Radio energy detected from deep space

An international team of astronomers, including one Australian, has detected a burst of radio energy from deep space using the Parkes radio telescope. The huge burst of energy, described by one of the astronomers as "strong by astronomical standards", is possibly the result of two stars colliding or the death of a black hole."The burst appears to have originated from the distant universe and may have been produced by an exotic event such as the collision of two neutron stars or the last gasp of a black hole as it evaporates completely," said lead researcher Assistant Professor Duncan Lorimer, from West Virginia University.Professor Matthew Bailes, of Swinburne University and the Australian on the team, said radio energy bursts were usually very faint at such extreme distances.

"Normally the kind of cosmic activity we're looking for at this distance would be very faint but this was so bright that it saturated the equipment," he said."It was sitting there just booming in - it was very, very bright," he said.The "radio hyperburst" is located millions of light years away and is believed to have originated from a source less than 1500 kilometres in size, and lasted five milliseconds.It was so strong when first detected six years ago, that it was dismissed as man-made interference.

Shape-shifting UFOs

There is no doubt that UFOs are strange. The fact that they are usually seen silently zipping around in our skies is weird enough; but throw in the fact that many UFOs that appear solid are seen to be constantly changing shape and size, it's enough to drive any serious UFO researcher to take up butterfly collecting instead.It is one of the great mysteries of UFOs, how can something that looks so real not behave like a solid object and change shape as rapidly as smoke in the wind? This has led to wild speculations on the true nature of UFOs and allowed skeptics to dismiss the entire phenomenon as simply misinterpreted natural events.What hard-core skeptics fail to take into consideration is the thousands of diverse UFO sightings that have come in over the years that exhibit the same shape-shifting characteristics. A reported sighting of a weird object that changes shape can be a good way to distinguish a real UFO from one that is fraudulent.UFOs are seen to come in all kinds of different shapes and sizes, ranging from saucers, ovals, cigars, spheres, rocket and triangular shaped. They can suddenly appear and disappear, only to reappear in a completely different location. They can split in two and rejoin again instantly. This has led to all sorts of heated arguments between UFO researchers who have a preferred shape, choosing to throw out cases that don't meet their criteria. However, if you take into account all of the reports of UFOs seen to morph from one shape into another, then possibly the vast diversity of UFOs is not so difficult to explain after all.

On June 29, 1954, A British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) Stratocruiser Centaurus left New York Idlewild airport bound for London. Just after 9:00pm the aircraft passed 170 miles southwest of Goose Bay, Labrador, flying northeast at 19,000ft. The crew suddenly noticed an object to the west of the plane that was roughly five degrees aft of the port wing at a distance of about five miles. As they drew closer, the crew could see a large pear-shaped UFO flying in formation with six other smaller objects. Against the sunset these objects appeared dark with the six smaller UFOs changing their positions around the larger craft which seemed to change from its original pear shape to a telephone handset shape and, in the words of Captain Howard: "what looked like a flying arrow - an enormous delta-winged plane turning in to close with us." The anomalous shape-shifting object seemed to be solid with definite, clearly-defined edges.

Baby dinosaurs unearthed in China

Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: The fossilised remains of six infant dinosaurs that died in a volcanic mudflow have been found in China. Researchers say the animals were less than four years old, and probably formed a "creche" composed of babies from at least two different clutches. The Psittacosaurus discovery indicates the animals had started forming social groups much earlier than previously thought, the scientists add. The 120-million-year-old fossils are reported in the journal Palaeontology. Research on the herd was led by Dr Paul Barrett, from London's Natural History Museum. He says the specimens are spectacularly well preserved and together offer a unique insight into the behaviour of the Psittacosaurus, which sported a parrot-like beak. "What [this find] shows is that these animals actually lived in small groups and not only did they live in groups but those groups were made up of individuals from different sets of clutches," Dr Barrett explained.

