• African-American's roots revised

    Nexdim Empire

    Atlanta-based family researcher William Holland sits alongside one of the Oku elders, Samuel Nshiom "Pa" Wambeng, during a visit to Cameroon in March. Wambeng passed away weeks after this picture was taken.

    By Alan Boyle




    If you're an African-American, tracing your roots back to the ancestral continent is hard enough — but tracing them back to the ancestral family? That requires genetic testing, plus family-history scholarship, plus trips to Africa, plus a little bit of faith. William Holland has filled all of those requirements, and to celebrate, he's planning a cross-continental family reunion for Memorial Day weekend in Virginia, where his ancestors were once held as slaves.

    "Memorial Day is a time for remembering the loved ones you lost, right?" Holland said. "So it's a good time to remember all those generations that were lost."

    It's taken more than a decade for the 43-year-old Atlanta genealogist to fill in the story of those lost generations — a story that leads back to Cameroon, and then even further back to present-day Syria. The historical record is so fragmentary, and the genetic analysis is so imprecise, that Holland couldn't possibly achieve iron-clad scientific certainty about the precise family relationships. But the story that Holland has pieced together is consistent with the genetic tests as well as with the tales told by families in Africa and America. And just as importantly, the story finally feels right.

    "What makes this more conclusive is that they had an authentic story that many people could verify," Holland said.

    Holland's initial investigative work took him back to the Civil War era in Virginia, where he found that his great-grandfather, Creed Holland, was a slave who was put to work as a wagon driver for the Confederate Army. That led Holland and his brothers to sign up for membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans — which was a controversial move at the time.

    But Holland didn't stop there: He wanted to know how it was that Creed's ancestors became slaves in the first place. So he took advantage of a trend that was just getting started back then: genetic testing for the purpose of finding family connections. After a couple of false starts, Holland found enough matches to justify focusing in on a region of Cameroon in West Africa.

    When I first started writing about Holland's quest, two years ago, he was following up on connections to royalty in northwest Cameroon's Mankon tribe. Holland visited the tribal leader, or Fon, in the regional capital of Bamenda — and received an African name (Ndefru) from the Fon of Mankon himself during a ceremony. Holland reciprocated the next year by inviting the royal family to a gathering in Franklin County, Va. The idea was to bring together the descendants of slaves and their African relations, and even the descendants of slaveowners. But something about the event felt wrong.

    "The rest of the Mankon family really resisted the fact that they were coming over," Holland recalled. "That told me that 'this is not your family, because they should be happy, they should be welcoming you.'"

    During follow-up trips to Africa, Holland learned more about the reason for the Mankon tribe's reluctance: Their ancestors were among several ethnic groups in that region of Cameroon who played a murky role in the slave trade of the 18th century. "Mankon didn't trade in their own people, but they were the middlemen for people [from other tribes] going down the coast," Holland said. "The Europeans would come to the coast and provide them with whiskey and guns to make people fight."

    Some of this information came from the leaders of a different group, the Oku, who live in a region of Cameroon about 20 miles northeast of Bamenda. After visiting the region, hearing the tales of the elders and double-checking the genetic results, Holland feels confident that he now has the right story.

    "You felt the sense of coming back," Holland told me. "You felt the welcoming that you should have gotten. They were running down the hill to come and meet us. That's how it was."

    One of the Oku elders, Sam "Pa" Wambeng, told Holland that the Oku and other groups trace their heritage back to 7th-century Syria. When Islam took hold in the region, those groups made their way through the Middle East and Africa, eventually settling in Cameroon. In addition to the Oku, the settlers included the Mboum, Nso and Foumban peoples. 

    Wambeng and other elders said there was a widely respected member of the Oku tribe named Bailack who lived in the 1700s. Bailack had several wives and scores of sons, but many of them were abducted and passed on to the European slavers during the reign of a ruthless fon named Ney.

    "They say 70 individuals were taken directly from the family," Holland told me. "They would have been the children of Bailack. Two or three escaped, and that's how they continued with the family. The family has spread to more than eight villages in Oku, despite the number captured as slaves in the reign of Ney."

    The time frame for that abduction, in the 1770s, matched up with the time frame for the voyage of Holland's great-great-great-great-grandfather to Virginia, where he was sold as a slave. And the rest is American history.

    Courtesy of William Holland

    Residents of an Oku village turn out to welcome William Holland during his visit to Cameroon.

