Science Special News

[Rasputin]

Woman sues newspaper over ghost story

Woman sues newspaper over ghost story

A newspaper article with a headline about a witness seeing a ghost conveyed the meaning that she was "demented" but did not defame her, a jury has decided. The New South Wales Supreme Court jury of four took about an hour to conclude that Therese Mallik had not established she had been defamed.Ms Mallik had taken action in the New South Wales Supreme Court against Hunter Valley Independent Newspapers Pty Ltd – publishers of the Cessnock Independent – and its managing director, proprietor and editor, William McGeown.The front page Cessnock Independent article, published in October 2005, was headlined: "Witness sees a ghost over Cremator".The story referred to a Land and Environment Court hearing about the possibility of increasing the number of bodies burnt at the St Patricks crematorium in the Hunter region.In the article, Ms Mallik was described as the "leader of the Nulkaba Residence Group against the cremator".It said that in her evidence to the environment court "she claimed to have seen a ghostlike figure in the clouds".

Yesterday, her barrister, David Caspersonn, told the four-person jury the article conveyed three defamatory meanings, including that Ms Mallik was "demented".While the jurors agreed it had that meaning, they decided it was not defamatory.They also rejected Mr Caspersonn's submission that the article conveyed the meaning Ms Mallik had given evidence that was "worthless, absurd and lacking in any credibility".

[Rasputin]

Weird gravity in Canada blamed on glaciers

A mysterious dip in gravity over Canada has been a weighty topic for some scientists. Now satellite data reveal a thick ice sheet that once cloaked the region partially resolves this so-called gravitational anomaly. Scientists have known that the Hudson Bay region features lower gravity than surrounding areas. While two theories have emerged to explain the strange phenomenon, conclusive evidence has been elusive. One theory involved a change in the area's overlying glacial weight as the Laurentide Ice Sheet melted.The new results, reported in the May 11 issue of the journal Science, provide a crude map of the ice sheet’s structure as it was during the most recent ice age. Turns out, the now-melted ice left behind an imprint from which the Earth is still rebounding, and that imprint contributes to the weird gravity. "There are many uncertainties about the last ice age and its impact on the Earth," said one of the study’s researchers Jerry Mitrovica, a physicist at the University of Toronto. “We are able to show that the ghost of the ice age still hangs over North America."

Mark Tamisiea of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts and his colleagues relied on gravity-hunting gear: Between April 2002 and April 2006, they collected data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). The twin GRACE satellites work by taking advantage of the fact that gravity’s pull on an area is proportional to the mass sitting atop that area.

[Rasputin]

Here be dragons

Countless cultures across the world share a common knowledge of a beast that never existed. From Apr. 22 through Nov. 4, The University of Texas at San Antonio Institute of Texan Cultures (ITC) will explore the origins, symbolism and cultural significance of the dragon through history in a family-friendly exhibit called "Here Be Dragons!""The dragon is a consistent image across countless cultures," said John Davis, executive director of the ITC. "Many of those cultures brought the belief in dragons with them when they came to Texas. As stories and legends travel, each culture embellishes upon them with their own beliefs. The result is a pantheon of stories that still inspire us today.”Featuring a 10-foot tall, smoke-breathing dragon, along with artifacts and depictions of dragons in various cultures, "Here Be Dragons!" provides an entertaining and educational experience that addresses the origins and symbolism of dragons. The exhibit includes stories of the Aztec feathered serpent-god Quetzalcoatl, the evolution of the Chinese imperial dragon and Texas-specific dragon stories like the Great Galveston Sea Serpent.The institute's researchers compiled many of their stories and findings into a 15-minute film entitled "Why We Believe." The video delves into the possible collective consciousness of the human race dating back to primitive man, who had to contend with predatory creatures like serpents, raptors and large cats. Adding the skeletal remains of dinosaurs, like those featured on the exhibit floor, led the human imagination to think of the creature that could have left that fossil record behind.The image of the dragon has evolved through the years, along with its function. The emblem has commonly been associated with kings and ruling parties.

