UFO flap over Ontario, Canada

British Columbia's UFO Researcher Brian Vike, Director of HBCC UFO Research sat listening to a radio show by way of the internet on March 11, 2007 from his home in Houston, B.C., a small town in northern British Columbia Canada. Mr. Vike thought he would check his http referrals to see what people were searching for on the internet. He was surprised to see the large number of sighting reports coming out of the province of Ontario, where most people were searching for the March 11, 2007 meteor. Believing an amazing light show took place in the province he thought to place a short, quick note to his website requesting that if anyone may have been witness to a meteor sighting over the Ontario province to please get in contact with him at HBCC UFO Research.It didn't take long before a few sighting reports of a possible meteor event started to arrive in Mr. Vike's email box. The following day, March 12, 2007 letters came flying in, one after another from different locations in the province of Ontario, and other areas as well. From Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and the object was witnessed also from some locations in New York.

There was no question as to what folks had been witness to, which was a fireball/meteor. The descriptions on what was seen were roughly the same. Some reports did vary from a round flaming green ball to a very bright red and orange ball with long green tail. Meteor reports still came in over the following next few days.What came as a surprise to Vike was the large amount of UFO sightings that was also happening in the province of Ontario. Over a short period of time the cases started rolling in and never stopped, and this over a lot of unusual reports of strange/unexplained UFOs seen by many eyewitnesses in the province.

Does Maya calendar predict 2012 apocalypse?

With humanity coming up fast on 2012, publishers are helping readers gear up and count down to this mysterious — some even call it apocalyptic — date that ancient Mayan societies were anticipating thousands of years ago. Since November, at least three new books on 2012 have arrived in mainstream bookstores. A fourth is due this fall. Each arrives in the wake of the 2006 success of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, which has been selling thousands of copies a month since its release in May and counts more than 40,000 in print. The books also build on popular interest in the Maya, fueled in part by Mel Gibson's December 2006 film about Mayan civilization, Apocalpyto. Authors disagree about what humankind should expect on Dec. 21, 2012, when the Maya's "Long Count" calendar marks the end of a 5,126-year era. Journalist Lawrence Joseph forecasts widespread catastrophe in Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation Into Civilization's End. Spiritual healer Andrew Smith predicts a restoration of a "true balance between Divine Feminine and Masculine" in The Revolution of 2012: Vol. 1, The Preparation.

In 2012, Daniel Pinchbeck anticipates a "change in the nature of consciousness," assisted by indigenous insights and psychedelic drug use.The buildup to 2012 echoes excitement and fear expressed on the eve of the new millennium, popularly known as Y2K, though on a smaller scale, says Lynn Garrett, senior religion editor at Publishers Weekly. She says publishers seem to be courting readers who believe humanity is creating its own ecological disasters and desperately needs ancient indigenous wisdom.
View: Full Article | Source: USA Today

Unknown object falls in to Somalia

A baffling device which resembles a satellite or Unidentified Flying Object (U.F.O) has landed in a rural area close to Buulo-Burde town, 220km north of the Somalia capital Mogadishu, eyewitnesses told Shabelle radio on Monday. Villagers report that the device had fallen in a remote jungle area, some 40km north of Bulo-Burde, killing one camel. No experts have reached there to find out exactly what the object is. The unknown object is sitting on an area of one 100 meter square as people grew more concern over the device that it might explode or contaminate the area. The device is said to be intact and not broken as it gives alarming signals. No one knows where the satellite-like device had come from. “In the evening of last Wednesday, a large device flew over us and some time later, we heard a big sound, BAM” said Ilyas Ali, a villager who lives nearby where this large device has fallen.

UFO mystery at RAF Lakenheath

Mystery surrounds claims that jets from RAF Lakenheath were called to intercept a UFO. UFO experts claim to have a recording which they have posted on the internet as proof that London Military Air Traffic Control contacted a flight of US Air Force F-15s from the base, after a UFO was picked up on their radar on January 12.But air traffic control denies making the call – and RAF Lakenheath will not comment without having more detail over the alleged incident.Steve Johnson, features writer for UFO Data Magazine, said: "We are still looking into it and we have made a Freedom of Information request to the Ministry of Defence and have also contacted RAF Lakenheath – but they haven't got back to us yet."The magazine and UFO Monitors East Kent are analysing an audio file picked up by radio enthusiasts purporting to be a call made by London Military Air Traffic Control to a crew of F-15s flying out of RAF Lakenheath.

They claim it tells the American airmen to intercept an unknown target at 3,000 to 4,000ft. The F-15s get a radar lock on the target and make a 'pass' at 17,000ft and then again at 17,700ft. Pilots described the black rock like object as unlike any aircraft they have ever seen."One pilot was heard to say to another: 'Did you see that?' And the other replied: 'Yes, but I don't want to talk about it," said Chris Rolfe, of UFO Monitors East Kent.

Bizarre hexagon spotted on Saturn

One of the most bizarre weather patterns known has been photographed at Saturn, where astronomers have spotted a huge, six-sided feature circling the north pole. Rather than the normally sinuous cloud structures seen on all planets that have atmospheres, this thing is a hexagon. The honeycomb-like feature has been seen before. NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged it more than two decades ago. Now, having spotted it with the Cassini spacecraft, scientists conclude it is a long-lasting oddity. "This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere, where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate, is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is."