    Courtesy of William Holland

    William Holland (at right) and his brother Marvin flank the Fon of Oku during a visit in March.

    Courtesy of William Holland

    The house of an Oku patriarch named Bailack was built in the 1700s and is still standing in a Cameroonian village.

    Do the genetics support Holland's status as Bailack's great-great-great-great-great-grandson? The evidence isn't indisputable. Thirty-one of the 36 genetic markers on the test that Holland took match up with the results from the Cameroonian clan. Genetic genealogy is a matter of probabilities, and the more markers two people have in common, the more likely it is that they're closely related. Thirty-one out of 36 is not super-close, but close enough for Holland to feel as if he's on the right track.

    "The results from different family lines show that there were strong mutations that occurred in the 1600s and the 1700s. Given the amount of time from 1772 to this generation, it fits in a time frame where you can have those mutations occur," Holland told me. "I'm no geneticist by any means, but it sounds logical that could happen."

    It's logical enough that Holland has scheduled another gathering, this time with members of the extended Oku clan as the special guests. It's due to take place around 1 p.m. ET on May 27, at the Franklin County Recreational Park near Rocky Mount, Va. Holland hopes that some of his long-lost relatives will be in attendance — but one of the dearest friends he made in Cameroon won't be there. Pa Wambeng, the elder who told the story that Holland has now made his own, passed away just a few weeks ago.

    "I'm very honored to have gotten there and met him," Holland said, "because if we put off our trip, it would have been too late."

    Previous chapters in the African saga:

    Holland says the Memorial Day weekend reunion will serve as a memorial for "all the ancestors who traveled this path that affected our family line," including Pa Wambeng as well as Grace Ngum Tamufor, the recently deceased daughter of the previous Fon of Oku.

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Brain-teasers for blog birthday

    NASA / SDO

    Sunspot region 1476 points toward Earth like a loaded gun in this picture from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. Experts say the active region is capable of generating major X-class flares.

    By Alan Boyle


    We're not only closing out the week — we're closing out the first 10 years of Cosmic Log. It was on May 13, 2002, that I first began noting the follies and mysteries of science, space and society in this space. To mark the occasion, I'm presenting not just one, not just two, but three sets of brain-teasers.

    The first puzzle has already played out on the Cosmic Log Facebook page. I asked Facebook followers to figure out which four-digit number is best associated with the picture above, and it just took a couple of minutes for multiple commenters to come up with the answer: 1476, the designation for the active region that's currently front and center on the sun's disk and capable of throwing X-class flares in our direction.

    Mitch Siff was the first to put it all together, and I'm sending him my last pair of sun-viewing safety glasses, suitable for watching the May 20 annular solar eclipse from his home in Colorado. Michael J. Tiano was also quick on the draw, and he'll be getting my second-last pair of 3-D glasses, along with a scary 3-D picture of yours truly.

    It's worth noting that a solar storm was one of the first topics tackled in Cosmic Log 10 years ago.

    Space Needle unscrambler
    Earlier in the week, I reported on the finals of a "Space Race 2012" competition at Seattle's Space Needle that resulted in Arizona law-school student Gregory Schneider winning a future suborbital trip into outer space. The final test was to solve a series of 10 brain-teasers while walking around a narrow ring-shaped platform just outside the Needle's 520-foot-high observation deck. I mentioned a couple of sample questions on Wednesday, but in honor of Cosmic Log's 10th birthday, here's the full set of 10 questions. The first commenter to give the correct answers to all 10 teasers — in a single comment, not a series of comments — will be eligible to receive my last pair of giveaway 3-D glasses.

    Unscramble the five following words:

    1. PALOLO

    2. IODEATSR

    3. VGATIYR

    4. OEREMTETI

    5. EFCRCAPTSA

    6. How many stars are in the Big Dipper?

    7. For the Space Needle's 50th Anniversary, the roof was painted which color: Orbital Orange, Galaxy Gold, Meteor Melon, Re-entry Red.

    8. True or false: The planet Venus rotates clockwise. It is the only planet to do so.

    9. Which is NOT the name of a NASA shuttle: Atlantis, Voyager, Discovery, Endeavour.

    10. Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first men to walk on the moon in which year: 1968, 1967, 1969, 1966.

