Science Special News

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Geomagnetic flip may not be random after all

One of the most fascinating natural phenomena on Earth is the flipping of its magnetic field, which has occurred hundreds of times in the last 160 million years. When the magnetic field flips, the North Pole becomes the South Pole and vice versa. The last time this happened was some 780,000 years ago, so we could be heading for another reversal soon. Now, physicists in Italy have found that the frequency of these polarity reversals is not random as previously thought but occurs in clusters, revealing some kind of "memory" of previous events (physics/0603086).Although a full geomagnetic polarity reversal can take thousands of years to complete, the implications could be enormous. As well as affecting the migration trajectories of birds and other animals, the disruption to the Earth's magnetic field could expose the Earth to hazardous cosmic rays -- a scenario that some researchers have linked to mass extinction events like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago. Geoscientists believe that our planet's internal magnetic dynamo is responsible for pole reversals, but the actual mechanism is not well understood. Previous analyses assumed that the number of times the poles have reversed over last 160 million years follows a Poisson distribution, implying that the events are random. The Poisson distribution tells you the probability of a number of events occurring in a fixed time if the events are independent and the average rate is known. A good example of the Poisson distribution in physics is the likelihood of unstable radioactive nuclei decaying in a certain period.

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New book describes US UFO response

In their new book, "Exempt from disclosure" by Robert M. Collins and Richard C. Doty, the authors tell readers about many complex and surprising factors involving the U.S. military, intelligence communities, scientific communities and the general public with regard to UFOs and extraterrestrial visitors. Collins is a retired Air Force captain with 22 years of service. He served as an Air Force intelligence officer, worked in aviation avionics and has a background in engineering and physics.Doty also served in the Air Force, and as a former agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, he worked on projects and operations related to UFOs.Cooper is a former U.S. Marine who also served in the Navy. He has researched UFO-related topics since 1988.The authors write in a straightforward way about a subject that has been examined in other books, films, TV shows and investigations. The book comes across as an honest effort to present important information in a way that informs readers and brings them up to date on a hidden history that is now emerging from the shadows of secrecy.The authors state they are accurately documenting specific events, places and people involved in many of the efforts to handle the UFO and extraterrestrial visitation situation over the decades since the end World War Two to the present.Skeptics might question this.

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Woman with perfect memory baffles scientists

James McGaugh is one of the world's leading experts on how the human memory system works. But these days, he admits he's stumped.McGaugh's journey through an intellectual purgatory began six years ago when a woman now known only as AJ wrote him a letter detailing her astonishing ability to remember with remarkable clarity even trivial events that happened decades ago. Give her any date, she said, and she could recall the day of the week, usually what the weather was like on that day, personal details of her life at that time, and major news events that occurred on that date. Like any good scientist, McGaugh was initially skeptical. But not anymore. "This is real," he says. Soon after AJ took over his life, McGaugh teamed with two fellow researchers at the University of California at Irvine. Elizabeth Parker, a clinical professor of psychiatry and neurology (and lead author of a report on the research in the current issue of the journal Neurocase), and Larry Cahill, an associate professor of neurobiology and behavior, have joined McGaugh in putting AJ through an exhaustive series of interviews and psychological tests. But they aren't a lot closer today to understanding her amazing ability than they were when they started. "We are trying to find out, but we haven't hit 'bingo' yet," says McGaugh.

His initial hypothesis, like several others, has turned out to be wrong — or at least incomplete. McGaugh has spent decades studying how such things as stress hormones and emotions affect memory, and at first he thought AJ's memories were of such emotional power that she couldn't forget them. But that hypothesis fell short of the mark when it became obvious that "the woman who can't forget" remembers trivial details as clearly as major events. Asked what happened on Aug 16, 1977, she knew that Elvis Presley had died, but she also knew that a California tax initiative passed on June 6 of the following year, and a plane crashed in Chicago on May 25 of the next year, and so forth. Some may have had a personal meaning for her, but some did not.

