Undavalli Caves

UNDAVALLI

The Undavalli Caves, and example of Indian rock cut architecture are located in the village of Undavalli in Guntur District, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. The caves are 6km south west of Vijayawada, 22km north west of Guntur City and about 280 km from Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. The caves are associated with the Vishnukundina kings of 420 to 620 A.D. They are dedicated to Anantapadmanabha Swamy and Narisimha Swamy.

These caves are tourist attractions due to its excellent specimens of cut-in architectural and sculptural models. It is believed that Buddhist saints used these caves as a rest house during the monsoon

These four stories caves are said to be found in the 7th century. They are associated with the Vishnukundin Kings of AD 420 - 620. These exotic caves of Undavalli were dedicated to the Anantapadmanabha and Narisimhaswami. According to the historical evidences Madhava Reddy who ruled this region as the subordinate under the Reddies of Kondaveedu gifted the caves to the temple of Anantha Swamy. It is also believed that these caves were used by the Buddhist monks as the rest houses. Some of the other shrines in the cave are dedicated to the Trimurti, Brahma and Shiva. These ancient Hindu cave temples holds the great importance among the Hindus in India.

Cave in its planning belongs to the earliest examples of Gupta architecture although several details in the second floor show the influence of Chalukyan architecture. First floor can be entered through one of 8 - 9 roughly shaped openings with massive square columns in between. Planning and style of sculptures in the first floor shows that this was Buddhist monastery - vihara. Part of chambers are primitive rock-cut monastery cells. Hall is not completed, it contains 8 columns. Here are three separate sanctuaries for Trimurti - Brahma, Vishnu and Shivu, each with a pillared hall in front. Trimurti is important concept in Hindu religion - a triad of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, embodyment of cosmic functions of creation, maintenance and destruction.

Darshan in the evening will continue till 1930 hrs. Besides admiring the architectural beauty of the Undavalli caves tourists can explore the nearby area around the Undavalli caves. When you reach at the top of the cave you get the finest view of the agricultural environment. You can kill time picking alongside the Krishna river. You can also take the leisure walk along the river and enchant with the local people. You may find children playing in the fields barefooted and their mothers working hard in the fields. Tourists can even take the boat ride in the river enjoying the surrounding beauty. After that you can even have lunch with the local villagers in the fields.

ANANTHA PADMANABHA SWAMI




ENTRANCE

TEMPLE

 

" wow "..a real signal from space....surely from alien's

What Was the Wow! Signal?

Everyone remembers the Steven Spielberg’s 1977 classic sci-fi film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” which depicted an imagined first contact with an alien civilization. But most probably don’t realize that a few months before the movie came out,  real-life scientists believed—at least for a few exciting moments—that they might have detected an actual message sent by  extraterrestrials.

It was mid-August 1977, and across the U.S., many if not most people were focused on the shocking death of rock-and-roll great Elvis Presley at age 42. But in Ohio, a 37-year-old man named Jerry Ehman was transfixed by another startling event that—at least for searchers for extraterrestrial intelligence—potentially was even more momentous.

Ehman, a volunteer researcher for Ohio State University’s now-defunct Big Ear radio observatory, pebrused data from the telescope’s scan of the skies on August 15, a few days earlier. In those days, such information was run through an IBM 1130 mainframe computer and printed on perforated paper, and then laboriously examined by hand. But the tedium was shattered when Ehman spotted something surprising—a vertical column with the alphanumerical sequence “6EQUJ5,” which had occurred at 10:16 p.m. EST. He grabbed a red pen and circled the sequence. In the margin, wrote “Wow!”

Ehman’s excitement over that bit of arcane information stemmed from the Big Ear’s mission at the time, which was searching space for radio signals of the sort that might be emanated by extraterrestrial civilizations, if they were attempting to make contact with intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. To Ehman, this signal, which had come from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, looked an awful lot like it could be such a message. Observatory director John Krauss and his assistant Bob Dixon, who subsequently examined the data, were similarly astonished by it.