    Cosmic Log history lesson
    Finally, here are some trivia questions about the past 10 years of Cosmic Log. First person to get all the answers correct in a single comment will be eligible to receive a signed copy of my book "The Case for Pluto." (I'm not holding my breath.) 

    1. Where did the name "Cosmic Log" come from? A space mission? A TV show? A comic book? Or did I just make it up?

    2. Which "Star Trek" actor was interviewed for Cosmic Log? Nichelle Nichols? Leonard Nimoy? William Shatner? George Takei?

    3. Which would-be celebrity astronaut was interviewed for Cosmic Log? Lance Bass? Mark Burnett? James Cameron? Victoria Principal?

    4. Which Apollo astronaut was NOT interviewed for Cosmic Log? Buzz Aldrin? Alan Bean? Pete Conrad? Harrison Schmitt?

    5. Which magician has been interviewed for Cosmic Log? The Amazing Randi? The Amazing Kreskin? David Copperfield? Penn Jillette?

    6. Which medium/channel/psychic has been interviewed for Cosmic Log? Mary T. Browne? Theresa Caputo? Allison Dubois? JZ Knight?

    7. Which TV show has been the subject of Cosmic Log postings? "American Idol"? "Dancing With the Stars"? "The X-Files"? All of the above?

    8. What is the "CLUB Club"? A hangout for Cosmic Log fans in Seattle back in the early days? A concept I proposed for an anti-theft device? A list of book recommendations? A members-only gallery of cosmic pictures?

    9. What kind of celestial object got its name in part because of Cosmic Log? Asteroid? Comet? Crater? Mountain?

    10. Who was the object named after? Douglas Adams? Alan Boyle? Stephen Hawking? Robert Heinlein?

    I'll provide the answers to both of the 10-question teasers on Sunday, the 10th anniversary, and if I'm in a generous mood for the start of the next 10 years, I may give away a book even if no one gets all of the Cosmic Log trivia questions right.

    Answers to questions:
    Space Needle unscrambler: APOLLO, ASTEROID, GRAVITY, METEORITE, SPACECRAFT, seven stars, Galaxy Gold, true, Voyager, 1969. BigBenAlaska solved all the puzzles and richly deserves a pair of 3-D glasses.

    Cosmic Log history: To get the answers to some of these questions, you have to go back to the deep archive at Multiply.com. Julia Cline got all the answers right and is eligible to receive a signed copy of "The Case for Pluto."

    1. Cosmic Log's name was inspired by a 40-year-old quote from a character in Weird Mystery Tales #1: "My name is Destiny, and it is my Fate to walk alone throughout eternity and observe the follies and mysteries of mankind, and to note them all in the cosmic log." Among the rejected names: Quanta, Penultimate Questions and the Blog at the End of the Universe.

    2. William Shatner was our guest for a Cosmic Log chat on Oct. 14, 2002. 

    3. Although Lance Bass was the subject of frequent Cosmic Log items in 2002, I never did talk with Lance himself. I did, however, chat with James Cameron a couple of times about his space aspirations. 

    4. I've had items in Cosmic Log about Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 12's Alan Bean, Apollo 17's Harrison Schmitt and other astronauts from NASA's glory days. I interviewed Apollo 12 commander Pete Conrad before his death in 1999 for a story about his Universal Space Lines venture — but that was before Cosmic Log got started. So Pete Conrad is the answer to this one.

    5. The Amazing Kreskin was the focus of a 2002 Cosmic Log item about his UFO stunt in Nevada.

    6. JZ Knight (who says she channels a 35,000-year-old warrior spirit named Ramtha) was the subject of an extended interview in 2010. I haven't yet checked in with Theresa ("Long Island Medium") Caputo or Allison Dubois of the "Medium" TV series, but I do stay in touch with my cousin Mary T. Browne, "the Wall Street psychic."

    7. All of the above: Who hasn't written about "American Idol," "Dancing With the Stars" and "The X-Files"?

    8. The CLUB Club is the "Cosmic Log Used Book Club." Since 2002, we've been highlighting books with cosmic themes that have been out long enough to become available at your local library or secondhand-book store. Even though I haven't been providing book club selections as often as I used to, the CLUB Club archive still makes for a pretty good reading list. 

