Folklore is the branch of the study of man which deals with local customs, tales and traditions. Everybody is a storehouse of folklore, though not everybody realizes it. Often, indeed, those who have never heard the word folklore have the greatest store of it, for the people with least book education commonly cherish most firmly old ideas and superstitions which have been passed on by word of mouth for generations. Everyone has heard stories of ghosts, witches, fairies, and giants. We all know some proverbs and have come across such ideas as, for example, that it is lucky to see black cat and unlucky to see a single magpie. We keep certain seasons of the year as festivals, suchn as Christmas, and we are familiar with the special customs connected with weddings and funerals. All such things are of interest to those who study folklore.

People who study folklore won’t criticize the old beliefs and practices they come across as silly, childish, or old-fashioned. Instead, they will try to collect accurate records of them and then see how these are connected with other ideas and customs of other places or times. By comparing with what is known of olden times or the folklore of other countries, they try to discover how certain beliefs and practices came into being, and what purpose they serve now or used to serve in the past.

Often we find that the beliefs which seem most peculiar and unreasonable, and the customs which appear least practical, are of the greatest interest and importance because they are commonly the oldest. Sometimes they were part of an ancient ritual or served a useful purpose when people’s way of life was different from what it is now. So we not only learn about what people thought and did in the past but are better able to understand present customs. People often keep up customs when they have forgotten the original reason for them, and in the course of time a fresh reason gets attached to the custom. Thus, when some joker ties an old shoe to the back of the taxi taking the bride and bridegroom to the station for their honeymoon, he would say it was “for luck”, but actually a shoe is an old fertility (繁殖力) symbol and has a place in the wedding customs of China and Palestine.

Scientists have been studying Antarctica for over a century, but details as basic as what it looks like beneath all that ice have largely remained a mystery. Now, Earther reports that a team of scientists from Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and the UK has published the most detailed data yet on the continent's subglacial topography （冰川下的地形）near the South Pole.

As they report in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, central Antarctica is home to three large canyons （峡谷）, one of which is deeper than the Grand Canyon and nearly as wide at some points. The researchers made the discovery by flying a plane with radar over the South Pole, a spot that isn't covered by satellites. They expected to find mountains beneath the ice sheet, but the wide canyons they found between the mountains came as a surprise.

Of the three canyons, two hadn't been documented previously. The largest, the Foundation Trough （基础槽），measures 218 miles long, up to 22 miles wide, and 6,260 feet deep, putting it up there with the planet's most impressive canyons.

The discoveries are significant on their own, but the real purpose behind the research is to better understand how the West and East Antarctic ice sheets will react to rising temperatures. Human-caused climate change has made some of the continent's ice not firm, and the West Antarctic ice sheet especially has been slowly melting to the sea. If patterns continue, the coastal glaciers supporting the large ice sheets could fall down, causing sea levels to rise a minimum of 10 feet. If this happens, the canyons could be a major factor in the speed and direction of ice flow from central Antarctica to the coast.

The event isn't likely to happen in the near future, but further study o£ Antarctica's topography will allow scientists to better predict when it might.

Every woman dreams of receiving a huge, sparkling and priceless diamond. Now scientists have discovered the largest diamond in the universe.

But it’s well beyond the reach of the most lovestruck men — 50 light years to be precise. Space scientists revealed that they had discovered a ten billion trillion trillion carat gem. Measuring 2,500 miles across and weighing five million trillion trillion pounds, the rock was found on Valentine's Day buried in the core of a white dwarf star in the constellation Centaurus.

“It’s the mother of all diamonds,” said Travis Metcalfe, who led the team of researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in America.

“You would need a jeweller’s loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond.” Named Lucy, after the Beatles' song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, the rock has sent a ripple of excitement through the scientific world.

The largest diamond found on earth was the 3,106-carat Cullinan. It was cut into nine major stones, including the 530-carat Star of Africa, now a part of the Crown Jewels. Diamonds were first discovered in India more than 2,800 years ago. The Ancient Romans believed that the stones were splinters of stars that had tumbled to earth.

In Ancient Egypt, diamonds were symbols of eternity and were used in funeral rites. In the Middle Ages, men wore them to symbolize their courage and virility. The tradition of giving them as love tokens dates from 1477, when Archduke Maximilian of Austria gave a diamond ring to Mary of Burgundy.