"So, one animal came along and laid a set of eggs somewhere, another one laid another set somewhere else - and individuals from each of those clutches came together to form a herd and that's the first time that we have good evidence of herding behaviour in these early dinosaurs," he told BBC News.It is this evidence of herding in Psittacosaurus that convinces Dr Barrett that the dinosaur was an inherently social creature; and that the horns that came later in its more flamboyant descendent, the iconic Triceratops, probably evolved for mating rituals rather than as a defence to butt away predators such as T. Rex. "It's a very similar argument to that which has been proposed for looking at the evolution of things like horns and antlers in living mammals," he said.

Cave entrances found on Mars

NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has discovered entrances to seven possible caves on the slopes of a Martian volcano. The find is fueling interest in potential underground habitats and sparking searches for caverns elsewhere on the Red Planet. Very dark, nearly circular features ranging in diameter from about 328 to 820 feet puzzled researchers who found them in images taken by NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor orbiters. Using Mars Odyssey's infrared camera to check the daytime and nighttime temperatures of the circles, scientists concluded that they could be windows into underground spaces.Evidence that the holes may be openings to cavernous spaces comes from the temperature differences detected from infrared images taken in the afternoon vs. the pre-dawn morning. From day to night, temperatures of the holes change only about one-third as much as the change in temperature of surrounding ground surface.

"They are cooler than the surrounding surface in the day and warmer at night," said Glen Cushing of the U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Team and of Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Ariz. "Their thermal behavior is not as steady as large caves on Earth that often maintain a fairly constant temperature, but it is consistent with these being deep holes in the ground."A report of this discovery by Cushing and his co-authors was published online recently by the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "Whether these are just deep vertical shafts or openings into spacious caverns, they are entries to the subsurface of Mars," said co-author Tim Titus of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff. "Somewhere on Mars, caves might provide a protected niche for past or current life, or shelter for humans in the future."

The bizarre case of Ninel Kulagina

Psychokinesis, or the ability to manipulate objects with the mind, is a notoriously difficult to prove ability. Most famously Uri Geller achieved fame in the 1970's with his seemingly amazing ability to bend spoons with nothing other than the power of his mind. Early on in his career, a number of scientists concluded that Geller does indeed posses psychic and psychokinetic abilities, however controversy over Geller's power developed after a number of stage magician's, most recently Criss Angel, claimed that Geller's abilities are simple stage magic tricks. Whichever is the case, Geller remains the most public individual claiming to have these powers.More obscurely, and more defiant against attempts to debunk, is the case of Ninel Kulagina. A female soldier in the Soviet Red Army, Kulagina found that whenever she became angry poltergeist activity would manifest in the room around her. After some time, she began to sense that the force that was responsible for the moving objects came from within her, rather than from a spirit. With practice, she learned how to focus her power and move objects at will. Soviet Scientist Edward Naumov was among the first to test her claims by spreading a box of matches on a table.

Straining to the point of shivering, Ninel spread her hands over the matches and within seconds the matches moved to the corner of the table in a cluster, and fell to the floor one by one. Ninel was then tested by Dr. Genady Sergeyev, who made more than 60 films of Ninel exhibiting her psychokinetic abilities. These films range from Ninel manipulating a broken egg in a tank of water, seperating the yolk and the white and moving each to opposite sides of the tank. Ninel was standing several feet from the tank at the time. In another experiment, a beating frog's heart suspended in a solution was sped up and then stopped by Ninel, demonstrating that her abilities extended beyond moving inanimate objects to the manipulation of living cells.

Ireland's UFO files released

A dossier on unidentified flying objects (UFOs), kept by the Irish Defence Forces for 37 years, has finally emerged. But anyone hoping to confirm the existence of little green men will be disappointed. The best the file comes up with are flying saucers, objects shaped like fried eggs and flashing coloured lights - some of the sightings logged in documents dating back to 1947.The file - released to the Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act - includes press cuttings about reported sightings of UFOs, along with classified memos and other correspondence.In recent months, the British and French authorities opened their files on UFO sightings to the public. A spokesman for the Department of Defence said that, since 1984 the UFO file was no longer maintained by the Defence Forces.The file up to then includes a report of a UFO sighting in Boherlahan, near Cashel, Co Tipperary, in 1984. It was "the same shape as a fried egg" and had "some kind of an aerial on top and it was brown in colour", local teenager Conor Dwyer told The Irish Times at the time.

