Led Zeppelin‬, ‪Train‬‬: 2016

Wednesday, 1 June 2016

Dagger in King Tut's Tomb Was Made With Iron From A Meteorite

King Tut continues to astound the archaeological community, as new research shows that the ancient Egyptian child pharaoh was buried with a dagger that originated in outer space.

The iron blade placed in his sarcophagus next to the right thigh of his mummified body was manufactured from a meteorite, according to researchers from Milan Polytechnic, Pisa University and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

The team carried out an analysis using non-invasive, portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and published their results in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.
Archaeologist Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tut’s tomb in 1922 sparked worldwide fascination with the 14th Century BC pharaoh. Three years later, two blades – one iron and one gold – were found in the wrapping of the 18th Dynasty mummy.

Previous analyses of iron objects found in King Tut’s tomb have proven controversial, but technological advances enabled the researchers, led by Daniela Comelli, to confirm that the iron in the dagger blade did, indeed, come from a meteorite.

“Meteoric iron is clearly indicated by the presence of a high percentages of nickel,” Comelli told Discovery News..

The pharaoh’s dagger is composed of nearly 11 percent nickel – almost three times the amount found in artifacts produced from iron ore quarrying. It also has traces of cobalt consistent with that of iron meteorites.

The team then went a step further to locate the source of the blade. “We took into consideration all meteorites found within an area of 2,000 kilometers in radius centered in the Red Sea, and we ended up with 20 iron meteorites,” Comelli explained.
Only one of them turned out to have nickel and cobalt levels consistent with Tut’s blade. It was found in 2000 at the Egyptian resort town Mersa Matruh.

Researchers said their study offers new insight into the lives of ancient Egyptian pharaohs and “the evolution of the metal working technologies in the Mediterranean.” The study points out that the “high manufacturing quality of Tutankhamun’s dagger blade is evidence of early successful iron smithing in the 14th C. BCE.”

“As the only two valuable iron artifacts from ancient Egypt so far accurately analyzed are of meteoritic origin, we suggest that ancient Egyptian attributed great value to meteoritic iron for the production of fine ornamental or ceremonial objects up until the 14th C. BCE,” the team also concluded.

The dagger wasn’t the only otherworldly object found in King Tut’s tomb. An amulet scarab on a necklace found in the boy king’s tomb is believed to be made from silica glass created when another space rock smashed into the Libyan desert and melted the nearby sand.

With many thanks to RT

The Rolling Stones Reveal ‘Totally Stripped’

Released during the height of the MTV Unplugged era, The Rolling Stones’ 1995 album Stripped captured the group in a pared-down mode. Though not strictly unplugged, its live and in-the-studio recordings (mixing Stones classics with some pertinent covers) were shot through with the raw energy of the Stones’ earliest days together, over three decades before the album’s original release.

The bulk of the album had been recorded at three concerts held, respectively, at Amsterdam’s Paradiso (26 May 1995), Paris’ Olympia (3 July) and London’s Brixton Academy (19 July) – all intimate venues that a band as huge as The Rolling Stones rarely deign to perform. Yet Keith Richards would rightly extol “the immediacy” of performing in such close quarters with their fans: the Stones pulled out some of their finest live performances ever, playing a total 64 songs across the three nights, 36 of which were unique to the setlist on the night they were performed.

Due for release on DVD and SD Blu-ray on 3 June, Totally Stripped shines a new light on this period in the Stones’ career with a reworked version of the documentary of the same name. DVD+CD and DVD+2LP versions also include collections of favourite live performances picked specifically for this reissue, while five-disc special edition DVD and SD Blu-ray packages contain the CD and documentary, plus the complete three live shows used to compile the original album. Taken together, the three concerts present the Stones at their raw, invigorated best.

