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Despite being nearly 40 years old, and being produced in the midst of the most rapid accumulation of knowledge in human history, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, holds up surprisingly well.This is partly due to the fact that the series, in many places, states outright where ideas are (or were at the time) speculative or incomplete. For instance, in the first episode:Episode 1: “On the Shores of the Cosmic Ocean”The transcript reads:Near the center of a cluster of galaxies there's sometimes a rogue, elliptical galaxy made of a trillion suns which devours its neighbors.Perhaps this cyclone of stars is what astronomers on Earth call a quasar.It is now well established that quasars are active supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies gobbling material and spewing out massive amounts of energy. Elsewhere in the series (in Episode 10), Sagan alludes to this idea, but it was not well established in the late 1970s when the series was created. He fairly states: “Quasars are a mystery still.”And, at that time, they were.His speculation is presented as such.Elsewhere in the series, in Episode 2: One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue, Sagan takes us on fanciful trip to a hypothetical Jupiter-like world where giant balloon creatures called “floaters” are pursued by “hunters” amidst the clouds.This is neither right nor wrong. It is a speculation intended to get us to imagine the strange and wondrous forms that life could take elsewhere in the universe.To be sure that we don’t confuse this with reality, however Sagan says:Physics and chemistry permit such life forms.Art presents them with a certain reality but nature is not obliged to follow our speculations.Cosmos also avoids having to have major revisions because it is, in many sections, a historical documentary, in which Sagan takes through various stories of how humans figured things out.Much of the science content is, by design, not “at the cutting edge.”In other words, this is not a series that was intended to give the viewer a sense of the the latest advances in science as of 1980 when the series was first broadcast, but to share how humanity’s broader portrait of the universe- its deep age, its inconceivably vast size, the slow and wondrous development and evolution of life, and the progression of the human awareness of all this- came about.So, much of what Sagan relays was fairly well established at the time and has not fundamentally changed much since then. The historical consensus of how: Kepler discerned the motions of the Planets, Christiaan Huygens explored the skies with telescopes, how 17th century Dutch explorers explored and mapped the world, how Milton Humasen and his mentor Edwin Hubble deduced the expansion of the universe, are largely the same now as they were then. All these stories are worthwhile and enriching tales of the capacity of the human imagination and discerning intellect to probe the nature of the universe.However, in many places the science in the series has been elaborated upon.Take the concept of “the gene” - the unit of information that transmits a given trait from one organism to its progeny. (This is not something covered in Cosmos to any great depth, but which I present as an analogy with the last 40 years of science.)The concept of “the gene” was initially developed in the mid 19th century by a Moravian friar by the name of Gregor Mendel. Mendel, through meticulous interbreeding of pea plants, came up with the idea that traits were passed on by the combination of male and female “factors” in the gametes of the plants he worked with. He developed a mechanism, and a set of rules, by which certain, simple and well defined, traits, get passed on to subsequent generations.Mendel, however, had no idea what the “factors” were. That is, he did not know the physical mechanism that allowed traits to be passed. Was it a “fluid?” Was it a certain, ineffable, elan vital? (“Living force”) Or was it something else?In the late 1930s and early 1940s, a peculiar, stringy substance, present in the Nucleus of cells, known as DNA, was shown- through a series of very clever experiments- to be the carrier of genetic information. Soon after that, the structure of DNA, its manner of reproduction, how its “code” was converted in the proteins and enzymes that make life possible, and how mistakes in its copying lead to the “innovation” upon which evolution depends, were all discerned.At the same time, it became clear that many genetic traits were not nearly so “black and white” as Mendel found in his pea plants. We now know, for instance, that most significant traits involve multiple genes.When this happened the principles that Mendel devised, Mendelian genetics, were not overthrown. You can still breed peas or other organisms with certain, well defined, traits in the same manner as Mendel and get similar results.Mendel was right, but Mendel was, as is all science, incomplete.Mendel’s ideas were elaborated upon.Science is often like this. Complete revolutions in thinking, where there is an abrupt paradigm shift, are relatively rare. Most of science is an elaboration on a previous idea.Few of the ideas that are presented in Cosmos are flat out “wrong”. There are many realms, however, where scientists have elaborated upon what was known previously. There are many places where over the last 40 astonishing years, science has refined figures (ages, times, amounts, sizes, quantities) that were known less precisely when the series was produced. In addition, there are new, emerging ideas that Sagan could not have anticipated.I’ve chosen a few examples, taken from the text of Cosmos, some copied from an earlier post that I wrote in response to a similar question, where science has surpassed what Sagan and his co-writers were able to anticipate in 1980.Episode 1: On the Shores of the Cosmic OceanBut yellow dwarf stars, like the sun are middle-aged and they are far more common.These stars may have planetary systems.This is an area where science was incomplete, but Sagan’s “prophesy” has turned out to be correct. The Kepler satellite, and various other systems, have determined that many, if not most stars do, in fact, have planets. Later in Cosmos, when Sagan runs through the numbers in the Drake Equation, he guesses as much, but is careful to state that he is making a rough estimate based on indirect evidence. It’s his use of the word “may”, here that needs revision. The number of confirmed planets around other star systems now runs into the thousands.We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution15 billion years is still a very good “rough estimate” for the age of the universe as a whole. However, various lines of evidence, most notably from the Planck Satellite, have pinned down the age of the universe even more