Like who DIDN'T know that! (But ladies, it isn't our fault, it is our genes!)
Men see bikini-clad women as objects, psychologists say
By Elizabeth Landau
CNN
CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) -- It may seem obvious that men perceive women in sexy bathing suits as objects, but now there's science to back it up.
Images of women in bikinis prompted brain responses in men associated with using tools.
New research shows that, in men, the brain areas associated with handling tools and the intention to perform actions light up when viewing images of women in bikinis.
The research was presented this week by Susan Fiske, professor of psychology at Princeton University, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"This is just the first study which was focused on the idea that men of a certain age view sex as a highly desirable goal, and if you present them with a provocative woman, then that will tend to prime goal-related responses," she told CNN.
Although consistent with conventional wisdom, the way that men may depersonalize sexual images of women is not entirely something they control. In fact, it's a byproduct of human evolution, experts say. The first male humans had an incentive to seek fertile women as the means of spreading their genes.
"They're not fully conscious responses, and so people don't know the extent to which they're being influenced," Fiske said. "It's important to recognize the effects."
The participants, 21 heterosexual male undergraduates at Princeton, took questionnaires to determine whether they harbor "benevolent" sexism, which includes the belief that a woman's place is in the home, or hostile sexism, a more adversarial viewpoint which includes the belief that women attempt to dominate men.
In the men who scored highest on hostile sexism, the part of the brain associated with analyzing another person's thoughts, feelings and intentions was inactive while viewing scantily clad women, Fiske said. Visit CNNHealth.com, your connection for better living
Men also remember these women's bodies better than those of fully-clothed women, Fiske said. Each image was shown for only a fraction of a second.
This study looked specifically at men, and did not test women's responses to similar images.
A supplementary study on both male and female undergraduates found that men tend to associate bikini-clad women with first-person action verbs such as I "push," "handle" and "grab" instead of the third-person forms such as she "pushes," "handles" and "grabs." They associated fully clothed women, on the other hand, with the third-person forms, indicating these women were perceived as in control of their own actions. The females who took the test did not show this effect, Fiske said.
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That goes along with the idea that the man looking at a woman in a bikini sees her as the object of action, Fiske said.
The findings are consistent with previous work in the field, and resonate, for example, with the abundance of female strip clubs in comparison to male strip clubs, said Dr. Charles Raison, psychiatrist and director of the Mind/Body Institute at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Raison was not involved in the study.
Previous research found that people tend to similarly dehumanize those who are homeless or drug addicts, although the phenomenon in this case is somewhat different, Fiske said. People have reactions of avoidance toward the homeless and drug addicts, and the opposite for scantily clad women.
The broader purpose of the research was to explore circumstances under which people treat one another as the means to an end, Fiske said.
Past studies have also shown that when men view images of highly sexualized women, and then interact with a woman in a separate setting, they are more likely to have sexual words on their minds, she said. They are also more likely to remember the woman's physical appearance, and sit closer to her -- for instance, at a job interview.
Taken together, the research suggests that viewing certain images is not appropriate in the workplace, Fiske said.
"I'm not advocating censorship, but I do think people need to know what settings should discourage the display and possession of these kinds of things," she said.
Both women and men have something to learn from this line of research, Raison said. Women should be aware of how they are perceived when wearing provocative clothing, and men shouldn't let feelings of impersonal sexual longing interfere with their more personal relationships with other women, including female friends. "Many men make foolish choices because of sexual attraction," he said.
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"The suggestion might be that there's some hard-wiring there that can interfere with the average man's ability to interact on deeper levels with really hot looking stranger women in bikinis," he said.
Women may also depersonalize men in certain situations, but published research on the subject has not been done, experts say. Evolutionary psychology would theorize that men view women as objects in terms of their youth and apparent fertility, while women might view men as instrumental in terms of their status and resources, Fiske said.
Another avenue to explore would be showing images of men's wives and girlfriends in bikinis, Raison said. He predicts the objectifying effect would not happen in this context
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Thursday, December 11, 2008
I knew that I always liked dogs
Most of them at least. The rest of them know who they are! (the yappy little ones, and the crazy junk-yard ones)
Dogs Have Innate Sense of Fairness, Study Finds
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
E-Mail Print Share:
WASHINGTON — No fair!
