Category Archives: Of Interest

Hits versus Home Runs

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Which Is More Difficult: Amassing 3,000 Hits, or 500 Home Runs?

By Dan Peterson, Life’s Little Mysteries Contributor
11 July 2011 5:10 PM ET

 

derek jeter

With a third inning home run to left field, New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter became the 28th member of baseball’s exclusive 3,000 career hit club on July 9. While this season has been one of Jeter’s worst at the plate — he’s hitting about 50 points below his lifetime batting average — he was still one of the quickest to join the club in terms of career at-bats.

While Jeter is fawned over by media and fans alike, do the other 27 members get the kind of respect they deserve? After all, chicks dig the long ball, and the 25 members of the rival 500 home run club seem to get more love from the crowd. Driving one out of the park gets everyone on their feet, fireworks go off, mascots go crazy and teammates give high fives. Knocking a ground ball up the middle for a single just doesn’t generate the same level of excitement.

So, which stat should get the most respect, 3,000 hits or 500 home runs? Which is career highlight is tougher to achieve?

Jeter is the only active player with 3,000 hits, but two active players have more than 500 home runs. Now that Jeter has passed 3,000, there are only three active players within even 300 hits (10 percent) of reaching 3,000; by the same measure, there are no current players within 50 home runs of eclipsing 500.

At one time, 500 homers seemed the tougher benchmark: Six players already had 3,000 hits before the Babe Ruth became the first player with 500 home runs in 1929. But as the long ball became a bigger part of the game, the scales tipped. It took the home run club members an average of 7,782 at-bats to reach their milestone. Getting to 3,000 hits, however, is a longer journey, requiring an average of 9,937 at-bats. (Jeter did it in 9,604 at-bats.)

The score is even clearer if you look at recent history. In the last 30 years, 12 players have joined the 3000 hit club (44 percent of the total), while 13 sluggers have made it to 500 home runs (52 percent). Baseball’s battle with steroids certainly played a part in this recent surge of long ball hitters, and many fans now slightly devalue the 500 home run achievement due to the drug use.

So, the debate goes on as to the most impressive baseball stat, hits versus home runs. Unless you’re a pitcher. A hurler might argue that either the 19 members of the 300 win club or the 16 players with at least 3,000 strikeouts are the sport’s real heroes.

fr/http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/3000-hits-500-home-runs-derek-jeter-1846/

Alien Planet Announcement Coming

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European Observatory to Make ‘Major’ Alien Planet Announcement Monday

by Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 10 September 2011 Time: 08:39 AM ET
Snow at La Silla Paranal Observatory
Rare snow fell at La Silla Paranal Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert
CREDIT: ESO/Y. Beletsky

A European observatory will announce what it describes as “major” alien planet findings on Monday (Sept. 12).

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) will hold a press conference at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) Monday to “report significant new results in the field of exoplanets,” ESO officials said in a media alert.

The results were obtained with the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher instrument, better known as HARPS, officials said. HARPS is a spectrograph on ESO’s 11.8-foot (3.6-meter) telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile.

Participating in the press conference will be:

  • Francesco Pepe, Geneva Observatory, Switzerland
  • Lisa Kaltenegger, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany
  • Markus Kissler-Patig or Joe Liske, ESO

Kissler-Patig or Liske will discuss the future of exoplanet research with ESO’s European Extremely Large Telescope, ESO officials said. This instrument will be the world’s largest telescope, boasting a 129-foot (39.3-meter) main mirror. It will be built on Chile’s Cerro Armazones mountain, and could begin operations by early in the next decade.

ESO didn’t give any further details about what Pepe and Kaltenegger will discuss. Both scientists are actively involved in the search for potentially habitable alien planets — those on which liquid water, and perhaps life as we know it, could exist.

According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, astronomers have discovered 564 confirmed alien planets to date, with more than 1,000 more candidate worlds suggested by data from the Kepler space observatory

fr/http://www.space.com/12908-alien-planet-announcement-european-southern-observatory.html

 

Governor Perry VS Firefighters

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As a former Emergency Medical Technician, I can attest to the necessity of proper and state of the art equipment in responding to emergencies on all levels and in all situations. You cannot respond to a critical situation with only the hope that your supplies will be there. You can only respond confidently KNOWING that you have adequate, up to date, and effective materials. Emergency Services deal with matters of life and death, sometimes their own. If one does a bit of soul searching, I am sure that you would agree that your life is worth the price of a non-rebreather, oxygen, fuel, even a fire hose. Any responsible politician would have to agree.