precisely to around 13.7–13.8 billion years.This refined portrait, as well as the re-dating of some events in Earth’s history, throw off the dates on the Cosmic calendar (as seen in Episode 2) a bit. However, the rough scale of the various events in the timeline- in particular the astonishingly recent advent of human civilization- are spot on.Episode 2: One voice in the Cosmic FugueThen suddenly, without warning, all over the planet at once the dinosaurs died.The cause is unknown,Not long after the broadcast of Cosmos, Luis and Walter Alvarez, a father and son team of geologists, proposed the idea that a thin, 65 million-year-old, layer of ejecta, with an overabundance of iridium relative to the rock around it, represented the impact of a massive asteroid. They proposed that this impact brought about the demise of the Dinosaurs.It is now well established that if the noted Chicxulub impact did not account completely for the demise of the dinosaurs, it at least played a significant role. (There is some debate as to how much the role of the formation of the Deccan Traps in India played, or if that several-million-year-long volcanic eruption had something to do with the impact.)Sagan alludes to this idea in Episode 8, but it is not presented here.Also, the dinosaurs did not entirely die out. Many small dinosaur species survived. We call them “birds.”The oceans and murky pools that filled the craters were, for these molecules, a Garden of Eden.This is an area where things have, with more information, become somewhat less clear. With the discovery of deep ocean vents (in 1979, just before the first broadcast of Cosmos), and discovery of the hardiness many strains of primitive archaea (bacteria-like primitive organisms)- which can survive high temperatures, radiation acidity and salinity- the number of environments in which microscopic life can develop, live, thrive, and could have arisen has grown.We’re still not sure where life first arise. Was it in a “murky pool”, as Sagan states, or was it next to a deep ocean vent? Or was it in some environment we haven’t considered? We still don’t know.We have, however, many more good possibilities today.The more you look like a samurai, the better your chances of survival.Eventually, there are a lot of crabs that look like samurai warriors.This is one of the few places where Cosmos is, according to the scientific consensus, wrong.While the idea of artificial selection is well established, and Sagan’s description of the development of the Heike crab is an excellent didactic illustration of the process (which gives the viewer a good sense of how >natural< selection works as well), many biologists now consider the Heike crab example to be spurious. Most now think that the Heike crab had a human-like appearance well before Japanese fishermen appeared on the scene.A good summary of this can be heard in the “Stuff to Blow Your Mind” podcast:Carl Sagan and the Samurai CrabsHowever, similar selection effects have been convincingly demonstrated in other species- both human-made and non-human made- so, while this example was unfortunately chosen, it remains a teachable moment and a good image of how the process works.Everything you need to know on how to make a human being is encoded in the language of life in the DNA molecule.Since 1980, the idea that genes are the sole driver of physical characteristics has been challenged by the findings in a field known as Epigenetics. Yes, genes (or, more precisely, one’s genotype) play a key role in deciding the physical traits in a given organism (the phenotype), but the expression of genes, which is controlled by one’s environment and the conditions under which one develops, also play a strong role.For instance, you could have a set of genes that tend to confer greater than average height. However, if your mother was unhealthy, smoked, lacked certain key vitamins or minerals during your gestation, of if you had a substandard diet when growing up, your growth could be stunted.There is some suggestion that such changes in gene expression can be partly inherited in a “Lamarckian” manner. This is very preliminary, however.For a noted example of this, see:The Famine Ended 70 Years Ago, but Dutch Genes Still Bear ScarsThat said, it is not technically true that everything you need to know on how to make a human being is encoded in the genes. Much variation in humans comes about as a result of development and environment and the (possible) inheritance of patterns of gene expression.Episode 4: Heaven and HellSo there may be physical evidence in the age of space flight for the account of the Canterbury monks in the 12th century.If 800 years ago a big asteroid hit the moon the crater should be prominent today still surrounded by bright rays thin streamers of dust spewed out by the impact.In billions of years, lunar rays are eroded but not in hundreds.And there is a recent ray crater called Giordano Bruno in the region of the moon where an explosion was reported in 1178.The idea that the lunar crater Giordano Bruno was created by an impact a millennium ago was proposed in 1976 (not long before Cosmos was produced) by astronomer Jack Hartung. Hartung pointed out all the findings which Sagan mentions- the vibrations of the moon, the newness of the crater, and the account of the Canterbury monks. These are, indeed, consistent with a recent collision.However, not long after this was proposed, astronomers realized a problem with this idea. Asteroid collisions, particularly large ones, are messy. They splat out a lot of material. Were such a large collision to have happened, much of it would have wound up falling into Earth’s atmosphere, resulting in an extremely strong, and long-lasting, meteor shower.The problem is that no one- not the Chinese, who were superb and diligent observers of the goings-on in the sky, not the Arabs, and not the Europeans- seem to have made note of a dramatic flurry of meteors over the next few weeks.Hartung’s suggestion has, therefore, fallen out of favor.So what did the monks see? A common suggestion is that they did, in fact, see a meteor- albeit one in Earth’s atmosphere. It was aimed directly at them and appeared, from their position, superimposed on the moon. This would account for the fact that no other records of the moon “splitting” and “fire and sparks” being emitted, are to found in historical records. The monks were in the right place at the right time to see a curious and dramatic illusion.It should be noted that Sagan, throughout this segment, is careful to underscore the fact that this idea is speculative:Nevertheless, there's a possible eyewitness account of just such an event.…So is the moon still quivering from that impact?