The hexagon is nearly 15,000 miles (25,000 kilometers) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it. The thermal imagery shows the hexagon extends about 60 miles (100 kilometers) down into the clouds. At Saturn's south pole, Cassini recently spotted a freaky human eye-like feature that resembles a hurricane.

Semi-identical twins discovered

Scientists have revealed details of the world's only known case of "semi-identical" twins. The journal Nature says the twins are identical on their mother's side, but share only half their genes on their father's side. They are the result of two sperm cells fertilising a single egg, which then divided to form two embryos - and each sperm contributed genes to each child. Each stage is unlikely, and scientists believe the twins are probably unique. These twins were born in the US, but neither their identity or their exact location is being revealed. Their case is also reported in the journal Human Genetics. Normally, twins either develop from the same egg which later splits to form identical twins - who share all their genetic material, or from two separate eggs which are fertilised by two separate sperm. This creates non-identical (fraternal) twins - who share on average 50% of their genetic material.

Sometimes, two sperm can fertilise a single egg, but this is only thought to happen in about 1% of human conceptions. Most embryos created this way do not survive. These twins, who were conceived normally, only came to the attention of scientists because one was born with sexually ambiguous genitalia. The child was discovered to be a hermaphrodite, and has both ovarian and testicular tissue, while the other child is anatomically male.

Rock with 'hair' goes on display

On March 16, 2007, an unusual rock went on display in Beijing. This rock has "hair," almost identical to human hair, growing out of its "head." The rock is iron gray in color, naturally smooth and rounded, and is similar to a cobblestone. There is also a very thin layer of scalp tissue connecting the "hair" to the rock. The hair is grey in color and similar to the color of the rock itself. The hair grows quite naturally from the top with the longest strands being about 15 centimeters (6 inches) long. The hair is slightly coarser than human hair. The rock was found on a beach, and according to Fashion Rock Café's executive Miss Yong, this kind of rock is named a "hair-growing rock". As long as conditions are right, the hair on this rare rock will continue to grow. Only two other hair-growing rocks have been reported in the world; and both are in a Taiwan Museum.
View: Full Article | Source: Epoch Times

France opens secret UFO files

France became the first country to open its files on UFOs Thursday when the national space agency unveiled a website documenting more than 1,600 sightings spanning five decades. The online archives, which will be updated as new cases are reported, catalogues in minute detail cases ranging from the easily dismissed to a handful that continue to perplex even hard-nosed scientists."It is a world first," said Jacques Patenet, the aeronautical engineer who heads the office for the study of "non-identified aerospatial phenomena."Known as OVNIs in French, UFOs have always generated intense interest along with countless conspiracy theories about secretive government cover-ups of findings deemed too sensitive or alarming for public consumption."Cases such as the lady who reported seeing an object that looked like a flying roll of toilet paper" are clearly not worth investigating, said Patenet.But many others involving multiple sightings -- in at least one case involving thousands of people across France -- and evidence such as burn marks and radar trackings showing flight patterns or accelerations that defy the laws of physics are taken very seriously.A phalanx of beefy security guards formed a barrier in front of the space agency (CNES) headquarters where the announcement was made, "to screen out uninvited UFOlogists," an official explained.Of the 1,600 cases registered since 1954, nearly 25 percent are classified as "type D", meaning that "despite good or very good data and credible witnesses, we are confronted with something we can't explain," Patenet said.

On January 8, 1981 outside the town of Trans-en-Provence in southern France, for example, a man working in a field reported hearing a strange whistling sound and seeing a saucer-like object about 2.5 meters (eight feet) in diameter land in his field about 50 meters (yards) away.A dull-zinc grey, the saucer took off, he told police, almost immediately, leaving burn marks. Investigators took photos, and then collected and analyzed samples, and to this day no satisfactory explanation has been made.The nearly 1,000 witness who said they saw flashing lights in the sky on November 5, 1990, by contrast, had simply seen a rocket fragment falling back into earth's atmosphere.Patenet's answer to questions about evidence of life beyond Earth was sure to inflame the suspicions of those convinced the government is holding back: "We do not have the least proof that extra-terrestrials are behind the unexplained phenomena."But then he added: "Nor do we have the least proof that they aren't."The CNES fields between 50 and 100 UFO reports ever year, usually written up by police. Of these, 10 percent are the object of on-site investigations, Patenet said.

New images reveal the 'impossible' on the Sun

The restless bubbling and frothing of the Sun's chaotic surface is astonishing astronomers who have been treated to detailed new images from a Japanese space telescope called Hinode. The observatory will have as dramatic an impact on our understanding of the Sun as the Hubble Space Telescope has had on our view of the universe beyond, scientists told a NASA press conference in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday."Everything we thought we knew about X-ray images of the Sun is now out of date," says Leon Golub from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. "We've seen many new and unexpected things. For that reason alone, the mission is already a success."Hinode (Japanese for "sunrise") was launched in September 2006 to study the solar magnetic field and how magnetic energy is released as the field rises into the Sun's outer atmosphere. The mission was formerly known as Solar-B.The spacecraft carries an optical solar telescope (SOT), an X-ray telescope (XRT) and an ultraviolet spectrometer.