    9 and 10. Back in 2003, I discussed the procedure for naming asteroids and solicited suggestions for folks who should have an asteroid named after them. Douglas Adams, the humorist behind the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series, was one of the prospects mentioned — and I noticed that there was an asteroid out there that almost literally had his name on it. The space rock known provisionally as 2001 DA42 included the date of Adams' death (2001), his initials (DA) and the answer to the ultimate question from the Hitchhiker's Guide (42). Astronomer Brian Marsden, who headed the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center at the time, thought it was a great suggestion and helped make it so in 2005. You can get the full story here.

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • The verdict is in on that sea monster video: It's a jellyfish

    Experts say the "Cascade Creature" is a jellyfish that's been turned inside-out.

    By Alan Boyle




    Marine biologists say the spooky "Cascade Creature" seen drifting through the deep sea in a viral video isn't a whale placenta, a parachute, a plastic bag or an alien visitor: It's a type of jellyfish known as a Deepstaria enigmatica.

    The video, which was apparently captured by a remotely operated vehicle near an underwater drilling site, caused a bit of a stir over the past couple of weeks among weird-science fans. Now it looks as if the truth is out there, thanks to assessments from experts such as Steven Haddock at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and Craig McClain at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.

    "This bag-like jelly is not that rare, but is large, so rarely seen intact," Haddock and his colleagues write on the JellyWatch Facebook page. "In the video, the swirling from the sub makes the medusa appear to undulate, and it even turns inside-out." They provide a helpful picture of a more typical specimen.

    McClain is even more helpful in his posting at Deep Sea News. He provides citations on previous sightings of the beast, including explanations for the jellyfish's weirdly collapsed shape. And he shows through photographs and drawings that the strange appendage and whitish lumps seen in the video are D. enigmatica's gonads. TMI, Craig ... TMI.

    For a third opinion, look no further than Australia's Nine News, which quotes Daniel Bucher, a marine biologist at Southern Cross University, as saying that the gonads were the giveaway.

    Now that we've settled that, bring on the next sea monster.

    More sea monsters:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • $1.5 million NASA rover contest set for robo-showdown in June

    NASA / JPL-Caltech

    An artist's conception shows NASA's Curiosity rover zapping a rock during a sampling operation on Mars. Laser-zapping is not a requirement for the robots entered in a NASA-backed $1.5 million contest.

    By Devin Coldewey

    Mark June 16 on your calendar, interplanetary robot fans: That’s when autonomous rovers will face off in NASA's $1.5 million Sample Return Robot Challenge at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.

    The challenge, one of several that NASA is sponsoring, was announced back in July 2010 — but a purpose-built autonomous robot isn't a simple thing to create, so it has taken nearly two years to collect and vet the entrants.

    The challenge, in brief, is to create a compact (1.5 cubic meters, 175 pounds) robot that can navigate varied terrain, find and collect certain items, and return them safely to the base. But it must do this without the use of GPS or any "Earth-based" systems, such as a compass or Internet connection, which naturally would not be available on celestial bodies other than our own. Furthermore, the robot can't use air cooling, ultrasonic rangefinders or a number of other techniques that wouldn't be workable in an airless environment.

    There are both private and public teams: Groups from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Waterloo  have both made the final 11, and the rest are start-up companies such as SpacePRIDE from South Carolina and True Vision Robotics from Atascadero, Calif. Six of the teams are based in California, while the rest are scattered around the US and Canada.

    The teams' robots will be unmanned and on their own once deployed, but they won't be going in completely blind. As would likely be the case on a real planetary mission, NASA is providing satellite imagery of the area, compete with topographic information and points of interest:

    NASA / WPI

    Topographic map of the competition's terrain

    The first phase of the challenge is a qualifying round, in which robots must retrieve a single sample within a quarter of an hour. Teams that succeed will be admitted to the second phase, the real challenge. There will be 10 samples in the vicinity, and a robot will have just two hours to collect as many as it can and return to a designated point. The prize money will be divvied up based on how the rovers perform this second task.

    A powerful and reliable sample-return robot will be a critical part of future robotic planetary missions. NASA has also set up competitions for other important parts of such endeavors, such as wireless power systems and digging mechanisms. Such research is readily adaptable to terrestrial applications such as disaster response and automated industry.

    WPI will be hosting the event on their campus in Massachusetts on June 14-18, with the competition beginning in earnest on June 16. NASA's deputy administrator, Lori Garver, and chief technologist Mason Peck will be on hand for the awards ceremony.

    Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

  • The World at Night finds beauty in darkness and light

    Slideshow: The World at Night 2012

    Christoph Otawa / The World at Night

    Experience the wonders of the night sky in a slideshow that features the winners of the 2012 "Earth & Sky" contest, presented by The World at Night.

    Launch slideshow

    By Alan Boyle




    Light pollution never looked so good: The World at Night's annual photography contest highlights the beauties of the night sky, but it also highlights the challenges posed by humanity's efforts to light up the night.

    This year's winners reveal how artificial lighting can add another dimension to the natural wonders of the stars and planets — or spoil the view forever. Hundreds of pictures were sent in from about 50 countries, including exotic locales such as the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, the national parks of Reunion Island and the savannas of South Africa, said Babak Tafreshi, the founder and leader of The World at Night. "We received a lot of submissions from Asian countries this year, especially China, India, Iran and Indonesia," the Iranian-born astrophotographer said in an email exchange.

    He said the message of The World at Night is definitely getting out: "In general, it looks as if TWAN's aim of reclaiming the natural beauty of the night sky and promoting nightscape photography is reaching a growing audience worldwide, while the activities by amateur and professional astronomers and environmentalists to increase awareness on the light pollution issue is truly getting a lot of public attention."

    This year's contest is limited to images taken since the beginning of 2011, but that leaves a lot to choose from — including pictures of Comet Lovejoy, the spectacular "Christmas Comet" that wowed skywatchers in the southern hemisphere, as well as the stunning auroral images that have cropped up over the past few months. Both those phenomena are represented in today's top-10 roundup from TWAN.

    Tafreshi drew attention to two potential perils facing astrophotographers nowadays: light pollution and photo fakery. He noted that the increasing glare of city lights was "not just an astronomer's problem," but also "a major waste of energy, and like any other form of pollution, it disrupts ecosystems and has adverse health effects."

    "Today, most city skies are virtually empty of stars," he said in his email. "About two-thirds of the human population today lives under light-polluted skies, not dark enough to see the Milky Way. Seeing a real dark sky is a must-see experience in the life of each of us, moments that you will not forget in your entire life."

    Tafreshi also said there's a fast-rising concern about images that may not be telling the truth about the earth and sky.

    "Unfortunately, a majority of photographers who are interested in nightscape photography are less familiar with astronomy, and the natural look and color of the night sky," he said. "So many landscape astrophotos today are intensely saturated, unnaturally contrasted, and sometimes with totally wrong colors of the sky. We had stunning compositions and amazing landscapes at night, some made by famous photographers, which were ruled out of the contest simply because they were 'overcooked' in processing."

    You can rely on TWAN's prize-winning pictures to show the true glories of the night sky, along with the glow of the world below. Check out our slideshow, and read more of Tafreshi's observations in the comment space below.

    More astronomy slideshows:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Pros and cons in the bee debate

    Honeybees may be victims of widely used insecticides. NBC's Anne Thompson reports.

    By Alan Boyle




    Is a widely used pesticide to blame for making bees disappear? The debate over a class of chemicals known as neonicotinoids was the focus of a spot on NBC's "Nightly News" tonight, and NBC News' Anne Thompson has supplemented her TV report with a couple of Web-only videos presenting the pro and con arguments on neonicotinoids.

    There's little question that pesticides play a role in the malady known as colony collapse disorder, in which whole colonies of honeybees leave their hives abruptly and never return. Most experts would say pesticides are among a host of bee-debilitating factors that also include viruses, mites and fungi. However, in recent months a number of studies have highlighted neonicotinoids as a particularly worrisome threat to bees.

    Live Poll

    How much of a threat do you think pesticides pose to bees?

    View Results
    • 183430
      Pesticides are not a significant threat.
      5%
    • 183431
      I think they're among several threats.
      36%
    • 183432
      I think they're the main threat to bees.
      58%
    • 183433
      None of the above.
      1%

    VoteTotal Votes: 1640

    So far, the Environmental Protection Agency has not acknowledged a link between colony collapse disorder and the reported problems with neonicotinoids. The chemicals are attractive to farmers, particularly for corn crops, because they are much more toxic to insects than they are to mammals. The stuff is sprayed on corn seeds as well as plants in the field.

    One of the bonus videos is an interview with Steve Ellis, owner of the Old Mill Honey Company in Minnesota. "The quantity of neonicotinoid systemic insecticides that are being used in the country is mind-boggling," he says. Ellis is one of the backers of a petition campaign calling on the EPA to suspend further use of a type of neonicotinoid known as clothianidin.