…So there may be physical evidence in the age of space flight for the account of the Canterbury monks in the 12th century.He’s proposing a hypothesis. He lays out the evidence, suggests that a lunar impact is good explanation for what was seen, and says “maybe”.In other words, the segment is not technically “wrong”. The idea that it illustrates, however, has fallen out of favor.Episode 9: “The Lives of the Stars”Beyond element 92, beyond uranium there are other elements.They don't occur naturally on the Earth.They're synthesized by human beings and fall to pieces pretty rapidly.One of them, element 94, is called plutonium...Even before the production of Cosmos, it was known that trace amounts of plutonium had been found in the Oklo natural nuclear reactor in Gabon. This was not widely known, however. It has since become common knowledge amongst a certain scientific community.This is a minor quibble.Plutonium - WikipediaNatural nuclear fission reactor - WikipediaSome 5 billion years from now there will be a last, perfect day on Earth.The process of stellar evolution is now much more well understood than it was in the 1970s. Today it is thought that the sun will slowly increase in brightness during its “main sequence” phase. As its core swells with the helium that it produces over the course of its life, the area where nuclear fusion takes place will correspondingly grow, increasing the output of the sun. (Note: This happens over a far longer time scale than our recent climate change and does not account for it.)The timeline for the sun becoming a red giant has, at the same time, lengthened. It is thought that the sun will likely be a red giant as much as 8 billion years into the future rather than the 5 billion presented in Cosmos.While the sun’s future history has grown, sadly, Earth’s has become shorter. Our world probably has less than a billion years before its surface is uninhabitable. (But that’s still a really long time. Don’t start making travel plans- unless, of course, you want to take our own tendency to do harm to our world into account.)Episode 10: “The Edge of Forever”Tendrils of gossamer clouds formed colonies of great, lumbering, slowly spinning things steadily brightening, each a kind of beast composed of a hundred billion shining points.The largest recognizable structures in the universe had formed.Perhaps more than any other realm of astronomy, the study of the long term evolution and fate of the cosmos has undergone the greatest change since the late 1970s. That said, Sagan’s portrait of the evolution of the universe is still an astonishingly accurate portrait of the current understanding.In recent years, however, the details have been fleshed out- though mysteries remain. It is thought, for instance, that large galaxies are more often the result of the gravitational merging of many smaller systems.At the same time, the overall structure of the universe, with great walls of galaxies separated by huge empty voids, is unlike the model of a more even distribution that was dominant in the 1970s.In the DVD version of Cosmos, Sagan, in an “update”, likens this distribution to soap bubbles- with galaxies residing on the surface of the bubbles.Episode 11: “The Persistence of Memory”The higher functions of the brain have evolved in three successive stages according to a provocative insight by the American biologist Paul MacLean.Neuroscience and comparative neuroscience have changed dramatically since the 1970s. Many ideas that were once seriously considered have now fallen out of favor.Paul MacLean’s Triune brain hypothesis is now no longer as dominant as it once was amongst neuroscientists. The main objection seems to be the idea that the separation between “reptilian” and “mammalian” behavioral traits is distinctly divided into the specific regions that Sagan talks about.Triune brain - WikipediaOver there is the right hemisphere of the cerebral cortex.It's mainly responsible for pattern recognition intuition, sensitivity, creative insights.And over here is the left hemisphere presiding over rational, analytic and critical thinking.These are the two sides the dual strengths, the essential opposites that characterize human thinking.Similarly, the Bicameral Brain hypothesis has fallen out of favor. MRI studies seem to suggest that creativity, analysis and so on are not distinctly confined to one or another side of the brain. It remains alive mainly in the popular press.Bicameralism (psychology) - WikipediaEpisode 12: “Encyclopedia Galactica”Sagan’s working out of the Drake Equation is admittedly speculative (he’s clear in the episode that he’s making “guesstimates” to generate a rough “N”) but it holds up surprisingly well.That said, a few of the numbers have become more precise in recent years.Sagan pegs the number of stars in the Milky-Way at around 400 billion. The currently accepted value, based on the data from the Gaia probe, is closer to 100 billion or so- with a very wide uncertainly. However, these surveys are understandably incomplete.The percentage of stars that have planets, however, seems to be much closer to 100%- perhaps 3/4 of stars at a very minimum.While we don’t have a clue how many potentially habitable worlds there are within each stellar system, the discovery of subsurface oceans beneath the ice of the Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, suggest that the number of “potentially habitable” worlds that have liquid water and interesting chemistry could be quite high.That said, many star systems have proven very strange- with planets hovering close to their stars.The figures that Sagan “guesstimates” could be wildly optimistic, or dramatic underestimates. That said, the figures he came up with in the 1970s were entirely reasonable and clearly, and correctly, make the point “the universe could be filled with civilizations.”In summary:While there are a number of small details that have changed since Cosmos (1980) was produced, and many new findings have added to the body of human knowledge, the overall lessons of the series “Humans can, through science, wrest wondrous truths from nature” and “It would be a shame if we let our hatred, greed or carelessness bring this amazing journey to an end” ring perhaps even more clearly than they did when the show was first broadcast.I think Sagan, more than anyone, would have found these new findings, corrections and enrichments to the body of human knowledge, thrilling.Cosmos is still well worth watching, savoring, and taking inspiration from. It is a starting point- but hopefully not the end- of your own personal journey.EDIT: I will will revisit this post and add additional “changes” that I’ve found as I encounter them. As the director of an “Astronomy Park” I often have reason to refer people to sections of Cosmos, so this will be quite often. So, this post will grow over time.

