HOT NEWS !

By Lauren Biron - Symmetry

Scientists on an experiment in Italy are looking for a process so rare, it is thought to occur less than once every trillion, trillion years.

To find it, they will create the single coldest cubic meter in the universe.

The experiment, the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events, will begin by the end of the year, scientists recently announced after a smaller version demonstrated the feasibility of the design.

The project, based at Gran Sasso National Laboratory, will examine a property of ghostly neutrinos by looking for a process called neutrinoless double beta decay. If scientists find it, it could be a clue as to why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe–and show that neutrinos get their mass in a way that’s different from all other particles.

The full CUORE experiment requires 19 towers of tellurium dioxide crystals, each made of 52 blocks just smaller than a Rubik’s cube. Physicists will place these towers into a refrigerator called a cryostat and cool it to 10 millikelvin, barely above absolute zero.

The cryostat will eclipse even the chill of empty space, which registers a toasty 2.7 Kelvin (minus 455 degrees Fahrenheit).

CUORE uses the cold crystals to search for a small change in temperature caused by these rare nuclear decays. Unlike ordinary beta decays, in which electrons and antineutrinos share energy, the neutrinoless double beta decay produces two electrons, but no neutrinos at all.

It is as if the two antineutrinos that should have been produced annihilate one another inside the nucleus.

“This would be really cool because it would mean that the neutrino and the antineutrino are the same particle, and most of the time we just can’t tell the difference,” says Lindley Winslow, a professor at MIT and one of over 160 scientists working on CUORE.

Neutrinos could be the only fundamental particles of matter to have this strange property.

Full article...

From Ancien Origins
 

A vow of silence has protected the mystery behind an ingenious invention for nearly 500 years. The secrets behind Guglielmo de Lorena’s amazing diving bell, a technical marvel, would have remained an engineering puzzle if not for the attentions of a curious maritime researcher.

The article “Guglielmo’s Secret: The Enigma of the First Diving Bell Used in underwater Archaeology” as written by researcher Dr. Josheph Eliav and published in International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology, hypothesizes a solution to the longstanding mystery of how two men in the 1500s were able to remain deep underwater for hours at a time in order to examine ancient wrecks and return to the surface with amazing artifacts.

Italian Guglielmo de Lorena is credited with inventing the first one-man diving bell. It boasted a revolutionary air-supply mechanism which would exchange the air inside while maintaining pressure, allowing the diver to remain underwater for hours.

In July 1535, set on exploring a sunken Roman vessel in Lake Nemi, Guglielmo de Lorna and partner Francesco de Marchi used the invention to examine and document sunken barges which had lain at the bottom of Lake Nemi. These wooden barges had once reputedly served as floating platforms for infamous Roman emperor Caligula in the first century A.D.


Full article...

By Henri Samuel - Telegraph.co.uk

A British-led team has broken the world underwater salvage record after recovering almost 50 million dollars (£34 million) worth of silver coins from the wreck of a British steamship 17,000 feet under the sea, it emerged on Tuesday.

The SS City of Cairo was sunk by a German submarine 480 miles south of St. Helena on November 4 1942 en route from Bombay to England with 100 tons of silver coins on board housed in 2,000 rectangular black boxes.

The U-68 struck the slow-moving steamship with one torpedo but waited a further 20 minutes before inflicting the coup de grace, thus allowing all but six of the ship's 302 passengers and crew to escape on to lifeboats.

The German captain, Karl-Friedrich Merten, then approached the lifeboats and famously told the survivors in perfect English: "Goodnight, sorry for sinking you."

It took three weeks before the bulk of the crew were rescued, by which time 104 people on board the lifeboats had died.

The ship's vast treasure in silver rupees belonging to the UK Treasury was thought lost forever.

Full story...

From CBC News

Divers beneath the Arctic sea ice offered a live video tour at the wreck of the Franklin Expedition's HMS Erebus today.

Holes had been cut through the ice, which is now about two metres deep, to give Royal Canadian Navy divers and Parks Canada underwater archeologists a chance to continue exploration of the 19th-century wreck discovered late last summer in the Queen Maud Gulf off Nunavut.

Park Canada had initially said a pre-recorded video would be released at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, providing an "up-close-and-personal" look at the ship that was one half of the ill-fated polar expedition led by Sir John Franklin in the 1840s.

