text: NASA sicentists have been looking at how continents wander and plate tectonics in general - see www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120322161938.htm. A layer of partially molten rock deep underground is thought to be the mechanism that allows continents to wander - or plates. What else might be going on? Seismometer data suggests this layer is patchy - especially under the Pacific Ocean.
  The Sun is putting energy into the atmosphere
  This story can be found at a number of blogs but not necessarily in mainstream media - the BBC have ignored it for example. One to read, probably because it has a lot of comments, is http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/22/whole-lotta-watts-added-to-the-atm... and concerns the recent flurry of eruptions on the Sun - coinciding with nice weather across the UK. NASA scientists say the Sun dumped enough energy in the upper atmosphere to power every household in New York for two years. It is described as a big dose of heat - the biggest since 2005.
  Who was Higgs - and what is the Boson?
  At www.io9.com March 22nd there is a piece on the Higgs boson and the fact one physicist gave his name to the theoretical particle when there were other contenders actively writing papers and doing research in the same year, 1964. Peter Higgs has been credited with the discovery - or the original hypothesis (as it has yet to be discovered) and yet there were other teams working on a similar project (story comes from New Scientist).
  Another hoard of coins
  At www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/9161483/Hoard-of-30000-silver-ro... (March 22nd) ... a hoard of coins dating from the 3rd century AD has been found not far from the famous Roman baths and appears to follow a pattern with some other hoards, namely dating from mid 3rd century AD when there was considerable disruption throughout the empire and not least in Roman Britain.
  A big lump of sand in the North Sea
  A ten cubic km wedge of sand now exists in the northern North Sea basin, somewhat south of Norway and east of Scotland, enough to bury Manhattan island under 160m of sand or the whole of London under 6m of sand (and that is an awful lot of the stuff). It appears to be extrusive - rising up from the gizzards of the earth. The paper is in the journal Geology March 19th but the big question might be - if sand is formed from eroded rocks why was so much of it buried under the sea floor?
  At www.novinite.com/newsletter/print.php?id=137665 ... the Sofia News Agency is reporting on the discovery of a monastery in Bulgaria that was founded in AD344 b y St Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria. Presumably it would have been based on Egyptian or Sinai models and predates the Candida Casa monastery in Galloway and St Martin monastery in the French Pyrenees. St Athanasius was an important theologian in the early Christian church and is important to Eastern Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants alike as he took part in establising key elements in dogmata.
  Some physics on the edge
  At www.physorg.com/print251310652.html ... University of Chicago physicists have experimentally demonstrated that atoms chilled to temperatures near absolute zero may behave like seemingly unrelated natural systems of vastly different scale offering potential insights into links between the atomic realm and deep questions of cosmology - such as the gravitational dynamics of black holes (you have been warned). Article in Science, March 2nd.