If you are requesting a general answer to this question, please refer to this website 13 of the Weirdest Discoveries Archaeologists Have MadeHowever, God talks about a city the like of which has never been created so far. That is Iram of the Pillars, or the Atlantis of Arabia.Most people associate Atlantis with a sunken city or continent that is long gone and hidden beneath the waters.However, Arabia has its own legend of a lost city, the so-called "Atlantis of the Sands", which has been the source of debate among a number of historians, archaeologists and explorers. The existence of this legendary place remains a controversial subject to this day.Over the years, various names have been given to this lost city, the most common being Ubar, Wabar and Iram of the Pillars.According to most legends and myths, the Atlantis of the Sands is located somewhere in the Rub' al Khali desert, also known as the Empty-quarter. This covers most of the southern third of the Arabian Peninsula, including most of Saudi Arabia and areas of Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.Several explorers have tried to determine the lost city's true location. One of them was Bertram Thomas (1892-1950). One of his Bedouin escorts told him the story of a lost city whose wicked people had attracted the wrath of God and had been destroyed.He found no trace of a lost city in the sands. Thomas later related the story to T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), who regarded Ubar as the "Atlantis of the Sands". Lawrence became fascinated with the lost city of the sands and kept looking for it, but he never found it either. Since then many other explorers attempted to locate the city buried beneath the sand.In 1992 The New York Times published an article announcing the Atlantis of the Sands has been discovered by a Los Angeles-based team of amateur and professional archaeologists."Using a combination of high-tech satellite imagery and old-fashioned literary detective work, they discovered the fortress city buried under the shifting sands of a section of Oman so barren that it is known as the Rub'al Khali or Empty Quarter.Built nearly 5,000 years ago, Ubar was a processing and shipping center for frankincense, an aromatic resin grown in the nearby Qara Mountains.When they started digging at Shis'r, near an old Arab fort, they began to uncover a large ancient structure. No one was sure what it was... Some explorers believe the remains of the old fort at Shisr could be the rests of the Iram of the Pillars.Used in cremations and religious ceremonies, as well as in perfumes and medicines, frankincense was as valuable as gold.Ubar's rulers became wealthy and powerful and its residents--according to Islamic legend--so wicked and debauched that eventually God destroyed the city, allowing it to be swallowed up by the restless desert.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, called it "the Atlantis of the sands" and, like the undersea Atlantis, many scholars doubted that Ubar ever existed," Los Angeles Times reports.Researchers said they "documented how the city fell, and that it did not appear to be by divine retribution for wickedness. In building his "imitation of paradise," the legendary King Shaddad ibn 'Ad unknowingly constructed it over a large limestone cavern. Ultimately, the weight of the city caused the cavern to collapse in a massive sinkhole, destroying much of the city and causing the rest to be abandoned.The researchers also discovered the remains of a nearby neolithic village that may date to at least 6000 B. C."A sketch showing what the city Iram of Pillars."The discoveries are expected to shed considerable light on the early history of the region, which has been shrouded in myth, said George Hedges, 39, a Los Angeles lawyer who with 53-year-old filmmaker Nicholas Clapp was one of the leaders of the expedition. Among the mysteries of the region the findings may help resolve, for example, is whether the Queen of Sheba, who would have been contemporaneous with Ubar, really existed.The researchers have already found evidence that the climate was much different at that time. The neolithic village was apparently located on the banks of a river--long since dried up--and its residents farmed a substantial area.Even in the time of Ubar, 3,000 years after the neolithic village, rainfall was more plentiful and the well supplied quite large quantities of water, enough to support not only the city itself but also the camel caravans that traversed the forbidding desert.See also:Mysterious Ancient Structures Hidden Under The Sand In The Sahara Desert Could Re-Write History Of Ancient EgyptBolivia And The Mystery Of The Twins Of AtlantisHyperborea Or Atlantis Ruins: Underground Secrets Of The Sacred Lake On The Arctic CircleClapp persuaded JPL scientists Charles Elachi and Ronald Blom to scan the region with a special shuttle radar system that was flown on the last successful mission of Challenger. The radar was able to "see" through the overlying sand and loose soil to pick out subsurface geological features.A satellite photograph of southern Arabia showing suspected sites of a lost city. Credit: WikipediaUsing the imagery, the team was able to pick out the ancient trade routes, which were packed down into hard surfaces by the passage of hundreds of thousands of camels. Junctions where the trade routes converged or branched seemed likely locations for the lost city.Armed with this information, they enlisted archeologist Juris Zarins of Southwest Missouri State University and British explorer Sir Ranulf Fiennes, who has served with the British military in the deserts of Oman and fought with the sultan's forces.The team made a brief, preliminary expedition to Oman last summer, searching about 35 sites. They found shards of pottery and other evidence of the trade routes, but nothing to show they had definitively found the city."Still, many feel this intriguing question still remains unanswered: "Is the city of Ubar identical to Iram of the Pillars or is the legendary lost city still buried somewhere beneath the sand?"There are other ten strange archaeological discoveries t be briefed below:1.The City of TroyTroy is a well-known city in the world of history, legends and monuments, located in the northwest of Anatolia. In 1865, the English archaeologist Frank Calvert dug a trench in a field he bought from farms in "Hisarlik" and in 1868, Heinrich Schliemann , a German businessman and archaeologist, began excavating in the same place after accidentally gathered him in Calvert and what they found was Priam's Treasure: a cache of gold and several other objects such as jewels that his wife used to wear and the golden mask of Agamemnon, included in the Shaft Graves with their skeletons and more regal gold.2. The Easter Island“Easter Island” is one of the most isolated places in the world located thousands of miles from the Chilean coast in the South Pacific. The most confusing thing about this island is that people can live in this place and build huge heads of