But was it? More than three decades later, the Wow Signal, as it has come to be known to SETI researchers, remains both the first and best potential evidence of communication from extraterrestrials, and one of the most perplexing mysteries in science.  Over the years, Ehman and colleagues worked to rule out other explanations—such as satellites, aircraft or ground-based transmitters on Earth. But by the same token, researchers have yet to prove that it actually is message from space. “It’s an open question.” Ehman told the Columbus Dispatch in 2010. Or as the late science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once put it in a 1997 interview with New Scientist magazine, “God only knows what it was.”

To grasp the significance of the Wow Signal, it helps to understand what Ehman and his colleagues were looking for. Back in the early 1960s, Cornell physicists Philip Morrison and Guiseppe Cocconi had tried to figure out how a distant extraterrestrial civilization, if one existed, might try to contact others in the universe. First, they hypothesized, aliens would use a radio signal, since such transmissions require relatively little energy to generate and can travel huge distances across space. Second, they assumed that the aliens would be smart enough to pick a message that other intelligent species might understand, even if they spoke a very different language. Chemicals, they noted, emit distinctive electromagnetic frequencies, or signatures, which is how astronomers can determine the composition of distant planets and stars from their light. Since hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, emits a signal with a frequency of 1420 megahertz, they reasoned that aliens might send out a signal that mimicked it.

But the signal spotted by Ehman was the first that seemed to fit that description almost exactly.

Each digit on the printout represented the intensity of a radio signal, from zero to 35, with intensities over nine being represented by letters. Most of the signals on the printouts were ones and twos. But this one, as signified by the “U” in the middle, was extremely powerful—about 30 times greater than the ordinary ambient noise of deep space. Indeed, it was the loudest, longest signal that the Big Ear, which was shut down and dismantled in 1997, would ever pick up. And the signal was narrowly focused and extremely close to 1420 megahertz, the frequency of hydrogen. In contrast, natural sources of radiation, such as planets, usually send out a much broader range of frequencies.

While that all has seemed so tantalizing to SETI researchers, they’ve never been able to prove that the Wow Signal actually was such a message. And much about it was difficult to explain. Scientists also were puzzled when they traced the signal to a location northwest of the globular cluster M55—a spot where there apparently was no star or planet. SETI researcher Paul Shuch told New Scientist in 1997 that if the signal did come from an alien civilization, it would have required some amazingly advanced equipment. Assuming that the extraterrestrial beacon was the size of the biggest radio telescopes on Earth, the aliens would have required a 2.2 gigawatt transmitter, vastly more powerful than any existing terrestrial radio station.

But the most puzzling thing about the Wow Signal was that it lasted approximately 72 seconds, and never was detected again, even though in the 20 years that followed, scientists conducted more than 100 studies of the same region of sky. If aliens were trying to contact us, wouldn’t they keep repeating their message? Back in the early 2000s, researchers tried once more with a 26-meter radio telescope in Hobart, Tasmania, which was smaller than the Big Ear but more advanced technologically. Despite their ability to detect signals only five percent as strong as the Wow Signal, the Astrobiology Magazine reported in 2003 that they found nothing that resembled it.

Five Good Reasons To Believe in UFOs

As most credible UFOlogists readily admit, proving that extraterrestrial spacecraft have visited our planet is a maddeningly difficult chore.

“The hassle over the word "proof" boils down to one question: What constitutes proof?” Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed the U.S Air Force’s secret investigation of UFOs in the early 1950s, once wrote.  “Does a UFO have to land at the River Entrance to the Pentagon, near the Joint Chiefs of Staff offices? Or is it proof when a ground radar station detects a UFO, sends a jet to intercept it, the jet pilot sees it, and locks on with his radar, only to have the UFO streak away at a phenomenal speed? Is it proof when a jet pilot fires at a UFO and sticks to his story even under the threat of court-martial? Does this constitute proof?”

More recently, Investigative journalist Leslie Keen, author of the 2011 book “UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record,” has noted that  in roughly 90 to 95 percent of UFO sightings, observers turn out actually to have seen weather balloons, ball lightning, flares, aircraft, and other mundane phenomena.  But another five to 10 percent of sightings are not so easily explainable, but that’s not the same as demonstrating that they are extraterrestrial in origin. Nevertheless, she argues, the hypothesis that UFOs are visitors from other worlds “is a rational one, and must be taken into account, given the data that we have.”