In the East, the dragon was the symbol of Imperial China and a person’s position in society determined the number of talons on the dragon’s claw. Some experts believe the dragon became a symbol of political power or religion commonly associated with an old regime. Artwork depicting the archetypal hero, the dragon slayer, represented a new political power or movement with the ability to vanquish the incumbent. A similar theory holds true in Christianity, which depicts the dragon as the embodiment of evil.Dragon motifs can be found on numerous artifacts, from instruments, to weapons to clothing and banners. Modern depictions of the dragon include sports clubs and mascots, martial arts organizations, military units and dining establishments. Dragons have commonly been depicted in works of science-fiction and fantasy literature, along with movies, games and various forms of entertainment.

[Rasputin]

UFO Disclosure impossible under capitalism

David Stein: Individuals and groups that currently seek full truthful disclosure concerning UFOs and Extraterrestrials (ETs) could be viewed to have an unrealistic goal. Full truthful disclosure can only occur if the prevailing capitalism can be replaced by a people-driven economic system. The current prevailing capitalist economic system is driven by greed and exploitation. Such a milieu of greed and exploitation would seek to either cover-up or to spread manipulative dis-information about things. This includes UFO's and Extraterrestrials, that would liberate humanity from that system of greed and exploitation. Disclosure advocates who hope that the Establishment, for example, will all of a sudden become enlightened and provide humanity access to alleged "free energy" and other ET technologies, which would free humanity from fossil fuel industries, (that in turn is creating catastrophic Global Warming), are not being realistic.

UFO and Extraterrestrial disclosure advocates, must inspire a totally rejuvenated people driven political economic system, freed of a greed and exploitation context, BEFORE humanity can be finally provided with a truthful context of disclosure about UFO and Extraterrestrials.

[Rasputin]

The surprising truth behind the Pyramids

"This is not my day job." So begins Michel Barsoum as he recounts his foray into the mysteries of the Great Pyramids of Egypt. As a well respected researcher in the field of ceramics, Barsoum never expected his career to take him down a path of history, archaeology, and political science, with materials research mixed in. As a distinguished professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University, his daily routine consists mainly of teaching students about ceramics, or performing research on a new class of materials, the so-called MAX Phases, that he and his colleagues discovered in the 1990s. These modern ceramics are machinable, thermal-shock resistant, and are better conductors of heat and electricity than many metals-making them potential candidates for use in nuclear power plants, the automotive industry, jet engines, and a range of other high-demand systems. Then Barsoum received an unexpected phone call from Michael Carrell, a friend of a retired colleague of Barsoum, who called to chat with the Egyptian-born Barsoum about how much he knew of the mysteries surrounding the building of the Great Pyramids of Giza, the only remaining of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The widely accepted theory-that the pyramids were crafted of carved-out giant limestone blocks that workers carried up ramps-had not only not been embraced by everyone, but as important had quite a number of holes.

According to the caller, the mysteries had actually been solved by Joseph Davidovits, Director of the Geopolymer Institute in St. Quentin, France, more than two decades ago. Davidovits claimed that the stones of the pyramids were actually made of a very early form of concrete created using a mixture of limestone, clay, lime, and water. "It was at this point in the conversation that I burst out laughing," says Barsoum. If the pyramids were indeed cast, he says, someone should have proven it beyond a doubt by now, in this day and age, with just a few hours of electron microscopy. It turned out that nobody had completely proven the theory...yet.

[Rasputin]

Future now

Anthony North: Premonition, precognition, second sight – three labels often applied to the ability to see into the future. This is, infact, one of the most troublesome areas of paranormal research. This is so for two reasons.The first is the sheer volume of supposed cases – everyone, it seems, has hints of the ability some time in their lives. And second, the apparent impossibility of being able to see the future before it happens. The Theories: Many exotic theories have been attempted to explain the ability to see the future. Typical is the ‘bow wave’ effect. Here it is argued that, just as a boat leaves a wake from its bow, so, too, with time, sending ripples of a future event back into the past.Consciousness has often been used to explain premonition. Typical is the idea that we have several states of consciousness, some bigger than others, and witnessing events ahead of the consciousness we already experience.The problem with such theories is not simply the fact that there is no real science to back them up. Unfortunately, experience of being human places immense stumbling blocks upon accepting the ability as credible.