What parent hasn't heard that from a child who thinks another youngster got more of something? Well, it turns out dogs can react the same way.
Ask them to do a trick and they'll give it a try. For a reward, sausage say, they'll happily keep at it.
But if one dog gets no reward, and then sees another get sausage for doing the same trick, just try to get the first one to do it again.
Indeed, he may even turn away and refuse to look at you.
Dogs, like people and monkeys, seem to have a sense of fairness.
"Animals react to inequity," said Friederike Range of the University of Vienna, Austria, who lead a team of researchers testing animals at the school's Clever Dog Lab. "To avoid stress, we should try to avoid treating them differently."
Similar responses have been seen in monkeys.
Range said she wasn't surprised at the dogs' reaction, since wolves are known to cooperate with one another and appear to be sensitive to each other. Modern dogs are descended from wolves.
Next, she said, will be experiments to test how dogs and wolves work together.
"Among other questions, we will investigate how differences in emotions influence cooperative abilities," she said via e-mail.
In the reward experiments reported in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Range and colleagues experimented with dogs that understood the command "paw" to place their paw in the hand of a researcher.
It's the same game as teaching a dog to "shake hands."
Those that refused at the start — and one border collie that insisted on trying to herd other dogs — were removed. That left 29 dogs to be tested in varying pairs.
The dogs sat side-by-side with an experimenter in front of them. In front of the experimenter was a divided food bowl with pieces of sausage on one side and brown bread on the other.
The dogs were asked to shake hands and each could see what reward the other received.
When one dog got a reward and the other didn't, the unrewarded animal stopped playing.
When both got a reward all was well.
One thing that did surprise the researchers was that — unlike primates — the dogs didn't seem to care whether the reward was sausage or bread.
Possibly, they suggested, the presence of a reward was so important it obscured any preference.
Other possibilities, they said, are that daily training with their owners overrides a preference, or that the social condition of working next to a partner increased their motivation regardless of which reward they got.
And the dogs never rejected the food, something that primates had done when they thought the reward was unfair.
The dogs, the researchers said, "were not willing to pay a cost by rejecting unfair offers."
Clive Wynne, an associate professor in the psychology department of the University of Florida, isn't so sure the experiment measures the animals reaction to fairness.
"What it means is individuals are responding negatively to being treated less well," he said in a telephone interview.
But the researchers didn't do a control test that had been done in monkey studies, Wynne said, in which a preferred reward was visible but not given to anyone.
In that case the monkeys went on strike because they could see the better reward but got something lesser.
In dogs, he noted, the quality of reward didn't seem to matter, so the test only worked when they got no reward at all, he said.
However, Wynne added, there is "no doubt in my mind that dogs are very, very sensitive to what people are doing and are very smart."
-GSL
Dogs Have Innate Sense of Fairness, Study Finds
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
E-Mail Print Share:
WASHINGTON — No fair!
What parent hasn't heard that from a child who thinks another youngster got more of something? Well, it turns out dogs can react the same way.
Ask them to do a trick and they'll give it a try. For a reward, sausage say, they'll happily keep at it.
But if one dog gets no reward, and then sees another get sausage for doing the same trick, just try to get the first one to do it again.
Indeed, he may even turn away and refuse to look at you.
Dogs, like people and monkeys, seem to have a sense of fairness.
"Animals react to inequity," said Friederike Range of the University of Vienna, Austria, who lead a team of researchers testing animals at the school's Clever Dog Lab. "To avoid stress, we should try to avoid treating them differently."
Similar responses have been seen in monkeys.
Range said she wasn't surprised at the dogs' reaction, since wolves are known to cooperate with one another and appear to be sensitive to each other. Modern dogs are descended from wolves.
Next, she said, will be experiments to test how dogs and wolves work together.
"Among other questions, we will investigate how differences in emotions influence cooperative abilities," she said via e-mail.
In the reward experiments reported in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Range and colleagues experimented with dogs that understood the command "paw" to place their paw in the hand of a researcher.
It's the same game as teaching a dog to "shake hands."
Those that refused at the start — and one border collie that insisted on trying to herd other dogs — were removed. That left 29 dogs to be tested in varying pairs.
The dogs sat side-by-side with an experimenter in front of them. In front of the experimenter was a divided food bowl with pieces of sausage on one side and brown bread on the other.
