Science Special News

[Rasputin]

Up jumps the 'Da Vinci' devil

Doubt the Bible? Question Jesus? Hint at secrets? Make way for crowds. Books and movies about conspiracy theories and skeptical views of religion are sure paths to popular attention. And some people say the devil is behind such works - whether the authors are aware of this or not, according to a new USA TODAY/Gallup survey.The nationwide telephone survey of 1,013 U.S. adults, conducted May 5-7, found that 19 percent see Satan trying to destroy people's religious faith when sales soar for books, movies and studies that raise doubts about Jesus or the Bible. People who attend church weekly were more likely to believe that.The movie version of Dan Brown's mega-selling novel, "The Da Vinci Code," which claims the Catholic Church conspired, even killed, to hide Jesus' secret marriage to Mary Magdalene, opens May 19.It follows closely on the heels of "The Gospel of Judas," released at Easter time by National Geographic.

That was the first translation of an ancient manuscript that presents Judas as Jesus' best buddy doing God's will, not the vile betrayer shown in the Bible.However, most people (72 percent) say it's human nature to be skeptical about religion. And Catholics, whose historical church fathers take a heavy beating in Brown's book, were least likely to blame an evil force."The devil has always been a scapegoat," says Terrence Tilley, a professor of philosophy of religion and Catholic theology at the University of Dayton in Ohio.Still, "some of (Brown's book) is so like what people would like to believe that it's easy for people to start believing the whole thing. Scholars really get their dander up when obvious fiction and legend is called fact," say Tilley, who has spoken about the book on panels from Dayton to Dublin.

[Rasputin]

Does the 'lost city' of Johor exist ?

The "lost city" of Gelanggi or Linggiu, claimed to have been hidden in the jungles of Johor for more than a thousand years, does not exist, said an archaeologist in the National Heritage Department. Khalid Syed Ali, the curator of archaeology in the department's research and development division, said a team of researchers carried out a study over a month in July last year but found no evidence of the "lost city".The 15-strong team was headed by the Director-General of Museum and Antiquity Datuk Dr Adi Taha, he said in a working paper presented at a forum organised by the National Museum here.The search was launched following a claim made by an independent researcher Raimy Che Ros that he had found evidence of the "lost city" after 12 years of research.

The claim, published in a newspaper in February last year, created public excitement because Linggiu was said to be older than the Borobudur Buddhist temple in Indonesia built between 750 and 842 A.D. and Cambodia's Angkor Wat built 300 years later.Khalid said Raimy was believed to have come up with his claim based on his research of literature on Malay history and did not discover any physical traces of the "lost city".The search team led by Adi comprised researchers from his department, Malaysian Centre for Remote Sensing, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Malaya, Universiti Perguruan Sultan Idris and Malaysian Archaeology Association.

[Rasputin]

MoD official UFO report published

The MOD has published the results of a once-highly-classified official investigation into the existence of Unidentified Flying Objects. The report concludes that UFOs exist - but are a mixture of natural and-man-made phenomena, rather than evidence of extraterrestrial life.The report examines 'UFO' sightings collected over a 30 year period, to ascertain whether there is any evidence of a threat to the UK and to identify any potential military technologies of interest. The study was not conducted to substantiate the existence of extraterrestrial life-forms but we can confirm that no such evidence was found. As for 'UFOs', or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (they're not always objects), the report concluded that while people reporting sightings are often genuine, rational explanations such as aircraft lights or natural phenomena, including meteors forming 'buoyant plasmas', can explain them.

The report concludes that none of the UFO reports the MoD received had any Defence Intelligence value and led to the decision in December 2000 that the Defence Intelligence Staff no longer had any need to continue receiving UFO sighting reports.Under Secretary of State for Defence, Tom Watson said:"I am delighted that the Freedom of Information Act has meant that this once Secret report has been declassified and made public. In a department where lives are literally on the line and we can’t release every document we have, this is yet more evidence of the MoD’s commitment to openness."The study, titled Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region, was conducted between 1996 and 2000 during a policy review into the handling of UFO sighting reports by the MOD. The report contains sensitive information concerning the UK Air Defence Region and was therefore classified Secret and given a limited distribution. Until the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, all government records were closed from public viewing for a period of 30 years after the last action was taken.

The report has been released now because MoD received a Freedom of Information request for a copy of the report. Embracing the spirit of open government, and despite the size (over 450 pages) and original classificatioOD staff have taken great care to ensure that the majority of this large report is made available.There is a real an enduring interest in Unidentified Flying Objects. By far the most popular topics of FOI requests has been UFOs, followed by Recruitment enquiries; enquiries from staff; and historical events such as World War Two, the Falklands conflict and the Balkans. Recent FOI MoD releases on UFOs have attracted media interest from as far away as Japan.

