If doomsday movies are anything to predict the future by, the earth is subject to worldwide disasters like 100-foot tidal waves, a new ice age, and even Armageddon meteors. Or course we don't need a disaster of that magnitude to render certain species of plants to go extinct. A good drought or fire could do that. The aim of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is to act as our insurance policy in case this happens. The facility stores some 250,000 varieties of seeds. More details in the full article.

Who would have thought that global warming, despite its ill effects, can create magnificent natural formations? One good example of this is the "ice cathedral" situated in the melting glaciers of Norway.

We completely understand that such formations is an indication that  our planet is increasingly getting warmer but we can't help as well but admire the formation. See some pictures of it after the jump!

In Norway, Archaeologists have reopened a burial mound which is thought to contain the bodies of a Viking queen and princess interred there approximately 1,173 years ago.

Earlier studies conducted by Per Holock at the University of Oslo showed that the older woman might be the Viking Queen Aasa while the younger female could be her daughter. An alternate theory is that the younger woman was a slave tasked to accompany her queen.

The dig site was originally found in southeastern Norway's Vestfold County where the Oseberg Viking longboat (now being displayed in Oslo) was also discovered back in 1904. The bodies of both women, with ages estimated to be at 60 and 30, were also found with the boat and were eventually reburied in the mound last 1948.

When the grave site was reopened, the members of the team were shocked to find it filled with water. The project leader Vivian Wangen of the Museum of Cultural History commented about this saying, "we were surprised when we removed the lid of the sarcophagus that it was filled with water. We hope the casket and the remains are intact. We won't find out until tomorrow."

The University of Oslo in Norway has concluded through a study that first-born children tend to be smarter than their younger siblings in terms of IQ scores.

According to researcher Petter Kristensen who headed the study, records of 250,000 military draftees from 1985 to 2004 were examined, collated and processed and the results revealed that the IQ scores of first-borns were 2.3 points higher on average.

According to Frank Sulloway of the University of California, Berkeley, 2.3 points can be crucial. This means that chances of first-borns to have above-average IQ ratings are 1.3 percent higher than their brothers and sisters. A 2.3-point difference could also spell the outcome of entrance exams for top-tier universities in America.

The reason for first-born children having generally higher IQ's than their younger siblings is not in the genes, says Kristensen. Social factors actually play a bigger role in the development of a child's mind. The fact that parents tend to have spent more exclusive time with their eldest children could be one of the reasons. Another reason for better development could be because eldest children sometimes act as surrogate parents by helping rear the younger kids, thus raising their maturity level.

Kristensen, by the way, is the second in a family with five kids. He says the only person who believes him among his siblings is his older brother. All of his younger sisters completely disagree with his findings.

Scientists in Canada are stumped as to just what kind of creature the skeleton shown in the photograph (courtesy of
Department of Fisheries of Oceans) to the right of this article belongs to - mainly because the iceberg it's been photographed as being encased in is yet to be found. They do agree, though, that whatever mammal the bones belonged to, it was pretty big.

One of six photographs sent to the Fisheries Department by Eli and Donna Norris of Newtown, show what appears to be a spinal column with the rib cage relatively intact, dangling from the iceberg and into the sea.

Despite close examination, however, researchers from Greenland, Norway and Canada have been unable to pin down just what creature left its remains embedded in the iceberg.

Of course, while they don't have a definite answer just yet, they do have their own ideas. Gary Stenson, a marine mammal scientist working in the Fisheries Department, says that he and his colleagues believe that the skeleton could have belonged to a present-day mammalian behemoth - say, a walrus or a beluga whale.

Scenarios such as one of those mammals getting stuck in one of the iceberg's crevasses to simply dying on an ice floe and being embedded into the iceberg by other pans of ice can be considered, too.

Then again, they're just suppositions and without the actual specimen or even a sample to examine, the world may never know just what was buried underneath all that ice. And with the iceberg yielding the remains yet to be found, it may stay that way.

Even when the soldiers are gone, the weapons destroyed, past scars from past wars never truly heal - the memories of its horrors always finding ways to haunt us. And for the sunken remains of one German U-boat, the haunting is part of the clear and present danger it presents to its surrounding aquatic life.
 
Launched during the latter half of WWII, the German submarine U-864 was carrying 1,857 canisters of Mercury weighing a total of 65 tons, along with Messerschmitt jet engine parts. All were intended to be smuggled to the Japanese in an attempt to help them regain air power in the war. It never happened.