Here is some of the most compelling evidence for that hypothesis:

•    The long, documented history of sightings. UFOs were around, in fact, long before humans themselves took to the air. The first account of a UFO sighting in America was back in 1639, when Massachusetts colony governor John Winthrop noted in his journal that one James Everell, “a sober, discreet man,” and two other witnesses watched a luminous object fly up and down the Muddy River near Charlestown for two to three hours.    There are documented sightings of sightings of what were then called “airships” during the 1800s as well, such as the July 1884 sighting of a Saturn-shaped UFO (a ball surrounded by a ring) in Norwood, NY, and a fast-moving object that briefly hovered over the startled townspeople of Everest, KS in 1897.

•    Numerous modern sightings by credible, well-trained professional observers. In Ruppelt’s 1955 book , “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects,”  he documented numerous instances of military service members, military and civilian pilots, scientists and other credible professionals who had observed UFOs. In one instance, Ruppelt describes the experience of a pilot of an Air Force F-86 fighter jet, who was scrambled to track a UFO and got to within 1,000 yards of a saucer-shaped object that abruptly flew away from him in a burst of speed after he fired upon it.   He also mentions a 1948 UFO encounter in which two airline pilots got to within 700 feet of a UFO and saw two rows of windows with bright lights.

•    Consistencies in the descriptions of purported alien ships. Over the decades, witnesses who’ve seen UFOs have shown remarkable consistency in the shapes and other characteristics of the objects they’ve described.  In 1949, the authors of the report for Project Sign, one of the early military investigations of UFOs, identified four main groups of objects—flying disks or saucers, cigar or torpedo-shaped craft without wings or fins, spherical or balloon-shaped objects that were capable of hovering or flying at high speed, and balls of light with no apparent physical form that were similarly maneuverable.  Nearly a quarter-century later, a French government investigation headed by Claude Poher of the National Center for Space Research found similar patterns in more than 1,000 reports from France and various countries.   One caveat is that in recent years, reports of wedge-shaped UFOs—which bear a similarity to the latest terrestrial military aircraft—have begun to supplant some of the traditional shapes.

•    Possible physical evidence of encounters with alien spacecraft. The 1968 University of Colorado report, compiled by a team headed by James Condon, documented numerous instances of areas where soil, grass, and other vegetation apparently had been flattened, burned, broken off, or blown away by a UFO.   A report by Stanford University astrophysicist Peter Sturrock, who led a scientific study of physical evidence of UFOs in the late 1990s, describes samples of plants taken from a purported UFO landing site in France in 1981. French researchers found that the leaves had undergone unusual chemical changes of the sort that could have been caused by powerful microwave radiation—which was even more difficult to explain, considering that they found no trace of radioactivity at the site.

•    Documented physiological effects on UFO witnesses. The Sturrock report describes in detail various symptoms experienced by individuals who had encountered UFOS, ranging from burns and temporary deafness to persistent nausea and memory loss.  Among the most vivid examples:  Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Landrum’s young grandson Colby, who reportedly happened upon a “large, diamond-shaped object” hovering over a Texas road in December 1980. All three became ill afterward;  Cash, for example, developed large water blisters on her face and swelling that closed her eyes, in addition to severe nausea and diarrhea. The effects persisted for years, and she was hospitalized more than two dozen times.

"Mind-Boggling" Pictures: Goats Scale Dam in Italy

Gravity-Defying Goats

Using moves that would make any rock climber jealous, Alpine ibex cling to a near-vertical rock face of a northern Italian dam in summer 2010.

This and other pictures of the goats have been circulating online recently, particularly in emails claiming the animals are bighorn sheep on Wyoming'sBuffalo Bill Dam, the rumor-quashing website Snopes reported in September.

In truth, Adriano Migliorati snapped the pictures at the 160-foot-tall (49-meter-tall) Cingino Dam (see map of the region), the Italian hiker told National Geographic News via email. The goats are attracted to the dam's salt-crusted stones, according to the U.K.-based Caters news agency. Grazing animals don't get enough of the mineral in their vegetarian diets.

It's not far-fetched, though, to think such a scene could be photographed in theUnited States. For example, mountain goats could scale dams in the U.S. West, according to Jeff Opperman, senior advisor for sustainable hydropower at the U.S.-based nonprofit the Nature Conservancy.

