Events

Archaeologists in Iraq have discovered a city which was lost for more than 2,000 years with the help of drone photography and declassified intelligence images.

Qalatga Darband, which is believed to have been founded in 331 BC by Alexander the Great, was discovered by a team of Iraqi and British archaeologists led by experts from the British Museum.

John MacGinnis, who is leading the team on the ground, told The Times: “It’s early days, but we think it would have been a bustling city on a road from Iraq to Iran. You can imagine people supplying wine to soldiers passing through.”

The site of initially came to the attention of archaeologists following the release of declassified CIA satellite photos from the 1960s, which appeared to show the outline of ruins.
Dr MacGinnis and his colleagues then used drones to discover the outlines of buildings which have lain beneath the ground for centuries.
Greek coins, and statues of Greco-Roman deities, have also been found at the site in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Staff from the British Museum have been training Iraqi heritage experts in a government-funded scheme designed to help archaeologists protect sites of historical significance in areas of the Middle East which have been severely impacted by conflict.
The Emergency Heritage Management Training Programme have trained workers in advanced technqiues including global positioning systems, satellite imagery and geophysics.
Iraqi heritage services have been severely impacted by the chaos that followed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

LONDON: Scientists have found the final resting place of European Space Agency's first lunar mission, SMART-1, 11 years after the spacecraft crashed into the Moon.
Researchers from European Space Agency (ESA) found the location to be 34.262 degree south and 46.193 degree west, consistent with the coordinates of impact calculated initially. The spacecraft launched on September 27, 2003 and was sent into a controlled impact on September 3, 2006 with the lunar surface.

An impact flash was imaged at the time by the Canada- France-Hawaii Telescope on the dark side of the boundary between night and day on the lunar surface, however, the exact location had not been identified until now.
"SMART-1 had a hard, grazing and bouncing landing at two kilometres per second on the surface of the Moon. There were no other spacecraft in orbit at the time to give a close-up view of the impact, and finding the precise location became a 'cold case' for more than 10 years," said Bernard Foing, project scientist ESA SMART-1."For this 'Crash Scene Investigation', we used all possible Earth witnesses, observational facts and computer models to identify the exact site and have finally found the scars," Foing said.The SMART-1 impact site was discovered by Phil Stooke, of Western University in Canada using high-resolution images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The images show a linear gouge in the surface, about four metres wide and 20 metres long, cutting across a small pre- existing crater. At the far end, a faint fan of ejecta sprays out to the south."The high resolution LRO images show white ejecta, about seven metres across, from the first contact. A north-south channel has then been carved out by the SMART-1 spacecraft body, before its bouncing ricochet. "We can make out three faint but distinct ejecta streams from the impact, about 40 metres long and separated by 20- degree angles," Foing said. Orbit tracking and the impact flash gave a good estimate of the impact location, and very close to that point was a very unusual small feature, researchers said. "It is exciting to see for the first time the real scars from the SMART-1 impact, and compare them to the models and laboratory simulations," said Mark Burchell from the University of Kent in the UK.

NIBIRU believers who are convinced a mythical planet will head towards Earth next month have been sent into overdrive after NASA confirmed it is monitoring the approach of a large celestial object.

NASA's close eye on the space rock is proof Nibiru, also known as Planet X, is real, according to theories.
Some have linked the planet to an asteroid called 2012 TC4, which is due to make a staggeringly close pass of Earth on October 12.
NASA earth defence specialists are closely monitoring the close approach of the asteroid.
Conspiracy theory channel Igor Kryan posted a video entitled ‘WOW Nibiru Guys Were Right. NASA Just Confirmed Its Coming October 12’ on YouTube.
In a promotional blurb the channel wrote: "WOW Nibiru fears were right: something huge from deep space coming to earth and it is coming closer than distance between New York & Tokyo.

