A giant aircraft carrier built from ice

The shape of life

Last spring, the geobiologist Dominic Papineau and colleagues reported that fossilised microorganisms were identified in 3.77-4.28-billion-year-old iron-rich rock in Quebec: hematite tubes and filaments whose appearance is similar to microorganisms that today live in hydrothermal vents. Others dismissed their findings as ‘dubiofossils’, a term the geologist Hans Hofmann coined in 1972 to describe controversial fossils. ‘Fossils,’ Hofmann wrote, were proven biological; ‘pseudofossils’ resembled life but were inorganic; ‘dubiofossils’ (also known as Problematica or Miscellanea) were equivocal.

Anti-anti-communism

A 2009 poll in eight east European countries asked if the economic situation for ordinary people was ‘better, worse or about the same as it was under communism’. The results stunned observers: 72per cent of Hungarians, and 62per cent of both Ukrainians and Bulgarians believed that most people were worse off after 1989. In no country did more than 47per cent of those surveyed agree that their lives improved after the advent of free markets.

World War II carrier “Lady Lex” found 2 miles under sea by Allen expedition