Battles Still Rage at Megiddo

Better Resolution

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Sprites and Elves in the Heavens

Education, Work and Leisure

TAU Research Briefs

TAU Research Briefs

Celestial Water

Where does the water we drink come from? TAU Prof. Akiva Bar-Nun suggests that one-third of each glass of water was delivered to our Earth from comets. He deduces this from the ratio of regular water (H2O) to heavy water (HDO), in which one hydrogen atom (H) has been replaced by deuterium (D). The Earth has three times more HDO than should have, if it was formed from our solar nebula. Where could this excess HDO come from? Recent observations of comets Halley, Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp reveal that their HDO/H2O ratio is 10 to 20 times larger than the known solar D/H ratio. Recent studies at TAU's Comet Laboratory in the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences show that, when water vapor freezes into cometary ices, the original HDO/H2O ratio is maintained. Since a high HDO water is produced only in interstellar clouds, between half and a third of the water we drink must have come to the Earth directly from the interstellar cloud which formed our solar system via comets. This conclusion is supported by further studies which suggest that the noble gases argon, krypton and xenon also came to the Earth via comets.

Intellectual Freedom and "Historical Truth"

A forthcoming article by TAU Prof. Asher Maoz deals with two controversial issues: the ability of courts of law to ascertain truth and the role of judicial and quasi-judicial institutions in establishing historical facts. These questions are examined against the background of two painful episodes in Israel's short history: the pre-statehood murder of Mapai leader Haim Arlosoroff and the trial of Israel Kastner. The rival Revisionist Movement was accused of incitement against Arlosoroff, and two of its members were accused of murder and were acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence. Five decades later, Prime Minister Menachem Begin established a State Commission of Inquiry to investigate the accusations. Kastner, a leader of Hungarian Jewry during the Holocaust was accused of collaborating with the Nazis. The Zionist leadership in Palestine was also accused of abstaining from rescue operations during the Holocaust. Israel's Attorney General subsequently initiated criminal defamation proceedings against the accuser. The article criticizes such uses of legal institutions to arbitrate between conflicting historical narratives to create an official history. Even if "historical truth" is possible, the task of establishing it should not be left to legal institutions. History and philosophy should remain open to free public debate and disagreement.

TAU to Host New National Center

The National Committee of Biotechnology of the Israel Ministry of Science has allocated funds to establish a national center to rapidly search for and discover novel compounds with pharmaceutical potential. This new National Center for the High Throughput Screening (HTS) of Novel Bioactive Compounds was recently established at TAU under the leadership of Prof. Yossi Loya (Faculty of Life Sciences) and Prof. Yoel Kashman (School of Chemistry). The center helps coordinate a multidisciplinary search by numerous academic and private research groups who are collecting biological materials from a diverse variety of marine and terrestrial microorganisms, plants and animals - many unique to the Middle East. Promising materials are screened, biologically and pharmacologically characterized, chemically isolated and structurally defined. Although automated methods can now inexpensively and rapidly generate thousands of new synthetic chemicals, natural products are still an inspiration for many novel pharmaceutical compounds. To achieve rapid, high throughput, the Center employs a fully automated robotic screening system.