stone around the island.There are statues only partially carved out of the slopes of this volcanic crater, and others fully complete ready for transport to their final destinations. All but 53 of the 887 Moai statues were carved from this material (compressed volcanic ash).3. Acomparo fingersAlthough the scientific community agreed that these figures were part of an elaborate hoax, they caused great fanfare when they were announced. Hundreds of these human-like figures and dinosaurs were found in Mexico, which made some people think that the ancient people were better archaeologists than they thought.4. The AntikytheraAntikythera is the first scientific astronomical instrument invented by the Greeks for astronomical calculation and was discovered 2000 years ago in a sunken ship on a Greek island called "Antikthera". With dozens of gears, this watch can only measure the position of the sun, moon, and other planets by entering simple data into it. Although there is controversy about its specific uses, it indicates that ancient civilizations have made impressive and impressive achievements in the field of mechanical engineering.5. Groupy ManStuffed bodies were repeatedly found, but the strange thing about this corpse, nicknamed "Grubali Man", is its structure, which is still protected despite the passage of hundreds of years on it, to the extent that the dead body of the dead body and nails of her hands remained as it was embalmed. Through the information available on the body, it is easy to know the cause of the death of the owner, which may be the result of a deep wound around his neck extending to his ears. This man is likely to die, aiming to sacrifice himself to go to a better destiny.6. The Shouting MummyUnlike modern burial methods, the ancient Egyptians did not take into account the fact that if the neck of the corpse was not attached to the skull, the second one would fall and the corpse would appear to be screaming permanently. Although there are mummies in the same situation, this mummy is more fearful than others and scientists suggest that torture against the deceased will be used as part of the burial rites. The mummy in this photo is called "The Unknown Man E" and was found by Gaston Masparo in 1886.7. Terra Cotta ArmyDozens of men surround this place, which is like a grave, but what is their story? This photo shows a strange archaeological discovery of the soldiers of the "Terra Cotta" who were buried with the first Emperor of China "Kun Shi Hyung" to protect the emperor after death.8. Moa ObjectIn 1986, after deep excavations in Mount Owen Caves in New Zealand, this massive and frightening claw was found. And whoever looks at it will think that the creature with the claw has died recently because it is amazingly preserved. After excavation and inspection, the scientists made it clear that this claw belongs to a large Maw, unable to fly from prehistoric times, which has a group of dangerous claws.9. Baghdad BatteryIn 1930, a number of pottery was discovered near Baghdad in the village of Khojot Rabeh. No one had been interested in these jars for a long time until a German museum curator published a report explaining the use of these pottery as galvanic cells or batteries for the purposes of painting and electrolysis.10. The Aztec SacrificeThe ancient Aztec Empire that inhabited the valley of Mexico hosted many bloody festivals festivals, offering sacrifices as an offering to please the gods. In 2004, another horrific type of ritual killing and torture of human beings and animals was discovered on the nights of festivals, which included bloodshed for the victims. Types of torture include the cutting of their heads and the representation of their bodies. And this night of terror continues until the next day's sun rises, which means that the gods are satisfied with human blood.In addition to what is mentioned above, and over the past few months, many archaeological missions operating in Egypt under the supervision of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities have discovered a number of important archaeological discoveries in Saqqara, which may open a new door for researchers, scholars and those interested in the first Pharaonic times, in light of its great diversity between cemeteries, workshops, archaeological walls, and food as well.Saqqara's strangest discoveries in the recent period were a piece of cheese, considered the oldest in the world, as the scientific journal Analytical Chemistry published a report on the discovery by Italian and Egyptian archaeologists of a white substance in a jar near a grave in the Saqqara region, attributed to "Ptashas" mayor of Memphis during the rule of the ninth family Ten, upon examination, turned out to be the oldest cheese ever discovered in the world.The white matter discovered by the expedition maintained its cohesion throughout tens of centuries, and was a solid mass covered with a piece of cloth, and researchers examined by the Italian archaeologist Enrico Grecco, and chemical analyzes of the sample after purifying the proteins in it later showed that it is a milk product made from milk (mixture Milk of sheep, goats and African buffalo).Another important discovery is the success of the Egyptian-German archaeological mission of the University of Tübingen in revealing a complete embalming (mummification) workshop, with attached burial chambers that include mummies dating back to the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh families (664 - 404 BC).The important discovery came during archaeological surveys in the area of ​​the Sowi-era tombs, south of the Onas pyramid in Saqqara, and the mission also found a gilded mummy mask inlaid with semi-precious stones, covering the face of one of the mummies in one of the attached burial chambers.

Conceivably, but I think we need the big picture to know why we are doing it. One reason might be to "Mars form" Mars to turn back the clock to the earlier period when it had giant floods for instance.See what happens if you get a new really huge flood on Mars like the ones we have evidence of. Plus somewhat thicker atmosphere. Do you get Martian life spreading over the planet when that happens?There's a possibility of finding present day microbial life, and maybe deep down life forms there - so would be fascinating to see what happens if Mars gets briefly far more habitable. Would they flourish and cover the surface? Would the microbes form microbial mats and stromatolites and larger structures? Even giant lichens or some such?Where briefly here, might mean for several thousand years - so a huge time on the human timescale, though a brief moment in the geological record - and something that happened frequently in the first few hundred million years of our solar system - but rarely since then.The good thing about steering comets into Mars to do that is - that it