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"Bigfoot" prints intentionally destroyed

Tracks resembling giant footprints in forests around Kampung Lukut and Kampung Temening are being erased, seemingly to distract foreign tour groups on Bigfoot sighting expeditions here. The authorities have cut the eco-tourist influx at these villages and nearby foothills by bulldozing and clearing the secondary forest where the Bigfoot footprints and other evidence were discovered.A check by the New Straits Times showed the secondary jungle area beside the tar road where a set of Bigfoot footprints was first found by local jungle trekker Kong Nam Choy on Jan 16 had been cleared.Foreign tour groups have been coming in big numbers and according to locals, this new eco-tourism activity had started after an expedition on Feb 20 by a team of local and foreign media members and researchers.The team comprising American and local film crews, members of the Singapore Paranormal Investigators and a foreign newspaper journalist were led by Kong to discover fresh Bigfoot footprints at Kampung Lukut.

The team produced the first plaster cast of a clear footprint, believed to have been made by the Johor Bigfoot, which was widely reported in the local and foreign media.It is believed that since then tour groups in Singapore had been organising Bigfoot tours to Kota Tinggi, for foreign and local tourists although this brought no benefit to locals.Kong said yesterday that tourists would arrive in cars and vans as early as 6am to trek into the secondary jungle at the two villages, looking for evidence of Bigfoot.

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Jacques Vallee - "Roswell is a Blind Alley"

Legendary ufologist Dr Jacques Vallee has dismissed the Roswell UFO incident as a topic not worthy of serious attention, and criticized the state of modern research into the UFO phenomenon. In an interview with the free online magazine Sub Rosa, Vallee labeled Roswell as a waste of valuable time and resources. "Roswell, in my opinion, is a blind alley," he said. "It is a major tactical mistake to base the argument for UFOs entirely on a case that has so little scientific evidence and so much ambiguous and conflicting testimony surrounding it."When asked about the state of ufology in 2006, Vallee was hardly impressed. "It’s a mess," he claimed. "By centering the whole discussion of the phenomenon on highly-charged, but poorly-researched issues like Roswell and abductions, ufologists have lost credibility, alienated the scientific public and opened the floodgates to hundreds of Internet sites where the wildest rumors circulate."

Vallee revealed that, due to these factors, UFO research was going underground, with scientists interested in the topic forming what he called an "Invisible College". Other stories in the most recent issue of Sub Rosa include a profile of cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, an article on the 'Skinwalker Ranch' in Utah, Margaret Starbird on Jesus and the Magdalene, and a fascinating insight into Timothy Leary's fascination with Aleister Crowley.

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Was Einstein wrong about space travel ?

Consider a pair of brothers, identical twins. One gets a job as an astronaut and rockets into deep space. The other stays on Earth. When the traveling twin returns home, he discovers he's younger than his brother. This is Einstein's Twin Paradox, and although it sounds strange, it is absolutely true. The theory of relativity tells us that the faster you travel through space, the slower you travel through time. Rocketing to Alpha Centauri—warp 9, please—is a good way to stay young. Or is it? Some researchers are beginning to believe that space travel could have the opposite effect. It could make you prematurely old. "The problem with Einstein's paradox is that it doesn't fold in biology - specifically, space radiation and the biology of aging," says Frank Cucinotta, NASA's chief scientist for radiation studies at the Johnson Space Center. While the astronaut twin is hurtling through space, Cucinotta explains, his chromosomes are exposed to penetrating cosmic rays. This can damage his telomeres—little molecular "caps" on the ends of his DNA. Here on Earth, the loss of telomeres has been linked to aging.

