Experts have provided the grisly goods to back up 17th-century accounts of cannibalism during the Jamestown colony's "starving time" — including a skull that shows signs of being chopped at and pried apart.

"Our team has discovered partial human remains before, but the location of the discovery, visible damage to the skull and marks on the bones immediately made us realize this finding was unusual," Bill Kelso, chief archaeologist of the Jamestown Rediscovery Project in Virginia, said in a news release issued Wednesday. Specimens from the Jamestown site were laid out during a Washington news conference.

Written accounts described acts of cannibalism during the winter of 1609-1610, when sickness, starvation and attacks from native tribes in the area put the two-year-old Virginia settlement to its sternest test. Scores of the colonists who crowded inside James Fort died that winter. One of the accounts described a husband who killed his pregnant wife and salted her flesh for storage and consumption. (The husband was executed for the crime.)

There was no reason to doubt the accounts, but in the course of their decades-long excavation, archaeologists were on the lookout for remains that might tell more of the story behind Jamestown's hardships. They found the evidence in the form of a partial human skull and other bones lying in a 17th-century trash deposit. Kelso enlisted the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History to sort out the clues. Colonial Williamsburg and Preservation Virginia helped provide historical context.

'Jane of Jamestown'
Based on an analysis of the bones — including the skull and its teeth, as well as the size of a tibia and bone growth in a knee joint — experts determined that the remains came from a 14-year-old female, nicknamed "Jane." The isotopic distribution of elements in the bones suggested that she consumed a European diet of wheat and meat.

Carolyn Kaster / AP

Doug Owsley, division head for physical anthropology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, displays the skull and a facial reconstruction for "Jane of Jamestown" during a news conference at the museum in Washington on Wednesday.

Carolyn Kaster / AP

Strike marks are seen on the skull of "Jane of Jamestown" at the National Museum of Natural History.

The grisliest findings were reflected in the wounds to the head: The chief of the museum's division of physical anthropology, Douglas Owsley, identified chops to the forehead and the back of the cranium to open the head. Knife cuts on the jaw and the cheekbone could have been made during removal of the flesh. Other markings suggest that the head's left side was punctured and pried apart.

The scientists' conclusion: Jane was butchered for her meat.

"She was almost certainly dead when she was cannibalized," Jim Horn, Colonial Williamsburg's vice president of research and historical interpretation, told NBC News. "The way the cuts are configured on the skull points to the fact that she was dead. if she was not, there would have been more signs of a struggle, and the marks would have been more irregular."

Based on the bone analysis and the disposition of the remains at the site, researchers believe Jane arrived in Jamestown in August 1609, just months before the crisis. She might have been a maidservant, or the daughter of a colonist. Chances are that she died in January or February of 1610, from either sickness or starvation, Horn said.

"The 'starving time' was brought about by a trifecta of disasters: disease, a serious shortage of provisions, and a full-scale siege by the Powhatans that cut off Jamestown from outside relief," he said in Wednesday's news release. "Survival cannibalism was a last resort; a desperate means of prolonging life at a time when the settlement teetered on the brink of extinction."

When Lord De La Warr and his relief party arrived in Jamestown in the spring of 1610, he ordered the "cleansing" of the ruined settlement. "It must have looked like a charnel house when he arrived," Horn said. That's probably how Jane's remains came to be deposited amid a trash heap in an abandoned cellar, he said.

Jane's legacy
Jamestown went on to become the Virginia Colony's capital from 1619 to 1699. In the late 17th century, the settlement was devastated by a series of fires. At the dawn of the 18th century, Virginia's capital was moved to Williamsburg, and old Jamestown faded away. Decades later, the descendants of Jamestown's settlers played their part in the creation of the United States of America.

Researchers have not matched up Jane's bones with a specific member of the Jamestown colony, and although DNA samples have been saved for future analysis, they say there's little hope of identifying modern relatives for comparative genetic testing. But the excavation continues, and Jane's remains provide graphic evidence of Jamestown's desperation.

Horn acknowledges that the story of Jane has a grisly fascination to it, but he says there's a broader significance as well. "It revolves around what it took to successfully establish European colonies in the New World," he told NBC News. "In the early phase of European colonization of the Americas, most colonies actually failed. They failed for the kinds of reasons that we discovered at Jamestown. ... Most colonies lasted no more than six to 12 months. What we're looking in the case of Jamestown is a remarkable story of survival and endurance."

More about Jamestown:

• 400-year-old seeds found in Jamestown
• 'New World' shows off a new Jamestown
• Colonial armor found in Jamestown pit

An exhibition that tells the story of Jane and the survival of Jamestown, England's first permanent settlement in America, is due to open May 3 at Historic Jamestowne in Virginia. Jane's bones will be put on exhibit temporarily, and eventually they will be "respectfully reinterred," Horn said. The facility has also produced a book and DVD on the subject, titled "Jane." However, details of the discovery have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

The tale surrounding the discovery of King Richard III's skeleton beneath an English parking lot is about much more than a pile of 528-year-old bones — all you have to do is look at the face of Philippa Langley as she breaks down during an archaeological autopsy.

"I don't see bones on that table," she says, during an emotional scene in a new documentary about the king's remains. "I see the man."

Langley, a 50-year-old Scottish screenwriter, plays almost as big a role as the much-maligned monarch in "The King's Skeleton: Richard III Revealed." The show airs Sunday night on the Smithsonian Channel in the U.S., after racking up royal ratings on British TV. It was Langley who enlisted the Richard III Society to help jump-start the excavation, and she serves as the on-screen witness for many of the key twists in the excavation.

Medieval CSI
Based on an analysis of the historical records, archaeologists from the University of Leicester obtained a license from the British government to dig into that parking lot next to Leicester Cathedral last year. "The King's Skeleton" traces each step in the CSI-style investigation, leading to February's conclusion that the bones were indeed the mortal remains of the last Plantagenet king.

Richard III reigned for only two years, but his death in the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 was a key moment. In fact, many historians consider his fall to mark the end of the Middle Ages in England. A century later, William Shakespeare's play immortalized him as one of literature's greatest villains.

One of the themes of "The King's Skeleton" centers on how Richard III may have gained a blacker reputation than he deserved. The way Richard III's fans see it, the successors to the throne from the House of Tudor had an interest in making their Plantagenet forebears look bad — to the point of portraying Richard III as a misshapen hunchback. "This is propaganda," historian Pamela Tudor-Craig says during the documentary.

So the truth comes as a shock to Langley.

"What we're actually seeing here is that this skeleton in fact has a hunchback," Jo Appleby, a bone expert at the University of Leicester, tells her in one scene.

"No!" Langley answers.

The identification of Richard III's remains drew upon carbon dating and detailed studies of the skeleton, including evidence of wounds that matched up with historical accounts of the king's demise. But the weightiest evidence comes from analysis of DNA extracted from the skeleton: The chemical signature of the mitochondrial DNA matched up with two maternal-line descendants of Richard III's eldest sister, Anne of York.

Stay tuned
Does this mean the case of Richard III is closed? Not yet. Mitochondrial DNA is not as precise an indicator as, say, a paternity test. "The DNA evidence is simply a single strand within the entire analysis procedure," Turi King, the University of Leicester geneticist who conducted the analysis, told NBC News on Friday. "You certainly wouldn't convict somebody on [the basis of this] DNA evidence."

However, King noted that the mitochondrial DNA signature for this particular skeleton is shared by only a few percent of Europeans. "It's quite a rare type, so that adds to the weight of the evidence," she said.

The next step will be to analyze the skeleton's Y-chromosome DNA, which is passed down from father to son. The Y-chromosome signature is far more precise than mitochondrial DNA, which all children get from their mother. Four paternal-line descendants of Richard III's family have already been identified and tested, and King is now waiting to do the much more complicated reconstruction of the skeleton's Y-chromosome DNA signature.