It orbits the Earth in a permanent twilight zone between night and day, which gives it a continuous view of the Sun.Hinode has sent back startling images of the Sun's outer limb. Where astronomers expected to see a calm region called the chromosphere, they saw a seething mass of swaying spikes."These structures are 8000 kilometres long and some extend twice that high," says SOT science team member Alan Title from Lockheed Martin Advance Technology Center in Palo Alto, California, US. "Their speed is such that if you sat on the end of one, which I don't recommend, you could travel from Washington, DC, to San Francisco in about four minutes. These things are really moving."

Hidden fossil, flying dragon

Submitted by Pendekar Timur: Around 120m years ago, as the dinosaurs neared the climax of their dominion, high above their heads an extraordinary creature flitted from tree to tree. The bizarre lizard, named the "flying dragon" by its Chinese discoverers, glided using a flap of skin spread over eight ribs. The find is remarkable because almost all gliding species, such as "flying" frogs and squirrels, use a membrane spread between their toes or between their body and legs to generate lift. Only two other species evolved the rib-gliding tactic. Xianglong zhaoi is also the first lizard fossil with gliding ribs to be found.Li Pipeng and colleagues at the Shenyang Normal University in north-eastern China say: "Gliding is an energetically efficient mode of locomotion that has evolved independently, and in different ways, in several tetrapod groups."

The fossil lizard, which was found in Liaoning, north-eastern China, is 15.5cm (6in) long, including a 9.5cm tail. But its strangest feature is eight elongated ribs around 4cm long, covered in a skin flap. The fossil's extraordinary preservation meant scientists could see details of the flap as well as the bones.

Lunar dust 'may harm astronauts'

Scientists are investigating the possible threat posed to astronauts by inhaling lunar dust. A study suggests the smallest particles in lunar dust might be toxic, if comparisons with dust inhalation cases on Earth apply. Teams hope to carry out experiments on mice to determine whether this is the case or not. Nasa has set up a working group to look into the matter ahead of its planned return to the Moon by 2020. A team at the University of Tennessee (UT) in Knoxville is also looking at ways of using magnets to filter dust from the living environments of lunar bases and spacecraft. The health effects of inhaling lunar dust have been recognised since Nasa's Apollo missions. Astronaut Harrison H (Jack) Schmitt, the last man to step on to the Moon in Apollo 17, complained of "lunar dust hay fever" when his dirty space suit contaminated the habitation module after an energetic foray on the lunar surface. The US space agency (Nasa) is now keen to assess the effects of more prolonged exposure and to address the problem before humans are sent back to the Moon in just over a decade.

Details of the work were presented to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas. Nasa's Lunar Airborne Dust Toxicity Advisory Group (LADTAG), which includes medical doctors as well as scientists from UT, have been working to characterise the dust's properties. "I've been working on lunar samples for 35 years and I have looked at fractions down to a few microns (millionths of a metre), but never anything less," said Professor Larry Taylor, director of the Planetary Geosciences Institute at Tennessee.

Was Marilyn Monroe tricked in to suicide ?

Marilyn Monroe may have been tricked into killing herself as part of a plot hatched with the knowledge of the former US attorney general, Robert Kennedy, according to a secret FBI file. The document, uncovered by an Australian film director, Philippe Mora, suggests Monroe was "induced" to make a suicide attempt, in the belief she would be found in time, and her stomach pumped. Instead, it suggests, she was left to die by staff and friends, including the actor Peter Lawford, who was married to Kennedy's sister, Patricia.The 36-year-old actress was found naked and face down on her bed on 5 August 1962, with a large quantity of barbiturates in her system. For 45 years conspiracy theorists have claimed that her death was not a simple suicide, with some linking it to alleged affairs with Kennedy and his brother, the then President, John F Kennedy.According to the FBI report, Robert Kennedy called Lawford from a San Francisco hotel that night "to find out if Marilyn was dead yet". Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, Mr Mora, who is based in Los Angeles, says he found the file among thousands of classified documents recently released under freedom of information laws. Compiled by a "former Special Agent" whose name is deleted, it is headed "Robert F Kennedy".The FBI received the file on 19 October 1964. It contains a report that claims Monroe was deliberately given the means to fake a suicide attempt.

Those in on the conspiracy, as well as Lawford, were her psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson, her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, and her secretary and press agent, Pat Newcomb.The former agent warns he cannot evaluate the authenticity of the information. Even so, saysMora, his file was circulated to five top FBI officers, including Clyde Tolson, right-hand man of bureau chief J Edgar Hoover.The report that it cites suggests the motive was to silence Monroe, who had threatened to make public a "romance and sex affair" with Robert Kennedy. Monroe had, it says, realised Kennedy was never going to divorce his wife and marry her, as promised. Kennedy had also reneged on a pledge to "take care of everything" after the actress's contract with 20th Century Fox was cancelled. The pair had "unpleasant words" on the phone.

Nebraska's own Roswell of 1884

Very few people have heard of Max, Neb. A cursory look at the Google Map of the town shows just how small it is - under 20 blocks, a blip in southwest Nebraska. It's just eight miles from the seat of Dundy County: Benkelman, population 914.But Max, the blip it may be, is the closest town to an incident in that occurred 1884.The Nebraska Nugget reported, "About 35 miles northwest of Benkelman, Dundy County, on the 6th of June (1884) a very startling phenomenon occurred. It seems that John W. Ellis and three of his herdsmen and a number of other cowboys were out engaged in a roundup. They were startled by a terrific whirring noise over their heads, and turning their eyes saw a blazing body falling like a shot to Earth. It struck beyond them, being hidden from view by a bank."One of the herdsmen, Alf Williamson, was burned as he approached the craft, which had created a split in the ground as it dragged to a stop. He was taken back to Ellis' home and treated for his burns.E.W. Rawlins, the brand inspector for the district, came to inspect it.The Nebraska State Journal reported on the event in 1887, saying, "One piece that looked like the blade of a propeller screw, of a metal of an appearance like brass, about 16 inches wide, three inches thick and three-and-a-half feet long, was picked up by a spade. It would not weigh more than five pounds, but appeared as strong and compact as any known metal. A fragment of a wheel with a milled rim, apparently having had a diameter of seven or eight feet, was also picked up.