So far, the risk hasn't been a major concern: The effect on shuttle and space station astronauts, if any, would be very small. These astronauts orbit inside of Earth's protective magnetic field, which deflects most cosmic rays. But by 2018, NASA plans to send humans outside of that protective bubble to return to the moon and eventually travel to Mars. Astronauts on those missions could be exposed to cosmic rays for weeks or months at a time. Naturally, NASA is keen to find out whether or not the danger of "radiation aging" really exists, and if so, how to handle it.

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Mysterious Earth

Frank B. Glover: This world the third stone from the Sun our planet Earth holds many mysteries in its past. We have just a basic idea of what this world has witnessed since its birth in the solar system. But yet we spend billions of dollars to look deeper in space for answers when in fact we may be sitting on them. Everyone has a hypothesis of what they lean more towards and I have mine. But being not a scientist or a scholar I have many different directions to lean towards. And finding as the plot thickens in some of them while others I can lead you to a dead end with. Bearing an open mind to what is physical evidence and just plain speculation can even disrupt what many scientist agree upon. While digging a little deeper in our planets mysteries we will find that even a scholar will tend to just speculate on what cant be explained away by words. I would like to go straight to the point about each subject of interest. And not spend hours getting lost in each subject.

UFO sightings: UFO’s have been spotted all over the planet. MUFON has a map of these sightings and when you look at all the red dots of each sighting they cover most of the land mass on the planet. But the key word here is sighting not evidence of a sighting just a person who said they saw one. That’s a big difference in my opinion because that takes us down the road towards speculation based on hear say and not physical evidence.

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London 'under water by 2100'

Dozens of the world’s cities, including London and New York, could be flooded by the end of the century, according to research which suggests that global warming will increase sea levels more rapidly than was previously thought. The first study to combine computer models of rising temperatures with records of the ancient climate has indicated that sea levels could rise by up to 20ft (6m) by 2100, placing millions of people at risk. The threat comes from melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, which scientists behind the research now believe are on track to release vast volumes of water significantly more quickly than older models have predicted. Their analysis of events between 129,000 and 116,000 years ago, when the Arctic last warmed to temperatures forecast for 2100, shows that there could be large rises in sea level.

While the Greenland ice sheet is expected to start melting as summer temperatures in the Arctic rise by 3C degrees to 5C (5.4F-9F), most models suggest that the ice sheets of Antarctica will remain more stable. The historical data, however, show that the last time that Greenland became this warm, the sea level rise generated by meltwater destabilised the Antarctic ice, leading to a much higher increase than can be explained by Arctic ice alone.

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'Clive of India's' 250-yr-old tortoise dies

A tortoise that once belonged to British colonial general Clive of India in the 18th Century has died in a zoo in Calcutta. Adwaita, "the only one" in Bengali, was found dead by keepers in Alipore Zoo on Wednesday. His shell cracked some months ago and a wound had developed. West Bengal officials said records showed Adwaita was at least 150 years old but other evidence pointed to 250. The shell of Adwaita, an Aldabra tortoise, will now be carbon-dated. Forestry minister in the West Bengal government, Jogesh Barman said: "Historical records show he was a pet of British general Robert Clive of the East India Company and had spent several years in his sprawling estate before he was brought to the zoo about 130 years ago." Mr Barman said Adwaita was probably brought from the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean and presented to Clive, an increasing force in the East India Company's military hierarchy. Aldabra tortoises are found in the four-island Aldabra atoll of the Seychelles, a UN World Heritage Site that now has about 152,000 giant tortoises.

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Ethiopian skull may be a missing link

A hominid skull discovered in Ethiopia could fill the gap in the search for the origins of the human race, a scientist says. The cranium found near the city of Gawis, 500 km south-east of the capital Addis Ababa, is estimated to be 200,000 to 500,000 years old.The skull appeared "to be intermediate between the earlier Homo erectus and the later Homo sapiens", Sileshi Semaw, an Ethiopian research scientist at the Stone Age Institute at Indiana University, told a news conference in Addis Ababa.It was discovered two months ago in a small gully at the Gawis river drainage basin in Ethiopia's Afar region, south-east of the capital.Sileshi said significant archaeological collections of stone tools and numerous fossil animals were also found at Gawis."(It) opens a window into an intriguing and important period in the development of modern humans," Sileshi said.Over the last 50 years, Ethiopia has been a hot bed for archaeological discoveries.Hadar, located near Gawis, is where in 1974 US scientist Donald Johnson found the 3.2 million year old remains of "Lucy", described by scientists as one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in the world.Lucy is Ethiopia's world-acclaimed archaeological find.