Working on the royal remains has been a "dream project," King said, but not without its drawbacks: "It's been very stressful. You're trying to work quite quietly and calmly. The pressure to make sure everything has been done properly has been intense. ... I feel like I'm still in the middle of it."

The license to work with the skeleton runs out next year, and King will have to finish up her DNA studies by then.

Meanwhile, a potential legal battle is looming over whether the remains will be reburied in Leicester Cathedral, as planned, or in York instead. Thankfully, that's one drama King and the other scientists involved in the Richard III mystery won't have to deal with.

"I just try to tune it out," she said.

More about the Richard III saga:

• Parking-lot skeleton identified as Richard III
• Could Richard III have gotten his spine fixed?
• For some, resting place is human rights issue

To tune in "The King's Skeleton: Richard III Revealed," check your cable provider's TV listings or consult the Smithsonian Channel's website. Britain's Channel 4 aired the show as "Richard III: The King in the Car Park."

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Christie's

Francis Crick sketched this diagram of the DNA double-helix molecule in a 1953 letter to his son, Michael. "The model looks much nicer than this," the elder Crick wrote.

The descendants of Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA's double helix, are likely to receive a seven-figure sum from this week's sales of the late researcher's Nobel Prize and a handwritten letter describing the structure of the DNA molecule — but the geneticists who are carrying on Crick's legacy will win a dividend as well.

"We'll probably be giving more money to the Francis Crick Institute than the prize was worth when he got it," mused Michael Crick, the Nobel-winner's eldest child and the recipient of that historic letter back in 1953.

The sales have been timed to take advantage of the 60th anniversary of the double-helix discovery, which was detailed by Crick and American biologist James Watson in a paper published by the journal Nature on April 25, 1953. Their findings opened the way to deciphering the molecular codes that control all of life's processes. The paper's publication date is now celebrated every year as "DNA Day."

Double helix, double sale
Crick's legacy is the focus of two million-dollar sales scheduled in New York this week: On Wednesday, Michael Crick's letter goes on the auction block at Christie's. His father sent it to the 12-year-old at his boarding school in March 1953 — just after the researchers worked out the structure of DNA's long, double-helix molecule, but before the Nature paper's publication. "My dear Michael," the letter began, "Jim Watson and I have probably made a most important discovery."

The seven-page letter goes on to lay out the chemical structure of "des-oxy-ribose-nucleic-acid ... called D.N.A. for short." The elder Crick even sketched out the base pairs connecting the molecule's twisted spines.

"As far as we know, it's the first written description of how life comes from life," Michael Crick, now 72, told NBC News.

The letter has been valued at $1 million to $2 million. Michael Crick and his wife, Barbara, will receive half of the proceeds. The other half will go to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, where Francis Crick worked up to the time of his death in 2004 at the age of 88.

Heritage Auctions

"F.H.C. Crick" is engraved on the 23-carat gold medal that Francis Crick received for the 1962 Nobel Prize.

Then there's the week's second sale: On Thursday, Heritage Auctions will sell the 1962 Nobel Prize gold medal, as well as Francis Crick's endorsed award check, one of his lab coats and other effects. The medal and its accompanying diploma are expected to go for anywhere between $500,000 and several million dollars. The London-based Francis Crick Institute is due to get 20 percent of the proceeds. Francis Crick's descendants — including Michael as well as two other children and six grandchildren — will split the rest.

It's tricky to convert today's dollars into what the Swedish krona was worth in 1962, but the way Michael Crick figures it, his dad's share of the prize back then would be worth something in the range of $100,000 to $150,000 today.

Sorting out the puzzles
Michael Crick has made his own mark in life as a computer programmer and a game developer in the Seattle area: Among his creations are Pentode, WordZap and the first version of Microsoft Word's spell-checker. Today he keeps his hand in by offering a daily series of "Crickler" word puzzles online.

Crick said he kept his father's letter in a plain envelope for decades. "Around 2005, somebody thought it might be valuable," he recalled. "The first thing I did was make some reasonably good copies of it."

It's a different story for the medal. Michael Crick said that was locked up in a safe-deposit box, and "it was just going to sit there indefinitely." After Francis Crick and his wife Odile passed away, the family started debating what to do with it. Wouldn't it be better to have the medal on display, say, at a museum? If it's so valuable, how should that value be divided among nine heirs?

"That was a bit of a puzzle," the puzzlemaster said.

Crick family via Christie's

A young Michael Crick sits on his famous father, Francis Crick, in a circa-1943 family photo.

The family decided to put the medal up for auction, along with the other effects. And Michael Crick decided the letter should be passed on as well. "There was some concern, because the process of valuing the letter was tricky. What do you compare it with?" he said. The experts at Christie's decided to compare it to a 1939 letter that Albert Einstein addressed to Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning about the dangers of nuclear weapons. A copy of that letter was sold in 2002 for $2.1 million.

All the plans for the auctions came together in time for this month's 60th anniversary, which Michael saw as a nice touch. "It just seemed like a good time to put the medal on the market," he said.

He'll be in the audience for this week's sales in New York, hoping that his keepsake — and his father's — will pay dividends for his family and for generations of scientists to come.

More about the history of DNA:

• 'Lost' letters reveal twists in double-helix discovery
• DNA directly photographed for the first time
• All about DNA from NBCNews.com

For more information about Michael Crick's DNA letter, including a remembrance of his father and a catalog that shows every page of the letter, check out Christie's website. Check the Heritage Auctions website to learn more about the medal and associated sale items.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Ronald Evans / NASA file

Earth rises above the moon's Ritz Crater in a view captured on Dec. 14, 1972, by Apollo 17's Ronald Evans.

Forty years ago today, human beings took their last steps on the moon, and had their last look at Earth framed by the lunar horizon. There have been other pictures from the moon since then, of course, but they've all been seen secondhand, based on data sent back by robotic probes. No humans have seen an Earthrise like this one with their own eyes since Apollo 17's crew began their homeward journey on Dec. 14, 1972.

For Andrew Chaikin — author of "A Man on the Moon," the definitive history of the Apollo moon effort — the 40th anniversary of our lunar farewell is a cause for reflection.

When Chaikin was a 16-year-old outer-space fanatic, he attended Apollo 17's night launch at Kennedy Space Center, thanks to a letter he wrote to his congressman asking for a VIP pass. "It was the only part of 'Man on the Moon' that I wrote from personal experience," he told me.

Chaikin said the 12-day mission ended the Apollo program "on the highest note possible."

"By the time of Apollo 17, those guys — not just the astronauts, but the flight controllers and the planners, the whole team — they were really on top of their game," Chaikin said. "It was a spectacular mission scientifically. They landed in an absolutely spectacular place. They took some of the most memorable photographs of all the Apollo missions."

Today, Chaikin posted a video that sums up the significance of Apollo 17 as well as the importance of keeping the moon on our agenda for exploration. The five-minute clip includes an amazing view of the lunar module's ascent module rising into the sky, transmitted from a remote-control video camera that was left on the moon's surface.

Chaikin hopes that astronauts will follow through on the implied promise in the words that Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan spoke just before climbing up from the lunar surface: "We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind," Cernan said.

Five days later, Cernan and his two crewmates, Harrison Schmitt and Ronald Evans, rode their command module through Earth's atmosphere and splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean — marking the end of NASA's last round trip to the moon. Most Americans weren't even alive when that happened. So how many people living today will still be around when the next moonwalk takes place? 

"I don't think we realize how exciting it's going to be when we can see the moon rise, knowing that people are living there, working to make humans a multiplanet species," Chaikin says in the video. "And when they come home, they can share with us one of the moon's most precious gifts: the sight of the earth, breathtakingly beautiful as an oasis of life in the void."

Today's anniversary, recalling our species' grandest voyages, comes amid a shocking episode in Connecticut that highlights our species' violent tendencies. It was that way for the Aurora theater shootings as well, which took place on the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Will there ever come a time when the brighter side of our nature, exemplified by the peaceful Apollo program, finally wins out over the dark side? That's one more thing to reflect on over the weekend...

