DID ASTEROID DESTROY SODOM AND GOMORRA?

Researchers: Asteroid Destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah (FOXNEWS)
A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness's account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that it recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across.

The tablet, found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the royal place at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, is thought to be a 700 B.C. copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky.

He referred to the asteroid as a "white stone bowl approaching" and recorded it as it "vigorously swept along."

Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, scientists have pinpointed his sighting to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123 B.C.

About half the symbols on the tablet have survived and half of those refer to the asteroid. The other symbols record the positions of clouds and constellations. In the past 150 years scientists have made five unsuccessful attempts to translate the tablet.

GENEALOGY WEBSITE AIMS TO REUNITE JEWISH PEOPLE

New site aims at reuniting Jewish people (JPost)
The Famillion company, an Israeli start-up, is building a giant digital family tree that will eventually link every Jew, their non-Jewish relatives and - if things go as planned - all of humanity.

The initiative is the brainchild of Danny Rolls, who co-founded Famillion with Iphtach Cohen, a computer expert and former IAF pilot.

The project is straightforward, the execution nearly complete, and the potential revolutionary.

The idea was born eight years ago, "when my wife, a researcher at the Weizmann Institute [of Science in Rehovot], dragged me to get genetic tests," Rolls says. "I had to create my family tree for the geneticist, and I suddenly had a vision that my tree was sitting in the geneticist's drawer with all these other trees, and if they linked up they would eventually connect the whole world."

It took five years for the vision of networked family trees to turn into something useable, its development driven by research papers Danny and Asya Rolls read at Weizmann in bioinformatics - how computing systems handle data about biological systems - and graph theory, which studies the depiction of mathematical relationships.

The result is a Web site, in English and Hebrew versions (jworld.famillion.com and jworld.famillion.co.il), in which users can build their family trees using a simple graphical interface. You just drag your family members around the screen.

There's nothing new, however, in a graphical family tree program. What's new here, the program's real power, is an underlying technology that can recognize similarities in trees, and merge corresponding sections of completely independent trees.

ISRAEL'S SPY SATELLITE A SUCCESS

Israel's New Spy Satellite Transmits Top Quality Images - Yuval Azoulay (Ha'aretz)
Footage from Israel's TESCAR satellite, launched into space two weeks ago, was transmitted for the first time Wednesday.   The Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) reported that the satellite, which could boost Israel's intelligence gathering capabilities regarding Iran, was working perfectly.

See also Israel Air Force Chief Warns Israeli Satellites Could Be Targeted in Orbit (Jerusalem Post)
Parties that are hostile to Israel could attempt to target Israeli satellites orbiting earth, Air Force commander Maj.-Gen. Eliezer Shkedi said Wednesday at a conference dedicated to the memory of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon.

SHABBOS GOY ROBOT

Shabbas Robot

(Israelity and Hat tip to Elder of Zyion)

If you’re an observant Jew adhering to Shabbat (Sabbath) laws, this next one may interest you:

A robot programmed to work on Shabbat will do it: clear the table, turn off the oven, control the a/c and click lights off and on - especially the bathroom one that gets turned off accidentally in the middle of the night by half-awake innocents.

According to the Hebrew press, “Shabbat Robot” is the brainchild of White Box Robotics, a subsidiary of Frontline Robotics.

The robot is meant to replace the traditional Shabbos Goy - a controversial term used for non-Jews hired to perform work-related tasks for Jews on the Sabbath.

But it’s gonna cost ya; About $4000 when product hits the market.

Ouch.

WHY ARE JEWS SO SMART?

Jewish I.Q. (Slate)
Is DNA what makes Jews so smart?

• The average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews is 107 to 115, well above the human average of 100.
• Some scholars now hypothesize that the genes that make Jews smart also give some of them nasty diseases such as Tay-Sachs.
• Supposedly, Jews are deficient in visio-spatial skills, possibly because their brains allot extra space for verbal intelligence. That might explain the average Ashkenazi Jewish score of 122 on verbal IQ tests.

See also: JEWISH GENIUS

ISRAELI INNOVATION

Israeli team develops GPS accuracy for keyhole neurosurgery using mini-robot (Israel21c)
By Sharon Kanon (Hat tip: Atlas Shrugs)
A tiny robot shimmies into position on the skull and reaches out its arm to automatically target the best spot for keyhole neurosurgery. It may sound like science fiction, or the latest animated feature by Dream Works, but it's actually an Israeli-developed mini-robot prototype that is likely to have a major impact on the way keyhole neurosurgery is done in the near future.

Keyhole neurosurgery, a minimally invasive procedure, is used for tumor biopsies, deep brain stimulation, to insert a draining tube to treat hematomas, and for catheter insertion. Increasingly, it will be used for tissue, tumor, and DNA sampling, which cannot be performed using anatomical imaging. Its advantage - that the surgery can be done with only a keyhole (3-30 mm diameter) opening in the skull - comes with a price. A slip in a surgical gesture is a surgery hazard.

GO TO SHUL, LIVE LONGER

Shul can help you live longer, study suggests (JTA)
A Hebrew University of Jerusalem study suggests that people who attend synagogue regularly live longer than those who do not.

Professor Howard Litwin of the university's Israel Gerontological Data Center studied 5,000 Israelis aged 60 or older over a seven-year period, according to an article in Ha’aretz. He compared various factors influencing their longevity.

His findings, published in The European Journal of Aging, showed a death rate 75 percent higher among those who did not attend synagogue regularly.

