- Email: [email protected]
French immigrants gave rise to British farms
IN BRIEF Q. SAKAMAKI/REDUX/EYEVINE
For new stories every day, visit www.NewScientist.com/news
Who knew stars came this big?
Dear God, please confirm what I already believe GOD may have created man in his image, but it seems we return the favour. Christians subconsciously endow God with their own beliefs on controversial issues. “Intuiting God’s beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify one’s own beliefs,” writes a team led by Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0908374106). The researchers started by asking Christian volunteers to give their own views on controversial topics, such as
abortion, followed by what they thought were the views of God, average Americans and public figures such as Bill Gates. Volunteers’ own beliefs corresponded the most with those they attributed to God. Next, the team asked another group of volunteers to undertake tasks designed to soften their existing views, such as preparing speeches on the death penalty in which they had to take the opposite view to their own. They found that this led to shifts in the beliefs attributed to God, but not in those attributed to other people. Finally, the team used functional MRI scans of subjects’ brains to show that contemplating God’s beliefs activates the same brain areas as thinking about one’s own views, while thoughts about other Americans’ views activate a brain area used for inferring other people’s mental states.
French immigrants founded British farms THE British may owe the French more than they care to admit. Archaeological finds from Britain show that farming was introduced 6000 years ago by immigrants from France, and that the ancient Brits might have continued as hunter-gatherers had it not been for innovations introduced by the Gallic newcomers. Mark Collard, from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia,
Canada, and his colleagues studied carbon-14 dates for ancient bones, wood and cereal grains from locations across Great Britain. From this they were able to assess how population density changed with time, indicating that around 6000 years ago the population quadrupled in just 400 years (Journal of Archaeological Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2009.11.016). This
coincides with the emergence of farming in Britain. Such a population explosion almost rules out the idea that farming was adopted independently by indigenous hunter-gatherers, says Collard. Pottery remains and tomb types suggest the first immigrants came from Brittany in north-west France to southern England, followed around 100 years later by a second wave from north-eastern France who settled in Scotland.
A SUPERNOVA that burst onto the cosmic scene in April 2007 was probably the death throes of the most massive star yet discovered. So say Avishay Gal-Yam of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and his colleagues, who followed the afterglow of the explosion in a nearby dwarf galaxy over 18 months (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08579). Their observations point to the explosion of a hypergiant star with a mass 200 times that of the sun. That would blow apart the idea that stars bigger than about 150 solar masses do not exist in our mature universe. Gal-Yam thinks the conditions in the host galaxy could be like those in the early universe, when theory says such giant stars were born and died in great numbers, seeding the universe with heavy elements. “These galaxies could be fossil labs to teach us about the first stars,” he says.
Unravelling secrets of giant black holes IT WOULD be like watching a supermassive black hole in “fast forward”. Studying the gammaray source Cygnus X-3 could reveal how these objects evolve. Cygnus X-3 is thought to be the remnant of a star in our galaxy – either a black hole or a neutron star – feeding on a disc of material. Now two sets of observations have shown that it is emitting highenergy gamma rays. Supermassive black holes do the same, and if similar processes are behind the bursts, watching Cygnus X-3 could tell us how they develop as they gobble up matter from their surroundings. Cygnus X-3 is smaller, and so will evolve faster (Science, DOI: 10.1126/ science.1182174; Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08578). 5 December 2009 | NewScientist | 17
For new stories every day, visit www.NewScientist.com/news
Who knew stars came this big?
Dear God, please confirm what I already believe GOD may have created man in his image, but it seems we return the favour. Christians subconsciously endow God with their own beliefs on controversial issues. “Intuiting God’s beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify one’s own beliefs,” writes a team led by Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0908374106). The researchers started by asking Christian volunteers to give their own views on controversial topics, such as
abortion, followed by what they thought were the views of God, average Americans and public figures such as Bill Gates. Volunteers’ own beliefs corresponded the most with those they attributed to God. Next, the team asked another group of volunteers to undertake tasks designed to soften their existing views, such as preparing speeches on the death penalty in which they had to take the opposite view to their own. They found that this led to shifts in the beliefs attributed to God, but not in those attributed to other people. Finally, the team used functional MRI scans of subjects’ brains to show that contemplating God’s beliefs activates the same brain areas as thinking about one’s own views, while thoughts about other Americans’ views activate a brain area used for inferring other people’s mental states.
French immigrants founded British farms THE British may owe the French more than they care to admit. Archaeological finds from Britain show that farming was introduced 6000 years ago by immigrants from France, and that the ancient Brits might have continued as hunter-gatherers had it not been for innovations introduced by the Gallic newcomers. Mark Collard, from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia,
Canada, and his colleagues studied carbon-14 dates for ancient bones, wood and cereal grains from locations across Great Britain. From this they were able to assess how population density changed with time, indicating that around 6000 years ago the population quadrupled in just 400 years (Journal of Archaeological Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2009.11.016). This
coincides with the emergence of farming in Britain. Such a population explosion almost rules out the idea that farming was adopted independently by indigenous hunter-gatherers, says Collard. Pottery remains and tomb types suggest the first immigrants came from Brittany in north-west France to southern England, followed around 100 years later by a second wave from north-eastern France who settled in Scotland.
A SUPERNOVA that burst onto the cosmic scene in April 2007 was probably the death throes of the most massive star yet discovered. So say Avishay Gal-Yam of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and his colleagues, who followed the afterglow of the explosion in a nearby dwarf galaxy over 18 months (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08579). Their observations point to the explosion of a hypergiant star with a mass 200 times that of the sun. That would blow apart the idea that stars bigger than about 150 solar masses do not exist in our mature universe. Gal-Yam thinks the conditions in the host galaxy could be like those in the early universe, when theory says such giant stars were born and died in great numbers, seeding the universe with heavy elements. “These galaxies could be fossil labs to teach us about the first stars,” he says.
Unravelling secrets of giant black holes IT WOULD be like watching a supermassive black hole in “fast forward”. Studying the gammaray source Cygnus X-3 could reveal how these objects evolve. Cygnus X-3 is thought to be the remnant of a star in our galaxy – either a black hole or a neutron star – feeding on a disc of material. Now two sets of observations have shown that it is emitting highenergy gamma rays. Supermassive black holes do the same, and if similar processes are behind the bursts, watching Cygnus X-3 could tell us how they develop as they gobble up matter from their surroundings. Cygnus X-3 is smaller, and so will evolve faster (Science, DOI: 10.1126/ science.1182174; Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08578). 5 December 2009 | NewScientist | 17