In Rick Perry’s Texas, Firefighters Forced To Pay For Gear, Engine Fuel

Rick Perry

Under Gov. Rick Perry, Texas has slashed firefighting budgets.

Posted: 9/9/11 07:56 PM ET

WASHINGTON — In Texas, firefighters aren’t just battling the wild fires raging around Austin and Houston. The state’s first responders have also had to deal with budget cuts affecting everything from fuel purchases to hoses and oxygen tanks.

In some cases, fire officials say, firefighters have had to pay out of pocket for basic necessities like proper protective gear and fuel to get them to the scene. One fire department that battled the blazes in Bastrop County had to pay for a hose, recalled Bastrop City Fire Chief Henry Perry, speaking to The Huffington Post during a break from working the wild fires.

“That fire department has been on this fire every day,” he said. “Before this fire, they were having to buy stuff out of their own pocket.” Perry said he knows of at least one other department whose firemen had to pay for equipment maintenance and engine fuel.

Earlier this week, HuffPost reported that Gov. Rick Perry, the GOP front-runner for president, had signed off on millions in firefighting cuts as part of the state’s most recent budget legislation. The Texas Forest Service’s funding has gone from $117.7 million in the 2010-2011 budget years to $83 million in the 2012-2013 budget years.

Severe cuts have also hit assistance grants to volunteer fire departments throughout Texas. The grants decreased from $30 million per year in 2010 and 2011 to $13.5 million per year in 2012 and 2013. These are cuts that firemen are now dealing with.

“I don’t agree with it. I understand what Governor Perry did,” said Henry Perry (no relation). “Do I like it? No. I don’t like it at all.”

The cuts come at a time when Texas fire departments have already been slowing purchases of new fire trucks and other critical equipment as a way to save money, said Guy Turner, president of the Texas State Association of Fire Fighters. The association had endorsed Perry in his re-election for governor in 2010.
“What I fear will happen is equipment will start to fail and put our members at peril,” Turner explained. “You can imagine if you’re inside a structure fire and your engine quits.”

Turner doesn’t have to imagine it. He said he knows of firefighters whose breathing apparatus has malfunctioned during fires. There have also been “instances of hoses failing during the course of firefighting operations.”

“For years, public safety was the golden calf — that we were untouchable,” Turner said. “Nobody’s untouchable. It is a shame. They are basically putting a price on how much our lives are worth. It’s disturbing at best.”

for the rest of the story, go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/09/rick-perry-fire-department-cuts-texas-wild-fires_n_956307.html

Invisible Planet Found

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Kepler Spacecraft Discovers ‘Invisible Planet’

Neptune_false

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has spotted a planet that alternately runs late and early in its orbit because a second, “invisible” world is tugging on it. This is the first definite detection of a previously unknown planet using this method. No other technique could have found the unseen companion.

“It’s like having someone play a prank on you by ringing your doorbell and running away. You know someone was there, even if you don’t see them when you get outside,” she added.

Both the seen and unseen worlds orbit the Sun-like star Kepler-19, which is located 650 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The 12th-magnitude star is well placed for viewing by backyard telescopes on September evenings.

Kepler locates planets by looking for a star that dims slightly as a planet transits the star, passing across the star’s face from our point of view. Transits give one crucial piece of information – the planet’s physical size. The greater the dip in light, the larger the planet relative to its star. However, the planet and star must line up exactly for us to see a transit.

The first planet, Kepler-19b, transits its star every 9 days and 7 hours. It orbits the star at a distance of 8.4 million miles, where it is heated to a temperature of about 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Kepler-19b has a diameter of 18,000 miles, making it slightly more than twice the size of Earth. It may resemble a “mini-Neptune,”  (image of Neptune above) however its mass and composition remain unknown.