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Archbishop opposes creationism in schools

The spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans does not believe that creationism -- the Bible-based account of the world's origins -- should be taught in schools. "I don't think it should, actually. No, No," said Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, reflecting on the bitter education debate over religion and science that has so divided the United States in particular.Williams, head of a church which has no problem with the Darwinian theory of evolution, told the Guardian newspaper: "I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory, like other theories."Asked if he was comfortable with the teaching of creationism in schools, the mild-mannered and usually cautious theologian said: "Not very. Not very."In the battle to bring God into the classroom, Christian conservative supporters of creationism and intelligent design seek to deny or downgrade the importance of evolution.Intelligent design proponents say that nature is so complex that it must have been the work of a creator rather than the result of random natural selection as outlined in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.Williams' stance echoes the position of the Roman Catholic Church, the world's largest single Christian denomination, which has weighed into the debate by praising a U.S. court decision that rejected the intelligent design theory as non-scientific.

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Confessions of a woman-centred psychic reader

In this second article from tarot reader and psychic Kathleen Meadows, we learn that there may be more to the fact that most tarot readers seem to be female than meets the eye. Kathleen Meadows: I am a self defined “woman-centered” Tarot reader (Certified Tarot Grand Master and Psychic) living in the Kitchener-Waterloo area of southern Ontario. I read in tea rooms, women’s shows, privately and online (www.psychicanada.com). Like everywhere else you find readers, most of the diviners offering Tarot readings online are women! This fact of life has enticed me for years. I’ve observed it in person and now with the advent of online readers, I have absolute global evidence that this is true. Few appear to be surprised by this fact or honestly as profoundly moved by it as I am. In itself, that’s as interesting to me as the fact that it’s so. Is anyone curious to know why this is so?

When I ask people what they surmise by this curious phenomenon, they say things like, “oh women are more intuitive than men” (there are no studies to support this assumption by the way), or they say, “Well women accept alternative ways of knowing more easily than men”. Wow what does all this say about our educational, institutional, in fact our whole global infrastructure? You see I think the answer to, “what do women really want” (one of Freud’s purportedly famous exclamations) is right here in the study of divination practice. Geraldine Amaral in her book quoted Freud saying that if he had his life to live over he would study divination, no doubt too late he realized that the answer to his life long question was here! But I digress…

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Oetzi's murder recorded on ancient stone ?

Ötzi the Iceman's murder might have been recorded on stone, according to a carving on a Copper Age stele. Found in Laces, a town not far from the glacier in the Ötztal Alps where the 5,300-year-old mummy was discovered in 1991, the stone shows an human figure filled with carvings, Lorenzo Dal Ri, director of the archaeological office of the Bolzano province, told Discovery News. "The stele had long been unnoticed as it was used to build the altar of a church in Laces. One carving is especially interesting: it shows an archer ready to shoot an arrow on an unarmed man's back," said Dal Ri. This is exactly how Ötzi the Iceman was killed: hit by a flint arrow in the left shoulder while being assaulted by his enemies, some of whose blood was found on the mummy's cloak and weapons. According to Eduard Egarter Vigl, the official caretaker of the world's oldest and best-preserved mummy at the South Tyrol Archaeological Museum in Bolzano, which attracts around 300,000 visitors a year, Ötzi managed to flee up the mountain until he collapsed and was entombed in the Similaun Glacier's ice. Probably caught in a storm at 10,000 feet, the prehistoric man spent at least three days in excruciating pain before he died of blood loss, hunger, cold and weakness, said Egarter.

