Unexpected detail in first Venus south pole images

The European Space Agency's Venus Express has returned the first-ever images of the hothouse planet's south pole from a distance of 206,452 kilometres, showing surprisingly clear structures and unexpected detail. The images were taken 12 April during the spacecraft's initial capture orbit after successful arrival on 11 April 2006.

Engineers have lost no time in switching on several of the instruments and yesterday the VMC (Venus Monitoring Camera) and VIRTIS (Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer) imaged, for the first time in space history, the southern hemisphere of Venus as the spacecraft passed below the planet in an elliptical arc.

Scientists are especially intrigued by the dark vortex shown almost directly over the south pole, a previously suspected but until now unconfirmed structure that corresponds to a similar cloud structure over the north pole.

Unexpected detail in first Venus south pole images

Self-Healing Mice

Researchers have discovered a unique strain of mouse that can regrow body parts without any scarring. They hope this could lead to new therapies for people. This ScienCentral News video explains.

Furry, little mice may not be your favorite things in the world, but they don't generally have the fear factor of horror films… unless, perhaps, they start regrowing their body parts.

While studying an autoimmune disease in a specially bred species of mouse, immunologist Ellen Heber-Katz and her research team at Philadelphia's Wistar Institute discovered the animals' natural ability to reqenerate. "It's interesting and exciting that mammals may not have lost the ability to regenerate, the way amphibians or starfish do," Heber-Katz says.

Researchers routinely keep track of lab mice using unique ear piercings. But the Wistar team saw that the strain of mouse they were working with completely re-grew this tissue after only four weeks.

Self-Healing Mice

Construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt

Till the death of Rhampsinitus, the priests said, Egypt was excellently governed, and flourished greatly; but after him Cheops succeeded to the throne, and plunged into all manner of wickedness. He closed the temples, and forbade the Egyptians to offer sacrifice, compelling them instead to labour, one and all, in his service. Some were required to drag blocks of stone down to the Nile from the quarries in the Arabian range of hills; others received the blocks after they had been conveyed in boats across the river, and drew them to the range of hills called the Libyan. A hundred thousand men laboured constantly, and were relieved every three months by a fresh lot. It took ten years' oppression of the people to make the causeway for the conveyance of the stones, a work not much inferior, in my judgment, to the pyramid itself. This causeway is five furlongs in length, ten fathoms wide, and in height, at the highest part, eight fathoms. It is built of polished stone, and is covered with carvings of animals. To make it took ten years, as I said - or rather to make the causeway, the works on the mound where the pyramid stands, and the underground chambers, which Cheops intended as vaults for his own use: these last were built on a sort of island, surrounded by water introduced from the Nile by a canal. The pyramid itself was twenty years in building. It is a square, eight hundred feet each way, and the height the same, built entirely of polished stone, fitted together with the utmost care. The stones of which it is composed are none of them less than thirty feet in length.

Construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt

Are Marriages Made in Heaven, or Hell?

Those who pray for a “biblically based” marriage might want to take a closer look at Scripture.

We were talking the other day about a couple that recently celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. Family and friends at the party incessantly cooed things like, “Sixty years, that’s so sweet!” and the minister extolled the devoted octogenarians as a shining example of how God blesses a marriage based on the Bible. Asked what the secret was to a successful marriage, the dear old fellow raised a shaky finger, smiled, and said, “Love!”

The question on our minds, however, was: “Who spiked the punch bowl with crazy pills?” If these two old folks are like any normal couple we know, then they’ve been through hell, accumulating more baggage over all those years than a Samsonite outlet store. Sixty years of living together is indeed an accomplishment worth celebrating, but let’s be honest about what should really be honored here—the miracle that these two people didn’t kill each other.

Don’t get us wrong. We’re all for marriage. We are both married—though not to each other—and we take that whole “till death do us part” thing seriously. (So seriously, in fact, that the realization we’ve vowed to spend the rest of our days with our other halves, as much as we love them, sometimes causes our heads to spin and leaves us gasping for air.) No, our beef with conjugal life is that we Americans tend to idealize it. Despite astronomical divorce rates, we have this notion of a “traditional” marriage—in which two people marry for love and to fulfill their individual lives—that didn’t even exist until some 200 years ago. Before that, marriages were mostly arranged for political and economic advantage. And since when do marriage and family have anything to do with bliss? Basically, all Greek tragedy is about loved ones fighting and slaying each other. It was with little exaggeration that the playwright Strindberg depicted marriage as “the dance of death.”

By John D. Spalding and Kristina Robb-Dover

Are Marriages Made in Heaven, or Hell?

Why did Jesus have to die?

Jesus had an amazingly productive ministry, teaching and healing thousands. He attracted large crowds and had potential for much more. He could have healed thousands more by traveling to the Jews and gentiles who lived in other areas.

But Jesus allowed his work to come to a sudden end. He could have avoided arrest, but he chose to die instead of expanding his ministry. Although his teachings were important, he had come not just to teach, but also to die, and he accomplished more in his death than in his life.

Death was Jesus’ most important ministry. This is the way we remember him, through the cross as a symbol of Christianity or through the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper. Our Savior is a Savior who died.

Why did Jesus have to die?