Problems, problems everywhere: The first major stumbling block to accepting an ability to see into the future is ‘free will.’ It is self-evident that we seem to have it. But free will can only be true if the future is an unknown country. If it was mapped out, free will would become an irrelevance.A similar problem arises with the law of causality. Stated simply, a cause must come before an event. If premonition is to be accepted, then it has also to be accepted that knowledge of an event can come before the cause.So it seems, at our present level of knowledge, there is nothing in science or experience that allows us to see into the future. But this is not to deny that ‘premonitions’ occur. It simply suggests that whatever is going on has to be tied to the present.

Laws of chance: We can, perhaps, answer the problem on many different levels. The first is to understand an important point about paranormal phenomena. We have a habit of tying phenomena to the individual. But often an explanation can come from a wider society.Consider, in a country such as the United States, chance dictates that there could be upwards of a million nightmares on a particular night. Of these, it is inevitable that some would hold imagery of, say, a particular type of disaster.If such a disaster happened in the days following such a nightmare, it would be tagged as a premonition, when, in reality, it is nothing more than an inevitability of chance. In a society, such coincidences are bound to happen.

[Rasputin]

On the road to Roswell: Stanton Friedman

This is the first in a special series of Raiders News Network interviews focusing on the 60th Anniversary of the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico, UFO Incident: HORN: Stanton, Roswell is the pre-eminent story of Ufology. Some say whatever occurred near Roswell, NM, in July 1947 will never be known. Others like you disagree on some levels. You and Bill Moore brought this story to light many years ago. This is the most appropriate place to start this series, so please tell us how that happened. STAN: I first heard of Roswell in the early 1970s from a woman named Lydia Sleppy whose son was a forest ranger in California .He had had a good sighting. My associate (Bobbi Ann Slate Gironda , long deceased) and I spoke with him and he suggested we talk to his mother who had had a good sighting near Albuquerque. We did speak to her and after she told us about the sighting, she mentioned that when she had been working at an Albuquerque Radio Station in the late 1940s, she was asked to type the story coming in from a broadcaster at their Roswell affiliate station for a newswire. He dictated how a flying saucer had been recovered and was being sent to Wright Field. Part way through the story the bell went off on the machine she was using to put the story on the news wire. The FBI instructed her not to continue the transmission. She remembered the names of some of the people and I located several, but came to a dead end. I should stress that New Mexico was a hotbed of classified Research and Development activities and certainly it was expected that there would be spies and counter intelligence concerns.

In 1978 I was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, at a TV station to do three interviews before my lecture "Flying Saucers ARE Real!" that evening at Louisiana State University. I had done two, but the third reporter was nowhere to be found. The station manager was giving me coffee, looking at his watch, and was embarrassed as he knew the person who had brought me to the station and that I had other things to do. Out of the blue he told me that the person I ought to talk to was Jesse Marcel over in Houma, Louisiana. I asked "Who is he?" He answered "Oh, he handled wreckage of a flying saucer when he was in the military. We are old Ham radio buddies." The reporter finally showed up and I was busy the rest of the day. Next day from the Airport I called information and then spoke with Jesse who told me his story. This is described in detail in "Crash at Corona: The Definitive Story of the Roswell Incident" by Don Berliner and myself and available from my website at www.stantonfriedman.com. Jesse didn't have a precise date. I shared the story with Bill Moore (we had known each other in Pittsburgh, years before). I also saw him months later in Minnesota the day after meeting with Vern and Jean Maltaise of Bemidji, MN, who told me a story of their friend Barney Barnett who had come across a crashed saucer and strange bodies in New Mexico. Bill had a 3rd story (From the Flying Saucer Review) about an English actor named Hughie Green who heard a story on the radio about a New Mexico crashed saucer when driving from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. He could pin down a date (early July, 1947). Bill went to the U. of Minnesota Library and found the stories in newspapers in the periodicals department. These gave us an independent check on Jesse's story and the names of many more people . By 1980 we had located 62 people. That is when the first Roswell book "The Roswell Incident" by Bill Moore and Charles Berlitz was published. Bill and I did 90% of the research. By 1986 we had published several more articles and the total was up to 92. This was all before the internet made searching a lot easier and cheaper. I instigated, and was in, the Unsolved Mysteries NBC TV program about Roswell in 1989. It was well done and was seen by 28 million people.