[Rasputin]

Multiple universes: The evidence is good

Ken Korczak: What if you had an identical twin? What if you had 10 identical twins? A million twins? what if all of these "others" were more than just twins in the sibling sense? What if these others were literally “you,” yet living independently in their own world or universe?Astonishing as it may seem, this may actually be the case. There may be millions, billions, and in fact, an infinite number of "alternate" universes stacked like so much Tupperware within our own universe. In each of these other universes lives another you leading a full and very real life, just like your own life.Some of these other universes are very close to our own, and are almost identical, except for minor differences. Others are further removed and the differences increase as the distance from our own increases.The concept is not a new one. In fact, the idea that other invisible worlds exist in proximity to our own are nearly as old as human beings. “Other worlds” is one of the oldest and most frequently used ideas in speculative literature and legend.

Examples might be “Fairyland” and the “astral plane.”While spiritualists, shamans and mystics have been happily dealing with the subject of alternate universes for centuries, modern science, notably the field of physics, has embraced the idea of alternate worlds in recent years.In the field of quantum mechanics, alternate universe theory is generally referred to as the “Many Worlds Interpretation,” and it holds up mathematically.The theory was first proposed 40 years ago in 1957 by the brilliant physicist Hugh Everett III. He came up with the Many Worlds scenario to deal with some of the more perplexing aspects of quantum mechanics.Everett suggested that whenever numerous viable possibilities exist, the world splits into many worlds or universes, one universe for each different possibility.For example, if you get up this morning and can’t decide if you want to have coffee or tea for breakfast, the Many Worlds Interpretation says that for each choice that is made, an entire universe is created to accommodate each choice.In one universe you choose coffee. In another universe you choose tea. In a third universe, you decide to have neither. In still another, you go with orange juice.

Each universe is as real and valid as the other. It’s just that each goes its separate way from the point of decision.According to the astounding Many Worlds Interpretation, every single choice that is made by every single human being at every instant of time creates an entire universe which goes on forever into infinity.Obviously, this means that millions and billions and trillions of universes are being created on an ongoing basis!In each universe created, everything is identical, except for that one different choice; from that point on, they develop independently, and no communication is possible between them, so the people living in those worlds have no idea that this is going on.According to the Many Worlds Interpretation, there are not only an infinite number of universes, but an infinite number of versions of each person—including you!Your alternate selves have all split off at some time in the past from the path you are now following. There may be versions of you that split off one or five years ago, or perhaps five minutes after you were born.

[Rasputin]

'Brazilian Stonehenge' discovered

Brazilian archaeologists have found an ancient stone structure in a remote corner of the Amazon that may cast new light on the region's past. The site, thought to be an observatory or place of worship, pre-dates European colonisation and is said to suggest a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy. Its appearance is being compared to the English site of Stonehenge. It was traditionally thought that before European colonisation, the Amazon had no advanced societies. The archaeologists made the discovery in the state of Amapa, in the far north of Brazil. A total of 127 large blocks of stone were found driven into the ground on top of a hill. Well preserved and each weighing several tons, the stones were arranged upright and evenly spaced. It is not yet known when the structure was built, but fragments of indigenous pottery found at the site are thought to be 2,000 years old. What impressed researchers was the sophistication of the construction.

The stones appear to have been laid out to help pinpoint the winter solstice, when the sun is at its lowest in the sky. It is thought the ancient people of the Amazon used the stars and phases of the moon to determine crop cycles. Although the discovery at Amapa is being compared to Stonehenge, the ancient stone circle in southern England, the English site is considerably older. It is thought to have been erected some time between 3000 and 1600 BC.

[Rasputin]

UFOs ? It's just the weather

Cheltenham ufo expert Robin Cole has backed a government report dismissing the idea that mysterious objects in the sky are aliens. Defence Intelligence Staff examined 30 years of flying saucer sightings and came to the conclusion that UFOs are probably caused by the weather.The 400-page report says those seeing glowing round or cigar-shaped objects in the sky were describing unusual but entirely natural events in the atmosphere.Maintenance engineer Robin, 40, says he sees a lot of sense in the report.A member of the Cheltenham-based Circular Forum, one of the longest running UFO groups in the country, he said: "I don't think aliens exist in the way the media suggests they do. I call them unidentified flying anomalies rather than objects because they aren't always solid."If people see something in the sky, they think it's a UFO because that's the conclusion they've been educated to come to."I'm always more objective in my line of thought.

I've made a few enemies in the UFO field for taking that stance."Robin has been interested in UFOs since spotting one when he was a child growing up in Leckhampton.He reckons he witnessed a solid metallic object at close quarters. He said: "Who knows what they are and that's why there is such an interest."There's no solid evidence to back anything up. The Government is saying it's an anomaly and that theory has been going around for years."

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US releases 9/11 Pentagon video

The US justice department has released the first video of the plane crashing into the Pentagon on 11 September 2001. American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the US military headquarters, killing 184 people, after it was hijacked as part of an al-Qaeda plot. The release of the video, taken from a Pentagon security camera, comes after a Freedom of Information Act request by legal watchdog Judicial Watch. The group said it hoped to dispel conspiracy theories about the crash. "Finally, we hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories involving American Airlines Flight 77," president Tom Fitton said. Some theorists have suggested the aircraft was shot down in flight, and that the Pentagon was struck by a missile. Stills released in 2002 showed the moment the hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon, killing 125 people in the building and 59 passengers and crew. The crash came shortly after two other hijacked airlines were flown into the twin towers at the World Trade Center in New York. Judicial Watch filed the freedom of information request in 2004, but the Pentagon refused to release the video because it was part of the investigation involving al-Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui, the group said.