It seemed to be of the same material and had the same remarkable lightness."The lack of physical evidence means there's nothing much left today, and John Buder, a field researcher with the Mutual UFO Network of Nebraska, said that the people of Dundy County shy away from talking about the event.Most of his investigation into it has been research. He first stumbled across the story in a tourist's guide to Nebraska. From there, he's found it in multiple books on the subject. "There has been a lot of studies made on UFO crashes," Buder said. "The people who I would claim know the most have not identified it as a hoax."It was the second UFO crash Buder knows of, and the first to be recorded in newspapers of the time. But once the story came out, it started a worldwide wave of similar stories - some more reputable than others.
View: Full Article | Source: Daily Nebraskan

Strange DNA results for 'alien' hybrid

Milagros Garcia is an alleged Alien and Human inter-species hybrid. The blood DNA from this Puerto Rican woman has yielded analyses so unusual and interesting that the physician involved is now interested in meeting the subject for further study. The DNA is possible in humans but is very rare. Ms. Garcia claims that she is the offspring of an alien encounter. The Doctor is not interested in the UFO/ alien phenomena he wants answers as to why her DNA has such rare qualities. A Case similar to this is being investigated in New Paris Ohio. A woman there has exceptional skills and get by on two hours of sleep a night. Omnec Onec alleges that she is a female extraterrestrial who originally came to Earth in 1955, who was born 246 Earth years ago. Omnec Onec says she was raised on the planet Venus in a town called Teutonia (a city whose name reflects earlier Venus-Earth contacts that included a trip to Venus by a German scientist). She alleges that she lived on an astral plane -- without a physical body -- until she was instructed by her leaders to travel to Earth with a message of peace and brotherhood. After landing in Earth, she said she was substituted for a seven-year-old girl who had just been killed in a bus wreck accident. She was raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, by the grandmother of Sheila, the girl whom she had replaced.

She grew up in what was to all outward appearances a normal life, never speaking of Venus, and endured the struggles that allowed her to deal with her own karmic past. She grew up, married and moved to Chicago, where she raised three children. worked as a bar maid, a clothes designer and a cashier. As a young adult, however, she began to manifest her second mission, to offer humanity an increased awareness of their relation to spirit. Omnec says she was trained to live as a human in an ancient monastery in Tibet.

The flying saucers of North America

Under the cover of darkness on 07 October 1959, a convoy of military vehicles escorted a flatbed truck through the abandoned streets of Malton, Canada just outside of Toronto. Local police had arranged to clear the route from a top-secret aircraft hangar to Toronto harbor, so the drivers paid little mind to traffic laws as they traversed the city. Upon arrival at the harbor the concealed cargo would be transferred to a US Navy tugboat, where it would make its way to a special NASA research facility in the United States under close guard. The exaggerated security was understandable given the circumstances: The secret stowed beneath the truck's tarps was a real-life flying saucer.If eyewitness reports are to be believed, the skies over the United States were swarming with unidentified flying objects during the early 1950s. Such sightings were not unheard of previously, but never before had the reports been so frequent and widespread. Some people suspected hoaxes and hysteria, and others speculated about otherworldly origins. While few doubted that there was something strange lingering in America's air, US military leaders were skeptical that the blobs of light were piloted by moon-men or martians. They were quite concerned, however, about the possibility that the blob-occupants were Russian-speaking.

There had long been credible rumors of secret Nazi "flying disk" attack planes being tested during the final few months of the Third Reich, and with the sharp rise in saucer sightings US officials wondered if Soviet scientists might have plundered and perfected the technology. Fortunately, the US wasn't too far behind; by the mid 1950s they had their own flying saucer program well underway. The United States' venture in flying saucer technology began in 1953 during a routine visit to Avro Aircraft, an outfit located in Malton. A gaggle of US defense experts were inspecting the shiny new CF-100 fighter jet when their tour was commandeered by a company engineer named John C. M. Frost– better known as "Jack" Frost. Frost was a highly accomplished aeronautics designer, as well as the head of the company's Special Projects Group. He showered the unsuspecting Americans with enthusiasm and information regarding one of Avro's secret but recently abandoned ideas. Frost's "Project Y" was a flat, wedge-shaped theoretical aircraft intended to lift off vertically like a helicopter while also possessing the speed, agility, and high-altitude capabilities of a jet fighter.

'Cave entrances' spotted on Mars

Scientists studying pictures from Nasa's Odyssey spacecraft have spotted what they think may be seven caves on the surface of Mars. The candidate caves are on the flanks of the Arsia Mons volcano and are of sufficient depth their floors mostly cannot be seen through the opening. Details were presented here at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas. Temperature data from Mars Odyssey's Themis instrument support the idea. The authors say that the possible discovery of caves on the Red Planet is significant. The caves may be the only natural structures capable of protecting primitive life forms from micrometeoroids, UV radiation, solar flares and high energy particles that bombard the planet's surface. The spacecraft spotted what seemed to be vertical "skylight" entrances to caves below the surface. There is a sheer drop of between about 80m and 130m or more to the cave floors below. During the day, one of the features - nicknamed "Annie" - is warmer than surrounding pits and cooler than sunlit areas.