The dogs were asked to shake hands and each could see what reward the other received.
When one dog got a reward and the other didn't, the unrewarded animal stopped playing.
When both got a reward all was well.
One thing that did surprise the researchers was that — unlike primates — the dogs didn't seem to care whether the reward was sausage or bread.
Possibly, they suggested, the presence of a reward was so important it obscured any preference.
Other possibilities, they said, are that daily training with their owners overrides a preference, or that the social condition of working next to a partner increased their motivation regardless of which reward they got.
And the dogs never rejected the food, something that primates had done when they thought the reward was unfair.
The dogs, the researchers said, "were not willing to pay a cost by rejecting unfair offers."
Clive Wynne, an associate professor in the psychology department of the University of Florida, isn't so sure the experiment measures the animals reaction to fairness.
"What it means is individuals are responding negatively to being treated less well," he said in a telephone interview.
But the researchers didn't do a control test that had been done in monkey studies, Wynne said, in which a preferred reward was visible but not given to anyone.
In that case the monkeys went on strike because they could see the better reward but got something lesser.
In dogs, he noted, the quality of reward didn't seem to matter, so the test only worked when they got no reward at all, he said.
However, Wynne added, there is "no doubt in my mind that dogs are very, very sensitive to what people are doing and are very smart."
-GSL
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Oops!
Zoo solves mystery of celibate polar bears
TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- Puzzled zookeepers in northern Japan have discovered the reason why their attempts to mate two polar bears kept failing: Both are female.
A 4-year-old polar bear sent to impregnate a female polar bear at a zoo in Kushiro was found to be female as well.
The municipal zoo in the city of Kushiro in Hokkaido brought in a polar bear cub three years ago. They named it Tsuyoshi, after the popular baseball outfielder Tsuyoshi Shinjo, and waited until it reached reproductive age.
In June, the zoo introduced Tsuyoshi to its resident bear, an 11-year-old female named Kurumi, and waited for sparks to fly.
But much to the disappointment of zookeepers, Tsuyoshi never made any amorous advances toward Kurumi.
Earlier this month, zookeepers put Tsuyoshi under anesthesia to get to the bottom of the matter. That's when they made their discovery: Tsuyoshi is a female.
Still, the Kushiro zoo plans to keep Tsuyoshi because he -- or rather, she -- has become immensely popular with visitors.
"I have rather mixed feelings, given the need for breeding, but Tsuyoshi is an idol for Kushiro," Yoshio Yamaguchi, head of the Kushiro zoo, told Japan's Kyodo news agency.
Tsuyoshi will even keep her name.
"We will not be changing it to 'Tsuyoko' since it is loved by citizens (by the current name)," Yamaguchi said.
"Ko" is a common suffix for a Japanese female name.
Meanwhile, Tsuyoshi's "brother," who was adopted by another zoo, has also turned out to be female, Kyodo reported
You think they woulda checked! = GSL
TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- Puzzled zookeepers in northern Japan have discovered the reason why their attempts to mate two polar bears kept failing: Both are female.
A 4-year-old polar bear sent to impregnate a female polar bear at a zoo in Kushiro was found to be female as well.
The municipal zoo in the city of Kushiro in Hokkaido brought in a polar bear cub three years ago. They named it Tsuyoshi, after the popular baseball outfielder Tsuyoshi Shinjo, and waited until it reached reproductive age.
In June, the zoo introduced Tsuyoshi to its resident bear, an 11-year-old female named Kurumi, and waited for sparks to fly.
But much to the disappointment of zookeepers, Tsuyoshi never made any amorous advances toward Kurumi.
Earlier this month, zookeepers put Tsuyoshi under anesthesia to get to the bottom of the matter. That's when they made their discovery: Tsuyoshi is a female.
Still, the Kushiro zoo plans to keep Tsuyoshi because he -- or rather, she -- has become immensely popular with visitors.
"I have rather mixed feelings, given the need for breeding, but Tsuyoshi is an idol for Kushiro," Yoshio Yamaguchi, head of the Kushiro zoo, told Japan's Kyodo news agency.
Tsuyoshi will even keep her name.
"We will not be changing it to 'Tsuyoko' since it is loved by citizens (by the current name)," Yamaguchi said.