Opperman, who called the Cingino pictures "mind-boggling," pointed out a picture of a Montana mountain goat doing an "incredibly acrobatic stretching maneuver to lick salt" in the November National Geographic magazine 

"He is wedged up this sheer vertical cliff face, almost doing a yoga pose with four hooves splayed out there," he said. "It's the same concept [with the Italian goats]—these animals can overcome what looks like impossible topography to get what they want."

Opperman cautioned, though, that the Italian dam is rare, in that its rough masonry provides gaps that act as toeholds. The more common, smooth-concrete dams—such as Buffalo Bill Dam— would give goats anywhere in the world trouble, he said.

Goat-Dotted Dam

Cingino Dam isn't completely vertical, allowing ibex—such as these goats pictured in summer 2010—to gain some purchase.

Adapted to their perilous environment, Alpine ibex have evolved a specialized split hoof, whose cleft is wider than on any other split-hooved species, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The hoof also has a hard wall that can grab on to steep cliffs and a soft, rubbery inside that serves as a "stopper" when the animal is pushed forward by gravity, the magazine reported.

And because dams are usually built in steep canyons, Cingino's steep rock face is likely nothing novel for the mountain-dwelling ibex, according to Opperman

Sometimes reaching heights of 16,000 feet (5,000 meters), the herbivores spend their lives scrambling the European Alps' rocky and steep terrain, according to Caters news agency.

A Dam Worth Its Salt

By scaling Cingino Dam, salt-craving ibex, such as this animal pictured in summer 2010, are "showing ingenuity, taking advantage of this human-created thing in their environment," the Nature Conservancy's Opperman said.

Some other enterprising species can also work around dams in their habitats. For instance, eels can literally wriggle up some dams obstructing their paths, Opperman noted. But all too often dams act as barriers for wildlife, for example by blocking migrating salmon and other fish.

"When we think about dams, it's often [about] these weighty issues," such as balancing energy needs with wildlife protection, Opperman added. The goat pictures are "a whimsical, comic relief to that."

Huge New Dinosaur Trackway Found in U.S.

Dinosaurs "stomping in the mud" left prints pointing to pigeon-toed hunter.

The newfound tracks suggest A. atokensis' feet weren't webbed after all.

Fossilized tracks of dinosaurs "stomping in the mud" have been discovered in southwestern Arkansas, scientists say.

Spanning the length of two football fields, the footprints hint that a giant predator was a bit pigeon-toed.

Several species, including the eight-ton Acrocanthosaurus atokensis—one of the largest predators ever to walk Earth—and sauropods, or long-necked plant-eaters, left their footprints in the 120-million-year-old Cretaceous limestone.

At the time, Arkansas was a broad mud flat, similar to the hot, dry, and salty shores of the modern-day Persian Gulf—not a particularly "pleasant place," said team leader Stephen Boss, a geoscientist at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Predators like Acrocanthosaurus were likely attracted to the site by sauropods and other prey species, but "what the sauropods are doing out there, who knows?" Boss said.

Though found elsewhere in North America, dinosaur trackways are rare in the southern U.S., he said. Indeed, most people tend to think of dinosaurs dwelling in the "classic" western lands of Colorado and Utah.

"They don't think this is a place that dinosaurs once roamed, but it is—and here's the proof."

Dinosaur Tracks Reveal Pigeon-Toed Predator?

A private citizen recently found the tracks, which were possibly exposed after a rainstorm scoured away a thin layer of shale. The shape of the footprints and the age of the limestone leaves "no doubt" that they were left by dinosaurs, said Boss, whose new research has not yet been published.

"The photographs seem to make it clear that they are indeed theropod dinosaur tracks," vertebrate paleontologist Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. said via email. Theropods, which included T. rex, were two-legged predators.

"Acrocanthosaurus tracks are already well known from Texas, and we have fossils of Acrocanthosaurus and closely related forms from Texas, Oklahoma, and Maryland, so almost certainly it lived in Arkansas, too," added Holtz, of the University of Maryland.

The tracks were likely left by multiple dinosaurs and must have been filled in fairly quickly—if they'd been exposed for long, the prints would have eroded beyond recognition, team member Boss said.

Set Lasers to "Discover"

Boss and colleagues scanned the trackway with a laser at a high resolution. The scan digitally preserved the tracks so that the scientists could analyze them and "walk across that surface in cyberspace," he said.