Night time temperatures are warmer than nearly all surrounding areas. Co-author Glen Cushing, from the US Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona, said this was exactly what would be expected if the feature were a cave. "Nothing like these features has been seen elsewhere on Mars," he told BBC News. The researchers describe the candidate caves as "seven sisters" and have given them all names: Dena, Chloe, Wendy, Annie, Abbey, Nicki and Jeanne. The cave entrances are between 100m and 252m wide (330-828ft). Because in most cases the cave floors cannot be seen, only minimum depths are known: the researchers calculated they must extend between 73m and 96m (240-315ft) below the surface. However, in one image taken of Dena by the Mars Odyssey Camera, a floor can be seen. Using the data, the authors calculated that this cave must extend 130m (426ft) below the surface.

Kevin Randle's Roswell claims investigated

Sheik Khalid Mohammad, the gulf millionaire playboy who is one of the financial backers behind the new reality-based TV series "Secret Wars" which chronicles the real life activities of Captain Kal Korff of the Israeli-founded Special Secret Services (S3), has hired the firm of KPMG to begin an immediate forensic audit and investigation of UFO researcher Kevin Randle's numerous claims and writings about the purported Roswell "UFO" crash of 1947. "Mr Kevin Randle has made very serious and completely false allegations against our main star, Mr. Captain Kal Korff. Such lies are also a libel and slander against all of us, especially myself as a financial investor. Since Mr. Randle claims he has 'the truth' and even had the ego large enough to name his book 'The TRUTH About the Roswell UFO Crash' I have decided to order a forensic investigation into Mr. Randles numerous statements and wild accusations." the Sheik said in remarks prepared in advance and communicated by his translator.

"The UFO field is in serious trouble. We will spare no expense to expose before the public and even bring to justice in the courts if necessary many of the lies and slanders and blood libels that are often and eagerly spread by many so-called 'experts' in this field who have the public and the media fooled concerning their intentions and their motivations."It is an honor to document all of this for the world to see. It is something that should have been done many years ago. Unless KPMG cannot finish their task on time, we plan to release this audit exposing Mr. Randle's very poor research in time for the 60th anniversary of the Roswell UFO anniversary exploitation festivals."

Cassini finds 'seas' on Titan

Scientists have discovered what appear to be sea-size bodies of liquid, probably methane or ethane, on the surface of Saturn's largest moon, including one about as big as Montana. The discovery by the international Cassini spacecraft was welcomed by researchers, who have long theorized that Titan possessed hydrocarbon seas because of methane and other organic compounds in its thick, largely nitrogen atmosphere. Until now, Cassini had spotted only clusters of small lakes on the planet-size moon."They're very obvious. There's nothing subtle about them," said Cassini scientist Jonathan Lunine of the University of Arizona, Tucson.Researchers using visual and radar imaging uncovered evidence of at least two seas on Titan's hazy north pole.Cassini's camera last month spied a large, irregular feature stretching 680 miles long with a surface area similar to Montana's, or to Asia's landlocked Caspian Sea. Its radar instrument swept over the feature's northern tip and determined that it likely contains liquid methane or ethane because of its smooth appearance. However, scientists don't know whether the entire area is filled with liquid.The spacecraft also discerned another body one-fifth the size of Titan's "Caspian Sea."

With a surface area of about 46,000 square miles, it is larger than Lakes Superior and Ontario combined, scientists said.While there's no scientific definition of what constitutes a lake or sea on Titan, the newly found features are significantly larger than previously discovered bodies of liquid on the frigid moon and should be considered seas, Lunine said.Results were presented Tuesday at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.Titan is one of the few objects in the outer solar system with a significant atmosphere, and scientists have long puzzled over its source. Methane is a flammable gas on Earth but is liquid on Titan because of the moon's intense atmospheric pressure and cold.Judging by their sizes and depths, the newly discovered seas likely aren't responsible for replenishing the long-term methane found in the moon's atmosphere, Lunine said. Instead, the source likely is underground methane reservoirs that vent to the surface.

Rotorua a 'hive of UFO activity'

A surgeon hailed a pioneer in the removal of devices implanted into humans by aliens is headed for Rotorua. Dr Roger Leir won't be performing surgery when he visits in September but will speak at a conference, hosted by Ufocus New Zealand, which will focus on UFO sightings and other extraterrestrial-related phenomena.Although Rotorua was chosen to host the conference for practical reasons, it is coincidentally part of a triangular section of the Bay of Plenty - between Waihi Beach, Whakatane and Rotorua - which is a particular hotspot of UFO activity, according to Ufocus founder Suzanne Hansen. "There is also a pattern of increased sightings whenever there is seismic activity. It may be that the UFOs are tracking what is happening with the tectonic plates."Ufocus treasurer and conference facilitator Graeme Opie, who is also the senior air traffic controller at Hamilton Airport, said in the past year there had been about 12 "credible" UFO sightings in the skies over New Zealand."A lot of people don't report them because they are scared of being labelled kooks ... or they report them directly to the police or the defence force and we never get to hear about them."Between 150 and 250 people are expected at the conference in Rotorua with Dr Leir as a keynote speaker.