If Kepler-19b were alone, each transit would follow the next like clockwork. Instead, the transits come up to five minutes early or five minutes late. Such transit timing variations show that another world’s gravity is pulling on Kepler-19b, alternately speeding it up or slowing it down.

Historically, the planet Neptune was discovered similarly. Astronomers tracking Uranus noticed that its orbit didn’t match predictions. They realized that a more distant planet might be nudging Uranus and calculated the expected location of the unseen world. Telescopes soon observed Neptune near its predicted position.

“This method holds great promise for finding planets that can’t be found otherwise,” stated Harvard astronomer and co-author David Charbonneau.

to read more, go to:    http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/09/kepler-spacecraft-discovers-invisible-planet.html#more

Russian Cosmonauts on ET’s

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Russian cosmonaut Popovich:

ETs warn Cataclysms will unify human consciousness

By Alfred Lambremont Webre, JD, MEd

About Alfred Lambremont Webre, JD, MEd, author of EXOPOLITICS: POLITICS, GOVERNMENT AND LAW IN THE UNIVERSE   His website is: www.exopolitics.com

A group of prominent Russian scientists, including Russian cosmonaut Dr. Marina Popovich, PhD, as well as Victoria Popova, Dr. Sc., Ph.D., and Lidia Andrianova Ph.D. have announced a discovery of extraterrestrial communications in pictograms that extraterrestrial intelligence has placed in crop circles and in stone monuments around the world. The group has created a dictionary of over 250 extraterrestrial pictograms for interpreting crop circles and stone monuments such as “Stonehenge and Avebury stone circles in the UK, Machu Picchu, Chavin de Huantar and the Nazca Lines in Peru, the pyramid of Chichen-Itza and the pyramids of the moon and the sun in Mexico and the Moai of Easter Island and others.”

Dr. Marina Popovich, PhD, Victoria Popova, Dr. Sc., Ph.D., and Lidia Andrianova Ph.D. write in their co-authored book “Letters of Extraterrestrial Civilizations: The Last Warning”, “Extraterrestrial civilizations (ETC) warn: the weakening of Earth’s magnetic field has reached a critical value, and threatens the life of mankind. ETC’ instructions in crop circles indicate how to escape from global cataclysms which will begin very soon.”

 

ET pictograms predict global cataclysms

The Russian scientist group states that the extraterrestrial pictograms communicate that “Extraterrestrial civilizations (ETC) predict three preliminary catastrophes followed by global cataclysms of a magnitude beyond anything experienced in living memory. There will be a short time period between all these events.”

They continue, “ETC warn that civilization has to be pre-informed about the scenario of global cataclysms [before the] beginning [of the] event. A civilization that is not informed has no chance to make the Transition in time and to prolong life. First pre-cataclysm will be related with interruption of global system of communication — phone, Internet. Pre-informed civilization will avoid shock and chaos of super-powerful disaster and has a chance to make the Transition in time.”

The Russian scientist group “emphasizes that this is a natural cycle of the planet. Part of this process is the development of human consciousness to a point where humanity will have a ‘window of opportunity’ to make the transition to a higher plane of existence. They explain that this point in history can be seen as a kind graduation for humanity to a higher and more subtle level of experience, a type of metamorphosis for humanity connected with ascension. Nobody can be saved individually, as the transition can be made only through the synchronous unification of human consciousness.

The Russian scientist group states, “The time for humans to escape the devastation through the unification of consciousness will be shortly after the first pre-cataclysm. After second pre-catastrophe humanity will have no chance to prolong life because number of people [remaining alive] will be not enough to start up the mechanism of the transition. In the future humanity will join a galactic community of evolved extra-terrestrial civilizations, linked through consciousness.”

 

Cosmonaut Dr. Marina Popovich

Dr. Marina Popovich “(born July 20, 1931) is a retired Soviet Air Force colonel, engineer, and legendary Soviet test pilot who holds 107 aviation world records set on over 40 types of aircraft. She is one of the most famous pilots in Russian history, and one of the most important female pilots of all-time. Marina Vasilieva became a Soviet Air Force pilot and in 1964, a military test pilot. She authored nine books and two screenplays. Among many other awards, she has been honored as Hero of Socialist Labor, the Order of Courage (presented personally by Vladimir Putin in June 2007)and a star in the Cancer constellation bears her name.”