But instead, at the Toronto event on Thursday afternoon, divers Marc-Andre Bernier and Ryan Harris, with a live video connection, provided the show. Viewers were able to see the vivid remains of Erebus and, with several technical interruptions, hear descriptions by the underwater crew.

The divers were also able to answer questions from students gathered at the ROM.

A video of the live event was released later.

The earlier video, along with photos released Wednesday, were scheduled to provide the first public look at a complex operation that is being done in conjunction with Joint Task Force (North)'s annual high Arctic sovereignty operation, Nunalivut.

Full story...

By Tony Paterson - The Independent

From Shirlez Zhao - South China Morning Post

A group of amateur divers believe they might have discovered the remains of a sailing ship which sank off the city's southernmost island in 1944 - killing more than 50 people, according to historical records.

The group of 12 discovered a cannon, two anchors and several iron chains during a diving trip near the southern tip of Po Toi Island on March 29.

They suspect the relics belonged to the only recorded shipwreck in that area - a vessel carrying around 500 Hong Kong citizens exiled by Japanese invaders.

Jack Wu Ming-chuen, chairman of the Hong Kong Underwater Archaeological Association - to which the divers belong - said the two anchors, each about two metres long, appeared to be admiralty pattern anchors which were invented in around 1808 and not popularised until 1815.

He said the anchors were found about 50 metres off the coast in 15-metre-deep water.

The cannon - also about two metres long - was discovered around 100 metres off the coast in 11-metre-deep water. Wu said it was common for cargo ships around that time to be armed because pirate activities were rampant.

"When the ship was about to sink, people on board would want to get rid of some weight," Wu said. "I guess they might have thrown the cannon away first."


Full article...

From Dailymail

A museum in Hawaii is preparing to open a treasure-trove of artifacts from the shipwreck of a royal yacht sunk off the coast of Kauai 191 years ago.

Richard Rogers, a Hawaii shipwreck chaser, worked with scientists from the Smithsonian Institution to dredge up the findings from the ship owned by King Kamehameha II, aka Liholiho, the second king of Hawaii.

'We found gold, silver, Hawaiian poi pounders, gemstones, a boat whistle, knives, forks, mica, things from all over the world, high- and low-end European stuff. Every bit of it is royal treasure,' Rogers said.

Rogers volunteered his time aboard his research vessel, the Pilialoha, over a five year period in four-week intervals from 1995 to 2001 to pull up the treasures.

'It's all pickled and nice and ready to be displayed,' Rogers said. 'There are over a thousand artifacts. We did our homework and this find is invaluable because it all belonged to the king. It is a fabulous window into the 1820s.'

Rogers said the king's belongings were buried in 10 feet of water and 10 feet of sand. His favorite discovery was a trumpet shell.

'I found it under a bunch of sand and carried it onto the deck. This was in 1999. I blew it and it made the most beautiful sound going out over Hanalei Bay,' Rogers recalled. 'I thought about how it hadn't been blown in over 170 years.'

Kamehameha II purchased the yacht from George Crowninshield II, who named it 'Cleopatra's Barge' in 1816. According to historian and Kauai Museum volunteer Zenon Wong, it cost $50,000 to build the 192 ton yacht. Rogers said it was the first luxury ocean-going yacht built in the United States.

Full article...

By Dan Bloom - Mirror

A treasure hunter who seized gold worth up to £260million from a shipwreck is facing jail after three years on the run. Tommy Thompson led a 1988 expedition to the SS Central America, the so-called Ship of Gold which sank laden with 21 tons of the precious metal off the Carolina coast in 1857.

But instead of the would-be Indiana Jones sharing the wealth, he allegedly ran off with the profits - leaving scores of angry investors. He reportedly sold much of the haul for around £36million in 2000, but investors claimed the gold was worth up to £260million in a civil court case.

Now Thompson, 62, is facing jail rather than spilling the shipwreck's secrets by testifying in the case - including exactly how much the gold was worth. As the pressure mounted Thompson and his girlfriend-assistant Alison Antekeier, 47, started using fake names and paying only in cash from 2005, prosecutors claim.

Then, in 2012, they became fugitives after failing to appear at a court case brought by the investors. The pair fled their multi-million dollar house in Vero Beach, Florida, after being confronted over unpaid rent by handyman James Kennedy.

He later went into the house and found several $10,000 cash wads hidden in pipes buried underground, the prosecutors claimed.

Full article...