"On October 12 New Yorkers will be closer to the object 2012 TC4 than to Tokyo.
"It will come thousands of times closer to Earth than feared Francesca mega asteroid."
Nasa claims the asteroid has nothing to do with Nibiru, which Nasa claims in an internet hoax.
However, 2012 TC4 is as big as a tower block and traveling towards us at more than 40,000mph.
The space rock is believed to be bigger than the Chebylinsk meteor which exploded above Russia, damaging thousands of buildings and injuring 1,500 people.

Nasa is convinced it will not impact, but say it will skim earth at a distance of about 4,200 miles, which is a cat's whisker as astronomical terms.
Asteroid 2012 TC4 is estimated to be between ten and 30 metres (30 and 100 feet) and will pass by earth on October 12.
The 20-metre Chelyabinsk meteor exploded in the atmosphere above the Russian city unexpectedly on February 15 2013.
No space agency had any idea it was approaching before the explosion ripped through the air.
About 26 to 33 times as much energy as that released from the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima was released.
Most injuries sustained were from flying broken glass from buildings damaged by the strength of the explosion.
Nasa scientists are aware of the pass of the larger 2012 TC4 and said they were excited about what could be learned from it.
A spokesman said: "They plan to use its upcoming October close approach to earth as an opportunity not only for science, but to test Nasa’s network of observatories and scientists who work with planetary defence.
"Even though scientists cannot yet predict exactly how close it will approach, they are certain it will come no closer than 4,200 miles (6,800 kilometers) from the surface of earth."

"WOW Nibiru fears were right: something huge from deep space coming to earth and it is coming closer than distance between New York & Tokyo."
Igor Kryan

Michael Kelley, program scientist and NASA Headquarters lead for the TC4 observation campaign, said: “Scientists have always appreciated knowing when an asteroid will make a close approach to and safely pass the earth because they can make preparations to collect data to characterise and learn as much as possible about it.
“This time we are adding in another layer of effort, using this asteroid flyby to test the worldwide asteroid detection and tracking network, assessing our capability to work together in response to finding a potential real asteroid threat.”
Scientists from Nasa’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have determined that it could even pass much farther away, as far as 170,000 miles (270,000 kilometers), or two-thirds of the distance from Earth to the moon.
These calculations are based on only seven days of tracking 2012 TC4 after it was discovered on Oct. 5, 2012, by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) from Haleakala on the island of Maui, Hawaii.
Further observations are needed to more precisely determine the asteroid’s orbit, which has been out of range of telescopes since 2012.
The spokesman added: "Asteroid 2012 TC4 may be slightly larger than the space rock that hit Earth’s atmosphere near Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February 2013.
"As it starts to approach Earth this summer, large telescopes will be used to detect it and re-establish the asteroid’s precise trajectory.
"The new observations are expected to help refine knowledge about its orbit, narrowing the uncertainty about how far it will be from Earth at its closest approach in October."

Paul Chodas, manager of the CNEOS at JPL said: "This is the perfect target for such an exercise because while we know the orbit of 2012 TC4 well enough to be absolutely certain it will not impact Earth, we haven’t established its exact path just yet.
“It will be incumbent upon the observatories to get a fix on the asteroid as it approaches, and work together to obtain follow-up observations than make more refined asteroid orbit determinations possible."
The Nibiru theory is that a mini solar system consisting of a sun, planets and moons is lurking on the edge of our solar system with a huge orbit of the sun.
Nibiru believers are convinced the "rogue system" is making its way from the outer solar system inwards, where it will wreak havoc on Earth as it passes at about four million miles away, but causes the poles to switch and great earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
It emerged in 1976, when writer Zecharia Sitchin claimed that two ancient Middle Eastern cultures – the Babylonians and Sumerians – told of a giant planet – Nibiru – that orbited the Sun.
The Nibiru story was linked to the beginning of the end of the world by Christian fundamentalists, who believed the rapture would start on September 23 and was connected to celestial activity as interpreted from passages in the Bible.
The Igor Kryan channel is unverified, and in its ‘about’ section on YouTube page says it was "created by a former CI spy" to "protect humans and animals, prevent World War III and New World Order".