"Ko" is a common suffix for a Japanese female name.
Meanwhile, Tsuyoshi's "brother," who was adopted by another zoo, has also turned out to be female, Kyodo reported
You think they woulda checked! = GSL
Friday, October 31, 2008
Global Warming Running Amok
7 killed in Tibet's 'worst snowstorm'
BEIJING, China (CNN) -- At least seven people have been found dead after "the worst snowstorm on record in Tibet," China's state-run news agency reported Friday.
About 1,350 people were rescued in Lhunze County -- another 300 were trapped -- after nearly five feet (1.5 meters) of snow blanketed much of Tibet this week.
The storm caused buildings to collapse, blocked roads and killed about 144,000 head of cattle, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported.
The seven people who died either froze to death or were killed as a result of collapsing buildings, and one person is still missing, China Daily said
BEIJING, China (CNN) -- At least seven people have been found dead after "the worst snowstorm on record in Tibet," China's state-run news agency reported Friday.
About 1,350 people were rescued in Lhunze County -- another 300 were trapped -- after nearly five feet (1.5 meters) of snow blanketed much of Tibet this week.
The storm caused buildings to collapse, blocked roads and killed about 144,000 head of cattle, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported.
The seven people who died either froze to death or were killed as a result of collapsing buildings, and one person is still missing, China Daily said
More proof that evolution is a fraud.
"Living Fossils" in New Zealand, or simply another creature that withstood the Deluge.
Living fossil found on New Zealand mainland
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A rare reptile with lineage dating back to the dinosaur age has been found nesting on the New Zealand mainland for the first time in about 200 years, officials said Friday.
An adult tuatara lizard is seen basking on a tree stump at the Karori Sanctuary in Wellington, New Zealand.
Four leathery, white eggs from an indigenous tuatara were found by staff at the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in the capital, Wellington, during routine maintenance work Friday, conservation manager Rouen Epson said.
"The nest was uncovered by accident and is the first concrete proof we have that our tuatara are breeding," Epson said. "It suggests that there may be other nests in the sanctuary we don't know of."
Tuatara, dragon-like reptiles that grow to up to 32 inches (80 centimeters), are the last descendants of a species that walked the earth with the dinosaurs 225 million years ago, zoologists say.
They have unique characteristics, such as two rows of top teeth closing over one row at the bottom. They also have a pronounced parietal eye, a light-sensitive pineal gland on the top of the skull. This white patch of skin -- called its "third eye" -- slowly disappears as they mature.
A species native to New Zealand, tuatara were nearly extinct on the country's three main islands by the late 1700s due to the introduction of predators such as rats. They still live in the wild on 32 small offshore islands cleared of predators.
A population of 70 tuatara was established at the Karori Sanctuary in 2005. Another 130 were released in the sanctuary in 2007.
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The sanctuary, a 620-acre (250-hectare) wilderness minutes from downtown Wellington, was established to breed native birds, insects and other creatures securely behind a predator-proof fence.
Empson said that the four eggs -- the size of ping pong balls -- were unearthed Friday but that there were likely more because the average nest contains around ten eggs.
The eggs were immediately covered up again to avoid disturbing incubation.
If all goes well, juvenile tuatara could hatch any time between now and March, she said.
Living fossil found on New Zealand mainland
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A rare reptile with lineage dating back to the dinosaur age has been found nesting on the New Zealand mainland for the first time in about 200 years, officials said Friday.
An adult tuatara lizard is seen basking on a tree stump at the Karori Sanctuary in Wellington, New Zealand.
Four leathery, white eggs from an indigenous tuatara were found by staff at the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in the capital, Wellington, during routine maintenance work Friday, conservation manager Rouen Epson said.
"The nest was uncovered by accident and is the first concrete proof we have that our tuatara are breeding," Epson said. "It suggests that there may be other nests in the sanctuary we don't know of."
Tuatara, dragon-like reptiles that grow to up to 32 inches (80 centimeters), are the last descendants of a species that walked the earth with the dinosaurs 225 million years ago, zoologists say.
They have unique characteristics, such as two rows of top teeth closing over one row at the bottom. They also have a pronounced parietal eye, a light-sensitive pineal gland on the top of the skull. This white patch of skin -- called its "third eye" -- slowly disappears as they mature.