    In the other video, David Fischer, chief ecotoxicologist for Bayer CropScience, contends that neonicotinoids don't kill off bee colonies as long as they're used properly. He contends that in the studies linking the chemicals to colony collapse disorder, the bees were exposed to "unrealistically high levels" of the chemicals. Bayer CropScience markets clothianidin in brand-name pesticides that include Poncho and Prosper.

    Watch the three videos, then feel free to weigh in with your vote and/or your comments.

    Steve Ellis of the Old Mill Honey Company explains how pollinators are an essential piece of the fabric for feeding the United States and the loss of bees is posing an unprecedented threat.

    David Fischer of Bayer CropScience claims that neonicotonoids, a relatively new class of insectoids, are not to blame for the recent collapses in bee colonies.

    More about the bee debate:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Logcommunity by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • SpaceX teams up with Bigelow on space station marketing

    Bigelow Aerospace

    Bigelow Aerospace's Genesis 2 inflatable space module rushes into an orbital sunrise.

    By Alan Boyle




    SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace plan to meet with officials in Japan soon after this month's scheduled launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, to kick off an international marketing effort for private-sector space stations.

    The plan, laid out today in a jointly issued news release, calls for clients to go into orbit inside the Dragon and link up with Bigelow's BA 330 inflatable space habitat.

    "Together we will provide unique opportunities to entities — whether nations or corporations — wishing to have crewed access to the space environment for extended periods," said SpaceX's president, Gwynne Shotwell. "I'm looking forward to working with Bigelow Aerospace and engaging with international customers."

    Robert Bigelow, the billionaire founder and president of Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace, said he was eager to join up with California-based SpaceX and tell international clients about "the substantial benefits that BA 330 leasing can offer in combination with SpaceX transportation capabilities."

    SpaceX is planning to launch an unmanned Dragon cargo capsule into orbit as early as May 19 for a potential test linkup with the International Space Station, and is already working with NASA to modify the Dragon for carrying astronauts as well. Just this week, NASA announced that SpaceX reached a milestone in that development effort by showing that seven astronauts could maneuver effectively inside the Dragon space taxi, even under emergency scenarios.

    SpaceX

    Astronauts and experts check out the crew accommodations in SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft. On top, from left, are NASA Crew Survival Engineering Team Lead Dustin Gohmert, NASA astronauts Tony Antonelli and Lee Archambault, and SpaceX Mission Operations Engineer Laura Crabtree. On bottom, from left, are SpaceX Thermal Engineer Brenda Hernandez and NASA astronauts Rex Walheim and Tim Kopra.

    Bigelow's BA 330 space module would be designed to provide 330 cubic meters of usable volume, which is about the size of a two-bedroom apartment. The BA 330 could accommodate up to six astronauts, depending on how cozy they plan to get. Two or more BA 330 modules could be connected together in orbit for lease by national space agencies, companies or universities, according to Bigelow Aerospace.

    Bigelow made his fortune in the hotel industry, which led some to suppose that he was getting into the space-hotel business — but the first users are likely to be researchers or governments aiming to pursue their own space programs on a leased orbital platform. The company has launched two prototype inflatable modules on Russian rockets — Genesis 1 in 2006 and Genesis 2 in 2007 — and both of those unmanned spacecraft are still in orbit.

    Mike Gold, who serves as Bigelow Aerospace's director of Washington operations and business growth, told me that the company was ready to move forward with the BA 330 as well as the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, an upscale version of the Genesis module that could be attached to the International Space Station. Future progress on both those projects is dependent on decisions made by NASA, however. NASA has not yet made a commitment to using the BEAM, and it has not yet announced how it will proceed with the next phase of its effort to support the development of commercial space taxis such as SpaceX's Dragon.

    "We'll be ready to proceed when commercial crew is," Gold told me.

    SpaceX

    An artist's conception shows a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to a Bigelow Aerospace module.

    In addition to its marketing arrangement with SpaceX, Bigelow has partnered with the Boeing Co. on a project to create a space taxi called the CST-100 to ferry NASA astronauts. That scenario could see a successor to the CST-100 launched toward a Bigelow-built space station atop United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket.

