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An amateur prospector made the spectacular find using a metal detector and a lot of patience.The nugget was found approximately 60cm underground near the town of Ballarat in Victoria, Australia. Weighing in at 5.5kg, the massive chunk of gold is valued at more than $300,000 and is the largest ever found by a prospector in the region. The unnamed man who discovered the nugget said that he"d been outwith the detector and came across something that he initially believed to be a car bonnet until he dug it up."I have been a prospector and dealer for two decades, and cannot remember the last time a nugget over 100 ounces (2.8kg) has been found locally," said gold exchange shop owner Cordell Kent.

"It"s extremely significant as a mineral specimen. We are 162 years into a gold rush and Ballarat is still producing nuggets - it"s unheard of." Anamateur prospector in the Australian state of Victoria has astonished experts by unearthing a gold nugget weighing 5. 5kg (177 ounces).  

View: Full article |  Source: BBC News  

Leonardo Da Vinci"s masterpiece has gone further than ever before thanks to a well-timed laser.Scientists at NASA accomplished the feat of beaming the famous painting to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter over a distance of 240,000 miles using a laser. It is the first time communication with a laser has been achieved over such a long distance, a major advancement in interplanetary lasercommunications technology."In the near future, this type of simple laser communication might serve as a backup for the radio communication that satellites use.

In the more distance future, it may allow communication at higher data rates than present radio links can provide," said researcher David Smith. Call it the ultimate in high art: Using a well-timed laser, NASA scientists have beamed a picture of Leonardo da Vinci"smasterpiece, the Mona Lisa, to a powerful spacecraft orbiting the moon, marking a first in laser communication.  

View: Full article |  Source: Space.com  

There have been indications that a cloning experiment to create a live Neanderthal may be on the cards.While the idea of using DNA from frozen mammoth remains to clone a live specimen is nothing new, the concept that we could do something similar to bring back extinct species of human such as Neanderthals may prove quite a shock to most people. Despite the technical and ethical difficulties inherent in such an endeavor, there are signs that some scientists may beconsidering research leading up to such an achievement and that they may need a surrogate human mother to deliver the child.Recently Harvard Medical School geneticist George Church was quoted as saying that eventually, an "adventurous female human" would be required to act as a surrogate mother in the birth of the first Neanderthal in 30,000 years.

It"s a topic that Church has talked about before, in 2009 he hinted at the possibility of cloning a "near-Neanderthal" when the Neanderthal genome was first reported. While the idea of reviving Neanderthals may sound farfetched, take for example the work of biologists to clone endangered or extinct non-human animals.  

View: Full article |  Source: Technology Review  

DARPA is reaching out to the research community to help overcome difficulties in making this a reality.The main purpose of storing drones at the bottom of the sea is to make it possible to deploy them to remote parts of the world where it would be otherwise too difficult or expensive to set up a forward operating area. The drones would be stored within special pressure containers and would simply float to the surface when needed. The Pentagonhas been quick to emphasize that the drones would not be equipped with any weapons but would instead be used for reconnaissance purposes."Depending on the specific payload, the systems would provide a range of non-lethal but useful capabilities such as situational awareness, disruption, deception, networking, rescue, or any other mission that benefits from being pre-distributed and hidden," DARPA stated in a press release.

The U. S. Navy wants to pack aerial drones and otherintelligence-gathering technology into special containers built to withstand deep ocean pressures and distribute them around the world’s seas.  

View: Full article |  Source: NBC News