While his resume sounds like part of a script from an episode of The X Files, the organisers of the Future Perspectives conference, at the Rotorua Convention Centre in September, insist the American is the real deal and they want to be taken seriously.Dr Leir, who holds qualifications as a foot surgeon, is touted as a world pioneer in the surgical removal of devices planted into people, supposedly following alien abductions.According to the biography posted on the Ufocus website, Dr Leir has performed 12 separate operations to remove implanted objects from people, the most recent in September. As with the other 11 cases, the patient was an abductee who had "a lifetime of close encounter experiences".The website claims the objects he removed, some of which look similar to small metal pins, had been tested in some of the world's most prestigious laboratories and baffled scientists, in part because "some of the tests show [radioactive] isotopic ratios not of this world ... comparisons have been made to meteorite samples".

What if the asteroid had missed ?

The extinction of the dinosaurs was most probably caused by an asteroid hitting the Earth - but what would have happened if the giant space rock had missed? For a long time it was thought that dinosaurs were a lumbering, cold-blooded extinction just waiting to happen. Even the word dinosaur has come to mean something that has outlived its time. The scientific argument was that as cold-blooded creatures, dinosaurs would not have stood a chance of surviving an ice age. "According to the first imaginings of palaeontologists and the general public about dinosaurs, we thought of them as reptiles," says Kristi Curry-Rogers, from the Science Museum of Minnesota. "'Reptile' is a word which comes with a lot of other connotations, like cold-blooded, slow-moving, sprawling, scaly skins, kind of stupid." But more recent discoveries, such as dinosaur fossils in both polar regions, reveal that these animals were far more adaptable than previously thought. Dr Curry-Rogers has analysed fossilised bones from Late Cretaceous (65-99 million years ago) dinosaurs and found them to have more in common with mammals and birds than reptiles. The evidence points to them being fast-growing and, crucially, that at least some of them were warm-blooded to some degree.

"They were perfectly well-adapted to deal with the problems of maintaining a body temperature," Dr Curry-Rogers told the BBC's Horizon programme. In other words, some of the dinosaurs were more than equipped to survive almost anything that the evolving planet had to throw at them. "They were the superlatives; they were the biggest, the heaviest, the meanest, the longest. You name it, dinosaurs were it," says fellow palaeontologist Phil Currie, from the University of Alberta in Canada, who has access to one of the richest areas of dinosaur research in the world.

View: Full Article | Source: BBC News

Key error claimed in Jesus documentary

A scholar looking into the factual basis of a popular but widely criticized documentary that claims to have located the tomb of Jesus said Tuesday that a crucial piece of evidence filmmakers used to support their claim is a mistake. Stephen Pfann, a textual scholar and paleographer at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, said he has released a paper claiming the makers of "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" were mistaken when they identified an ancient ossuary from the cave as belonging to the New Testament's Mary Magdalene. The film's director, Simcha Jacobovici, responded that other researchers agreed with the documentary's conclusions. Produced by Oscar-winning director James Cameron, the documentary has drawn intense media coverage for its claims challenging accepted Christian dogma. Despite widespread ridicule from scholars, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" drew more than 4 million viewers when it aired on the Discovery Channel on March 4. A companion book, "The Jesus Family Tomb," has rocketed to sixth place on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list.

The film and book suggest that a first-century ossuary found in a south Jerusalem cave in 1980 contained the remains of Jesus, contradicting the Christian belief that he was resurrected and ascended to heaven. Ossuaries are stone boxes used at the time to store the bones of the dead. The filmmakers also suggest that Mary Magdalene was buried in the tomb, that she and Jesus were married, and that an ossuary labeled "Judah son of Jesus" belonged to their son. The scholars who analyzed the Greek inscription on one of the ossuaries after its discovery read it as "Mariamene e Mara," meaning "Mary the teacher" or "Mary the master."
View: Full Article | Source: The Boston Channel

Confirming Einstein's theory of light

Work completed by physics professors at Rowan University shows that light is made of particles and waves, a finding that refutes a common belief held for about 80 years. Shahriar S. Afshar, the visiting professor who is currently at Boston's Institute for Radiation-Induced Mass Studies (IRIMS), led a team, including Rowan physics professors Drs. Eduardo Flores and Ernst Knoesel and student Keith McDonald, that proved Afshar’s original claims, which were based on a series of experiments he had conducted several years ago. An article on the work titled "Paradox in Wave-Particle Duality" recently published in Foundations of Physics, a prestigious, refereed academic journal, supports Albert Einstein’s long-debated belief that quantum physics is incomplete. For eight decades the scientific community generally had supported Niels Bohr’s ideas commonly known as the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. In 1927, in his “Principle of Complementarity,” he asserted that in any experiment light shows only one aspect at a time, either it behaves as a wave or as a particle. Einstein was deeply troubled by that principle, since he could not accept that any external measurement would prevent light to reveal its full dual nature, according to Afshar.

The fundamental problem, however, seemed to be that one has to destroy the photon in order to measure either aspects of it. Then, once destroyed, there is no light left to measure the other aspect. “About 150 years ago, light was thought to behave solely as a wave similar to sound and water waves. In 1905, Einstein observed that light might also act as being made out of small particles. Since then physicists found it difficult understanding the full nature of light since in some situations it acts like a particle and in others like a wave,” Flores said. “This dual nature of light led to the insight that all fundamental physical objects include a wave and a particle aspect, even electrons, protons and students.”