[Rasputin]

Deerman column draws worldwide response

David Clarke: It’s amazing how many people still live in fear of Deerman. We even heard from a Kewanee serviceman stationed in South Korea who fears the mysterious creature might track him down.A week ago the column was devoted to recalling the legend of the half-man, half-deer who supposedly lurked in the woods north of Kewanee. We were responding to a request from Neponset seventh grader Gus Block who asked the newspaper to “uncover the truth” in an unbiased fashion. Gus had heard some “pretty tall tales” about this Deerman from his “parents and other old people” and wondered if his leg was being pulled. We have since learned Gus overheard the adult Sunday School class at the Church of Peace reminiscing about stories of Deerman one Sunday morning and his curiosity was piqued so he penned a letter to the paper. As we explained last week to Gus and the rest of our readers, the legend of Deerman began in the early 1960s in a column in this newspaper called “Mostly Malarkey,” written by editor and publisher Jerry Moriarity.For several years the rumors of sightings and encounters circulated and “Deerman was here!” could be found scrawled on road signs, barns and walls throughout the Kewanee area.

Our responses revealed some of the dangers associated with Deerman, two actual “sightings.” and where he came from. Our first response came from Kewanee native Kevin Jones, now a professor at a university in Sacramento, Calif. “As a fellow ‘old guy,’ I can attest that I saw Deerman,” Jones admits. According to the legend, he recalls, if you saw Deerman three times, you died. Jones said he saw Deerman twice and caught him with a sidelong glance the third time, narrowly avoiding the third and fatal sighting. “This is why I can never come back to Kewanee. If I see him a third time, I’m dead,” Jones revealed.

[Rasputin]

Filling your car up with aluminium ?

Submitted by Pandora & Pendekar: Pellets made out of aluminum and gallium can produce pure hydrogen when water is poured on them, offering a possible alternative to gasoline-powered engines, U.S. scientists say. Hydrogen is seen as the ultimate in clean fuels, especially for powering cars, because it emits only water when burned. U.S. President George W. Bush has proclaimed hydrogen to be the fuel of the future, but researchers have not decided what is the most efficient way to produce and store hydrogen.In the experiment conducted at Purdue University in Indiana, "The hydrogen is generated on demand, so you only produce as much as you need when you need it," said Jerry Woodall, an engineering professor at Purdue who invented the system.Woodall said in a statement the hydrogen would not have to be stored or transported, taking care of two stumbling blocks to generating hydrogen.For now, the Purdue scientists think the system could be used for smaller engines like lawn mowers and chain saws. But they think it would work for cars and trucks as well, either as a replacement for gasoline or as a means of powering hydrogen fuel cells.

"It is one of the more feasible ideas out there," Jay Gore, an engineering professor and interim director of the Energy Center at Purdue's Discovery Park, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. "It's a very simple idea but had not been done before."On its own, aluminum will not react with water because it forms a protective skin when exposed to oxygen. Adding gallium keeps the film from forming, allowing the aluminum to react with oxygen in the water, releasing hydrogen and aluminum oxide, also known as alumina.What is left over is aluminum oxide and gallium. In the engine, the byproduct of burning hydrogen is water."No toxic fumes are produced," Woodall said.

[Rasputin]

Ghost-hunting skeptics

When Carol Copeland started renovating her World War II-era Stockton home a year ago, things started to happen that were unexplainable, she said. At first, when she came home to find an empty shelf ripped out of her bedroom wall, she blamed it on faulty carpentry. When she heard the sound of footsteps and her name being called aloud, she brushed it off. But when she watched as a shot glass collection flew off a shelf in her living room, she said, there was no denying it anymore. “I always said I’d need to see it before I could believe it,” Copeland said. “Then I saw it, and I can’t really explain it.” She suspects the house is haunted by the ghost of her aunt, who lived in the home for decades until she died two years ago — and who was very particular about the way she kept her home. Copeland’s story is a textbook example of a haunting, said Beth Hedricks, director of the new California chapter of the International Society of Paranormal Investigators, based out of the Manteca-French Camp area. “One of the first things (ISPI investigators) ask is if you are making changes to the house,” Hedricks said. “And the next question they ask is if you’re being treated for any psychological issues.” That sort of skepticism characterizes ISPI, a research-based group dedicated to seeking out things that go bump in the night. Once their skills are honed, members respond to calls from the public about suspected hauntings.