A 10-year-old boy reported it made a buzzing noise like a chainsaw and said the bright lights dazzled him.The file also contains a classified memo on an alleged sighting of a flying projectile over a bog in Donegal in May the same year. An off-duty garda and a farmer were cutting turf near Falcarragh when they heard "a gushing sound". The garda looked up and saw a grey object travelling at speed over his head. It was shaped like a household iron with fins at the back.The memo noted the garda was "extremely reluctant" to be interviewed but agreed after receiving assurances his identity would not be revealed. However, the garda's cover was blown a month later in Phoenix. The magazine speculated it had been a sea-launched guided missile.An early entry in the file concerns a statement by a Cahirciveen shopkeeper and farmer in June 1947. He told gardaí he saw a circular object moving "faster than a motor car" through the sky. "It was flat and was like a big wheel or large plate . . . the rim was white and it was hollow in the centre".

Velociraptor dinosaur 'had feathers'

he ferocious Velociraptor, made famous in the movie Jurassic Park, was probably covered in feathers. A re-assessment of a fossil forearm unearthed in Mongolia in 1998 has revealed an array of small bumps. In modern birds, such "quill knobs" are the locations where secondary feathers, the flight or wing feathers, are anchored to the bone with ligaments. The American Museum of Natural History and the Field Museum of Natural History report their study in Science magazine. Quill knobs on living bird species are most evident in strong flyers. Those birds that primarily soar or that have lost the ability to fly entirely, however, typically lack signs of quill knobs, the research team says. "A lack of quill knobs does not necessarily mean that a dinosaur did not have feathers," explained Alan Turner, from the AMNH and Columbia University, New York, US. "Finding quill knobs on Velociraptor, though, means that it definitely had feathers.

This is something we'd long suspected, but no one had been able to prove." The Mongolian Velociraptor specimen's short arms indicate that the creature itself could not fly; but its feathers may have been useful for display, to shield nests, for temperature control or to help it manoeuvre while running, the team says. The latest study will undoubtedly alter the perceptions some people have built up of the beast thanks to the successful movie franchise. The real creature belonged to the Dromaeosauridae, a family of small to medium-sized, lightly built and fast-running dinosaurs from the Cretaceous Period (146 million to 65 million years ago) who appear from the fossil record to have been very effective predators.

Czech crash victim wakes up speaking English

A Czech speedway driver knocked unconscious in a crash stunned ambulance drivers when he woke up speaking perfect English. 18-year-old Matej Kus was out cold for 45 minutes after the crash, but when he woke up he conversed fluidly in English with paramedics, even speaking in an English accent. The teenager had just begun to study the language and his skills were described by friends and team-mates as “basic at best”. Peter Waite, the promoter for Kus's team, the Berwick Bandits, told the Daily Mail: "I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "It was in a really clear English accent, no dialect or anything. Whatever happened in the crash must have rearranged things in his head. "Before his crash Matej's use of the English language was broken, to put it mildly.

"He was only just making a start on improving it and struggled to be understood, but was keen to learn. "Yet here we were at the ambulance door listening to Matej talking to the medical staff in perfect English. "Matej didn't have a clue who or where he was when he came round. He didn't even know he was Czech. "It was unbelievable to hear him talk in unbroken English." Unfortunately, the speedway driver's new found skills didn’t last and he remembers nothing of the accident or the following two days. He is now keen pursue studies in English. He told the Daily Mail, through an interpreter: "It's unbelievable that I was speaking English like that, especially without an accent.