 

Popovich and UFOs

One source states, “Dr. Marina Popovich has been outspoken about UFO reality. She wrote a book called UFO Glasnost (published in 2003 in Germany) and given public lectures and interviews. She has mentioned over 3000 UFO sightings by Soviet military and civilian pilots. Although qualifying that her statements are not official, she says that the Soviet Air Force and KGB have fragments of five crashed UFOs in their possession. The crash sites mentioned were Tunguska (1908), Novosibirsk, Tallinn/Estonia, Ordzhonikidze/Caucasus, and Dalnegorsk (1986). Popovich said debris was analyzed and the conclusion was that it wasn’t manufactured on Earth with terrestrial technology In 1991, she also displayed what she claims is the last photo taken by the Russian probe Phobos 2, before it lost contact with Earth and disappeared. This photo shows an unexplained cylindrical figure, which could be a camera artifact.”

 

Russian scientists Popova and Andrianova — Barkhausen effect

According to their biographies, “Dr. Victoria Popova has over 100 scientific publications and 14 patents. She is the best inventor of NCC HS. Dr. Lidia Andrianova has over 50 scientific publications and 4 patents. Their dissertations were based on research of the Barkhausen effect and its application for nondestructive testing and evaluation of ferromagnetic materials. Later we understood that just the Barkhausen effect can explain the mechanism of global cataclysms beginning…. On the basis of decoded information we have written 12 books. Two of our books we have published in co-authorship with Dr. Marina Popovich.” One source states, “The Barkhausen effect is a series of sudden changes in the size and orientation of ferromagnetic domains, or microscopic clusters of aligned atomic magnets (spins), that occurs during a continuous process of magnetization or demagnetization. The Barkhausen effect offered direct evidence for the existence of ferromagnetic domains, which previously had been postulated theoretically. Heinrich Barkhausen discovered that a slow, smooth increase of a magnetic field applied to a piece of ferromagnetic material, such as iron, causes it to become magnetized, not continuously but in minute steps.”

Watch video presentation by Russian scientists explaining extraterrestrial communications

Russian scientists Popova and Andrianova have created a series of 15 brief videos in English outlining the critical components of their discovery. Readers can access video #1 at the following URL:

to read more and see the videos, go to: http://www.spiritofmaat.com/sep11/cataclysms.html

Mercury Receiving CME

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MERCURY-DIRECTED CME: On Sept 8th around 2300 UT, the SOHO and STEREO spacecraft detected a significant CME emerging from the farside of the sun. Earth is not in the line of fire, but the planet Mercury is. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab estimate that the cloud will reach the innermost planet on Sept. 9th at 12:00 UT (plus minus 7 hours). Click to view a movie of their CME model:

 

NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft is in orbit around Mercury, so it will have a front row seat for the impact. Researchers are keen to learn how Mercury’s magnetosphere responds to CMEs. In particular, they wonder if CMEs can overpower Mercury’s magnetic field and sputter atoms right off the planet’s surface. Thanks to the Goddard forecast, MESSENGER’s controllers know the CME is coming, and they can prepare to observe the impact.

Interplanetary space weather forecasting is a new thing. It became possible in 2010-2011 when NASA and ESA spacecraft surrounded the sun. Working together, SOHO, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, STEREO-A and STEREO-B now have the entire star under surveillance. CMEs can be tracked no matter where they go, which means space weather isn’t just for Earth anymore.

fr/spaceweather.com

 

 

New Light On Human Origins

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(These kinds of things just add more questions to the whole question of origins)

African fossils put new spin on human origins story

By Jonathan AmosScience correspondent, BBC News

Professor Chris Stringer, with the help of a cast of a fossil skull, describes the similarities that this species has with modern humans

The ancient remains of two human-like creatures found in South Africa could change the way we view our origins.

The 1.9-million-year-old fossils were first described in 2010, and given the species nameAustralopithecus sediba.

But the team behind the discovery has now come back with a deeper analysis.

It tells Science magazine that features seen in the brain, feet, hands and pelvis of A. sediba all suggest this species was on the direct evolutionary line to us – Homo sapiens.

