"We're absolutely thrilled, after 143 years of frustration, to finally get the information we need about this star so that we can work out whether our theory of white dwarfs is actually correct."
- Martin Barstow, Ph.D., Leicester Univ., U.K.
December 17, 2005 Baltimore, Maryland - For the first time in human astronomical history, scientists have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to isolate the light from the white solar dwarf known as Sirius B orbiting its huge and bright companion, Sirius A, in the constellation Canis Major. Since the Sirius B discovery in 1862, astronomers have been frustrated by the intense glow of Sirius A overwhelming their ability to "see" and "weigh" tiny, but very dense, Sirius B.
December 8, 2005 Berkeley, California - This past summer on the 4th of July at the British Royal Society Summer Exhibition Program, geologist Silvia Gonzalez, Ph.D., from Liverpool's John Moores University, announced that what appear to be human footprints in volcanic rock near Puebla, Mexico, were 40,000 years old. Puebla is about 1.5 hours by car southeast of Mexico City. The date was determined from Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) of "some baked particles incorporated into the ash." Dr. Gonzales and her colleagues had first discovered the prints in 2003 and hypothesized that early hunters walked near a lake there across freshly deposited ash from volcanoes that are still active in the region. The ash mixed with rain and water which over time turned to rock. 
