton – a number that measures how a particle reacts to magnetic force – and found it to be exactly the same as that of the proton but with opposite sign. The work is described in Nature.

“All of our observations find a complete symmetry between matter and antimatter, which is why the universe should not actually exist,” says Christian Smorra, a physicist at CERN’s Baryon–Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment (BASE) collaboration. “An asymmetry must exist here somewhere but we simply do not understand where the difference is.”

Antimatter is notoriously unstable – any contact with regular matter and it annihilates in a burst of pure energy that is the most efficient reaction known to physics. That’s why it was chosen as the fuel to power the starship Enterprise in Star Trek.

The standard model predicts the Big Bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter – but that’s a combustive mixture that would have annihilated itself, leaving nothing behind to make galaxies or planets or people.

To explain the mystery, physicists have been playing spot the difference between matter and antimatter – searching for some discrepancy that might explain why matter came to dominate.

So far they’ve performed extremely precise measurements for all sort of properties: mass, electric charge and so on, but no difference has yet been found.

Last year, scientists at CERN’s Antihydrogen Laser PHysics Apparatus (ALPHA) experiment probed an atom of anti-hydrogen with light for the first time, again finding no difference when compared with an atom of hydrogen.

But one property was known only to middling accuracy compared to the others – the magnetic moment of the antiproton…”

For the rest, click here.

This is pretty much one of our dreams come true. JUST IMAGINE WHAT’S INSIDE?

Also, one of our favorites, Kathlyn M. Cooney, an Associate Professor of Ancient Egyptian Art & Architecture at the University of California Los Angeles, is quoted — and she cautions that since archeology is destructive, it is best to be patient regarding this discovery…

From Gizmodo

by George Dvorsky

Stunned Scientists Detect Suspected Hidden Chamber Within Great Pyramid of Giza

Khufu’s Pyramid 3D cut aerial view. The fuzzy white dots represent the location of the newly discovered void. (Image: ScanPyramids Mission)

“Though they were constructed nearly 5,000 years ago, the Great Pyramids of Egypt are still packed with secrets. Using a technique that leverages the power of cosmic rays, scientists have confirmed the presence of a large empty space within Khufu’s pyramid—a void that’s signaling the presence of a possible hidden chamber.

It’s tempting to think that all the great archaeological discoveries from ancient Egypt have already been made, but new research published today in Nature shows there’s still plenty for us to uncover.

An investigation into the internal structure of Khufu’s pyramid—the largest pyramid in Giza—has revealed the presence of a large and inaccessible “void” within the structure. The researchers who led the study, Mehdi Tayoubi from the HIP Institute in France and Kunihiro Morishima from Nagoya University in Japan, won’t go so far as to say the cavity is a hidden chamber, but they’re reasonably convinced the internal feature is a deliberate architectural feature of the pyramid. As to what’s inside is anyone’s guess, but the presence of artifacts and funeral items are not out of the question, according to Egyptologists.

The discovery was made possible through the unlikely intersection of archaeology and particle physics. By making meticulous measurements of muons—elementary particles that rain down on Earth from deep space and are capable of traveling through solid objects—researchers were able to characterize the densities within the pyramid, revealing the presence of an empty space that measures at least 100 feet (30 meters) in length…”

For the rest, click here.