“We have examined the critical areas of anatomy that have been used consistently for identifying the uniqueness of human beings,” said Professor Lee Berger from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg

“Any one of these features could have evolved separately, but it is highly unlikely that all of them would have evolved together if A. sediba was not related to our lineage,” the team leader informed BBC News.

A. sediba hand (L.Berger/Uni of Witwatersrand)The female’s right hand is missing only a few bones

It is a big claim and, if correct, would sideline other candidates in the fossil record for which similar assertions have been made in the past.

Theory holds that modern humans can trace a line back to a creature known as Homo erectus which lived more than a million years ago. This animal, according to many palaeoanthropologists, may in turn have had its origins in more primitive hominins, as they are known, such asHomo habilis or Homo rudolfensis.

The contention now made for A. sediba is that, although older than its “rivals”, some of its anatomy and capabilities were more advanced than these younger forms. Put simply, it is a more credible ancestor for H. erectus, Berger’s team claims.

The sediba specimens were unearthed at Malapa in the famous Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, just to the northwest of Jo’burg.

to read more, go to:    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14824435

Two Massive Solar Flares

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Sun Unleashes Massive Solar Flares in One-Two Punch

Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 07 September 2011 Time: 12:30 PM E
Sun unleashes massive solar flare
This image taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory watching the sun shows a powerful solar flare (center right) just minutes after it erupted on 6:20 p.m. EDT (2220 GMT) on Sept. 6, 2011.
CREDIT: NASA/SDO/GSFC

This story was updated at 8:48 p.m. EDT.

Just as many Americans got back to work after the long Labor Day weekend, the sun jolted to life as well, unleashing a massive solar flare just one day after another sun storm sent a stream of particles racing toward Earth.

The X-class solar flare — the most powerful type of sun storm— erupted at 6:12 p.m. EDT (2212 GMT) on Tuesday (Sept. 6) and hit its peak strength eight minutes later, according to a space weather update by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The flare occurred less than 24 hours after another less intense but still dramatic solar storm.

Several different satellites watched the action unfold, including NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which constantly records high-definition videos of the sun in several different wavelengths. [Photo of the X-class solar flare]

The Tuesday event registered as an X2.1-class solar flare, while Monday’s storm topped out at a still-powerful M5, NOAA officials said. Strong solar flares are classified according to a three-tiered system: X-class flares are the most powerful, M-class are of medium strength and C-class are the weakest.

September solar storms

Researchers are still taking the measure of the big Tuesday sun storm. It may also have produced a coronal mass ejection (CME) aimed at Earth, researchers said, but as of Tuesday evening it was too early to tell.

CMEs are massive clouds of solar plasma that can streak through space at up to 3 million mph (5 million kph). CMEs that hit Earth can wreak havoc on our planet, causing disruptions in GPS signals, radio communications and power grids.

to read more, go to:    http://www.livescience.com/15933-sun-unleashes-massive-solar-flares.html

Unknown Extinct Humanoid DNA Lives On

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Humans Had Sex Regularly With Mysterious Extinct Relatives in Africa

Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience Contributor
Date: 05 September 2011 Time: 03:32 PM ET
neanderthal family
A new study of the human genome reveals modern humans interbred not only with Neanderthals but also with an extinct group of relatives in Africa.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Our species may have bred with a now extinct lineage of humanity before leaving Africa, scientists say.

Although we modern humans are now the only surviving lineage of humanity, others once roamed the Earth, making their way out of Africa before our species did, including the familiar Neanderthals in West Asia and Europe and the newfound Denisovans in East Asia. Genetic analysis of fossils of these extinct lineages has revealed they once interbred with modern humans, unions that may have endowed our lineage with mutations that protected them as we began expanding across the world about 65,000 yeas ago.

Now researchers analyzing the human genome find evidence that our species hybridized with a hitherto unknown human lineage even before leaving Africa, with approximately 2 percent of contemporary African DNA perhaps coming from this lineage. In comparison, recent estimates suggest that Neanderthal DNA makes up 1 percent to 4 percent of modern Eurasian genomes and Denisovan DNA makes up 4 percent to 6 percent of modern Melanesian genomes.