Here are some of your own reflections, selected from the comments you've left over the past week on earlier installments of our Apollo 17 coverage:

Astropreneur:

"December of 2022 isn't that far away. At the rate we are going, and with the uncertainty and lack of focus we are experiencing regarding our manned space exploration program, I'm afraid the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 17 mission will pass without any new footprints having been made on the moon's surface by American astronauts.

"How would our lives be today if after 20 or 30 flights the Wright brothers dismantled their airplane and no one else flew for the next 50 years?

"Are we any better off now for not having continued our manned flights to the moon, and perhaps beyond?

"Will we sleep forever? America must awaken or we will find ourselves trailing behind the new leaders who will pick up the torch we long ago dropped.

"Awaken, American spirit of exploration! Arise as you once did so long ago! I miss you."

Elizabeth-1372999:

"That flight stood out, like the first flight to the moon. I can remember some of the highlights: a geologist looking at rocks, giving a reason to go to space beyond the Cold War; the 'blue marble' and a reminder that we are the one habitable planet in the solar system, so we had better keep this planet healthy. The 'Merry Merry Month of December' was funny, but at the time, also a little bit of concern: There was a worry that the breathing apparatus had a problem. What made him sing was the low gravity; he found it fun to skip on the moon because each jump covered a lot of distance, and that was visible on television (something the moonshot deniers should notice).

"I don't think of them as the last astronauts on the moon, but the most recent. It was a shock when my daughter saw videos of Neil Armstrong's moon landing in school, and I realized that another moon landing had not happened in her life. She is much older now, and my grandson has never seen a moon landing, and more and more funding is being cut, even though information from the space program is still coming to us. Look at the information from the asteroid projects and the xenon rocket. The space program is such a small part of our budget as is. It seems that every time budgets are cut, the space program suffers, schools suffer, and children have less and less to feel proud of."

Rick Carter:

 "The next step for mankind is to become a celestial being. Short of that, mankind is destined to become just become one more extinct species in the vast cosmos. It is only by moving out into that vast cosmos that we see a true reflection of ourselves."

FarmerJeani:

"In 1969, I sat in my sister's living room with my grandmother and watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. My grandmother reminisced about her life as we watched. Her father took part in the run for Indian Territory in Oklahoma. She and her siblings stayed with relatives in St. Louis while her parents built a cabin to house them. She liked to stand in the window and watch the lamplighter come around with his horse and buggy to light the gas street lights. She was educated on the farm by an old Cherokee woman who had been to finishing school in Europe, but forced on the long 'trail of tears' march to Indian Territory in 1838-39. She lost all of her family on the way. My great-grandfather eventually sold the farm and bought a store in town. Grandma married a farmer and moved back to Indian Territory, where she raised nine children without the benefit of electricity. All their water was carried from the creek, light was provided by kerosene lanterns and homemade candles. My children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren can never fully appreciate the grandeur of the moment as seen through my grandmother's eyes. It was an epic accomplishment and I have no doubt that we will return — to the moon and to many other worlds."

Bbbbmer:

"We truly are a great nation at times — if only we'd remember that."

Troy-2251798:

"My fear is that, in this day and age, America will go to the moon (and/or Mars) and treat it in the usual, selfish, utilitarian way. We have already screwed this planet up. Now they are considering going elsewhere. Of course, once we're there, we'll screw that up too. Here's an 'out-of-this-world' thought: Focus on population control and conservation to limit how badly we're screwing up the one and only world we're ever going to have."

EarlyOut-1524710:

"Planting a radio telescope on the far side of the moon, shielded from the radio noise generated by all of our technology, might well provide the kind of scientific bonanza that Hubble has created.

"That's what's lacking in most the moon mission proposals: the promise of being able to carry out some real science. Most of the proponents of a lunar return offer little more than, 'It would be neat to go back and look around some more.' That's a little vague, given the cost and danger involved."

Pb in CA:

"Somebody explain to me why going to the surface of the moon is valuable. There is nothing there of any value.
OK, I've heard the idea of building a radio receiver on the far side. But, it would be more cost-effective to build a very-long-baseline radio receiver system using a fleet of satellites that stay in low-moon orbit, and half the time are shielded from earth radio noise.

"If we are willing to accept the fact that robots are much better adapted to carrying out missions in space, then we can have a sustainable, affordable space exploration program. The Augustine Commission got it right in this regard. Personally, I have no problem in thinking of robots as extensions of humans, and saying 'we are exploring the surface of Mars' currently with Curiosity.

"Here are the advantages of robots vs. humans on the moon:
- Robots can stay indefinitely - no return trip to Earth
- Energy supply is sun power - no need to take air, food and water
- Very close communication to humans back on Earth - 2.5-second round trip
- Cost of a mission is 1:2000 compared to sending humans

"What is gained by sending humans?"  

Cheezeweggie:

"I can't believe that we are trillions of dollars in debt and the government is seriously considering cutting health care for the elderly — but we can even consider borrowing money to go to the moon. Clean up the mess, then spend money on 'toys.' America can't afford this right now."

Stargazermom123:

"Yes, we're in bad shape here on Earth. In many ways. But we were born to look out and dream ... to explore. We went to the moon ... we have rovers on Mars, [including] one working years after it was supposed to die. Voyager 1 is reaching the end of our solar system, and will soon be beyond it — our first UFO. If we don't go back to the moon ... go to Mars ... [and] go beyond that someday, when we solve our petty differences here on Earth and put our minds to developing the mechanism to go outward into the unknown, what do we have to look forward to? What do young people have to dream about? When I stand outside on a clear night and look out at all the stars, I often wonder if anyone is looking back. Looking back and dreaming of places unknown and things never before seen, just as I am."

More about Apollo 17:

• The moon looms again as future destination
• Apollo 17's Blue Marble leaves its mark on our memory
• Harrison Schmitt remembers Apollo 17 like it was yesterday
• Flashback to 1997: Last moonwalkers look ahead
• Flash timeline: Glory Days on the Final Frontier
• Panoramas.dk: 360-degree view from Apollo 17
• Audio slideshow: Voyage of the Millennium

In addition to marking the 40th anniversary of Apollo 17's lunar departure, this Earthrise serves as today's offering for the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which features views of Earth from outer space on a daily basis from now until Christmas. Check out these other holiday goodies:

More space calendar entries:

• 2012 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• Day 1: A fantastic Chinese fan
• Day 2: Satellite shows a Grander Canyon
• Day 3: Typhoon stirs awe — and alarm
• Day 4: Glittering nighttime view of Riyadh
• Day 5: Night lights shine on 'Black Marble'
• Day 6: Holy sites seen at night
• Day 7: Blue Marble still leaves its mark
• Day 8: Satellites look into a volcano's hell
• Day 9: Jack Frost nipping at Alaska's nose
• Day 10: Cosmonaut looks down on peaks
• Day 11: Earth looms above moonwalker
• Day 12: Skytree casts shadow on Tokyo
• Day 13: Aurora sets stage for meteor show
• 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar

NASA / AFP

This image from Dec. 7, 1972, shows a view of Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew - Gene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt - as they traveled toward the moon. The view extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to Antarctica. This was the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap.

It's been exactly 40 years since NASA sent astronauts to the moon for the last time, and even though more than half of all Americans weren't alive when Apollo 17 got off the ground, the mission still has a big impact on our collective memory. And perhaps the biggest impact comes in the form of a single photograph, the original Blue Marble picture of Earth's full disk.

Hours after their launch on Dec. 7, 1972, Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan and his crewmates — Harrison Schmitt and Ronald Evans — oohed and ahhed over their home planet, suspended in the blackness outside their window. "I know we're not the first to discover this, but we'd like to confirm ... that the world is round," Cernan told Mission Control.