A species native to New Zealand, tuatara were nearly extinct on the country's three main islands by the late 1700s due to the introduction of predators such as rats. They still live in the wild on 32 small offshore islands cleared of predators.
A population of 70 tuatara was established at the Karori Sanctuary in 2005. Another 130 were released in the sanctuary in 2007.
Don't Miss
Special: Planet in Peril
The sanctuary, a 620-acre (250-hectare) wilderness minutes from downtown Wellington, was established to breed native birds, insects and other creatures securely behind a predator-proof fence.
Empson said that the four eggs -- the size of ping pong balls -- were unearthed Friday but that there were likely more because the average nest contains around ten eggs.
The eggs were immediately covered up again to avoid disturbing incubation.
If all goes well, juvenile tuatara could hatch any time between now and March, she said.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Holy Dancing Dinosaurs!
'Dino Dance Floor' Found In Ariz.
Site Has 1,000+ Dinosaur Tracks, Professor Says
PAGE, Ariz. -- University of Utah geologists said they have discovered prehistoric animal tracks on the Arizona-Utah border so densely packed they're calling it a "dinosaur dance floor."
The three-quarter-acre site is in Arizona in the Coyote Buttes North area of the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness.
Estimated to be 190 million years old, the site has more than 1,000 and perhaps thousands of dinosaur tracks, averaging a dozen per square yard in places, said Marjorie Chan, professor and chair of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah.
The site is so dense with dinosaur tracks that geologists said it reminds them of a popular arcade game in which participants dance on illuminated, moving footprints.
"It was a place that attracted a crowd, kind of like a dance floor," Chan said.
A study identifying the dinosaur track site was published in the October issue of the international paleontology journal Palaios. Chan is senior author of the study, which was conducted for a master's degree thesis by former graduate student Winston Seiler.
The range of track shapes and sizes reveals at least four dinosaur species gathered at the watering hole, with the animals ranging from adults to youngsters, Seiler said.
"The different size tracks, 1 inch to 20 inches long, may tell us that we are seeing mothers walking around with babies," he said.
The new study is the first scientific publication to identify the impressions as dinosaur footprints on a trample surface, Chan said.
Numerous dinosaur track sites have been found in the western United States, including more than 60 in Navajo Sandstone, where actual dinosaur bones are rare.
"Unlike other trackways that may have several to dozens of footprint impressions, this particular surface has more than 1,000," Seiler and Chan wrote. And they said the density of tracks is much greater than it is at even larger track sites, such as the one at Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park in Utah.
The 2.4-inch-wide tail-drag marks, which are up to 24 feet long, are a special discovery because there are fewer than a dozen dinosaur tail-drag sites worldwide, Seiler said. Four tail drags were within the 10 plots he surveyed, and there are others nearby.
"Dinosaurs usually weren't walking around with their tails dragging," Seiler said.
Seiler said he first saw the site in 2006. "At first glance, they look like weathering pits -- a field of odd potholes," he said. "But within about five minutes of wandering around, I realized these were dinosaur footprints."
When the footprints were made 190 million years ago, "the continents were arranged so this area was in the tropics" and was part of the supercontinent named Pangaea, Seiler said. "It was a desert, like the Sahara but much larger than the Sahara is today, covering much of Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada," he said.
Seiler said he envisions the dinosaurs were "happy to be at this place, having wandered up and down many a sand dune, exhausted from the heat and the blowing sand, relieved and happy to come to a place where there was water."
The trample surface "helps paint a picture of what it was like to live back then," he said. "Tracks tell us what the dinosaurs were doing, what their behavior was, what life was like for them, what they did on a day-to-day basis."
After the dinosaurs left their prints, the trample surface was covered by shifting dunes, which eventually became Navajo Sandstone. Then, the rock slowly eroded away, exposing the tracks. The tracks eventually will erode, too, Seiler said
Posted by GSL
Site Has 1,000+ Dinosaur Tracks, Professor Says
PAGE, Ariz. -- University of Utah geologists said they have discovered prehistoric animal tracks on the Arizona-Utah border so densely packed they're calling it a "dinosaur dance floor."
The three-quarter-acre site is in Arizona in the Coyote Buttes North area of the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness.