For example, looking more closely at Acrocanthosaurus's 2-foot-long (0.6-meter-long) footprint will help answer key questions such as "What did this thing look like when it had meat on it?" Boss said.

Already, the scans have revealed that the three-toed Acrocanthosaurus didn't have webbed feet—a discovery that wouldn't have been possible with just bones for evidence.

Researching the tracks digitally may also show scientists precisely how the dinosaur walked. "One of the things that surprised me [from early analyses]," Boss said, "is the feet turned inward—sort of pigeon-toed."

120 Roman Shoes Found in U.K.; "Substantial" Fort Find

Leather footwear found among jewelery, coins at supermarket construction site.

About 60 pairs of sandals and shoes that once belonged to Roman soldiers have been unearthed at a supermarket construction site in Camelon, Scotland, archaeologists say.

The 2,000-year-old leather footwear was discovered along with Roman jewelry, coins, pottery, and animal bones at the site, which is located at the northern frontier of the Roman Empire.

The cache of Roman shoes and sandals—one of the largest ever found in Scotland—was uncovered recently in a ditch at the gateway to a second century A.D. fort built along the Antonine Wall. The wall is a massive defensive barrier that the Romans built across central Scotland during their brief occupation of the region.

The find likely represents the accumulated throwaways of Roman centurions and soldiers garrisoned at the fort, said dig coordinator Martin Cook, an archaeologist with AOC Archaeology Group, an independent contractor in Britain.

"I think they dumped the shoes over the side of the road leading into the fort," he said.

"Subsequently the ditch silted up with organic material, which preserved the shoes."

Despite being discards, the hobnailed shoes are in relatively good condition, Cook added.

Newfound Fort One of Decade's Biggest Finds

While the new supermarket site also includes the remains of a first century Roman fort and ancient field systems, excavations have centered on the area of the younger Antonine fort.

"We've got evidence of a really substantial structure," Cook said. "You would have had a square fort with stone walls and three or four ditches around them." 

Other finds include a Roman axe and spearhead, three or four brooches, French Samian ware—which is a high-prestige ceramic—glass, and standard pots, he said.

"I would say it is one of the most important forts in Scotland," Cook added. "This will be one of the most important Scottish excavations in the last decade."

The Romans are believed to have abandoned the Antonine Wall and retreated south toward England in about A.D. 165.

The Camelon dig team is on the lookout for evidence that could challenge this by suggesting the Romans stayed longer in the region.

To date, however, the excavation seems to confirm that the Romans legged it—minus their footwear, of course.

Pictures: 3,000 Ancient Buddhas Unearthed in China

Knowing Smile

The head of a Buddha statue peeks above the dirt in Handan (map), China, where archaeologists have reportedly unearthed nearly 3,000 Buddha statues, which could be up to 1,500 years old.

The discovery is believed to be the largest of its kind since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, an archaeologist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told reporters in late March, according to the Associated Press.

The Buddha statues—most of which are made of white marble and limestone and many of which are broken—could date back to the Eastern Wei and Northern Qi dynasties (A.D. 534 to 577), experts say.

The statues—discovered during a dig outside of Ye, the ancient capital of the Eastern Wei and Northern Qi dynasties—may have been rounded up and buried after the fall of the Northern Qi dynasty by later emperors in an attempt to purge the country of Buddhism.

"It may have been that some of the ruins and broken sculptures from the past were gathered from old temple sites and buried in a pit," said Katherine Tsiang, director of the Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago.

In some cases, the Buddhist statues may have been buried by the faithful themselves in times of danger.

"In other sites, there are inscriptions that suggest that old damaged sculptures were not just dumped in a pit, but respectfully buried in an orderly way," Tsiang said.

Deep in the Past

On March 20 Chinese archaeologists stand at the edge of a pit where thousands of ancient Buddha statues were unearthed in January. The statues range from about 8 inches (20 centimeters) long to life-size.

While rare, such finds are not unheard of, Tsiang said. In the 1950s, for example, archaeologists found more than 2,000 fragments from broken marble Buddha statues at the site of a temple in Dingxian in China's Hebei Province.

"Many sculptures from these sites are similar in style to those found recently at Ye," Tsiang said. But this "may be the largest find. I don't know of larger examples."