Astronauts had been seeing the full planet from beyond Earth orbit since 1968, when Apollo 8 made a looping trip around the moon and back. In fact, Apollo 8's "Earthrise" picture of our planet at the moon's horizon also ranks among the most memorable space pictures ever taken. But there was something extraordinary about the view during Apollo 17's trip: The planet's entire disk was sunlit — a sight that astronauts had never captured on film before. The trajectory provided the best look yet at Antarctica, and Schmitt marveled over the clear view of Africa.

"If there ever was a fragile-appearing piece of blue in space, it's the Earth right now," Schmitt said.

When the original picture was released, it made front pages around the world — and it inspired a continuing series of Blue Marble images, including a version that's been commonly used on iPhone displays. Just this week, NASA released a set of "Black Marble" nighttime satellite pictures to add to the Marble repertoire.

Slideshow: Apollo 17: The last moonshot

NASA

Click through historic photos from humanity's last trip to the moon, the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Launch slideshow

The Blue Marble wasn't Apollo 17's only cultural legacy. Here are a few other memes that came out of the 12-day mission:

• Doing science in space: Apollo 17 was the first NASA mission to include a professional scientist: Harrison Schmitt, who had a Ph.D. in geology. John Logsdon, former director of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, recalls that Apollo 16 and 17 were almost canceled during the Nixon administration due to budgetary concerns. "It was the outcry from the science community ... and the fact that Nixon really didn't want to cancel them, that saved those missions," Logsdon said. Apollo 17 was arguably the most scientifically oriented mission to the moon — and helped set the precedent for research on the space shuttle and the International Space Station.
• The beauty of a night launch: The post-midnight launch marked the first time that a NASA manned spacecraft took off at night, and the brilliant blaze of the Saturn 5 rising into the darkness became another iconic picture. It would be more than a decade before the next night launch from Florida: the shuttle Challenger's liftoff on STS-8 in 1983.
• Orange soil: One of the most remarkable scientific discoveries came when Schmitt spotted orange-colored soil during the second of the mission's three moonwalks in the Taurus-Littrow valley. "It's all over! Orange!" he said. He and Cernan made sure that the stuff was included in the mission's 243 pounds (110 kilograms) of lunar rock and dirt — the largest haul of samples ever brought back from the moon. Researchers determined that the orange soil consisted of glass beads formed from lava ejected during volcanic eruptions on the moon, about 3.7 billion years ago. Such findings have helped scientists understand the violent processes that were at work on the moon early in its existence.
• Singin' on the moon: The astronauts had serious work to do during their three days on the lunar surface, but there were moments of levity as well. The best-known moment came when Cernan and Schmitt crooned a tune as they skipped on the moon. "I was strolling on the moon one day, in the very merry month of December," they sang.
• Last man on the moon: When Cernan prepared to climb up the ladder from the moon's surface into the Challenger lunar module for the last time, he told Mission Control that he believed the next steps on the moon would be made "not too long into the future." Logsdon said it was well-known at the time that the next moon mission wouldn't happen for a decade or more. "But I don't think any of us thought it would be 40 years, or really more than a half-century," Logsdon said.

NBC News' Cape Canaveral correspondent, Jay Barbree, told me that Cernan isn't fond of his "last man on the moon" title. "He likes to be called 'the most recent astronaut on the moon,'" Barbree said. "That's his way of saying we're going back."

This week, Bloomberg.com's James Clash quoted Cernan as saying that he "honestly believed it wasn't the end, but the beginning." At the time, he told himself, "We're not only going back, but by the end of the century, humans will be well on their way to Mars."

Cernan also told Clash that he regretted missing out on what would have been another picture for the ages:

"I left my Hasselblad camera there with the lens pointing up at the zenith, the idea being someday someone would come back and find out how much deterioration solar cosmic radiation had on the glass.

"So, going up the ladder, I never took a photo of my last footstep. How dumb! Wouldn’t it have been better to take the camera with me, get the shot, take the film pack off and then (for weight restrictions) throw the camera away?"

How long will it be before someone comes across Cernan's camera and does the damage assessment? If you remember the Apollo moon missions, what did they mean to you back then, and what do they mean to you today? If you don't remember Apollo, do those missions still tug at your psyche, or does this all seem like ancient history? Feel free to leave your remarks or reminiscences as comments below, or send them as emails to cosmiclog@msnbc.com. I'll compile the best of the bunch for a follow-up item next week. We'll also have a look at how the moon may (or may not) figure in future space exploration.

Update for 6 p.m. ET: So who took the Blue Marble picture? That's been the subject of debate for decades, and no one at NASA has ever come up with a definitive answer. "I've actually been to events where all three of them kind of jokingly take credit for it," NASA's Mike Gentry told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in 1999. The question has apparently been a sore point for Schmitt and Cernan in recent years, but when Barbree asked Cernan about the matter, the mission commander took the standard diplomatic line. Here's what Barbree says Cernan told him about who had the camera: "We were passing it around, and passing it around, and we really don't know who shot it. One of us did."

More about moonshots:

• Harrison Schmitt remembers Apollo 17 like it was yesterday
• Flashback to 1997: Last moonwalkers look ahead
• Flash timeline: Glory Days on the Final Frontier
• Panoramas.dk: 360-degree view from Apollo 17
• Audio slideshow: Voyage of the Millennium
• Apollo 18 in fiction and fact

In addition to marking the 40th anniversary of Apollo 17's launch, the original Blue Marble serves as today's offering for the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which features views of Earth from outer space on a daily basis from now until Christmas. Check out these other holiday goodies:

More space calendar entries:

• 2012 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• Day 1: A fantastic Chinese fan
• Day 2: Satellite shows a Grander Canyon
• Day 3: Typhoon stirs awe — and alarm
• Day 4: Glittering nighttime view of Riyadh
• Day 5: Night lights shine on 'Black Marble'
• Day 6: Holy sites seen at night
• 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• The Atlantic: Hubble Advent Calendar
• Zooniverse Advent Calendar

A fourth-century fragment of papyrus that quotes Jesus telling his disciples about "my wife" has set off a buzz among scriptural scholars — but this is no "Da Vinci Code" come true. Rather, the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" is just the latest discovery to suggest how the early Christian church took shape.

Fans of the Dan Brown thriller are already familiar with the theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a husband-and-wife relationship. The basis for such speculation lies in Gnostic gospels that came out in the second, third and fourth centuries, but were left out of the standardized scriptures — texts such as the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Mary and the recently reconstructed Gospel of Judas.

Even though only a few phrases can be read on the papyrus fragment that's just come to light, those phrases are consistent with the Gnostic view of early Christianity — which tended to give a more prominent role to women, and particularly to Mary Magdalene. The text, written in the Sahidic Coptic dialect, includes the phrase "Jesus said to them, 'My wife...'" as well as references to a woman named Mary being "worthy of it," and to a woman who "will be able to be my disciple."  

The marriage debate
Karen L. King, the Harvard Divinity School professor who received the fragment from an anonymous owner, emphasized that the discovery does not serve as evidence that Jesus was married. Rather, it suggests that there was a debate within the early Christian church on the status of women, and that Jesus' relationship with women figured into the discussion. Revisiting that debate may be unsettling to some believers, but to scriptural scholars, it just comes with the territory.

"Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim," King said in a news release from Harvard Divinity School. "This new gospel doesn't prove that Jesus was married, but it tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage. From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry, but it was over a century after Jesus' death before they began appealing to Jesus' marital status to support their positions."

Ben Witherington, a New Testament scholar at the Asbury Theological Seminary, noted that the latest find fits King's perspective on scriptural scholarship. "She does have a dog in this hunt," he told me. "She's an advocate for the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Judas, telling us of early Christian experiences of various kinds, particularly of the Gnostic kind."

The fragment that King calls the Gospel of Jesus' Wife could well contribute to the study of Gnosticism in the second or fourth century, but Witherington said it's not a game-changer for our view of the first-century Jesus. "While this fragment is interesting, if you are interested in the historical Jesus, this is much ado about not very much," Witherington said via email.

