joshbyard:

Social Network Analysis of The Iliad and The Odyssey Indicates that They Were Likely Based on Real Events

Today, P J Miranda at the Federal Technological University of Paraná in Brazil and a couple of pals study the social network between characters in Homer’s ancient Greek poem, the Odyssey.

Their conclusion is that this social network bears remarkable similarities to Facebook, Twitter and the like and that this may offer an important clue about the origin of this ancient story.

Miranda and co think of each character in the Odyssey as a node in the network. They say a link exists between two characters when they meet in the story, when they speak directly to each other, cite one another to a third character or when it is otherwise clear that they know each other.

In analysing the Odyssey, they identified 342 unique characters and over 1700 relations between them. Having constructed the social network, Miranda and co then examined its structure.

“Odyssey’s social network is small world, highly clustered, slightly hierarchical and resilient to random attacks,” they say. What’s interesting about this conclusion is that these same characteristics all crop up in social networks in the real world. Miranda and co say this is good evidence that the Odyssey is based, at least in part, on a real social network and so must be a mixture of myth and fact.

(via The Remarkable Properties of Mythological Social Networks | MIT Technology Review)

electricspacekoolaid:

How DId Earth Stay Warm Enough for Liquid Water? - The Faint Young Sun Paradox 

A climate puzzle that goes back to Earth’s younger years some 4.5 billion to 2.5 billion years ago. The sun was much dimmer around then. There was much less solar radiation reaching the planet compared with today. Earth should have been a frozen wasteland similar to Mars perhaps (without the red). But all the geologic signs show a young planet covered in liquid water, allowing the first life-forms to emerge. Scientists call this confusing mystery the “Faint Young Sun Paradox.”

Carl Sagan and George Mullen identified the paradox in 1972. By then, researchers had determined that a newborn star’s brightness gradually increases over time as hydrogen atoms in the star’s core fuse into helium. Working backward, researchers estimated that the sun generated 20 to 30 percent less energy during the first half of Earth’s history than it does now.

Evidence of the paradox comes from clues in the rock record that indicate the presence of flowing water as far back as the Archean eon, 3.8 billion to 2.5 billion years ago. Geologists have found ancient pillow lavas — knobby volcanic rocks that form only when lava erupts under water — and ripple marks etched by waves on sedimentary rocks. No such rocks are known from the earlier Hadean eon (SN: 5/19/12, p. 22) 4.5 billion to 3.8 billion years ago, but the chemistry of Hadean-aged zircon minerals recycled into younger rocks suggests that liquid water must have been present by at least 4.2 billion years ago.

By this time, much of the heat from Earth’s formation would have dissipated, so it couldn’t account for the warm temperatures. The only explanation is that some unknown factor helped warm the planet. The dilemma seems impossible to resolve because data on fundamental climate factors are missing for this primordial period, says planetary scientist Robin Wordsworth of the University of Chicago. “The Earth has such an active system that the evidence gets erased quickly.”

There has been no dearth of theories, however. Over the last 40 years, climate scientists have offered a range of explanations — everything from high concentrations of insulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to changes in Earth’s proximity to the sun. Some ideas are more plausible than others, but even the most probable hypotheses present roadblocks for scientists.

Still, as researchers continue to mine the ground for more geologic clues and refine their simulations of early Earth’s climate, they inch closer to answers.

“I’m rather confident that we can have a much clearer picture of what can solve the faint young sun problem in the next few years,” says Georg Feulner, a paleoclimate scientist at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Articles - Sources - Info

shineonyourcrazydiamond5:

Frida Kahlo con 9 años. 15 de junio de 1919

wildcat2030:

For better concrete, do as Romans did

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Ancient Roman structures that have withstood the elements for more than 2,000 years are showing engineers how to make today’s concrete more durable and sustainable.

Using the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, engineers and geologists examined the fine-scale structure of Roman concrete. The findings showed for the first time how the extraordinarily stable compound—calcium-aluminum-silicate-hydrate (C-A-S-H)—binds the material used to build some of the most enduring structures in Western civilization.

The discovery could help improve the durability of modern concrete, which within 50 years often shows signs of degradation, particularly in ocean environments. (via Futurity.org – For better concrete, do as Romans did)

thegetty:

Vieille Cour, 22 rue Quincampoix, 1908 or 1912, Eugène Atget. The J. Paul Getty Museum

cutesy:

Isolator - 1925

Invented by science fiction pioneer Hugi Gernsbeck, the “Isolator” was designed to help focus the mind when reading or writing, by rendering the wearer deaf, piping them full of oxygen, not only by eliminating all outside noise, but also by allowing just one line of text to be seen at a time through a horizontal slit.

Qilakitsoq is an old Inuit settlement on the Nuussuaq peninsula on the west coast of Greenland around 450 km north of the Arctic Circle. In 1972 two brothers on a grouse hunt found a number of approximately 500-year-old mummies in the same grave underneath an outcrop of rock. Owing to a combination of the particular location on a north-facing slope, the dry air and the low temperatures, the mummified remains were in a particularly good state of preservation.

There were six women and two children, all of whom were fully dressed. The discovery of the remains brought with it a lot of new knowledge concerning the Inuit way of life and their clothing. The eight bodies were equipped for a long journey into life after death, since according to beliefs at the time it was considered necessary to be prepared for hunting even after death.  [x]

(Source: vulcanics)

“I love subversive humour, freckles, knees, the long hair of women, the dreams of young children at liberty, a young girl running in the street.”

René Magritte with wife Georgette Berger, 1922-1929

Also

dead-men-talking:

medievalistsnet:

Did people in the Middle Ages take baths?

Great read!