M.J. Rose

Hapless youngster or power-hungry murderess? Who was this Queen Ankhesenamun?

Let’s find out…

From Ancient Origins,

The Hunt for Ankhesenamun: How Did a Young Woman Stop an Ancient Dynasty from Imploding? Part I

“The names of Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and Tutankhamun—prominent players from the Eighteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom period in ancient Egypt—have been in the spotlight for well over a century. Extensive research, documentaries, and publications have served to keep the mystique of the Amarna royals alive in our collective consciousness. However, a key figure from this family, Queen Ankhesenamun, is either ignored or given little prominence in most narratives.

Flower Child of Akhetaten

Ankhesenamun is portrayed in myriad ways; as a terrified and hapless youngster; a power-hungry murderess; or a loathsome vixen who will stop at nothing to achieve her devious ends. Very few characterizations concentrate on the real person, sans the hype. But then, with irrefutable facts hard to come by, any exotic soap opera can be built around an ancient individual! This once-powerful queen surely deserves a far better study of her personage; for she seems to have managed to prevent a dynasty from imploding—and that is her lasting legacy…”

For the rest, click here.

Water is life….?

Credits: AFP

From Futurism,

One of Earth’s Closest Alien Planets Appears to Be An “Ocean World”

The case for Proxima b
“Proxima b’s proximity to Earth — about 4.2 light years away — makes it the nearest exoplanet that is potentially habitable and could contain life. While it may be tidally locked (meaning one side of Proxima b perpetually faces its star as it completes its 11.2 year revolution), Proxima b’s proximity to the star it orbits, the red-dwarf Proxima Centauri, puts it right in the Goldilocks Zone. This means there’s a strong possibility that water exists on this exoplanet.

A team from the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France believes Proxima b may not just contain water; it could be covered in it. “The planet could be an ‘ocean planet’, with an ocean covering its entire surface, and similar water to some icy moons around Jupiter or Saturn,” the team says.

Water = Life
To figure out just how much water may be on Proxima b, the CNRS team used simulations that play with the estimated range of the planet’s radius, between 0.94 and 1.4 times that of the Earth. At the lowest limit, the simulations suggest a dense planet with a metallic core surrounded by a rocky mantle, and surface water of about 0.05% of the planet’s total mass.

With the maximum limit, however, the simulations show the planet’s radius at 8,920 km (5,542.6 miles), with a mass that’s equally divided between a rocky core and surrounding water. “In this case, Proxima b would be covered by a single, liquid ocean 200 km deep,” the researchers explained…”

For the rest, click here.

This almost seems too fringe to be true (Nibiru anyone?) — but wow, won’t it be interesting if the Sun really does have a chaos-causing twin out there somewhere?

Image Credit: NASA, ESA and J. Muzerolle, STScI

From Futurism,

Astronomers Discover That Our Sun Likely Had an “Evil” Twin That Killed the Dinosaurs

Scientists believe that most, if not all, sun-like stars are born with a twin. Evidence also suggests that our solar system’s sun’s twin may be responsible for knocking the comet that killed the dinosaurs toward Earth.
“We have long known that the dinosaurs were killed by a catastrophic comet impact with the Earth’s surface but what if there was some foul play afoot? Astronomers have discovered that our sun may have been born with a twin, and an evil one, at that. One hypothesis states that every 27 million years, the evil twin, aptly dubbed Nemesis, returns to wreck havoc on the solar system. They believe that the star lobs a few meteors in our direction as it makes its may through the outer limits of the solar system.

Research has lead scientists to believe that most stars are born with at least one sibling. According to UC Berkeley astronomer Steven Stahler, “We ran a series of statistical models to see if we could account for the relative populations of young single stars and binaries of all separations in the Perseus molecular cloud, and the only model that could reproduce the data was one in which all stars form initially as wide binaries.”…

For the rest, click here.