is just imitating something that happens - though increasingly rarely - from time to time anyway geologically - just makes it happen more often.Whether we should do that I don't know. But - is far better than bashing ahead and trying to turn it into a copy of Earth, which is I think impossible - and this "Mars forming" might be a good thing to do. But need great thought and care.Or - even more ambitious - try to create a global northern ocean, thicken the atmosphere and try to turn it back to the first few hundred million years and see what happens (taking care to keep Earth life away - and of course - you would first remove all our existing rovers and erase all biological trace of our presence there).You may know from my other answers, that I am not a fan of ideas of sending humans to the surface of Mars or terraforming Mars - because I think it is so tremendously interesting and valuable to us in its current pristine state.Especially - I think there is a good chance we will find present day Martian life with fundamentally different biochemistry and biology - if so - would, I think, be a tragedy to confuse that by introducing Earth microbes to the planet at this stage before we even know what is there and what we are doing to the planet.Many people think that the surface of Mars is not habitable to Earth microbes. But in fact there are many niches there that have been proposed, more than one a year since 2008, that would permit Earth microbes to survive in the top few mms or cms of the Martian surface.. There are known to be salty brines just cms within the surface over most of the surface of Mars. Some of these may be habitable to Earth microbes. They even exist in the equatorial regions where Curiosity found them indirectly through variations in humidity as it traveled over sand dunes - it is not able to dig down to examine them. Curiosity’s brines are thought to be too cold for Earth microbes at night and too salty in the daytime, but Martian life might be able to tolerate and replicate at much lower temperatures and if so there could be native life there. Earth microbes could also retain water from the night into the daytime and survive in such conditions in biofilms that equalize the conditions between day and night if there were enough microbes build up to form a biofilm (not impossible e.g. after a human landing).THE CURIOSITY BRINES BELOW THE SURFACE OF SAND-DUNESThis was a serendipitous discovery announced in April 2015. Liquid brines that form through deliquescing salts (perchlorates) - the salts take in water from the atmosphere (same principle as the salts you use to keep equipment dry).They noticed that when Curiosity drives over sand dunes, then the air above them is drier than it is normally. When it leaves the sandy areas the humidity increases.Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) on NASA's Curiosity Mars roverIt’s temperature and humidity sensors are located on these booms on the rover’s mastNASA Mars Rover's Weather Data Bolster Case for BrineThis shows that something in the sand dunes is taking up water vapour from the air, and rather a lot of it too. They calculated that the perchlorates in the sand must take up so much water at night that the liquid brines would be habitable, except that they are too cold for Earth life. This shows how it works:As the day progresses the brines warm up but any brines close to the surface (in the top five centimeters or so) would dry out, and become too salty for Earth life. That's for any water in the top five centimeters or so.They found conditions for liquid water in the top 5 cms at various times in the morning for most of the year from 2 am to after 8 am, and in the evening in winter from 6 pm to around midnight (just reading off from their figure 3b)However, when temperatures in the top 5 cms reach conditions habitable for Earth life, they find that the water activity has dropped to zero, making it impossible for Earth microbes to replicate (Earth life requires a water activity level of at least 0.6). More strictly speaking, microbes may be able to replicate at lower temperatures but if so, it’s exceedingly slow, centuries to thousands of years.Planetary protection at present at least is based on keeping Mars free of Earth life only for our own purposes and not for future generations thousands of years from now, so they count habitats as being okay for planetary protection if the conditions are so cold that life would take millennia to colonize it.They suggest that it could have permanently hydrated brines below about 15 centimeters below the surface, and at that depth, the liquid would never get warm enough for metabolic activity for Earth microbes, never mind replication.Top temperatures in summer at 15 cms depth would be around -40 °C (I'm reading this off their figure 2a, grey shows the temperature range 15 cm below the surface).The authors of the paper concluded that the conditions in the Curiosity region were probably beyond the habitability range for replication and metabolism of known terrestrial micro-organisms. However this is in the tropics where the air is (comparatively) warm and dry, and it leads to the possibility of habitable brines in conditions that are colder, with greater atmospheric water content.As perchlorates are widely distributed on the surfaceof Mars, this discovery implies that the rest of the planet should possess even more abundant brines owing to the expected greater atmospheric water content and lower temperaturesFor a summary see "Evidence of liquid water found on Mars (BBC)" and for the article in Nature "Transient liquid water and water activity at Gale crater on Mars" (abstract, the paper is behind a paywall, but you can read it via the link in the BBC article through Springer Nature Sharedit,. or researchgate)."Gale Crater is one of the least likely places on Mars to have conditions for brines to form, compared to sites at higher latitudes or with more shading. So if brines can exist there, that strengthens the case they could form and persist even longer at many other locations, perhaps enough to explain RSL activity,"Principal Investigator Alfred McEwenNASA Mars Rover's Weather Data Bolster Case for BrineDO THE LOW NIGHT TIME TEMPERATURES REALLY MAKE THE CURIOSITY BRINES STERILE? - EFFECTS OF BIOFILMSDoes this really mean that the brines are sterile though - for either Mars or Earth life?Nilton Renno, who is an expert on Mars surface conditions suggests that Earth microbes may still be able to exploit this liquid brine layer through biofilms::"Life as we know it needs liquid water to survive. While the new study interprets Curiosity's results to show that microorganisms from Earth would not be able to survive and replicate in the subsurface of Mars, Rennó sees the findings as inconclusive. He points to biofilms—colonies of tiny organisms that can make their own