The fifth and sixth centuries were important periods for the spread and development of Buddhism in China, she added.

"We know that Buddhism"—which began in India around 500 B.C.—"was introduced to China during the Han dynasty" several hundred years before the newfound artifacts are believed to have been created, Tsiang said.

"At first, it may have only been practiced by foreigners. ... Gradually it became much more popular after the Han dynasty fell. And by the fifth and sixth centuries, there was quite a lot of trade across the Silk Road into China from Central Asia.

"So [Buddhist] monks from India were coming in, and Chinese monks were traveling and learning. There were also translation projects, so the texts of Buddhism were being translated into Chinese."

Colorfast

A Chinese archaeologist gingerly holds an ancient headless Buddha statue, one of thousands recently uncovered in a pit in northern China.

Such "freestanding" Buddha statues—typically shown wearing monk-style robes like the one shown here—were widely made in northern China from the middle of the fifth century A.D. onward. Before this time, the Buddha was usually shown standing in a group, with pairs of attendants.

The life-size or nearly life-size nature of the freestanding Buddha and the lack of a standard body type or facial expression for the statues have led some scholars to speculate that the sculptures were results of a new understanding of the Buddha in human terms, rather than as a supernatural divinity or immortal.

Blooming Halo

 

A stone Buddha missing its body is one of nearly 3,000 ancient statues depicting the enlightened prince that were unearthed in northern China earlier this year.

The Buddha's head is surrounded by a halo with a large central lotus-leaf blossom—an important symbol in Buddhism of purity and rebirth.

"The Buddha had a bump on top of his head that represents his extra wisdom," Tsiang said. "In this case that extra protuberance is not very high. It's just shown as a slightly raised part of the skull."

In fifth-century China, Buddhists would often pay to have craftsmen carve a statue of the Buddha, which they would then donate to temples.

"It was a way of doing good deeds, generating merit," Tsiang said. "People who gave gifts to temples were considered deeply deserving of rewards, which could include good health or protection by the Buddha."

Often the statues would include inscriptions wishing a deceased loved one a good rebirth or the attainment of enlightenment

Bodhisattva

Some of the statues gifted to Buddhist temples by ancient Chinese donors—such as this newfound sculpture of a bodhisattva, or enlightened Buddhist being—were elaborately decorated at great expense.

"People wanted to show their generosity with the use of expensive materials like marble and bronze and expensive pigments and gold," Tsiang said.

Deep Thoughts

Statues like this one—of young figure in a cross-legged pose common in Buddhist art—were common in fifth-century China. Such sculptures refer to a formative period in the Buddha's youth, when he had first contemplated the suffering of life and resolved to detach himself from this world while seated in the shade of a bodhi tree.

"This is an image derived from India that appeared in scenes of the life of the Buddha, and it shows the Buddha as a prince before he went in search of enlightenment," Tsiang explained.

The popularity of this "contemplative" pose amongst Buddha statues in fifth-century China may be related to the growing belief at the time that living Buddhist practitioners could also achieve enlightenment, Tsiang said.

"People learned that Buddha himself was a human," she added, "and that it was possible for them to become enlightened through study, cultivation of spirit, and meditation."

World's Oldest Blood Found in Famed "Iceman" Mummy

New nanotech findings hint at quick death for Stone Age Ötzi.

The world's oldest known blood cells have been found on Ötzi the Iceman, according to the latest research on the 5,300-year-old mummy.

What's more, the discovery proves that the Stone Age homicide victim had a quick, if not painless, death.

Ötzi has been the subject of extensive postmortem investigations ever since his corpse was discovered in an Alpine glacier on the Austrian-Italian border in 1991. 

No blood residue had previously been detected, however, despite various studies detailing his violent death due to an arrow shot and other injuries.

"There were no [blood] traces found, even when they opened some arteries, so it was thought maybe the blood had not preserved and had completely degraded, or that he lost too much blood because of the arrow injury" on his back, said team member Albert Zink, head of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy.

For the new investigation, scientists traced Ötzi's wound areas—the arrow injury and a cut on his right hand—with a pioneering nano-size probe.

Each minute movement of the probe was recorded with a laser, "so you get a three-dimensional image of the sample in a very tiny scale," Zink explained.