UFOs sighted during Lunar eclipse

Mystery surrounds the sighting of a "spooky" UFO over west Oxfordshire. An object, described as "a slow-moving, orange light" was seen passing over Witney during the lunar eclipse two Saturdays ago.Among those who saw the object, shortly after 10.30pm, were Derek Hall, of Jacobs Mill, Witney, and his girlfriend Paula Siford.There were also reports of one or more unidentified objects flying over Oxford. Yet a week on, their identity still remains unknown.Mr Hall, a 43-year-old sales executive for a security company, said: "It was spooky. We were looking at the eclipse when we saw this bright glow, just to the side of the moon."It appeared as a slow-moving, orange light - as if a light aircraft was in flames. It was moving in a northerly direction, then bore round to the east. It disappeared in the direction of Woodstock. "There was no sound at all. It was very strange."He said it was not a plane, and could not have been a meteorite, as it changed direction.He added: "We thought there might have been something in the news since, but there hasn't been. I still don't know what it was, but I'm sure others must have seen it."I don't know whether the object we saw was extra-terrestrial, but it was certainly an unidentified flying object."A Witney householder, who asked not to be named, said: "We saw it up in the sky. It was very unusual."

Another witness was 14-year-old Lewis Ashton, who watched the object from his home in Burford Road, Witney. The Wood Green School pupil said: "It wasn't a plane or a satellite. I don't know what it was, but it seemed quite strange."Mr Hall contacted the Anomalous Phenomena Research Agency - which investigates UFO sightings in Oxfordshire and the Thames Valley.Research co-ordinator Brian P James said there had been sightings in Oxford at about the same time.He said: "We did get a report of a set of four low-flying lights heading east to west over Christ Church Meadow in Oxford. They were so low the witness thought it was an aircraft crashing. These lights split into two pairs, which then went off to the north and south. The witness phoned her daughter in Barton, who then saw another, or similar, four lights coming from the east."

View: Full Article | Source: Oxford Mail

Trying to meet the neighbours

Is there anybody out there? Give the question some thought before you answer, because it’s more perilous than it seems. Deny the possibility of a universe populated with intelligent extraterrestrials that can speak and mate and battle with humanity, and the science-fiction canon collapses; more than a century’s worth of novels, from “The War of the Worlds” to “Old Man’s War,” would find their speculative foundations swept out from underneath them. But admit to a sincere belief in the remotest potential for alien life, and prepare to be fitted for a straitjacket; a recent survey conducted by Baylor University found that more Americans believe in ancient civilizations like the lost continent of Atlantis than in U.F.O.’s. If intelligent humans think the existence of aliens is a perplexing notion, the idea that a small group of astronomers and physicists are attempting to determine if aliens exist is even more so. To the uninitiated and the ignorant (and those of us who fall into both camps), the science of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is as inscrutable as the phenomenon it seeks, conjuring up images of mad scientists out of old EC comic books, their ears trained to intricate listening devices as they scan the interstellar static for unearthly broadcasts — or worse, of hapless crackpots chasing down every report of alien abduction they read in Weekly World News.

Surprisingly, the science-fiction community (which knows a thing or two about being misunderstood and dismissed) is not unequivocally supportive of SETI’s work. In a 2003 lecture entitled “Aliens Cause Global Warming" Michael Crichton declared, “SETI is unquestionably a religion.” And authors free of Crichton’s political baggage do not cast SETI’s mission in particularly upbeat terms, either: in his short story “The Puzzle,” the Serbian author Zoran Zivkovic writes of a scientist pursuing a SETI-like experiment, whose “gloomy exultation” can end only with irrefutable evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence — only “with contact made would he be able to say that his life’s work had meaning.”
View: Full Article | Source: New York Times

Will biology solve the universe ?

For years, scientists have tried to develop a universal theory of everything. Steven Hawking predicts that such a theory will be discovered in the next 20 years. A new theory asserts that biology, not physics, will be the key to unlocking the deepest mysteries of the universe, such as quantum mechanics."The answer to the universe is biology -- it's as simple as that," says Dr. Robert Lanza, vice president of research and scientific development at Advanced Cell Technology. He details his theory in The American Scholar's spring issue, published on Thursday. Lanza says scientists will establish a unified theory only if they radically rethink their understanding of space and time using a "biocentric" approach. His article is essentially a biological and philosophical response to Hawking's A Brief History of Time, in which he questions how we interpret the big bang, the existence of space and time, as well as many other theories -- assertions that might ruffle the feathers of some physical scientists.But Lanza is used to controversy. The 2005 Wired Rave Award winner has seen plenty in response to his stem cell and cloning work at Advanced Cell. And he's ready for the scientific row his latest work is likely to engender."The urgent and primary questions of the universe have been undertaken by those physicists who are trying to explain the origins of everything with grand unified theories," says Lanza in his article.

