Eight Million Year Old Cypress Trees Found in Turkey with Perfectly Preserved Wood

Miners digging for lignite, a type of coal, discovered a patch of cypress forest that's eight million years old. The palaeontological site is in Bukkabrany in northeastern Hungary, and it has been luring scientists because of the perfect preservation of the wood of the trees, which, logic would dictate, should have been petrified after so long.

The state of the trees may give climatologists clues to what happened to the region at that time, when the Pannonian lake, which submerged much of Hungary began to retreat and caused much of the Mediterranean sea to dry up.

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Bulusan Volcano Erupts in the Philippines Again

Bulusan volcano in Sorsogon in the Philippines erupts anew, endangering nearby towns. If things get worse, an evacuation of the vicinity will be undertaken.

This satellite image on the left, depicted in exaggerated, elevated 3D shows the Bulusan landscape. The volcano itself is 1,559 meters high. It has a 1,000-foot-diameter crater.

The ash spewed by the eruption, if massive enough, like what Mt. Pinatubo ejected, can theoretically become distributed around the globe and help cool the atmosphere to counter global warming.

Saturn's Rings from Different Perspectives

The rings of Saturn represents perhaps the most awe inspiring structure in the solar system. See a couple of views of them by the Cassini spacecraft. The upper photo shows giant Titan and Ephemesus while the lower one includes shepherd moons Prometheus and Pandora with Mimas in the distance.

Pluto's Moon Has Ice Volcanoes

Charon, Pluto's sole moon has been discovered to have volcanoes that spew water ice into space. Water apparently is liquid inside the moon, probably due to an ammonia mixture that acts like an antifreeze. The water instantly turns to ice when they hit the cold of space. The volcanoes were detected with the Gemini observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The picture above is an artist's rendition.

The 60th Moon of Saturn is "Frank"

The NASA probe Cassini has discovered Saturn's 60th moon and it's been called Frank. But until a really suitable name is given it, it's will have to be identified in the record books as S/2007 S 4. It's only a mile wide and is thought to be made of rock and ice. Frank is thought to be one of the remains of a larger satellite which shattered when another object hit it in a cataclysmic event a long time ago.

The Northern European Hemisphere at Night

This is a composite image made by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the Northern Hemisphere in Europe and part of Africa and Eurasia. At the top is the Arctic, which Russian scientists and members of parliament are currently exploring, going down in a submarine called Mir to the bottom of the Arctic Sea, 14,000 feet below the surface. The Russians have laid claim to much of the Arctic, asserting that a seabed ridge called the Lomonosov Ridge, which extends to Northern Canada, is really part of the Russian continent.

Video Games Are Good for You

Lo and behold! Positive news on how video games can be good for you. Yes, after James Gee, professor of learning at the University of Wisconsin found out about the wonders of video gaming from playing his preschooler kid's learning game, Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside, and hitting it off with solving problems in The New Adventures of the Time Machine, he decided to do a study on how video gaming affects the brain. What he has found out will delight video gamers. Apparently, video gaming sharpens thinking, social skills, and perception. Read more about this here.

Copycat Nintendo Wii abound. Click here to read the article.

Mars Before and During Planet-Wide Dust Storm

This is Mars as it looks in 2001 before a planet-wide dust storm, and during the storm, which engulfed the entire planet. A similar far-reaching dust storm recently observed on the red planet caused initial concern regarding the roving robots there, Spirit and Opportunity, but it seems they'll be okay once the storm passes.

Indonesia's Mt. Gamkonara Erupting

This powerful photograph of Mt. Gamkonara in Indonesia shows the recent activity of the volcano which erupted explosively in 1673. Eight thousand people have already been evacuated from the danger zone vicinity. Mt. Gamkonara stands at 1,600 meters and is the tallest in the island of Halmahera.

AKARI Shows a Hidden Side of the Universe

AKARI, the infrared satellite of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is reportedly doing well, sending back images of the known universe using infrared cameras. It has given us stunning views of commonly-viewed sky objects like the constellation of Orion, here shown in visible light (left), and in infrared (right). Notice how nebular structures are shown in greater detail. See the nebular ring surrounding the star (actually, it's a trio) that represents Orion's head, on top in the infrared snapshot? What do you think caused it?

Queen Hatshepsut's Large Breasts Indicate Obesity

Queen Hatshepsut, the most powerful of female pharaohs in ancient Egypt was obese, say scientists. Paleopathologist Bob Brier says "Breasts are one clear indication of obesity in female mummies. It is fairly simple: fat is deposited there, the skin stretches and that skin does not retract with mummification. So it is easy to see excess skin in the area of the breasts." Zahi Hawass, Egypt's secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, says Hatshepsut's breasts are "huge and pendulous" even for a mummy's.