New Knights Templar revelations

Having pursued the possibility of being on the trail of the lost treasure of the Templars, whatever that find may constitute, meant that sooner or later I would have to take my own closer look and perspective at the Order. So much has been written about the KT - as much theory as established and recorded fact - that it would be difficult to come up with something totally refreshing, but I have enjoyed investigating their Lincoln connexions. It’s only very recent that I remembered how I stood in the ruins of the churchyard at Coustaussa way back in 1986 and in a private moment of reflection at this, my first stop off point in my only visit to nearby Rennes-le-Chateau, asking aloud if the spirits of the Templars both past and present would assist me in my Quest. My memory had totally misplaced that solemnity having happened, and looking back now, I wonder if they did. The year previous, sacred geometrist and RLC author David Wood had shown me his discovery in the valley – the Temple of Solomon etched out on the ground, and strongly resembling, to my mind, a giant camera! No surprise we are dealing with Light, then!

Back in England, Lincolnshire is one of the most important Templar Counties due to the Bishop of Lincoln’s power extending over most of England at the time, for nearly 500 years the Seat of the Holy See was held at the Bishop’s Palace (only a few hundred yards away from my ‘Lincoln Da Vinci Code’ final location ) from the Humber to the Thames. The Patron Saint of Lincoln Cathedral, St Hugh, had bought the original Temple in London from the Templars, who then went on to build the second one which stands today. (It’s believed Hugh died in the original, of which nothing now remains). It is well within the bounds of possibility the the Templars hid treasures in Lincolnshire because its largest and most efficient Orders were concentrated in different parts of the County, having built preceptories at Temple Bruer and Willoughton near Gainsborough, South Witham and Aslackby, near Sleaford, Bruer being one of the only Templar sites never to have been properly excavated as it was waterlogged at the time raids were made on most Templar properties.

The Angels of Mons revisited

The Korean war was given the moniker "the forgotten war" because of the relatively small amount of attention it recieved from the public compared to the two world wars. As time has progressed, however, World War I seems to get increasingly less attention, and the Korean war more. As the veterans of WWI die, there are only a handful left now, that war is rapidly fading from living memory and becoming a conflict relegated to academia and an all too brief mention in school history books. In fact, WWI was a horrific conflict that took the lives of nearly nine million people and served to shape the subsequent history of the 20th century. WWI was also a war riddled with supernatural occurences more fitting accounts of a medieval war, than a modern one. Chief among these stories are the Angels of Mons. The Battle of Mons was the first major action by the British Army in World War I.

After the forced withdrawl of French and Belgian forces, the British were left exposed and while they fought valiantly, they too were forced to take a costly retreat in the face of overwhelming German forces. In the midst of this retreat a strange apparition of angels holding back the Germans was claimed to occur. Accounts filtered to the media in Britain of three angels appearing between the British and Germans, protecting the British in their retreat. The angels appeared as larger than men, with a center angel in bright light, with wings extended, seemingly protecting the two smaller angels in the face of the Germans. The British interpreted it as St. George, and the story was used in the recruitment of British soldiers.

Astronauts reveal UFO encounters

Rumors have persisted for years that the astronauts -- nearly all of whom are military officers susceptible to being silenced under orders -- may have seen something more on the Moon than rocks and dust. According to transcripts of the technical debriefing following the Apollo 11 mission, astronauts Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins told of an encounter with a large cylindrical UFO even before reaching the Moon," U.S. investigative journalist and researcher Jim Marrs documents Mr. Aldrin further officially presented his encounters with apparent Extraterrestrials on CNN's Larry King Show. Jim Marrs further presents that Mr. Aldrin said, "The first unusual thing that we saw I guess was one day out or pretty close to the Moon. It had a sizable dimension to it". Aldrin said the Apollo crew at first thought the object was the Saturn 4 booster rocket (S-IVB); but, he added, "We called the ground and were told the S-IVB was 6,000 miles away." Mr. Aldrin described the UFO as a cylinder, while Armstrong said it was "really two rings" Two connected rings". Collins also said it appeared to be a hollow, tumbling cylinder. He added, "It was a hollow cylinder. But then you could change the focus on the sextant and it would be replaced by this open-book shape. It was really weird." Even more strange was the experience of Mr. Aldrin and Mr. Armstrong, after they reached the Moon.