The scans revealed classic "doughnut shape" red blood cells, the team reported Wednesday in the journal Interface.

While past studies have suggested evidence for prehistoric blood on Stone Age tools and other artifacts, "you can never really be sure, because you can see structures which are quite similar to red blood cells" such as pollen grains or bacteria, Zink commented.

To confirm they were indeed dealing with human blood cells, the researchers illuminated the wounds with a laser. The wavelengths of the scattered light revealed the substances' molecular makeup.

"We got very typical samples for blood, like for the [blood protein] hemoglobin," he said.

The new finding "really is the oldest clear evidence for red blood cells."

Quick Death

The new nanotechnology, allied with an atomic force microscope, also uncovered traces of fibrin, a blood-clotting agent—evidence that the Iceman suffered a mercifully quick demise.

"Fibrin is formed immediately when you get a wound, within a few minutes, but then it disappears"—in a living, functioning body, anyway, Zink said. "Finding fibrin in the arrow wound is confirmation that Ötzi actually died very quickly after the arrowshot."

Solar Plane Completes First Intercontinental Flight

Sun-Powered Shadow

The unique silhouette of the experimental aircraft Solar Impulse soars above Rabat, Morocco, just before landing to complete an unprecedented intercontinental journey—without fuel tanks.

The plane touched down in the North African capital at 11:30 p.m. local time, 19 hours after take-off from Madrid, Spain, with Bertrand Piccard, one of the aircraft's two designers, in the cockpit. The 448-nautical-mile (830-kilometer) flight across the strait separating Europe and Africa, put Solar Impulse into the history books as the first manned solar intercontinental flight.

"The flight over the Gibraltar strait was a magical moment, and represents one of the highlights of my career as an aeronaut," said Piccard after deplaning before a cheering crowd at Rabat-Salé international airport.

It was the second part of a two-stage trip from the plane's base in Switzerland. The plane had been holding at Madrid for more than week waiting for calm weather, after originally taking off from Payerne, Switzerland, and flying 17 hours into Spain with Piccard's project partner and codesigner, André Borschberg, as pilot.

This jaunt is a warm-up for the Solar Impulse's planned round-the-world flight in 2014.

Night Preparations

Solar Impulse's ground crew can be seen making final preparations for takeoff in the wee hours of the morning—at 5:22 a.m. Madrid time on June 5. The intercontinental leg of the solar plane's journey was delayed several days by weather, though not by a lack of a sun. High winds, which create problems for the ultralight craft, kept the plane grounded until conditions improved early this week.

Once under way, the flight to Morocco took 19 hours and 8 minutes at an average ground speed of just under 32 miles per hour (52 kilometers per hour). Although it began and ended in darkness, the flight didn't really tax the airplane's power sources. "After almost 20 hours of flight we landed with a full set of batteries," said pilot André Borschberg. "This is extraordinary as it represents an increase in confidence in new technologies."

Crossing a New Frontier

Powered only by the sun above its wings, Solar Impulse soared to heights of 27,000 feet (8,229 meters) while en route to Morocco, where its international journey ended. The team said that the flight was made "under the patronage" of Morocco's King Mohammed VI, and by invitation of the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (MASEN). The team chose Morocco as its destination in order to help launch construction of the world's largest (160-megawatt) solar thermal power plant.

A Flight by Light

The Solar Impulse aircraft stands on the airfield in Payerne, Switzerland before a test flight last year. Solar flying takes patience and a wait for favorable conditions, but the team had confidence that the skies would be right for its late-spring history journey.

"Weather isn't a reliable science but we always find a window," Solar Impulse spokesperson Alexandra Gindroz said.  "It isn't about rushing or completing the flight at some speed. It's about having good conditions."

"Solvay," the word displayed prominently on Solar Impulse's nose, is an international chemical company that became the project's first major partner in 2004, and contributed high-performance ultralight polymers that made the physical construction of the aircraft possible. Other sponsors include the watchmaker OMEGA, Deutsche Bank, and Schindler, a leading provider of elevators and escalators.

Stretching Its Wings

A record-breaking journey began when Solar Impulse took off from an airfield in Payerne, Switzerland, en route to Madrid, Spain, on May 24. André Borschberg, the project's chief executive officer, flew the first leg of a 1,550-mile (2,500-kilometer) intercontinental flight that ended in Rabat, Morocco, without using a drop of fossil fuel or emitting any pollution.