On February 9, 1944, U864 was intercepted by the British HMS Venturer. The ensuing running battle left the U864 broken in half by a dead-on torpedo hit, its hulking remains sinking into waters 500 feet deep off the coast of Norway. Even in its death, the U-boat still posed a threat to its surroundings.

Now resting on the sea bed roughly two kilometers of the coast of the island of Fedje, the U-boat had slowly been leeching its toxic cargo into the surrounding area, poisoning the local fish life and anyone who ate it.

The Norwegian Coastal Administration is already alert to the situation, and has since banned boating or fishing in the area. In connection with this, the islanders demanded that the Authorities remove the vessel from its grave, along with the Mercury. This proved to be impossible, as further inspection shows, the salt water had already eroded the canisters to the point that extraction would cause them to break.

As a last resort, it is reported that the Norwegian authorities have resorted to burying the vessel in 100,000 cubic or sand, dirt or gravel to a depth of 12 meters to prevent further leaks. The resulting project will cost £8 million. The burial will be aired on BB this January 5, and will be treated as a formal burial ceremony, in memory of the U-boat's Captain Wolfram,72-man crew.

Some may remember a similar incident taking place back in 2000. The K-141 Kursk which sank off the coast of the Barents Sea following a mysterious explosion onboard the experimental sub. There were no survivors

Scientist seem to hitting it big lately, recently it was a "bonanza" of planets, now it's a "monster" of a fossil in the Arctic. Norwegian scientists have found a "treasure trove" of fossils belonging to giant sea reptiles that were alive and eating back in the day of the dinos.

The 150-million-year-old fossils were discovered on the Arctic island chain of Svalbard - about halfway between Norway and the North Pole. The finds were of plesiosaurs and icthyosaurs. They were discovered by Paleontologists from the University of Oslo's Natural History Museum, during fieldwork in a remote part of Spitsbergen, the largest island of the archipelago.

The experts say that the discovery was notable because of the sheer density of fossils in the area. "You can't walk more than 100m without finding a skeleton," so says Jorn Harald Hurum, co-director of the dig. Moreover, according to Hurum, what they're finding aren't just single bones here and there, they're finding complete skeletons.

The discovered hoard comprises 21 long-necked plesiosaurs, six ichthyosaurs and one short-necked plesiosaur. A sea dino graveyard. One skeleton was even nicknamed "Monster" because of its humongous size.

Experts speculate that perhaps the unusual chemistry in the mud of that area may be responsible for the remarkable preservation of the specimens, as some skeletons are still pale white even though they're in black shale - in short some still look like roadkill.

The museum plans to return to the site in the summer of 2007 to resume excavation.

Which way is North? Princeton scientists say they have evidence that today's North Pole could have been originally located along the equatorial line. What's more interesting is that the planetary somersault may have been caused by an erupting supervolcano. Either that, or a mountain range so large that it created an imbalance in the Earth's rotation. To illustrate the major shift in the Earth's axis, the scientists ask one to imagine Alaska at the equator. This theory is not new and has been around for 140 years, but the evidence is most definitely new...

The magnetic grains discovered by scientists in layers of rock sediment on the ocean floor are like entries in Earth’s diary. When rock particles sink to the ocean floor to form layers of new sediment, tiny magnetic grains align with the magnetic lines of the Earth. As the rock hardens it becomes a reliable record of where Earth’s magnetic field was pointing at the time of the rock’s formation. If dramatic geological event did take place, the magnetic grains will have an different orientation than present day rock formation.

Known as the True Polar Wander, the theory suggests that if an object of sufficient weight  formed far from the equator, the planet’s rotation would gradually pull the heavy object away from the axis which the Earth spins around. If the supervolcano or some massive formation caused the Earth's spin to become imbalanced, the planet would tilt and rotate until the  extra weight was relocated to a point along the equator. Incidentally, polar wander is not the same as continental drift.

“The sediments we have recovered from Norway offer the first good evidence that a true polar wander event happened about 800 million years ago,” said Adam Maloof, an assistant professor of geosciences. “If we can find good corroborating evidence from other parts of the world as well, we will have a very good idea that our planet is capable of this sort of dramatic change.”

In case were you wondering if Earth will do another somersault, Maloof says probably not. "The Earth’s surface is pretty well balanced today.”

Let's just take his word for it for now...