A team of Italian archaeologists believe they have discovered the tomb of Philip, one of Jesus' 12 apostles, at the ancient Asia Minor city of Hierapolis in the Aegean province of Denizli, known today as Pamukkale in Turkey, and are planning to excavate the unopened grave soon.

The discovery of the grave of the New Testament saint, who it is said came to Hierapolis nearly 2,000 years ago to spread the Gospel and was crucified upside down by the Romans, will attract immense attention around the world, said excavator Francesco D'Andria, director of the Institute of Archaeological Heritage, Monuments and Sites at Italy's National Research Council in Lecce.

I don't watch reality performance shows because the few I have seen in America are rather predictable, people dancing or doing weird stuff and whatnot.

But today, via Google Plus, I got a chance to see Kseniya Simonova do sand art and animation on "Ukraine's Got Talent".  The story she tells, in real time, using nothing but sand as her medium and then animating it...it's too ridiculously talented to describe.    You don't have 8 minutes to kill, nor do I, but it is maybe the best 8 minutes you will spend today.

On the Internet, and certainly in science blogging, it may seem like biologists are more interested in culture wars with the religious fringe than talking about evolution.

The Institute of Human Origins (IHO) and its Becoming Human outreach site instead conducts, interprets and publicizes scientific research and the sponsorship of scholarly interaction to advance scientific understanding of our origins and its contemporary relevance, which means it is a place people can get smarter.   That's always good.

Here's a screenshot on bipedalism but it's full of good stuff for people of all ages so give it a look:

Wherever you are – anywhere in the world – on August 5th, contribute to science by taking a photo of a blank white piece of paper, outside in the sun, between 4:00 and 7:00 pm local time.

Your photo will used to measure how much of the sun’s energy is reflected back from the Earth -- our planet's "albedo." It's one way scientists can monitor how much energy – and heat – is being absorbed by our planet.

Read more at ScienceForCitizens.net

Here is what you need to do:

On August 5, 2011, take a photo between 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm local time.
Put a white piece of paper on a flat surface. The white paper should fill 1/4 to 1/2 of the total view.

What is the world coming to when a man can't even split atoms in his own kitchen any more?   

Richard Handl said he has always been attracted to physics and chemistry and so he decided to do a little citizen science.  It was no secret, he even kept a blog about it.  In it, he described how he managed a minor meltdown at home but there were no dangerous radiation levels.

When he figured he might be doing something illegal - Sweden is progressive and tolerant but they are not the ACLU - he wrote the Sweden's Radiation Authority and they replied to the lovable scamp by sending the police.   What did they find?  Radium, americium and uranium so they arrested him on charges of unauthorized possession of nuclear material.

A drought has left the OC Fisher Reservoir in San Angelo State Park of West Texas almost empty, except for stagnant, dead fish that have made the water a deep red.


Credit: Texas Parks and Wildlife Inland Fisheries--San Angelo, and it's a lot more red now.

The controversy over human embryonic stem cell research was a policy one more than a science one; with so many diverse scientists there had to be an ethical standard created by society, just like with animal testing and the environment.

Since the introduction of the 2008 Human Fertilisation Embryology Act in the UK, with standards much looser than the US and most of Europe, 155 ‘admixed’ embryos, containing both human and animal genetic material, have been created according to the Daily Mail.

Just as some flowers use bright colors to attract insect pollinators, other plants may use sound to lure in nectar-eating bats.  One rain-forest vine has a dish-shaped leaf located above a cluster of flowers that appears to help bats find them (and the plant's tasty nectar) by reflecting back the calls the flying mammals send out, new research indicates. 

While there is other evidence that plants use bats' sonar systems to attract them, this is the first time scientists have shown that a plant can produce an "echo beacon" that cuts through sonic clutter of reflected echoes, and that this signal can cut a bat's search time for food in half, according to the researchers, led by Ralph Simon, a research fellow at the University of Ulm in Germany.

A NASA satellite has caught a stunning, yet eerie, video of a huge plasma twister rising up from the surface of the sun.  The video, taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows a plasma eruption that swirls up like a tornado to a dizzying height of up to 93,206 miles (150,000 kilometers) above the solar surface.

"Its height is roughly between 10 to 12 Earths," solar astrophysicist C. Alex Young of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told SPACE.com.