Waiting for Calm

Much like the aviation pioneers of the early 20th century, the pilots of the Solar Impulse must wait for the right weather. The aircraft is seen here in April 2011 at its hangar in Payerne, Switzerland.

Aircraft Array

The carbon-fiber Solar Impulse aircraft has an enormous 200-foot (61-meter) wingspan—similar to that of an Airbus A340.

Yet it's ultralight, weighing only about as much as an average automobile (3,525 pounds or 1,600 kilograms). Almost 12,000 silicon solar cells, most arrayed on the aircraft's wings, drive four electric motors that can turn the plane's propellers day or night thanks to power-storing batteries.

Sky-High Energy Storage

Solar Impulse soars above Montreux, Switzerland, in a 2010 test flight. The plane's batteries store solar energy to make night flight possible but they also presented one of the aircraft's great engineering challenges. The batteries weigh approximately 880 pounds (400 kilograms), more than 25 percent of the plane's total mass, and necessitated major weight reductions across the rest of the body.

Propelling a New Era of Flight

Rammos Lyssandre, an aircraft designer who interned with Solar Impulse for his master's thesis in 2008, tests one of Solar Impulse's four propellers. The propellers drive the 71.5-foot-long (21.8-meter-long) aircraft at average flying speeds of 43.5 miles per hour (70 kilometers per hour). The plane's four motors average 8 horsepower, and together produce about the same amount of power as the Wright brothers used on their famous flights in 1903.

Breaking Records, Day and Night

Solar Impulse sits on the runway in Payerne, Switzerland, on the morning of July 8, 2010, after the 26-hour flight that was the first night flight in the relatively short history of solar aviation.

Before the flights this spring, the plane already held three world records; absolute height (30,300 feet, 9,235 meters), height gain (28,688 feet, 8,744 meters) and duration for a manned solar flight (26 hours, 10 minutes, 19 seconds).

Circling Not a Problem

Solar Impulse prepares to land in Brussels, Belgium, at the tail end of its first international flight in May 2011. That flight originated in Switzerland.

When André Borschberg reached Madrid late last month, after a far longer flight and some 14 hours aloft, his landing was postponed but demonstrated another advantage of solar flight. "We had to wait like three hours for authorization to land, so that all the regular traffic could land," Gindroz said. "But it's not a problem for us to circle because Solar Impulse doesn't have any limitations with fuel."

Airborne Without Contrails

Solar Impulse, an unusual entrant in the race for green transportation, takes to the skies above Payerne, Switzerland, on May 24. Some 17 hours later the sun-powered plane had traversed the Pyrennees and landed in Madrid without consuming a drop of fuel or creating any emissions. The flight is meant to fire the imagination and showcase the potential of solar powered flight in an aviation industry currently dominated by powerful fossil fuels.

About Arrigetch Peaks, Alaska

"These teeter-tottering granite boulders all wanted to slide," Andrew Skurka says of a talus-covered pass in the central Brooks Range, where his friend Roman Dial joined him.

Dan's Cave, Abaco Island

Following the guideline her life depends on, a diver threads the needle through a stalagmite forest in Dan's Cave on Abaco Island. A single, misplaced fin kick can shatter mineral formations tens of thousands of years old.

Deepwater Whip Coral, Japan

What looks like a tangle of gnarled cables is in fact a forest of deepwater whip coral in Suruga Bay. Each strand is studded with feeding polyps that reach tiny tentacles into the currents to grab floating food

Redwood Tree, California

Partway up a 350-foot tree, botanist Marie Antoine (at right) passes a slender core sample of its wood—750 years of redwood biography—to canopy ecologist Giacomo Renzullo. Research now shows that the older such trees get, the more wood they put on.

Mutnovsky Volcano, Kamchatka

A volcanologist strides through a murky expanse of steam on Mutnovsky Volcano during an expedition to Kamchatka, Russia. The steam billows from a fumarole, or a vent created by heated groundwater and rising volcanic gas, and it serves as a visible reminder that the peninsula is one of the most volcanically active regions in the world, with some 29 active volcanoes.