“We need to modify the standard model of human origins in which a single population transitioned to the anatomically modern state in isolation — a garden of Eden somewhere in Africa — and replaced all other archaic forms both within Africa and outside Africa without interbreeding,” researcher Michael Hammer, a population geneticist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, told LiveScience. “We now need to consider models in which gene flow occurred over time.”

Haplotype hints

Hammer and his colleagues gathered DNA samples from the Center for the Study of Human Polymorphisms in Paris and sequenced about 60 regions of the human genome that apparently have no function. These genes are less subject than functional DNA to change as a result of recent evolutionary pressures driving the survival of the fittest; in such a way, they can give a clearer view of how populations might have mixed or not in the past.

The investigators focused on three populations that presented a good sample of the geographic and cultural diversity of sub-Saharan Africa — Mandenka farmers in western Africa, Biaka Pygmies in west-central Africa, and San Bushmen of southern Africa — looking for unusual patterns that suggested ancient interbreeding with other lineages. This included a hunt for long haplotypes, or sets of DNA sequences, not seen in other modern human groups, the idea being that while short haplotypes could potentially be explained by a few chance mutations within these modern human populations, comparatively long haplotypes were instead likely inherited from a significantly different lineage.

“If interbreeding occurs, it’s going to bring in a whole chromosome,” Hammer explained. Although this genetic contribution would have dwindled over time, remnants would still exist as shorter, unusual fragments, and “by looking at how long they are, we can get an estimate of how far back the interbreeding event happened.” (The longer these odd haplotypes are, the more recently they occurred, having less time to get diminished by other genetic inputs.)

New Light on the Black Death

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Molecular Clues Hint at What Really Caused the Black Death

Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 07 September 2011 Time: 12:25 PM ET
A depiction of the black death from a 15th century Bible.

The Black Death arrived in London in the fall of 1348, and although the worst passed in less than a year, the disease took a catastrophic toll. An emergency cemetery in East Smithfield received more than 200 bodies a day between the following February and April, in addition to bodies buried in other graveyards, according to a report from the time.

The disease that killed Londoners buried in East Smithfield and at least one of three Europeans within a few years time is commonly believed to be bubonic plague, a bacterial infection marked by painful, feverish, swollen lymph nodes, called buboes. Plague is still with us in many parts of the world, although now antibiotics can halt its course.

But did this disease really cause the Black Death? The story behind this near-apocalypse in 14th century Europe is not clear-cut, since what we know about modern plague in many ways does not match with what we know about the Black Death. And if plague isn’t responsible for the Black Death, scientists wonder what could’ve caused the sweeping massacre and whether that killer is still lurking somewhere.

Now, a new study using bone and teeth taken from East Smithfield adds to mounting evidence exhumed from Black Death graves and tantalizes skeptics with hints at the true nature of the disease that wiped out more than a third of Europeans 650 years ago.

This team of researchers approached the topic with open minds when they began looking for genetic evidence of the killer.

“Essentially by looking at the literature on the Black Death there were several candidates for what could have been the cause,” said Sharon DeWitte, one of the researchers who is now an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of South Carolina.

Their first suspect: Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes modern plague, including bubonic plague.

The speed of plague

In 1894, Alexander Yersin and another scientist separately identified Y. pestis during an epidemic in Hong Kong. Years later the bacterium was given his name. Yersin also connected his discovery to the pestilence that swept Europe during the Black Death, an association that has stuck.

One problem, however, is that compared to the wildfire-like spread of the Black Death, the modern plague moves more leisurely. The modern plague pandemic began in the Yunnan Province of China in the mid-19th century, then spread to Hong Kong and then via ship, to India, where it exacted the heaviest toll, and to San Francisco in 1899, among many other places.

The disease that caused the Black Death is believed to have traveled much quicker, arriving in Europe from Asia in 1347, after the Golden Horde, a Mongol Army, catapulted plague-infected bodies into a Genoese settlement near the Black Sea. The disease traveled with the Italian traders and later appeared in Sicily, according to Samuel Cohn, a professor of medieval history at the University of Glasglow and author of “The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in the Early Renaissance Europe” (Bloomsbury USA, 2003).

to read more, go to:   http://www.livescience.com/15937-black-death-plague-debate.html