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A team of scientists has discovered magnetic waves that fluctuate when exposed to certain conditions in a superconducting material.

The finding was made by Brown University physicist Vesna Mitrovic and colleagues at Brown and in France.

At the quantum level, the forces of magnetism and superconductivity exist in an uneasy relationship.

Superconducting materials repel a magnetic field, so to create a superconducting current, the magnetic forces must be strong enough to overcome the natural repulsion and penetrate the body of the superconductor. This relationship is pretty well known. But why it is so remains mysterious. Now, physicists at Brown University have documented for the first time a quantum-level phenomenon that occurs to electrons subjected to magnetism in a superconducting material.

They report that at under certain conditions, electrons in superconducting material form odd, fluctuating magnetic waves.
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Hair preserved in permafrost for 4,000 years has shed light on a tribe of Stone Age hunters who crossed from Siberia to Greenland in an unsung odyssey of migration, scientists said on Wednesday.

Unearthed at a site in western Greenland, the hair provides a vivid portrait of a man who died four millennia ago and overturns a mainstream theory about how humans colonised the Arctic New World, they said.

Greenland’s first known settlers were not Inuit or Native Americans as widely believed, but the direct descendants of Siberians who somehow crossed the Bering Strait to Alaska and then headed east, according to their report, published by Nature.

The tuft of hair and four pieces of bone, uncovered at Qeqertasussuk, are the only human remains ever found of Saqqaq culture, an enigmatic coastal-dwelling community that lived in western Greenland for some 1,700 years.

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One of the world’s oldest shipwrecks has been discovered off the coast of Devon after lying on the sea bed for almost 3000 years.

The trading vessel was carrying an extremely valuable cargo of tin and hundreds of copper ingots from the Continent when it sank.

Experts say the ”incredibly exciting” discovery provides new evidence about the extent and sophistication of Britain’s links with Europe in the Bronze Age, and reveals the remarkable seafaring abilities of the people during the period.

Archaeologists have described the vessel, which is thought to date back to about 900BC, as being a ”bulk carrier” of its age. The copper and tin would have been used for making bronze, the primary product of the period which was used in the manufacture of weapons, tools, jewellery, ornaments and other items.

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Bird watchers walking along the beach on the Baltic island of Öland off Sweden’s southeastern coast were puzzled by an unusual natural phenomenon recently when they stumbled across dozens of football-sized balls of ice lying on the shore.

A week before Christmas, Magnus Bladh of the Ottenby bird station, located on Öland’s southern cape, was strolling along the beach with a colleague when he saw something he’d never seen before.

“Temperatures were below freezing and there was a light wind, but it was very cold! In the seaweed we noticed at least 200 large ice balls,” he said in a report to Swedish meteorological agency SMHI.

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The discovery of the “pacemaker gene” could lead to new drug treatments to avoid heart attacks and disease, say experts.

A person’s heartbeat is controlled by electrical signals, which start in one central place – the heart’s pacemaker – and travel around the heart muscle.

And now, a team at Imperial College London have found the gene that controls those electrical signals and thus the rhythm of the heart.

The researchers claimed that the damage or mutations to the gene – known as SCN10A – increase the risk of heart disease.

The researchers believe that the finding could help them to understand how the body’s heartbeat is controlled and could ultimately help them come up with new treatments for heart rhythm disturbances.

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