Unlike some ghost-hunting groups, the group steers clear of psychics. Instead, members base their investigations on science and history, Hedricks said. “I go into every location as a skeptic,” she said. “Probably eight out of 10 hauntings are easily explained. I want to find the two that aren’t.” The way to properly investigate a haunting is to try to disprove it, she said. Investigators tackle practical matters first, looking for outside factors that could look or feel like a ghost. Carbon monoxide leaks, for example, are often behind suspected hauntings. The deadly gas can make people’s hair stand on end and make them see things when nothing is there, Hedricks said. Research comes next, when — clad in the society’s work shirts and toting cameras, recording equipment and thermometers to document temperature shifts — investigators collect evidence to determine whether a ghost might be lurking about.

[Rasputin]

Polar depths yield weird new species

Carnivorous sponges, blind creepy-crawlies adorned with hairy antennae and ribbed worms are just some of the new characters found to inhabit the dark abysses of the Southern Ocean, an alien abode once thought devoid of such life. Recent expeditions have uncloaked this polar region, finding nearly 600 species of organisms never described before and challenging some assumptions that deep-sea biodiversity is depressed. The findings also suggest that all of Earth's marine life originated in Antarctic waters.Scientists had assumed that the deep sea of the South Pole would follow similar trends in biodiversity documented for the Arctic. "There are less species in the Arctic than around the equator," said one of the scientists behind the study, Brigitte Ebbe, a taxonomist at the German Center for Marine Biodiversity Research. "People assumed that it would be the same if you went from the equator south, but it didn't prove to be true at all."

The findings, reported this week in the journal Nature provide a more accurate picture of creatures in the southern deep sea and shed light on the evolution of biodiversity in the deep ocean, including ancient colonization dating back 65 million years. "The Antarctic deep sea is potentially the cradle of life of the global marine species," said lead author Angelika Brandt of the Zoological Institute and Zoological Museum at the University of Hamburg.

[Rasputin]

Reading the numbers: Numerology

His name is Brian and, like many of us, he is seeking answers about his life. One recent Monday afternoon, he called Alison Baughman, of Akron, via her Internet radio show "Visible By Numbers" and asked for help.He told her his birthday is April 10, 1975. She did a few calculations and told him that he has had a difficult childhood, but that it has taught him compassion and empathy.Baughman indicated to Brian that he gives unconditional love to people who aren't always pleasant to him; that he is a humanitarian looking out for the interests of others, sometimes to his own disadvantage."Does that make sense to you Brian?" she asked him.He replied: "Yes, yes, totally."She also told him good things are in store for him in the coming years, including recognition and financial reward.He thanked her; and, judging from his tone of voice, he seemed relieved. Baughman's live show airs at 8 p.m. Mondays over BBS radio, at www.bbsradio.com, and attracts callers from all over the country.

The Web radio station bills itself as the "No. 1 Worldwide Internet Talk Radio Network on the Planet."Using callers' names and/or dates of birth (both for a comprehensive reading), Baughman says she describes their character traits and their challenges, gives them spiritual advice and predicts what is in their futures. The type of numerology she uses, often referred to as Western numerology, was founded upon the teachings of Pythagoras, a 5th-century Greek mathematician, philosopher and mystic."It's a road map, so to speak," Baughman said in an interview earlier this spring at her home.The numerologist uses basic math to reduce numbers to one digit. Letters in names are given a number based where they are placed in the alphabet. The real work, however, is in the interpretation, a skill that Baughman said takes years to hone. But simply put, each number has a meaning. As an example, people in the 3, 6 or 9 categories tend to be very inspirational, creative and emotional, she said.