"But as exciting and glamorous as these theories are, they are an evasion, if not a reversal, of the central mystery of knowledge: that the laws of the world were somehow created to produce the observer."At several points in his article, he argues that cosmologists are doing work that has been hijacked by creationists."In cosmology, scientists have discovered that the universe has a long list of traits that make it appear as if everything it contains -- from atoms to stars -- was tailor-made for us," he writes. "Indeed, the lack of a scientific explanation has allowed these facts to be hijacked as a defense of intelligent design."
View: Full Article | Source: Wired News

Ancient Structure On The Moon Filmed By Armstrong, 1969

Seeking life on Europa

As NASA develops its next "flagship" mission to the outer solar system, Jupiter's enigmatic moon Europa should be the target, says Arizona State University professor Ronald Greeley. Although Europa lies five times farther from the Sun than Earth, he notes it may offer a home for life.Greeley, a Regents' Professor, heads the Planetary Geology Group in ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration. He presented the Europa proposal Feb. 18 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco."Europa is unique in our solar system," says Greeley. "It's a rocky object a little smaller than our Moon, and it's covered with a layer of water 100 miles deep." This holds more water than all the oceans on Earth, he explains. Greeley adds that Europa also has the two other basic ingredients of life -- organic chemistry and a source of energy.Scientists have identified four candidate worlds beyond Earth that might contain life, either now or in the past, Greeley says. These four are Mars, Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus, and Jupiter's moon Europa.Mars is the target of numerous ongoing missions, and NASA's Cassini spacecraft is studying both Titan and Enceladus at present. Cassini's results, however, show that Titan and Enceladus have temperatures hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit below zero and may not hold any liquid water.

NASA's Galileo mission surveyed Europa in the late 1990s. Greeley notes the mission found that Europa's surface ice was mixed with organic minerals that came up from the solid rocky part of the moon or were deposited by meteorite and comet impacts at the surface. Yet Galileo's results raised more questions than answers."We know Europa's surface is frozen," Greeley says. "But we don't know if it's frozen all the way down, or if there's an ocean under an ice shell."The ice thickness is a key question, notes Greeley."Ultimately, we want to get down through that ice shell and into the ocean where any action is," he says. "So it matters whether the ice is 10 yards thick, or 10 miles or more. The data we have today will never answer that question."
View: Full Article | Source: Astrobiology Magazine

Huge 'ocean' discovered inside Earth

Scientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean. The discovery marks the first time such a large body of water has found in the planet’s deep mantle.The finding, made by Michael Wysession, a seismologist at Washington State University in St. Louis, and his former graduate student Jesse Lawrence, now at the University of California, San Diego, will be detailed in a forthcoming monograph to be published by the American Geophysical Union.The pair analyzed more than 600,000 seismograms—records of waves generated by earthquakes traveling through the Earth—collected from instruments scattered around the planet. They noticed a region beneath Asia where seismic waves appeared to dampen, or “attenuate,” and also slow down slightly. “Water slows the speed of waves a little,” Wysession explained. “Lots of damping and a little slowing match the predictions for water very well.”Previous predictions calculated that if a cold slab of the ocean floor were to sink thousands of miles into the Earth’s mantle, the hot temperatures would cause water stored inside the rock to evaporate out.“That is exactly what we show here,” Wysession said. “Water inside the rock goes down with the sinking slab and it’s quite cold, but it heats up the deeper it goes, and the rock eventually becomes unstable and loses its water.”

The water then rises up into the overlying region, which becomes saturated with water. “It would still look like solid rock to you,” Wysession told LiveScience. “You would have to put it in the lab to find the water in it.”Although they appear solid, the composition of some ocean floor rocks is up to 15 percent water. “The water molecules are actually stuck in the mineral structure of the rock,” Wysession explained. “As you heat this up, it eventually dehydrates. It’s like taking clay and firing it to get all the water out.”The researchers estimate that up to 0.1 percent of the rock sinking down into the Earth’s mantle in that part of the world is water, which works out to about an Arctic Ocean’s worth of water.“That’s a real back of the envelope type calculation,” Wysession said. “That’s the best that we can do at this point.”
View: Full Article | Source: Yahoo! News

1997 Art Bell interview with Col. Philip Corso - Roswell UFO crash

A multimedia production that provides a greater understanding of the implications of the UFO issue, what it means to our future on Earth, ... all » and how we can benefit.

It features warnings by the spokesperson for the late NASA rocket scientist turned whistleblower, Dr. Wernher von Braun, and President Eisenhower (Five Star General), as well as video footage of Dr. Steven Greer, Hon. Paul Hellyer, and others.

The Art Bell radio interview with the late Col. Philip Corso is the main feature and also includes Col. John Alexander as guest. It was broadcasted July 23, 1997.

Corso was a member of President Eisenhower's National Security Council and former head of the Foreign Technology Desk at the U.S. Army's Research & Development department. He came forward to reveal his personal stewardship of alien artifacts from the Roswell crash. In his book, "The Day After Roswell," he told how he spearheaded the Army's reverse-engineering project using technology from a crashed UFO that led to today's integrated circuit chips, fiber optics, and lasers.

He told Art that he came forward to leave a legacy to younger people and the children who he feels have a right to know the truth.

The Tomb Of Jesus?

New scientific evidence, including DNA analysis conducted at one of the world’s foremost molecular genetics laboratories, as well as studies by leading scholars, suggests a 2,000-year-old Jerusalem tomb could have once held the remains of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.



The findings also suggest that Jesus and Mary Magdalene might have produced a son named Judah.

The DNA findings, alongside statistical conclusions made about the artifacts — originally excavated in 1980 — open a potentially significant chapter in Biblical archaeological history.
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