According to an Associated Press story of July 20, 1969 published in the San Bernardino Sun-Telegram, the astronauts sighted eerie lights inside a crater near the point on the Moon where their lunar lander was due to touch down the next day. On their first sweep around the Moon, Armstrong described a mysterious bright light on the inner wall of the crater Aristarchus, located north of their flight path. "It seems to have a slight amount of florescence to it. The area in the crater is quite bright," he reported. "That area is definitely brighter than anything else I can see. There doesn't appear to be any color involved in it. It looks like an eerie sight," confirmed Aldrin. Two astronauts who appear to have broken ranks are Dr. Edgar Mitchell and Gordon Cooper. On The Oprah Winfrey Show on 19 July 1991, Mitchell hinted that all information regarding UFOs has not been released, saying, "I do believe that there is a lot more known about extraterrestrial investigation than is available to the public right now [and] has been for a long time... It's a long, long story. It goes back to World War II when all of that happened, and is highly classified stuff."

MoD boss recounts UFO sighting

A top UK government official admitted the existence of UFOs in a secret document about a dramatic sighting. The Ministry of Defence boss made the astonishing claim after dozens of eyewitnesses reported a "hovering" flying saucer in the skies in Shropshire.His confidential report features in a new book by Timothy Good, who is regarded as a world expert on alien phenomena.Good's book, Need To Know, features previously secret government papers about UFO sightings which have taken place around the world.A whole section is devoted to a mystery craft which "shot beams of light" near RAF Shawbury, Shropshire, in the early hours of March 31, 1993. It had earlier been spotted in the skies above Devon, Cornwall and South Wales.Up to 70 credible eyewitnesses later came forward to report the sighting, including some military personnel and police officers.

The newly obtained document shows that a Head of Secretariat for the Ministry of Defence wrote to the Assistant Chief of Air Staff following the chilling encounter on the night and was convinced it was a genuine UFO.The release of the book comes as the MoD prepares to publish other UFO reports dating back to 1967. The documents to be released also include witness accounts from civilian pilots and military personnel.

600,000-year-old bacteria found

The oldest living thing has been discovered in the form of 600,000-year-old bacteria extracted from ice cores, scientists claim. The finding gives hope that if Mars or other frigid worlds ever supported life similar to these ancient bacteria, they might be alive still. The trick, the discovery suggests, is for organisms to keep some metabolism going over the millennia, so that they can keep their DNA in repair while awaiting a more favorable environment in which to multiply. The other approach, complete dormancy, would cause DNA to be damaged and perhaps destroyed over such long periods of time. The scientists isolated long chains of active DNA from the bacteria. "The colder you make the environment, the longer [DNA] survives," said study team member Thomas Gilbert of the University of Copenhagen. "In places like Mars and [Jupiter's moon] Europa, which are really, really cold, DNA may very well be surviving there for a hell of a long time." Recently in separate work, scientists collected the oldest ever recovered DNA, estimated to be up to 800,000 years old, below more than a mile of Greenland ice. However, the DNA was not active inside a living organism. The new discovery involves extremely persistent life.

The secret to the longevity of the bacteria and DNA, the scientists write in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the capacity of the DNA to continuously repair itself as it degrades over time. Sarah Stewart Johnson of MIT and her colleagues uncovered the bacteria from cores drilled in northeastern Siberia, northwestern Canada and Antarctica. They isolated genetic material from the samples, finding the DNA was relatively intact. "Normally with old samples of this kind of age, if you get any DNA at all, which is unlikely, you'll be getting maybe 30, 40, 50, maybe 100 nucleotide sequences," Gilbert told LiveScience. "Here they were getting 4,000 base pairs, no problem, which suggests the DNA is pretty good."