    Gold said the commercial crew vehicle development program was the "long pole in the tent" for Bigelow Aerospace's plans. Even if Bigelow Aerospace built its BA 330, it would have to rely upon an affordable, reliable, safe system for orbital transport — and that system probably would have to be developed and tested with NASA's help.

    Four companies, including Boeing and SpaceX as well as Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada Corp., have been receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from NASA, but it's not yet clear how much money Congress will approve for the next phase of the program. If the funding matches NASA's projected levels, space agency officials have said commercial space taxis could be flying astronauts by 2017. "We hope it could be even earlier," Gold said.

    However, it's highly questionable whether NASA will get as much money for commercial crew development as it has requested. The request for fiscal year 2013 was almost $830 million, but a Senate subcommittee cut that figure to $525 million. Today the House passed a bill specifying an even lower funding level, $500 million. The White House has threatened a presidential veto of that bill, in part because of its concerns about the cutback in commercial crew support.

    More about SpaceX and Bigelow:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Maya calendar workshop documents time beyond 2012

    Tyrone Turner / National Geographic

    Boston University archaeologist William Saturno carefully uncovers art and writings left by the Maya some 1,200 years ago. The art and other symbols on the walls may have been records kept by a scribe, Saturno theorizes. Saturno's excavation and documentation of the house were supported by the National Geographic Society.

    By Alan Boyle




    Archaeologists have found a stunning array of 1,200-year-old Maya paintings in a room that appears to have been a workshop for calendar scribes and priests, with numerical markings on the wall that denote intervals of time well beyond the controversial cycle that runs out this December.

    For years, prophets of doom have been saying that we're in for an apocalypse on Dec. 21, 2012, because that marks the end of the Maya "Long Count" calendar, which was based on a cycle of 13 intervals known as "baktuns," each lasting 144,000 days. But the researchers behind the latest find, detailed in the journal Science and an upcoming issue of National Geographic, say the writing on the wall runs counter to that bogus belief.

    "It's very clear that the 2012 date, this end of 13 baktuns, while important, was turning the page," David Stuart, an expert on Maya hieroglyphs at the University of Texas at Austin, told reporters today. "Baktun 14 was going to be coming, and Baktun 15 and Baktun 16. ... The Maya calendar is going to keep going, and keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future."

    The current focus of the research project, led by Boston University's William Saturno, is a 6-by-6-foot room situated beneath a mound at the Xultun archaeological site in Guatemala's Peten region. Maxwell Chamberlain, a BU student participating in the excavations there, happened to notice a poorly preserved wall protruding from a trench that was previously dug by looters, with the hints of a painting on the plaster.

    Saturno said he didn't think there'd be much to the wall, but "I felt we had a responsibility to find out at the very least how large this room was."

    When archaeologists worked their way into the mound, they were amazed to find that it was a richly decorated room from the Classic Maya period, dating back to roughly the year 800. One niche was adorned with the faded picture of a Maya king, wearing a blue-feathered headdress and holding a white scepter. The picture of a scribe holding a stylus, perhaps the son or brother of the king, was painted nearby with the label "Younger Brother Obsidian." Another wall showed a row of three stylized black figures, with one bearing the hieroglyphic name "Older Brother Obsidian."

    Tyrone Turner / National Geographic

    The painted figure of a man — possibly a scribe who once lived in the house built by the ancient Maya — is illuminated through a doorway to the dwelling, in northeastern Guatemala. The structure represents the first Maya house found to contain artwork on its walls. The research is supported by the National Geographic Society.

    Tyrone Turner / National Geographic

    Never-before-seen artwork — the first to be found on walls of a Maya house — adorn the dwelling in the ruined city of Xultún. The figure at left is one of three men on the house's west wall who are painted in black and wear identical costumes. One of the black figures is named "Older Brother Obsidian." The figure in the center appears to be a scribe, labeled "Younger Brother Obsidian." A Maya king is portrayed at far right. Heather Hurst rendered the paintings in clearer detail below.

    Heather Hurst / National Geographic

    A vibrant orange figure, kneeling in front of the king on the ruined house's north wall, is labeled "Younger Brother Obsidian," a curious title seldom seen in Maya text. The man is holding a writing instrument, which may indicate he was a scribe. The painting re-creates the design and colors of the figure in the original Maya mural.