[Rasputin]

NASA makes Exoplanet weathermap

Researchers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have learned what the weather is like on two distant, exotic worlds. One team of astronomers used the infrared telescope to map temperature variations over the surface of a giant gas planet, HD 189733b, revealing it likely is whipped by roaring winds. Another team determined that the gas planet HD 149026b is the hottest yet discovered. Both findings appear May 9 in Nature. "We have mapped the temperature variations across the entire surface of a planet that is so far away, its light takes 60 years to reach us," said Heather Knutson of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., lead author of the paper describing HD 189733b. The two planets are "hot Jupiters" -- sizzling, gas giant planets that zip closely around their stars. Roughly 50 of the more than 200 known planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets, are hot Jupiters. Visible-light telescopes can detect these strange worlds and determine certain characteristics, such as their sizes and orbits, but not much is known about their atmospheres or what they look like. Since 2005, Spitzer has been revolutionizing the study of exoplanets' atmospheres by examining their infrared light, or heat.

In one of the new studies, Spitzer set its infrared eyes on HD 189733b, located 60 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula. HD 189733b is the closest known transiting planet, which means that it crosses in front and behind its star when viewed from Earth. It races around its star every 2.2 days. Spitzer measured the infrared light coming from the planet as it circled around its star, revealing its different faces. These infrared measurements, comprising about a quarter of a million data points, were then assembled into pole-to-pole strips, and, ultimately, used to map the temperature of the entire surface of the cloudy, giant planet.

[Rasputin]

Psychodrama

Anthony North: There is a problem with much of the paranormal in that we rely too much on classic interpretations. This is not to say that these interpretations may not be true, but that understanding can better be achieved by a radical overhaul of terms.The poltergeist is a perfect example. We have a clear idea of what a poltergeist is. But could phenomena be more open to rational understanding by offering new concepts and names? Let’s consider the possibility. What a poltergeist isn't: A poltergeist is classically understood as an infestation of a spirit throwing this and that about the place, causing a general paranormal nuisance of itself. Yet if we break down the phenomena in the poltergeist, we can see distinct and separate elements.The two central elements are a level of communal consciousness that perceives paranormal activity in a specific location, such as mind/matter interaction and ‘spirit’ sightings; and the ‘possession’ of a person, or focus.For this essay I want to reclassify the poltergeist as a concept I would call ‘psychodrama.’ This can best be understood as the coming together of mind with other minds, an environment, and culture.

What you see is what you get: We can see such a concept as the occurrence of an ‘altered state’ contrary to what we consider to be normal reality. However, can such a thing as ‘normal reality’ exist? The philosopher, Kant, argued yes, it can, but it is above human experience, for we view the world through specific ‘mind filters’, which place our prejudices upon reality.This argument is valid when we consider we input a mass of data, through the senses, of the ‘outside’ world, but the vast majority of this sense experience in not intuited by our conscious mind. Rather, we have ‘selective awareness’ of the world we inhabit, only perceiving what we consider important.

[Rasputin]

Possible Aztec offerings found in Mexico

Submitted by Pendekar Timur: Archaeologists diving into a lake in the crater of a snowcapped volcano found wooden scepters shaped like lightning bolts that match 500-year-old descriptions by Spanish priests and conquerors writing about offerings to the Aztec rain god. The lightning bolts — along with cones of copal incense and obsidian knives — were found during scuba-diving expeditions in one of the twin lakes of the extinct Nevado de Toluca volcano, at more than 13,800 feet above sea level.Scientists must still conduct tests to determine the age of the findings, but the writings after the Spanish conquest in 1521 have led them to believe the offerings were left in the frigid lake west of Mexico City more than 500 years ago.Lightning bolt scepters "were used by Aztec priests when they were doing rites associated with the god Tlaloc," said Johan Reinhard, an anthropologist and explorer-in-residence for National Geographic Society who took part in more dives Thursday at the Lake of the Moon.

"We think it is pretty clear that the Aztecs considered this one of the more important places of Tlaloc."The research, which also involves the volcano's Lake of the Sun, is being led by Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History. Stanislaw Iwaniszewski, an archaeology professor at the institute, said Aztec iconography often associates Tlaloc with lightning bolts.