Witherington noted that experts who have gotten a close look at the papyrus say it's genuine,  but he cautioned that "we cannot be absolutely sure of its authenticity or origins" as long as scholars can't track down the details surrounding how, when and where it was discovered.

Bart Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, voiced similar caution. However, if the document proves authentic, it would represent an important advance in scriptural scholarship, he said. 

"It's certainly not reliable for saying anything about the historical Jesus," Ehrman told me. "But what it is important for is that this would be the first time we have any Christian authority or Christian group indicating that, in their opinion, Jesus was married." Like King, Ehrman suggested that such claims might have figured into early Christian debates over the comparative merits of marriage vs. celibacy. 

Monks and 'sister-wives' 
Witherington said the text could be open to alternate interpretations. "In view of the largely ascetic character of Gnosticism, it is likely that we are dealing with the 'sister-wife' phenomenon, and the reference is to a strictly spiritual relationship, which is close but does not involve sexual intimacy," Witherington said.

During a follow-up phone call, he explained that "during the rise of the monastic movement, you had quite a lot of monk-type folks and evangelists who traveled in the company of a sister-wife." The fellow travelers looked after each other, but celibacy was part of the deal, he said.

"The other question about this is ... were these 'fractured fairy tales' that helped monks in the desert while away the time, or were they serious religious texts?" Witherington said.

Gnostic works proliferated in Egypt's Christian monasteries until Athanasius of Alexandria drew up what became the "official" list of books in the New Testament and condemned the rest in the year 367. Scholars believe that the best-known collection of Gnostic texts, the Nag Hammadi library, was bundled up and buried in the desert as a result.

The debate over the papyrus fragment's authenticity and the meaning of the Gospel of Jesus' Wife is likely to play out for a long time among scriptural scholars — and among "Da Vinci Code" fans as well. For now, here are links to background material and the initial blog reactions:

• The news release from Harvard Divinity School points to a Web page about the papyrus and to the manuscript that King has prepared for publication in January's issue of Harvard Theological Review.
• James Tabor, a scriptural scholar at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the co-author of controversial books about Jesus and his family, notes King's research — and says Witherington and other scholars should "reconsider the question" surrounding Jesus' marital status. 
• Michael Heiser, a scholar specializing in biblical languages, says on his PaleoBabble blog that he tends to agree with the view that church leaders have "manipulated the testimony of Mary Magdalene" — but he warns against reading too much into the discovery.
• Jim West, a biblical scholar at the Quartz Hill School of Theology and pastor of Petros Baptist Church in Tennessee, says on the Zwinglius Redivivus blog that "without more context, both historically and archaeologically, the snippet is valueless." 
• James McGrath, a New Testament scholar at Butler University in Indianapolis, also voices caution on the Exploring Our Matrix blog but adds that there's no reason why people should find the idea that Jesus was married "inherently unbelievable."

Update for 9 p.m. ET: Some observers have pointed out that the New Testament contains multiple allusions to Jesus as a bridegroom, and the church or the collective people of God as his bride. This report from The Atlantic catalogs the references. However, Witherington said the Coptic papyrus appears to refer to a different kind of relationship. "A bride is one thing, and a wife is another," he told me. The fragment's additional references to "Mary" and a prospective woman disciple also argue against attaching a purely metaphorical meaning to the word "wife."

For what it's worth, here are all the translated bits from the papyrus:

"'... not [to] me. My mother gave to me li[fe] ...'"

"The disciples said to Jesus, '..."

"deny. Mary is worthy of it" (Or: "deny. Mary is n[ot] worthy of it") 

"...' Jesus said to them, 'My wife...'"

"... she will be able to be my disciple ..."

"Let wicked people swell up ..."

"As for me, I dwell with her in order to ..."

"an image"

"my moth[er]"

"three"

"forth which ..."

More about scripture and history:

• Artifacts reveal history behind David and Goliath
• New find revives flap over 'Tomb of Jesus'
• Help scientists decipher a lost gospel
• Is the Bible full of 'forgeries'?
• All about apocryphal gospels

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

E2BN / NEN

A sculpture that shows computer pioneer Alan Turing looking down at the Enigma Machine was created from stacked slate by British artist Stephen Kettle.

The June 23 centennial of Alan Turing's birth is providing an opportunity to look back at the brilliant life and tragic end of a pioneer in computer science — a Briton who was instrumental in cracking Germany's Enigma code and turning the tide of World War II, but who killed himself after his humiliation by a society that saw homosexuality as a crime.

Turing came up with the concept of a "universal machine" back in 1936, setting the stage for the quest to create artificial intelligence. It's a quest that's as old as Ovid's Metamorphoses and as new as IBM's Watson. His vision of a computer so knowledgeable and adept in the ways of society that humans would think it was human, too, led to the establishment of the "Turing Test" as a classic gauge of machine intelligence. (Some argue that a program called Cleverbot passed the Turing Test last year.)

His greatest contribution came during the war, when he designed an electromechanical device known as the "bombe." With additional refinements, the cabinet-sized machine at Britain's Bletchley Park could decode thousands of intercepted German messages, tipping off the allies about the Nazis' next moves.

The intelligence gleaned by the Bletchley Park team, code-named Ultra, was crucial to the Allied war effort. "It was thanks to Ultra that we won the war," British Prime Minister Winston Churchill told King George VI.

Gay hero? Or just plain hero?
The postwar era, however, was a disaster for Turing, who was gay. He got into a messy relationship with a man who helped an accomplice break into Turing's house — and after Turing reported the burglary, the investigation of the break-in eventually turned into an investigation of the researcher's sexual behavior.

At that time, in 1952, homosexual behavior fell under a criminal category known as gross indecency, and Turing's conviction could have put him in prison. As an alternative, Turing chose chemical castration through hormone injections. His security clearance was revoked, and he was barred from working for the British government. Turing pressed for a change in Britain's laws, but homosexuality remained a criminal offense in Britain until 1967.

That was way too late for Turing. Two years after his conviction, he died in his laboratory after eating a poisoned apple.

In 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a posthumous apology to Turing, saying that the computer pioneer "truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war."

"The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely," Brown said. "We're sorry. You deserved so much better."

Today, Turing is hailed in some quarters as a tragic gay hero. But during this centennial year, the spotlight is squarely on science rather than sex. Google executive Vinton Cerf, who's considered one of the creators of the Internet, said in a BBC retrospective that he hoped this year's exhibits and observances would "help make Turing a hero and household name beyond the technical community that reveres his memory."

Texts on Turing
Cerf's tribute is one of seven essays on Turing's life and legacy being posted to the BBC's website this week. Wired's British website is also presenting a rich variety of perspectives to celebrate Turing Week. This weekend, luminaries from around the world will gather at the University of Manchester for a Turing centenary conference. Video from the conference is due to be streamed live. It's all part of Alan Turing Year.

To read up on Turing and his times, you can start with Andrew Hodges' 1983 biography, "Alan Turing: The Enigma," which has been reissued in a centenary edition. (In addition to the book, Hodges maintains a biographical website at Turing.org.uk.) There's also a centenary edition of "Alan M. Turing," the biography written in 1959 by Sara Turing, Alan's mother. "The Man Who Knew Too Much" is a more recent biography of the great man, written by David Leavitt in 2006.

Charles Petzold's "The Annotated Turing" delves into Alan Turing's groundbreaking 1936 paper, while Princeton University Press is putting out "Alan Turing's Systems of Logic: The Princeton Thesis," a facsimile edition of Turing's Ph.D. thesis. There's also "The Essential Turing," a compilation of the researcher's best-known writings. And if you're looking for something fresh that puts Turing's achievements in a wider context, check out George Dyson's book, "Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe."

Any birthday wishes you'd like to pass along for the centennial? Feel free to post them as comments below.

More about the history of computing:

• A brief history of computers
• British code crackers reunite, pride unbroken
• Museum celebrates 2,000 years of computing
• For tech pioneer IBM, 100 years of 'Think'

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Rhett A. Butler / mongabay.com

New evidence challenges the idea that the Amazon Basin was densely inhabited before the arrival of Europeans.