    Heather Hurst / National Geographic

    Three male figures, seated and painted in black, appear in a painting that re-creates the design and colors of a Mural found on the ruined house's west wall. The men wear only white loincloths and medallions around their necks, plus a headdress bearing another medallion and a single feather. One of the figures is particularly burly and is labeled "Older Brother Obsidian." Another is labeled as a youth.

    Heather Hurst / National Geographic

    A Maya king, seated and wearing an elaborate headdress of blue feathers, adorns the north wall of the ruined house discovered at the Maya site of Xultun. An attendant, at right, leans out from behind the king's headdress. The painting by artist Heather Hurst re-creates the design and colors of the original Maya artwork at the site.

    Rows of numbers and hieroglyphs were painted on yet another wall. In fact, it appeared that the wall had been plastered over repeatedly and covered with new sets of figures. "What these are giving us are time spans," Stuart said. "Not so much dates, but Maya notations of elapsed time."

    Stuart said some sets of numbers denoted lunar cycles of 177 or 178 days, along with the sign for a patron god that was associated with each cycle. "This was, we think, a calculator for a Maya priest, an astronomer, to figure out lunar ages," he said.

    In a news release, Saturno said this represents the first look at "what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be official record keeper of a Maya community."

    "It's like an episode of TV's 'Big Bang Theory,' a geek math problem and they're painting it on the wall," Saturno said. "They seem to be using it like a blackboard."

    In addition to lunar cycles, the calculations on the wall could relate to the periods of Venus, Mercury and Mars, the researchers reported. Stuart said such calculations could have come into play for predicting eclipses. He imagined that there might be "one or more, maybe two or three of these astronomers or calendar priests working, sitting there on a workbench and writing these notations on the wall."

    One array of numbers would be particularly intriguing to doomsday debunkers: lists that appear to denote wide ranges of accumulated time, including a 17-baktun period. "There was a lot more to the Maya calendar than just 13 baktuns," Stuart observed. Seventeen baktuns would stand for about 6,700 years, which is much longer than the 13-baktun cycle of 5,125 years. However, Stuart cautioned that the time notation shouldn't be read as specifying a date that's farther in the future than Dec. 21.

    "It may just be that this is a mathematical number that they find interesting, kind of floating in time," he told me. "But it certainly is expressing a capacity of time. If they were calculating something from their time period, around 800 A.D., yeah, this would have gone way beyond 2012. But again, we're not sure exactly what the base of the calculation is."

    William Saturno and David Stuart / National Geographic

    Four long numbers on the north wall of the ruined house relate to the Maya calendar and computations about the moon, sun and possibly Venus and Mars; the dates may stretch some 7,000 years into the future. These are the first calculations Maya archaeologists have found that seem to tabulate all of these cycles in this way. Although they all involve common multiples of key calendrical and astronomical cycles, the exact significance of these spans of time is not known.

    Saturno said archaeologists have been trying to get out the word that the end of the Maya culture's 13-baktun "Long Count" calendar didn't signify the end of the world, but merely a turnover to the next cycle in a potentially infinite series — like going from Dec. 31 to Jan. 1 on a modern calendar, or turning the odometer on a car over from 99999.9 to 00000.0.

    "If someone is a hard-core believer that the world is going to end in 2012, no painting is going to convince them otherwise," he said. "The only thing that can convince them otherwise is waiting until Dec. 22, 2012 — which fortunately for all of us isn't that far away."

    Saturno and his colleagues plan to be studying the Xultun site long after that time. He said the workshop was apparently part of a residential compound that had been razed over the ages; the workshop was preserved because it was filled in with material rather than smashed down from above. That could suggest that the room was recognized as a special place even when it was abandoned. Research into the room and its purpose is continuing, Saturno said.

    In its day, Xultun apparently served as one of the major ceremonial cities for the Classic Maya civilization — and yet it's just barely been explored, in part because the area is so remote.

    "We have probably 99.9 percent of Xultun left to explore," Saturno said. "We're going to be working on it probably for many decades to come. ... Four or five years in to the research project, we have yet to determine its actual boundaries — so my estimate may be off. We may have 99.99 percent left to excavate."

    More Maya mysteries:

    In addition to Saturno and Stuart, authors of the Science paper, "Ancient Maya Astronomical Tables from Xultun, Guatemala," include Anthony Aveni and Franco Rossi. The Xultun excavations between 2008 and 2012 were supported by Boston University and the National Geographic Society.

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

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