Radio Show

Drawing of Ancient Colorado Rock Art by Archeoastronomer Carl Lehrburger

Host Intro: Colorado's Sun Temple at Beltaine, Colorado has been generating controversy for more than 20 years. The ancient rock carvings receive dramatic illumination on dates such as the spring equinox. But who made this seeming, solar calendar? Classical scientists say it's native American petroglyphs. Some mavericks, believe the rock carvings include the written language of ancient Celtish travelers. Carl Lehrburger will explain.

Groups Featured in this report include:
Archeoastronomy, archaeoastronomy.com


Full Text:

HEADLINES:

(SUSAN MORAN) When you get a chance for having some extra money, and you give some of it to a charity, does it feel better if you HAVE to give the money or if you do it voluntarily?  Actually, people take pleasure in doing both, according to a new study by researchers in Oregon.  In the experiments, William Harbaugh and his colleagues at the University of Oregon gave volunteers $100 each and then asked them to make decisions about whether to give money to a local food bank.  However, the volunteers didn’t make ALL the decisions about donations.  The researchers transferred some of the $100 to the food bank in tax-like payments. While all this giving and tithing was going on, the researchers monitored electrical activity within the volunteers' ventral striatum, a key part of the brain's reward system. The results indicated that the volunteers took pleasure anytime they were contributing to the food bank, but that the kind of brain activity that’s tied to a sense of well- being increased more when they donated the money voluntarily.   

(EWEN CALLOWAY)




SUSAN MORAN
Most people know that Pluto is a dog.  Last year, Pluto also gained a great deal of attention when it STOPPED being a planet and was renamed a dwarf planet.  Now, the former planet has taken another blow.  That’s because astronomers have concluded that the same dwarf planet that got Pluto demoted in the first place, is bigger than Pluto.   In 2006, researchers discovered another large object, close to Pluto, and named it Eris.  In Greek mythology, that’s the name for the goddess of strife. Eris and Pluto seemed so similar in size . . . and such a small size, it sparked a major controversy.  Many scientists said that it’d be silly to call Eris yet another planet.  To settle the argument, the International Astronomical Union created the category of dwarf planet for objects including Eris and Pluto.  But they gave Pluto a special distinction, as the largest known dwarf planet. Then, sadly for Pluto, astronomers found a small moon orbiting Eris.  They named it Dysnomia, which in Greek mythology is the daughter of the goddess Eris.  Using Dysnomia to help them refine their calculations, and studying Eris more carefully through the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Observatory, these astronomers made more precise calculations about the orbit and the density of Eris. They concluded that this upstart is about 27 percent more massive than Pluto.  So not only is Pluto no longer a planet.  It’s no longer the biggest dwarf planet.  But, unlike Eris, Pluto IS still a dog.


LIVE INTERVIEW FOLLOWS