microenvironment."Mars liquid water: Curiosity confirms favorable conditions.The 2015 review makes a similar point about the ability of multi-species microbial communities to alter dispersed small-scale habitats.Cells in biofilms are embedded in a matrix of externally produced substances (such as polysaccharides, proteins, lipids and DNA) and adjust environmental parameters to make them more habitable[45]. There are many examples of small-scale and even microscale communities on Earth including biofilms only a few cells thick. Microbes can propagate in these biofilms despite adverse and extreme surrounding conditions.NOTE ON FOOTNOTES: the footnotes here link to my Astrobiology Encyclopedia. This has corrected and extended versions of Wikipedia articles on the same topic, which have many mistakes and omissions (for instance, Wikipedia doesn’t mention the 2015 review).I don’t know if Nilton Renno meant a martian biofilm or one for Earth life. However both could work.Martian life would surely be adjusted to live at the lowest temperatures on Mars. It could do that using the chaotropic agents such as the perchlorates which are naturally present on Mars - these are chemicals that help processes to continue at lower temperatures than they usually do. Earth life may be able to use these too. 2014 report mentions these:3.1.3. Chaotropic substances. Numerous types of com-pounds increase the flexibility of molecules, destabilizing and/or fluidizing themMars has abundant chaotropic agentsChaotropes such as MgCl2, CaCl2, FeCl3, FeCl2, FeCl, LiCl, perchlorate, and perchlorate salts are, collectively, abundant in the regolith of Mars.These would permit faster metabolic processes at lower temperatures.The 2014 report has a findingFinding 3-3: Chaotropic compounds can lower the temperature limit for cell division below that observed in their absence. There exists the possibility that chaotropic substances could decrease the lower temperature limit for cell division of some microbes to below-18°C (255 K), but such a result has not been published.I haven’t found much research on the topic since then. Here are a couple of relevant papers but these are preliminary results:Bacterial presence in chaotropic perchlorates solutions at subzero temperatures: Implications to Mars (2019)Enhanced Microbial Survivability in Subzero Brines (2018)If you know of more on this topic do say.If it is possible for life to evolve to live in these habitats, then conditions on Mars would seem to be optimal to drive such evolutionChaotropic agents abundant in the Martian saltsSalty brines rich in these chaotropic agents with extreme low temperatures also likely abundant, in the top 15 cms throughout the equatorial regions.Surely there is a possibility here that martian biofilms have evolved to take advantage of these brines.If they have done so they would likely trap the water at night at those low temperatures below - 40 C and then retain it in the films through to daytime as the brines warm up to temperatures conducive to Earth life.So, the Curiosity brines could well be habitable to martian life. They may be habitable to Earth life too - though at those low temperatures it would likely reproduce only slowly. But if the biofilm retains liquid water through to daytime there isn’t really any limit on how warm it could get and still retain liquid within the biofilm that perhaps Earth life could colonize.There are many other potential microhabitats on Mars, even in equatorial regions. For a couple of examples see Microhabitats - such as micropores in salt pillars and ground hugging water vapour as morning frosts evaporate in my preprint.Also there may be underground caves that communicate with the surface. These would be of many different types on Mars, as varied as on Earth and some formed by processes unique to Mars involving dry ice, or rare on Earth involving sulfuric acid. Most of them won’t be easy to spot from orbit, just as caves on Earth are hard to spot from orbit, with entrances that are often hard to see even when you approach them on the ground. Penelope Boston lists some of the types of cave possible on Mars (Boston, 2010)Solutional caves (e.g. on Earth, caves in limestone and other materials that can be dissolved, either through acid, or water). The abundance of sulfur on Mars may make sulfuric acid caves more common than they are on Mars.Melt caves (e.g. lava tubes and glacier caves)Fracture caves (e.g. due to faulting)Erosional caves (e.g. wind scoured caves, and coastal caves eroded by the seas on ancient Mars)Suffosional caves - a rare type of cave on the Earth, where fine particles are moved by water, leaving the larger particles behind - so the rock does not dissolve, just the fine particles are removed.Sublimational caves caused by dry ice and ordinary ice subliming directly into the atmosphere (a process that doesn’t occur on Earth).See also these sections of my preprint:Potential deep subsurface habitats communicating with the surface including ice fumaroles and hydrothermal systems on MarsLichens, cyanobacteria and black yeasts surviving in modern Mars surface conditions (similar to Gale crater) and other examples of Earth life that could potentially survive on MarsSome think that it is possible that Mars has fresh liquid water in polar regions, a few tens of centimeters below the surface, protected from the surface vacuum by clear ice and melted by the solid state greenhouse effect. This should happen according to the models if Mars has ice similar in properties to the clear blue ice in Antarctica (where a similar process occurs).Potential for fresh liquid water in polar regions through solid state greenhouse effect - of special planetary protection relevancePerhaps there could even be liquid water in equatorial regions too when the early morning frost (discovered by Viking) melts. This is preliminary unpublished research at present.Andrew Schuerger’s lab at the University of Florida recently made a startling, albeit preliminary, discovery. He tested the effect of frost (first discovered on Mars by the Viking mission) on rocks under Martian conditions, and found that liquid water flowed on the rocks for about 15 minutes, before all the water turned into the gas phase.Life could exist on Mars today, very close to the surface - AirSpace magazineThere have been at least as many new proposed near surface habitats for Mars since the striking Phoenix leg droplet observations in 2008 as there have been years.Then let’s look briefly at the RSLs, top candidate for many astrobiologists.WHAT ARE THESE RECURRING SLOPE LINEAE (RSLS)?Skip to: Dust cascades explanationMany dark streaks form seasonally on Mars. Most of these are thought to be due to dry ice and wind effects. This image shows an example, probably the result of avalanche slides and not thought to have anything to do with water:Slope Streaks in Acheron Fossae on Mars - these streaks are thought to be possibly due to avalanches of dark sand flowing down the slopeNotice that these avalanche streaks are dark, and broad. They take decades to fade away.However a few of the streaks form in conditions that rule out all the usual mechanisms. These are the Warm Seasonal Flows, also known as Recurrent Slope Lineae.