The historical portrayal of the Amazon Basin's residents before 1492 has swung from the stereotype of backward savages to a vision of sophisticated stewards of the land — but a newly reported survey suggests that wide swaths of the Amazon's forests, particularly in the western and central regions, were relatively untouched by humans.

The findings could play into the debate over the Amazon's future as well as its past.

""You can't use an idea of past transformed landscapes to justify modern deforestation," Crystal McMichael, a paleoecologist who analyzed Amazonian soil as part of her research at the Florida Institute of Technology, told me. McMichael is the lead author of a study published in today's issue of the journal Science.

She and her colleagues collected 247 core samples of soil from 55 sites throughout the central and western Amazon, in Brazil and Peru, to check for signs of human disturbance. Their objective was to provide a reality check for what some researchers have called the "1491 hypothesis": the idea that areas of the Amazon Basin were intensely managed centuries ago, but reverted to a more natural state after the arrival of explorer Christopher Columbus and his European brethren, due to the decline of indigenous culture.

One of the foremost critics of that view is Dolores Piperno, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Piperno is a co-author of the Science paper.

"Drawing on questionable assumptions, some scholars argue that modern Amazonian biodiversity is more a result of widespread, intensive prehistoric human occupation of the forests than of natural evolutionary and ecological processes," she said in a Smithsonian news release. "Climatologists who accept the manufactured-landscapes idea may incorporate wholesale prehistoric Amazonian deforestation, widespread fires and carbon emissions into their models of what caused past shifts in atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane levels. But we need much more evidence from Amazonia before anything like that can be assumed."

The evidence from the soil samples, including samples taken from sites with previously known human impacts, runs counter to those assumptions. Most of the samples showed little sign of charcoal, which would have been left behind by land-clearing fires. There were few signs of silica deposits known as phytoliths, which are indicators of ancient agriculture. The researchers did pick up the signature of "terra preta" — that is, earth enriched by human waste — but mostly around riverbanks rather than far into the forest.

Crystal McMichael

Researchers Crystal McMichael and Monica Zimmerman collect soil samples in the tropical rainforests of Peru.

"Together, the data suggest that human population densities in the sampled regions were low and highly localized, and were not consistent with major population centers with associated areas of widespread, extensive agriculture," the researchers wrote.

The findings came as no surprise to Michael Heckenberger, an anthropologist at the University of Florida. Heckenberger is perhaps best-known for his study of ancient urban communities in the Upper Xingu region of the Brazilian Amazon, east of the areas surveyed by McMichael and her colleagues. His work was discussed in "The Lost City of Z," a best-selling book by David Grann.

"I was delighted to see the paper, because it does act as a cautionary note," Heckenberger told me. 

Heckenberger said the research fits in with the view that the pre-Columbian Amazon Basin had wide areas of forest land that showed relatively little human alteration, as well as areas that supported substantial concentrations of human population.

"This clearly has moved the debate forward," he said. "I hope we don't digress back to [a debate over whether] the Amazon was the setting par excellence for primordial forests and primitive tribes vs. an area that was dominated by large, complex societies. It's neither one nor the other. ... There were patches of dense, complex societies, and then there were other areas that were, if not completely untouched, then something very like untouched forest."

Heckenberger said he was "still of the opinion that as time progresses, we're going to find more and more of the Amazon that did support large populations." But he praised the work published in Science and said he hoped to see more sampling of sites from broader stretches of the Amazon Basin.

"I'd love to grab that team and bring them to my research site, to use that to some degree as a control against what you might expect," he told me. "The flip side of that is to jump into the pickup truck with that team and look for archaeological signatures in the area that they've been studying."

McMichael thought that was a fine idea. "He's done some excellent work," she said of Heckenberger.

She speculated that pre-Columbian tribes preferred to live near rivers rather than in the forest interior "so they could connect with other communities" more easily. She also suspected that the eastern side of the Amazon Basin was settled more intensely than the western side because it was drier and more amenable to forest-clearing. However, even if large settlements existed in some parts of the Amazon before Columbus, that shouldn't be used as a defense for 21st-century deforestation, McMichael said.

"The amazing biodiversity of the Amazon is not a byproduct of past human disturbance," she said in a news release. "We also can't assume that these forests will be resilient to disturbance, because many have never been disturbed, or have only been lightly disturbed in the past. Certainly there is no parallel in western Amazonia for the scale of modern disturbance that accompanies industrial agriculture, road construction, and the synergies of those disturbances with climate change."

More about Amazonian culture:

• Pre-1492 Amazon farmers didn't use controlled burns
• How the Amazon's lost cities worked
• Another 'Stonehenge' discovered in Amazon
• Gallery: A tale of seven cities, lost and found

In addition to McMichael and Piperno, authors of "Sparse Pre-Columbian Human Habitation in Western Amazonia" include M.B. Bush, M.R. Silman, A.R. Zimmerman, M.F. Raczka and L.C. Lobato.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

AP

A piece of iron lies next to a skeleton dating back to the Middle Ages at an archaeological dig in the Black Sea town of Sozopol. Bulgarian archaeologists say they have found skeletons that were pinned down through their chests with iron rods - a practice believed to stop the dead from rising as vampires.

Bulgarian archaeologists are showing off two centuries-old skeletons that they say were pinned down through their chests with iron rods to keep them from turning into vampires — a trend that was all the rage in medieval Europe.

The "vampire" skeletons were excavated recently near the Black Sea town of Sozopol, according to reports from The Associated Press and AFP. Bozhidar Dimitrov, head of Bulgaria's National History Museum, was quoted as saying that corpses were regularly treated this way in some parts of the country until the beginning of the 20th century.

About 100 similar burials have been found in Bulgaria over the years. "I do not know why an ordinary discovery like that became so popular," AP quoted Dimitrov as saying on Tuesday. "Perhaps because of the mysteriousness of the word 'vampire.'"

Bulgarian archaeologist Petar Balabanov has found a number of nailed-down skeletons near the eastern town of Debelt, at gravesites dating as far back as the 1st century. According to custom, the bodies had to be pinned down just in case they tried to rise from the grave. AFP quoted Balabanov as saying that the rite was practiced in Bulgaria as well as other Balkan countries.

Of course, the world's most famous vampire legend is associated with the 15th-century Balkan strongman known as Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler. That's mainly due to Irish novelist Bram Stoker, who borrowed the Dracula name for his 1897 novel about a blood-sucking bad guy from Transylvania. The idea that vampires drank blood may be of relatively recent vintage, but the idea that the dead had to be stopped from rising again was widespread in medieval times — in part due to the plague.

Several years ago, Italian archaeologists made a splash when they dug into a mass grave for 16th-century plague victims on the Venetian island of Nuovo Lazzaretto and found the remains of a woman who had a brick stuck between her jaws. To explain the brick, they cited some of the anti-vampire strategies practiced at the time.

For example, in one region of Germany, gravediggers would occasionally return to a plague grave and find that the shroud surrounding the corpse had been eaten away, with blood or other fluids coming out of the mouth. The hair and fingernails also appeared to grow longer, even after burial. Today, researchers say such phenomena are due to the natural stages of decomposition — but in the Middle Ages, people feared that these were the signs of vampirism.

The Italian researchers claimed that the brick was jammed in to keep the "Vampire of Venice" from causing trouble. But other archaeologists have disputed that claim. They suggest instead that the brick merely fell into the mouth of the woman's skull. That has sparked a scientific tiff, as LiveScience reported last month.

Based on Balabanov's excavations, the Bulgarian nailing-down practice goes much farther back than Dracula or the Black Death — maybe like placing coins on the eyes of the deceased, but grislier. What do you think? Is this solid science, or another case of vampire grandstanding? Please feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

More about ghoulish archaeology:

• 'Vampire' victim spurs gruesome debate
• Black magic revealed in ancient tablets
• The science of bloodsuckers
• Gallery: Seven ghoulish discoveries
• Gallery: Myths and realities about vampires

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Diego Libkind

Sugar-filled galls on Southern beech trees in the Patagonia region of South America are attractive to a species of yeast, Saccharomyces eubayanus, that somehow made it to Europe where it fused with S. cerevisiae to form lager yeast, the microbe responsible for fermenting ice cold lager beer.