The deluxe edition tracklist is as follows:

CD
‘Not Fade Away’ (Amsterdam, 26 May 1995)
‘Honky Tonk Women’ (Paris, 3 July 1995)
‘Dead Flowers’ (Amsterdam)
‘Faraway Eyes’ (London, 19 July 1995)
‘Shine A Light’ (Amsterdam)
‘I Go Wild’ (Paris)
‘Miss You’ (London)
‘Like A Rolling Stone’ (Amsterdam)
‘Brown Sugar’ (Paris)
‘Midnight Rambler’ (London)
‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ (Paris)
‘Gimme Shelter’ (Amsterdam)
‘Rip This Joint’ (Amsterdam)
‘Street Fighting Man’ (Amsterdam)

DVD 1Totally Stripped documentary

DVD 2: Paradiso, Amsterdam, 26 May 1995
‘Not Fade Away’
‘It’s All Over Now’
‘Live With Me’
‘Let It Bleed’
‘The Spider And The Fly’
‘Beast Of Burden’
‘Angie’
‘Wild Horses’
‘Sweet Virginia’
‘Dead Flowers’
‘Shine A Light’
‘Like A Rolling Stone’
‘Connection’
‘Slipping Away’
‘The Worst’
‘Gimme Shelter’
‘All Down The Line’
‘Respectable’
‘Rip This Joint’
‘Street Fighting Man’

DVD 3: L’Olympia, Paris, 3 July 1995
‘Honky Tonk Women’
‘Tumbling Dice’
‘You Got Me Rockin’’
‘All Down The Line’
‘Shattered’
‘Beast Of Burden’
‘Let It Bleed’
‘Angie’
‘Wild Horses’
‘Down In The Bottom’
‘Shine A Light’
‘Like A Rolling Stone’
‘I Go Wild’
‘Miss You’
‘Connection’
‘Slipping Away’
‘Midnight Rambler’
‘Rip This Joint’
‘Start Me Up’
‘It’s Only Rock’n’Roll’
‘Brown Sugar’
‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’

DVD 4: Brixton Academy, London, 19 July 1995
‘Honky Tonk Women’
‘Tumbling Dice’
‘You Got Me Rockin’’
‘Live With Me’
‘Black Limousine’
‘Dead Flowers’
‘Sweet Virginia’
‘Faraway Eyes’
‘Love In Vain’
‘Down In The Bottom’
‘Shine A Light’
‘Like A Rolling Stone’
‘Monkey Man’
‘I Go Wild’
‘Miss You’
‘Connection’
‘Slipping Away’
‘Midnight Rambler’
‘Rip This Joint’
‘Start Me Up’
‘Brown Sugar’
‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash

With many thanks to UDiscover

German WWII Coding Machine Found On eBay For $20

This is not the machine Alan Turing was working on.

The Enigma machine is pictured below:

Part of a rare German coding machine used by Hitler and his generals to send secret messages during the Second World War has been found after it was advertised on eBay for (£9.50) $20.

A volunteer at the National Museum of Computing, at Bletchley Park, southern England, saw the Lorenz teleprinter, which was in its original case, online.

It was only after buying and refurbishing the teleprinter that it was found to be a military model, which had been used to enter orders or information to be turned into coded messages generated by a cipher machine, the Lorenz SZ42, which the Nazis used for communications between command posts.

The Lorenz cipher was larger and far more complex than the better known Enigma machine, which was portable and used by the Germans for battlefield and diplomatic communications.
A volunteer at the museum in Buckinghamshire, which is separate from the former code-breaking headquarters where the Enigma code was cracked, was looking on eBay when he saw a photograph of what looked like a teleprinter. He and a colleague contacted the owner and visited her in Southend, Essex, where the teleprinter was in its case on the floor of a shed, John Wetter, from the museum, told BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House. It was not clear how it came to be in the woman’s shed.

“We said, ‘Thank you very much, how much was it again?’ She said £9.50, so we said, ‘Here’s a £10 note. Keep the change.’”

Its acquisition, and the loan of a Lorenz cipher machine from a Norwegian collection, will allow the museum to display original hardware to show how the Germans encrypted commands. The borrowed cipher machine was used by the German command in Lillehammer, near Oslo.

About 200 Lorenz machines were to have been used during the Second World War but only four survived. The loaned cipher is missing its motor, which the museum is trying to trace.

The Lorenz code had been broken by Bill Tutte, a British mathematician, who deciphered it without ever having seen the machine, which had 12 wheels each with many settings.

This allowed the allies to read secret messages circulated by the German high command.

By 1944 a computer called Colossus was able to decipher its messages within hours, rather than weeks.

Picture credit and more at: Colossus: The Secrets Of Bletchley Park.

With many thanks to The Australian

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