[100]They form on sun facing slopes in the summer when the local temperatures rise above 0C so far too warm for dry ice.They are not correlated at all with the winds and dust storms.They are also remarkably narrow and consistent in width through the length of the streak, when compared to a typical avalanche scar.They develop seasonally over many weeks, gradually extending down the slopes through summer - and then fade away in autumnWarm Season Flows on Slope in Horowitz Crater (animated)The leading hypotheses for these remains that they are correlated in some way with the seasonal presence of liquid water - probably salty brines.DUST CASCADES EXPLANATION STILL MOST LIKELY IS ACCOMPANIED BY SOME LIQUID WATERSkip to: Why life on Mars need not be related to Earth lifeA 2017 paper did show that the some aspects of these features are more consistent with dust cascades. That got widely reported (if you follow the news on Mars astrobiology), but what hasn’t been reported so much are the many difficulties with this explanation, which suggest it is only part of the picture. I found those through literature searches rather than news stories.These papers suggest they are not yet fully understood and may still contain substantial amounts of brines. I wrote a summary of this research for a draft astrobiology article I’m working on myself (work in progress) (cites here take you to my version of the article in google docs)The Recurring Slope Lineae (RSL’s) remain a leading candidate for brines that could be habitable, although there is considerable debate in the literature about the amount of brines present and whether they may be habitable. In planetary protection discussions since they may be the result of aqueous processes they are treated as “an Uncertain Region that is to be treated as a Special Region until proven” (Rettberg et al, 2016).A study of RSLs in Eos Chasma shows that the features are consistent with dust cascades, since they terminate at slopes matching the stopping angle for granular flows of cohesionless dust, and they also ruled out formation of substantial quantities of crust‐forming evaporitic salt deposits, though the hydrated salts and seasonal nature continue to suggest some role for water in their formation (Dundas et al, 2017).Difficulties with the dust explanation include the rapid fading away of the streaks at the end of the season, instead of the more usual decades, and a lack of an explanation of how the dust is resupplied year after year. Resupply also remains a major question for the models involving substantial amounts of liquid brines (Stillman quoted in David, 2017). A study of RSLs in the Valles Marineres finds that they seem to traverse bedrock rather than the regolith of other RSLs, and that if water is involved in their formation, then substantial amounts must be needed to sustain lengthening throughout the season (Stillman et al, 2017).I will be citing from my preprint here, registered with the Open Science Foundation, but will just be using it here for its literature summaries:Potential Severe Effects of a Biosphere Collision and Planetary Protection ImplicationsWHY LIFE ON MARS NEED NOT BE RELATED TO EARTH LIFEThe Chicxulub impactor did send material from a shallow tropical ocean to Mars, 66 million years ago, but it would be hard for a microbe to withstand the shock of impact, fireball of ejection from our atmosphere, ionizing radiation, cold and vacuum of space, and then to find a home on present day dry and dusty Mars congenial to it.If there is Earth life there, it’s most likely transferred billions of years ago when Mars had seas and big asteroids tens to hundreds of kilometers in diameter hit Earth able to punch a hole in our atmosphere and send rocks all the way to Mars with relatively little by way of shock or atmospheric heating.In the other direction, if it is native Mars life we don’t know its capabilities but it could easily be damaged beyond recovery by the instant shock of ejection from the Mars surface - and all of the meteorites we have at present come from at least a couple of meters below the surface and ejected from the southern uplands where the air is thinner so that smaller impacts can send material all the way to Earth. The most likely habitats for martian life are also fragile - dust, ice, salts, and it would not be easy for life in those to get to Earth.Again the easiest time for martian life to get to Earth is in the early solar system when Mars had seas, and later, lakes, and then it depends on its capabilities back then, whether it could do this.WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH BRINGING EARTH LIFE TO MARS?It’s easy to find life if we bring it there ourselves.Cassie Conley, former planetary protection officer for Mars puts it like this:33 seconds into this video “So we have to do all of our search for life activities, we have to look for the Mars organisms, without the background, without the noise of having released Earth organisms into the Mars environment.”Full quote:The idea of bringing microbes to Mars, in order to sort of test whether Mars could be a habitat, whether we could terraform Mars, whether it could be a habitat for Earth organisms -- that's something we might do eventually. If the international community decides it's the right thing to do, we can certainly do it. It's just that as we go about the process of exploring Mars, we don't want to screw up the things we want to do first by doing things that then we can't take back afterwards.We can't do a do-over on releasing organisms in the Mars environment. Once they're there they will be there. So we have to do all of our search for life activities, we have to look for the Mars organisms without the background, without the noise of having released Earth organisms into the Mars environment. This is why we are very careful when we clean robotic spacecraft, because we really want to understand what's there at Mars and not see the stuff we brought with us by accident.See also myRead online for free here: OK to Touch? Mars? Europa? Enceladus? Or a Tale of Missteps?Or buy here Touch Mars? Europa? Enceladus? Or a Tale of Missteps - Amazon.comNASA's Plan To Reduce Planetary Protection For Mars Risks Accidentally Extinguishing Second Genesis Of Life Before We Find ItProtecting Earth's Environment For A Mars Sample Return - Has NASA Started The Legal Process Yet?Too Late For NASA / ESA To Legally Return Mars Unsterilized Sample To Earth By 2032 - Protecting Earth's Environment A Priority