Click here to view Queen Hatshepsut's headshot.

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Ghost Orchid Materializes in Florida Park

Ghost orchids (Dendrophylax lindenii) are rare. Not only are they shaped differently from most flowers, they are also endangered. This is why it was a pleasant surprise to find one growing on an old cypress tree in the Corkscrew Swamp Wildlife Sancuary in Naples, Florida. It was spotted with nine magnificent flowers, the size of the hand, by visitors who were on the lookout for owls. It was 45 feet over the ground and had a mass of old root growth which meanth it had been there a long time. Park Manager Ed Carlson says it must have been hidden by leaves since it blooms in June and July when cypresses are leafed out. "We've just never seen it before," he says.

The ghost orchid blooms for only two weeks, so if you want to see it, you'd better get to the sanctuary before it wilts. It is the first ghost orchid discovered in the park in 12 years. The ghost orchid is featured in the movie "Adaptation," which was inspired by the novel "The Orchid Thief."

Learn about the amazing hair cleansing and conditioning properties of the oil from the flower of the shampoo ginger (Zingiber zerumbet) plant. Click here.

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A Deep Lake in Russia Vanishes Overnight

Local fishermen in the village of Bolotnikovo in Russia who went out to fish in their favorite lake got the surprise of their life when they saw a deep hole with a muddy bottom instead where the lake used to be the day before. "I lookedand there was no water," said one of the fishermen. "I thought: Oh, my God, what's going on?" Rescuers were called out to see if anyone disappeared with the water, which is believed to have drained into subterranean cave systems.

According to local official Dmitry Klyuev, whole houses were swallowed under similar circumstances 70 years ago.

The superstitious locals believe otherwise. Youngsters who used to swim in the lake have heard of stories, including that of a church that lay under the water. "We used to go swimming there, but we were rather afraid of its depth, and there were various rumors that the lake had appeared during the reign of the feared Tsar Ivan the Terrible. It had been "shrouded in dark mystery" ever since. Coincidentally, the name Bolotnikovo translates roughly as "boggy."

Strangely, another lake in Chile also disappeared.

In a related event, see how this circular, 100-meter-deep sinkhole swallowed up half a building in Guatemala.

This is sourced from BBC news.

Villagers Dine on Dinosaurs in China

Villagers in central China have acquired a taste for dinosaur bones, thinking they are the bones of flying dragons. Valued for their supposedly curative powers, the bones are extracted from the ground, pound to a powder, and used as ingredients in food and medicine. The concoctions are fed to children to alleviate dizziness and cramps, among other ailments. Scientist Dong Zhiming said that the dinosaur fossils were being sold in markets in Henan province as "dragon bones" since 2006 at about fifty cents per kilogram, until the villagers were told they were actually the remains of dinosaurs. They promptly donated 200 kilograms to him to study. The villagers had been selling and eating dinosaur bones for twenty years.

What Can Make a 2-Hectare Lake Vanish?

In Bernardo O'Higgins National Park in Magallanes, Chile, a 2-hectare glacial lake has disappeared in what appears to be another case of global warming. The whole body of water simply seemed to evaporate in a span of two months. The discovery was made in late May by park rangers who were shocked to find a huge crater where the lake had been. No, it's not the Silver Surfer's fault. Geologists have concluded, after some deliberation, that melting glacial ice caused the lake's level to swell, putting more pressure on a glacial dam which eventually gave way. It makes us wonder how other bodies of water will fare in these times of warming.

Jupiter's Upper Equatorial Stripe Disappears

These pictures of Jupiter's clouds were taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). It has captured a dramatic change in the upper equatorial band of Jupiter. It appears to have disappeared and merged with the darker bands. Something is going on in Jupiter's atmosphere that we can only guess on. The two white stripes of Jupiter had always been a favorite sight to see by amateur astronomers using their small-aperture telescopes.

Mars Rover Oppurtunity Takes a Chance in Victoria Crater

The Mars-roving robot Opportunity will soon take its chances in the Martian Crater Victoria in order to analyze a layer of light soil exposed to the elements when the crater was made. Will this be the robot's last mission? The top photo shows a view of the crater with the rover's track seen as white lines. It was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. The bottom photo is a view from the crater's edge taken by Opportunity itself.