Litwin suggested several reasons: Faith may help people survive psychological pressure better; observant Jews walk to shul on Shabbat, thus maintaining an exercise routine; and a supportive community helps people live longer.

"It's important to remember that according to the findings, social ties carry the same weight as attending synagogue," Litwin told a reporter for the Israeli daily.

ISRAELIS SKETCH OUT TIME MACHINE?

Israeli researchers tout time machine model (EE Times)
NETANYA, Israel — Researchers at the Technion University (Haifa, Israel) claim they have developed a theoretical model of a time machine that, in the distant future, could enable future generations to travel into the past. The team's findings were published in the latest issue of Physical Review.

"In order to travel back in time, the spacetime structure must be engineered appropriately," explains Professor Amos Ori of the Technion's Faculty of Physics. "This is what Einstein's theory of general relativity deals with. It says that spacetime can be flat. That is " it has a trivial, simple structure. But it can also be curved with various configurations."

The team stresses the main question is whether — according to the principles of curvature development in the theory of relativity — a time machine can be created. "In other words " can we cause spacetime to curve in such a way as to enable travel back in time? Such a journey requires a significant curvature of spacetime, in a very special form."

The researchers explain that traveling back in time is actually closing time-like curves so we can go back to an event at which we were present in the past. In flat space, it is not possible to close curves and go back in time. In order for closed time-like curves to exist, there has to be a curvature of a specific form on spacetime...

In the past, scientists raised a number of objections to this possibility. Now, Prof. Ori is proposing a theoretical model for spacetime that could develop into a time machine.

ISRAEL INVENTS MINI BLOOD VESSEL ROBOT

Blood Vessel Robot from Israel (Atlas Shrugs)
A world first: the Technion has developed a miniature robot capable of moving about in blood veins. Japanese researchers had developed a similar tool of 1cm in diameter, the Technion is only a millimeter! "The robot will be easily able to move in the opposite direction of the blood flow which has never been done before" one of the researchers explained.

Jan writes: "This should be forbidden to the divesters and boycotters."

Along with every other gift from the Jewish brain.

ISAAC NEWTON PREDICTED JEWS' RETURN TO ISRAEL

.... AND END OF WORLD.

The world will end in 2060, according to Newton (Evening Standard)
His famously analytical mind worked out the laws of gravity and unravelled the motion of the planets. And when it came to predicting the end of the world, Sir Isaac Newton was just as precise. He believed the Apocalypse would come in 2060 – exactly 1,260 years after the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire, according to a recently published letter. Luckily for modern scientists in awe of his achievements, Newton based this figure on religion rather than reasoning.

In a letter from 1704 which has gone on show in Jerusalem's Hebrew University, Newton uses the Bible's Book of Daniel to calculate the date for the Apocalypse. The note reveals a deeply spiritual side to a man more usually regarded as a strict rationalist. Newton, known as the founder of modern physics, secured a royal exemption from ordination in the Church of England – something normally expected of academics in his day – so he would not have to follow its teachings.

But he confidently stated in the letter that the Bible proved the world would end in 2060, adding: "It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner."

Continuing in a decidedly sniffy tone, he wrote: "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail." The exact words from the Book of Daniel that inspired his prediction are not clear.

But he got at least one thing right – in another document, he interpreted biblical prophecies to mean that the Jews would return to the Holy Land before the world ended. Newton, who died 280 years ago, wrote that the end of days would see "the ruin of the wicked nations, the end of weeping and of all troubles, the return of the Jews (from) captivity and their setting up a flourishing and everlasting Kingdom".

Yemima Ben-Menahem, one of the curators of the exhibition, said: "These documents show a scientist guided by religious fervour, by a desire to see God's actions in the world." The papers – including more prosaic notes about his income and the price of tin – lay in a trunk at the house of the Earl of Portsmouth for 250 years before being auctioned in the late 1930s. Since 1969, many have been locked away in Israel's national library.

ARE JEWISH WOMEN ARGUMENTATIVE?

Perfecting the art of arguing (Interfaithfamily.com)
Are Jewish women particularly argumentative? Um, no comment. But Sue Eisenfeld says there are reasons why that may be so.

JEWISH GENIUS

JEWISH GENIUS by Charles Murray (Commentary)
Since its first issue in 1945, COMMENTARY has published hundreds of articles about Jews and Judaism. As one would expect, they cover just about every important aspect of the topic. But there is a lacuna, and not one involving some obscure bit of Judaica. COMMENTARY has never published a systematic discussion of one of the most obvious topics of all: the extravagant overrepresentation of Jews, relative to their numbers, in the top ranks of the arts, sciences, law, medicine, finance, entrepreneurship, and the media.

I have personal experience with the reluctance of Jews to talk about Jewish accomplishment—my co-author, the late Richard Herrnstein, gently resisted the paragraphs on Jewish IQ that I insisted on putting in The Bell Curve (1994). Both history and the contemporary revival of anti-Semitism in Europe make it easy to understand the reasons for that reluctance. But Jewish accomplishment constitutes a fascinating and important story. Recent scholarship is expanding our understanding of its origins.

And so this Scots-Irish Gentile from Iowa hereby undertakes to tell the story. I cover three topics: the timing and nature of Jewish accomplishment, focusing on the arts and sciences; elevated Jewish IQ as an explanation for that accomplishment; and current theories about how the Jews acquired their elevated IQ. READ ON....