Estimated to be 190 million years old, the site has more than 1,000 and perhaps thousands of dinosaur tracks, averaging a dozen per square yard in places, said Marjorie Chan, professor and chair of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah.
The site is so dense with dinosaur tracks that geologists said it reminds them of a popular arcade game in which participants dance on illuminated, moving footprints.
"It was a place that attracted a crowd, kind of like a dance floor," Chan said.
A study identifying the dinosaur track site was published in the October issue of the international paleontology journal Palaios. Chan is senior author of the study, which was conducted for a master's degree thesis by former graduate student Winston Seiler.
The range of track shapes and sizes reveals at least four dinosaur species gathered at the watering hole, with the animals ranging from adults to youngsters, Seiler said.
"The different size tracks, 1 inch to 20 inches long, may tell us that we are seeing mothers walking around with babies," he said.
The new study is the first scientific publication to identify the impressions as dinosaur footprints on a trample surface, Chan said.
Numerous dinosaur track sites have been found in the western United States, including more than 60 in Navajo Sandstone, where actual dinosaur bones are rare.
"Unlike other trackways that may have several to dozens of footprint impressions, this particular surface has more than 1,000," Seiler and Chan wrote. And they said the density of tracks is much greater than it is at even larger track sites, such as the one at Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park in Utah.
The 2.4-inch-wide tail-drag marks, which are up to 24 feet long, are a special discovery because there are fewer than a dozen dinosaur tail-drag sites worldwide, Seiler said. Four tail drags were within the 10 plots he surveyed, and there are others nearby.
"Dinosaurs usually weren't walking around with their tails dragging," Seiler said.
Seiler said he first saw the site in 2006. "At first glance, they look like weathering pits -- a field of odd potholes," he said. "But within about five minutes of wandering around, I realized these were dinosaur footprints."
When the footprints were made 190 million years ago, "the continents were arranged so this area was in the tropics" and was part of the supercontinent named Pangaea, Seiler said. "It was a desert, like the Sahara but much larger than the Sahara is today, covering much of Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada," he said.
Seiler said he envisions the dinosaurs were "happy to be at this place, having wandered up and down many a sand dune, exhausted from the heat and the blowing sand, relieved and happy to come to a place where there was water."
The trample surface "helps paint a picture of what it was like to live back then," he said. "Tracks tell us what the dinosaurs were doing, what their behavior was, what life was like for them, what they did on a day-to-day basis."
After the dinosaurs left their prints, the trample surface was covered by shifting dunes, which eventually became Navajo Sandstone. Then, the rock slowly eroded away, exposing the tracks. The tracks eventually will erode, too, Seiler said
Posted by GSL
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Very Cool "Historic" Meteor Visible From Cyprus
Hello Science Fans,
I received an astronomy alert the other night that an asteroid the size of a mini-van would become a metor somewhere over Egpyt, and would probably be visible from Cyprus. I got up at the un-Godly hour of 3:30 AM to look for the event. It was a crystal clear night in Cyprus, which it is about 300 nights a year, and Orion was high in the SE. At approximately 5:46 local time the metor appeared on schedule. This was the historic part. Never has an impact with Earth's atmosphere of a specific asteroid been forecast. This one flared as an extremely bright "bolide" as it streaked across the sky. It was at least as bright as the full-moon, but in a much smaller area. It left the tell-tal ion-trail across the sky long after the bright streak, but none of the mysterious sounds of bolides was heard by this observer in Cyprus. Happy star-gazing all.
GSL
I received an astronomy alert the other night that an asteroid the size of a mini-van would become a metor somewhere over Egpyt, and would probably be visible from Cyprus. I got up at the un-Godly hour of 3:30 AM to look for the event. It was a crystal clear night in Cyprus, which it is about 300 nights a year, and Orion was high in the SE. At approximately 5:46 local time the metor appeared on schedule. This was the historic part. Never has an impact with Earth's atmosphere of a specific asteroid been forecast. This one flared as an extremely bright "bolide" as it streaked across the sky. It was at least as bright as the full-moon, but in a much smaller area. It left the tell-tal ion-trail across the sky long after the bright streak, but none of the mysterious sounds of bolides was heard by this observer in Cyprus. Happy star-gazing all.
GSL
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