Ice cold beer: In these dog days of summer, few things are better. So, let's raise a glass and toast Saccharomyces eubayanus, newly discovered yeast that helped make cold-fermented lager a runaway success.

The yeast, in the wild, thrives in ball-shaped lumps of sugar that form on beech trees in Patagonia of South America. Its discovery appears to solve the mystery of how lager yeast formed. Until now, scientists only knew about the origins of ale yeast, which makes up just half of the lager yeast genome.

Yeasts are microscopic fungi that feast on sugar, converting it to carbon dioxide and alcohol via the process of fermentation. Ale yeast, S. cerevisiae, has been doing this throughout the history of beer, which stretches back to at least 6,000 B.C. in Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization.

But ale yeast does its magic at relatively warm temperatures. In the 15th century, Bavarians started cold-fermenting beer in caves, a process known as laagering.

"The ale strains were probably poorly adapted to growing in that environment and that opened up an opportunity when S. eubayanus came on the scene," Chris Todd Hittinger, a professor of genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained to me.

The cold-adapted yeast likely reached Europe as stowaway when trade with South America took off in the 1500s, he and colleagues report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Barry Carlsen / University of Wisconsin-Madison

This graphic shows the journey S. eubayanus likely took as trade between South America and Europe ramped up in the 1500s.

Once in Europe, the Patagonia yeast fused with S. cerevisiae. "By forming a hybrid, you get an immediate temperature shift in its preference and that would have provided an immediate advantage to the process the Bavarians were using to make beer," Hittinger said.

He and his colleagues used genetic sequencing techniques on a search of five continents for this wild yeast species. Their quest was to complete the puzzle in part so that genetic engineers and brewers can create ever-more efficient strains of lager yeast and, potentially, a better beer.

That, in turn, could be a boost in the highly-competitive brewing industry. Lager, according to the researchers, is a $250 billion a year business.

Credit for the discovery of this wild yeast goes to Diego Libkind of the Institute for Biodiversity and Environment Research in Bariloche, Argentina, who was interested in the ball-shaped lumps of sugar that form on beech trees there.

The lumps, called galls, are an immune response to invasion by a fungus. They are abundant in the spring and local Aborigines such as the Mapuche traditionally use them as a slightly-sweet topping for salads, Libkind explained to me in an email.

In addition, "the Aboriginies used to let the galls spontaneously ferment in water and made an alcoholic beverage called by the generic name chicha," he said. "Most probably, S. eubayanus was in charge of that fermentation."

Today, Libkind and his colleagues are working with a microbrewery in Argentina to diversify their products with S. eubayanus and "artificially forced S. eubayanus/S. cerevisiae hybrids," he said.

Details on these products are under wraps, he said, though since yeast go under thousands of years of domestication by brewers, he doubts the wild yeast would make for a good beer.

But the idea of brewing a beer with S. eubayanus might be worth pursuing, Hittinger said. "It would unlikely be a particularly great beer straight out of the beech forest, but I suspect it would be passable."

Update, Aug. 23, 2:00 pm PT:

Patrick McGovern, a world expert on the history of alcoholic beverages and director of the biomolecular archaeology lab at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, sent me an email today with his thoughts on the yeast discovery.

Assuming the genetics work is correct, he said he is "troubled by how this newly discovered wild yeast strain made it into Bavaria in the 1500s."

For one, he noted, Germans, and especially Bavarians, were not involved in the European exploration of Patagonia at the time. So, if the yeast somehow hitched a ride back to Europe via trade with the English, Spanish, and Portuguese, how did it get to Bavaria?

"Perhaps, some Patagonian beech was used to make a wine barrel that was then transported to Bavaria and subsequently inoculated a batch of beer there?" he asked. "Seems unlikely."

He said a more likely scenario is that galls in the oak forests of southern Germany also harbored S. eubayanus, at least until it was out competed by the more ubiquitous S. cerevisiae.

"If true, then the use of European oak in making beer barrels and especially processing vats, which could harbor the yeast, might better explain the Bavarian 'discovery' of lager in the 1500s," he said.

Nevertheless, he added, history and archaeology are full of surprises.

"Nowhere is this more true than of the seemingly miraculous process of fermentation and the key role of alcohol in human culture and life itself on this planet," he said.

"This article has begun to unravel the complicated heritage and life history of the fermentation yeasts, and will hopefully stimulate more research to see whether the Patagonian hypothesis proves correct."

More stories about beer:

• Happy (hic) birthday, canned beer!
• Ancient Nubians drank beer laced with antibiotics
• Beer may have lubricated rise of civilization
• Tip a glass to these Iron Age beer makers
• In ancient Peru, women made the beer
• Ancient yeast reborn in modern beer

When you look back at the past 50 years of human spaceflight, don't forget the computer scientists who helped make it all possible.

That's the message Arthur Cohen wants to pass along on the golden anniversary of NASA astronaut Alan Shepard's 1961 Freedom 7 spaceflight, a 15-minute suborbital outing that marked one not-so-small step on the way to the moon. The successful flights made by Shepard and other members of the Mercury 7 depended on the work done by Cohen and thousands of other workers behind the scenes.

"There was a lot of attention given to the seven astronauts," Cohen recalled in an interview this week. "The thing that was hardly mentioned was the fact that there were computers that were doing the work."

Today, Cohen is an adjunct professor of mathematics at Nassau Community College in New York, but back in the early 1960s he was manager for the IBM Space Computer Center in Washington, where he directed the development of all computing support for Project Mercury. Two IBM 7090 computer systems at NASA's nearby Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, plus a backup IBM 709 computer in the Bahamas, provided all the raw number-crunching power to plot the trajectories of those early spacecraft. Western Electric and Bell Labs provided the supporting communication network.

"In those days, 1,000 bits per second was high speed," the 83-year-old Cohen told me.

The data streaming down from space was funneled through Goddard and then onward to Cape Canaveral, where mission controllers kept watch on the real-time channel. "All the displays at the Cape were actually provided by us," Cohen said. Somewhere around 75 to 100 people were on IBM's team to make sure the computers were in sync.

A picture from the old days shows Cohen and members of his team gathered around the computer center, with Mercury astronauts Deke Slayton and Gus Grissom in their midst. "We did wear white shirts — that's the way IBM was back then, right? — but maybe our sleeves were rolled up," Cohen joked.

IBM

The IBM computer team mixes it up with Mercury astronauts Gus Grissom (fifth from the right) and Deke Slayton (second from the right). Arthur Cohen is fourth from the left.

After Project Mercury, Cohen turned to other, more down-to-Earth projects at IBM in New York, and retired from the company in 1988. But he says the spaceflight experience set the tone for his career and those of a whole generation of engineers. "The people who worked on the project did go on to Gemini and Apollo, and some of the people went on to the airline reservation system. One of my guys went on to the air traffic control system and managed that.," he said. "There was a lot of fallout from this stuff."

IBM

Arthur Cohen is now an adjunct professor of mathematics at Nassau Community College.

Today, almost everything about spaceflight and its computing requirements is different.

"Things have improved, but it's basically the same kind of stuff. You still have to check data, edit data, smooth data," he said. "You're still driving displays. But I think the space game is going to be much more about understanding something about deep space. It'll be a different challenge. Here, you're talking about doing an orbit in 88 minutes. There, you may be talking about years [of orbital calculations], so things may be going somewhat slower in terms of feedback about what's happening."

Despite all those diferences, Cohen suspects that the level of dedication among computer scientists will be as high as ever.

"The future for them can't be any brighter," he said. "Computers are going to be behind everything that can help mankind, whether it be medicine, or crop yields, or space. Whatever it might be, computers are going to be important. Who knows what we need to do?"