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Pre-Columbus map may be authentic

A New Zealand university's research has suggested a 243-year-old map indicating a famous Chinese explorer discovered New Zealand, Australia and America before Europeans is probably not a fake. Waikato Times reported Saturday that Waikato University carbon-dating shows that "there might be something in a theory that the Chinese discovered New Zealand before Europeans." Before Christmas, the university's carbon-dating unit was asked to analyze a Chinese map allegedly dating back to 1763 and stating that it was a copy of a 1418 map. If authentic, the 1418 map by Chinese explorer Zheng He, which includes portrayals of America and Australia, was drawn 70 years before Christopher Columbus became the first European to land in America. In the early days of the Ming Dynasty, that is, early in the 15th century, Zheng He was ordered by the then emperor to lead a vast fleet to sail for a distant voyage, aimed to establish relations with foreign countries and expand trade contacts. Between 1405 and 1433, Zheng acted as an envoy to countries lying to the west of China for seven times. But where actually had he been has been debated for years, especially recently by some historians. Western histories record that Columbus found the New World in 1492, Portugal's Bartholomeu Diaz discovered the Cape of Good Hopein 1488, and Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan set off to circumnavigate the world in 1519. While some people said Zheng He seemed to have discovered America 70 years before Columbus in 1492 if the controversial map drawn in 1763 by a Chinese cartographer is real. The map could have an important influence on a re-evaluation of Chinese and Western maritime exploration.

The map was originally unveiled in Beijing on Jan. 16, attracting interest from across the globe. The owner, Liu Gang, a Chinese lawyer and map collector, said at the time that it was an authentic 1763 copy of a 1418 Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) original. The original map has not been found, but if real, the 1763 copy could be proof that it existed. If so, it would give credence to the theory that Chinese sailors traversed the globe long before their European counterparts. Deputy Director Fiona Petchey of Waikato University carbon-dating unit, who was entrusted to make tests of the map, said tests showed there was an 80 percent probability that the map's paper dated to either 1640-1690 or 1730-1810.

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Ultraterrestrials: Do they walk among us ?

Ken Korczak: The most popular belief today is that UFOs are spaceships piloted by aliens from other planets and other solar systems. But another good theory which never gets as much press is that UFOs may, in fact, originate right here on earth. Instead of being Extraterrestrials, UFO aliens might be Ultraterrestrials -- a species that has always been here, which evolved on earth along with homo sapiens, but which represent a species far advanced.These Ultraterrestrials are so superior to us it’s almost impossible for us to comprehend their existence. All we know of them are fleeting glimpses of light in the sky, occasional bizarre encounters between human beings and so-called aliens, and other unexplainable phenomenon.Think of how a group of chimpanzees in the wild perceive human beings. Because their own level of consciousness is limited compared to ours, they cannot comprehend what we humans are beyond being just another kind of animal.A chimp may think of an airplane as some kind of magical, giant bird.

They relate to it with the level of understanding they have about their environment. The speculation of the chimp, at best, is a crude idea about the total truth of an airplane, and the fact that it represents entire levels of consciousness that are so advanced, they are literally invisible to chimp mind.Now think of a human being who encounters a UFO. To us a UFO seems to be some kind of flying, mechanical aircraft -- but the true nature of the UFO may be as different from a spacecraft as a bird is from an airplane. Like the chimp, we just don’t have the advanced levels of consciousness we need to comprehend the true nature of a UFO.As humans, we make the naturally egotistical assumption that we are the species at the top of the heap -- we see ourselves as the peak achievement of evolution. We even make the bold claim that God, the supreme architect of the entire universe, created us in his own image!But it’s not a big leap to consider that we are just another link in a vast chain of species, many which are below us, and some which may be above us.