To learn more about Cohen and the contributions made by Project Mercury's "unsung computers," check out IBM's news release and this report from the DVICE blog. Do you have some behind-the-scenes stories about the past 50 years of spaceflight? If so, feel free to share your tales in the comment section below.

More on spaceflight history:

• Timeline: Glory Days on the Final Frontier
• Slideshow: Remembering Alan Shepard
• NASA celebrates 50 years of Americans in space
• Historic Mercury launch pad reimagined as classroom

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. 

CollectSpace

The shuttle Enterprise, which was an aerodynamic test vehicle that never flew in space, gets a once-over at its display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center, near Dulles International Airport in Virginia. Discovery is expected to take Enterprise's place after the retirement of the space shuttle fleet.

Last updated 12:12 p.m. ET March 9:

So what happens now that the shuttle Discovery has made its last landing? The most-flown spaceship in NASA's fleet will almost certainly end up on display at the Smithsonian — but not before it goes through a months-long round of technological taxidermy.

The first steps toward Discovery's destiny aren't all that unusual: NASA will put the orbiter through its routine post-flight maintenance, as if it were going back into space. But instead of prepping the space plane for its next mission, mechanics will give Discovery a major overhaul, turning the world's most complex flying machine into an unflyable museum artifact.

NASA has already figured out how to pull out all the stuff on Discovery that could pose a health hazard, ranging from fuel tanks and plumbing to thermal blankets that have soaked up toxic fumes for the past 26 years. The shuttle's main engines will be replaced with mockups built out of replicas and spare parts. The crew cabin will be spiffed up to look as if it's ready for flight, but in hidden areas, structural shells and skins will take the place of flight hardware.

When museumgoers get their first up-close peek at Discovery next year, they may have no idea that the space shuttle has been stripped down and rebuilt. "To the viewer, it will look as if the shuttle is intact," Robert Z. Pearlman, editor of CollectSpace website and a walking encyclopedia on the shuttle program, told me. "And for future generations of researchers, the process of removing all these materials has been very well documented."

Discovery's destiny is due to be announced officially on April 12, the 30th anniversary of the shuttle fleet's first spaceflight. Officially, Discovery's fate is a closely held secret. But the widespread assumption is that after putting nearly 150 million miles on its odometer, the senior space shuttle will go to the Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum that's right next to Dulles International Airport in Virginia.

Museum spokesman Brian Mullen insists that the Smithsonian is still "in the dark" about where Discovery will end up. "It's really up to NASA," he told me. For months, officials at the museum have been offering a statement so well-worn that it sounded as if Mullen had it memorized: "The museum is involved in discussions about transfer of the orbiter and other artifacts from the shuttle program. The final disposition of shuttle artifacts will be the decision of NASA."

But if NASA doesn't award Discovery to the Smithsonian on April 12, that would be a real shocker.

Sought-after shuttle
Discovery is the shuttle most sought after because it's the most flown and the oldest of the three orbiters remaining in the fleet (Columbia and Challenger, lost in 2003 and 1986, were older) — and also because it was involved in some of NASA's best-known missions, including the 1990 deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope and both of the "return to flight" missions in 1988 and 2005.

NASA offered it to the Smithsonian two years ago, but for a while it looked as if the Smithsonian would have to pass up the opportunity, due to the costs associated with getting a "free" space shuttle. NASA initially said any museum that was awarded a shuttle would have to come up with $42 million to reimburse the space agency for preparation and transport costs. That price tag was knocked down to $28.8 million, but the Smithsonian still reportedly balked. Congress finally stepped in with a legal provision last December saying that the Smithsonian would get a shuttle "at no or nominal cost" if NASA Administrator Charles Bolden thought it was an appropriate venue for display.

If Bolden gives his go-ahead on April 12 as expected, Discovery would take the place of the shuttle Enterprise, a craft that flew several aerodynamic tests in the '70s but never went into space. The Enterprise has been on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center since 2004. Giving Discovery to the Smithsonian means that Enterprise would be up for grabs, along with Endeavour and Atlantis, two other space shuttles that have yet to take their final turn in outer space.

"The Enterprise is an artifact under the Smithsonian's care," Mullen noted. "If we were lucky enough to get a flown orbiter, I'm sure NASA has a plan."

End of the shuttle scramble?
The disposition of Endeavour, Atlantis and presumably Enterprise is one of the hottest contests in the museum world. In all, 29 would-be exhibitors are vying to acquire a space shuttle, even though they'd have to pay the $28.8 million as well as the expense of providing a suitable exhibit space and getting the decommissioned orbiters spruced up for display. NASA wants to make sure the shuttles are better preserved than some high-profile space artifacts from the Apollo era. The prime example was a Saturn 5 rocket that was slowly rotting away at Johnson Space Center. Fortunately for space history buffs, the rocket was restored several years ago and moved to an enclosed, climate-controlled shelter, at a cost of $5 million.

Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex

An artist's concept shows a space shuttle on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.

The most mentioned players in the shuttle scramble include:

• Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, which has drawn up plans for a $100 million, 64,000-square-foot exhibit where the shuttle would be displayed as if it were in flight, with its robotic arm extended to support an astronaut.
• Space Center Houston, which has proposed the construction of a 53,000-square-foot hangar at the visitor center for Johnson Space Center in Texas.
• The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, which is planning to add a 200,000-square-foot exhibit hall to its grounds. The Dayton museum is particularly interested in Atlantis because of that shuttle's past role in Air Force space missions.
• Seattle's Museum of Flight, which has started work on a $12 million, 15,500-square-foot "Human Space Flight Gallery" that would be available to showcase a shuttle.
• The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, a dockside facility in Manhattan that has been built alongside the aircraft carrier Intrepid.

It's not yet exactly clear yet how much time would pass between a shuttle's last flight and its handover to one of the museums, but Pearlman said NASA would like to have the shuttles in a position to go to their future homes as little as six months after their final flights. Realistically, the job may take longer than that. "It looks like it will take at least a year for preparations," Mullen told me.

NASA spokesman Michael Curie recently said in an e-mail that the space agency was looking into scenarios that would require the space agency to hang onto a shuttle for longer than expected after retirement. "As a what-if budget exercise, we are looking at what it would cost if a recipient was not ready to take an orbiter right away, and if we wanted to keep an orbiter in long-term storage for potential engineering analysis," he wrote.

United Space Alliance, the contractor that manages most aspects of the shuttle program on NASA's behalf, has proposed using Endeavour and Atlantis in a commercial operation to resupply the International Space Station. That would short-circuit NASA's plan for sending those two shuttles to the museums anytime soon. However, the USA proposal doesn't seem to have a high chance of gaining NASA's support, particularly in view of the Bolden's plan for an April 12 announcement on the shuttles' fate.

The final, final journey
When NASA has finished decommissioning a shuttle, it would be loaded atop the modified Boeing 747 jet that serves as NASA's carrier airplane and flown to the airport that's nearest to the orbiter's destination, Pearlman said. Cranes would be used to lift the shuttle off the plane, and then the exhibitor would take it from there.

If the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex gets one of the shuttles, the job won't require a plane trip, Pearlman noted. And if the Smithsonian gets Discovery as expected, the shuttle would be hoisted off the carrier plane and rolled along Dulles' runway to the Udvar-Hazy Center. The same plane could conceivably give the Enterprise a piggyback flight from Dulles to its new destination.

"While all the other orbiters are seeing the end of their flight careers, Enterprise is getting a bit of a reprieve. It'll have one last carry on the top of a 747," Pearlman joked.

You might think that Pearlman, an enthusiast for space history and memorabilia, would be over the moon at the prospect of seeing Discovery up close in a museum. But that's not the case.

"I think everyone would love to see the orbiters continue flying," he said. "I'd much rather see Discovery go on and fly another 39 flights. I just don't think that at this point, with our national priorities ... well, I don't see that as a very likely possibility."

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