This February the group sued the government over its refusal, saying there was "no legal basis" for it. Washington agreed to release the video after a court sentenced Moussaoui to life in jail for his role in 9/11 earlier this month, a Judicial Watch spokeswoman told the BBC. The group said it fought to obtain the video because "it was very important to complete the public record" on the attacks. French author Thierry Meyssan alleged that Flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon and suggested a truck bomb or missile caused the damage.

[Rasputin]

The "paranormalogist"

D. Lange: The English term “paranormal” is defined as not beingin accordance with the known natural or scientificlaws. The English suffix “-ologist” denotes someone whostudies a field of discipline. The innovative new term, “paranormologist” is perhapsthe best way of describing Christopher Chacon. Chaconis considered one of the worlds foremost experts inthe scientific exploration of the paranormal (i.e.parapsychological, supernatural and anomalousphenomena). A veteran field investigator/researcherwith the Phenomenology Division of the Office ofScientific Investigations and Research (O.S.I.R.),Chacon has traveled to every corner of the worldexploring phenomena that defies the known laws ofnature and physics. Like all of its operatives, Chaconwas specially trained in O.S.I.R.’s elitenext-generation scientific method.

The O.S.I.R. has at its disposal an army of scientistsequipped with an insurmountable arsenal of supernext-generation technology. Their unlimited funds andresources, coupled with their apparent authority overgovernment jurisdiction has allowed them to maintainthe highest level of secrecy surrounding their manyinvestigations and research. Because the O.S.I.R.conducts their scientific operations in a clandestinemanner, they are fortunate in discovering a caliber ofparanormal phenomena that is beyond compare.The dynamics behind the many types of phenomena Chaconencounters all over the world often redefinestraditional preconceptions on how the phenomenabehaves and additionally what might be causing it.Chacon has encountered poltergeist and haunt phenomenathat have ripped through walls, slamming anything itencounters to the ground. He has pursued an unknownbiped creature twice the size of a human that chargedthrough the jungle at over 60 miles per hour. He hasdealt with a volatile demonic possession of an ancientSamarian entity that killed several people bymutilation before being contained.

He has encounteredan entire village that was experiencing atime-distortion anomaly. He was successful incapturing an individual who was using super-poweredpsychokinetic abilities to kill people. Chacon is one of the only scientific researchers inthe world whose expertise allows him to investigateevery type of paranormal phenomena imaginable. Some ofthe many types of paranormal phenomena include,cryptozoology (strange creatures), haunts andpoltergeists, possessions and miracles, UFO andextraterrestrial close encounters, psychic andparapsychological phenomena (i.e. clairvoyance,psychokinesis, astral projection, etc.), metaphysicalphenomena (i.e.witchcraft, reincarnation, black magic,etc.) and all sorts of anomalous or fortean phenomena(i.e. crop circles, raining fire and brimstone,space/time distortions, etc.). The types of phenomenathat are considered “paranormal” are too many tomention here and continue to grow as explorations intothis realm flourish and new and extraordinaryphenomena are reported. As a representative of O.S.I.R. and one of the worldshighest authorities on the paranormal, Chacon has beenfeatured internationally on countless radio and TVshows, documentaries, news interviews as well as inpublications for his work as a scientificinvestigator/researcher of the paranormal.

Chacon’swidespread appearances included the network news ofNBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, BBC News, Japan NIPPON News, aswell as the popular TV programs; Dateline, 20/20, TheOtherside, Sightings, Unsolved Mysteries, NationalGeographic Explorer, Eye to Eye with Connie Chung, TheTom Snyder Show, Hard Copy, Discovery Channel, TheLearning Channel, and many more. Chacon introduced theworld to the high-tech, advanced scientific method ofexploring paranormal phenomena long before there wasan “X Files”, or even more recently, “Ghost Hunters”.Fueled by Chacon’s and O.S.I.R.’s ground-breakingapproach to the paranormal, individuals andgrass-roots groups have sprung up all over the U.S.,Canada and throughout the world, although none can becompared to the degree of experience and expertise ofChacon or the power and professionalism of theO.S.I.R.. According to May 2005 article inBusinessweek magazine, sales of technical equipmentfor the measurement of paranormal phenomena, measuringsuch things as electro-magnetic fields, have become asurprisingly healthy business over the last few years.

[Rasputin]

Nasa tracks cataclysmic asteroid

Mark your calendar for Sunday, April 13, 2036. That's when a 1,000-foot-wide asteroid named Apophis could hit the Earth with enough force to obliterate a small state.The odds of a collision are 1-in-6,250. But while that's a long shot at the racetrack, the stakes are too high for astronomers to ignore.For now, Apophis represents the most imminent threat from the worst type of natural disaster known, one reason NASA is spending millions to detect the threat from this and other asteroids.A direct hit on an urban area could unleash more destruction than Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 Asian tsunami and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake combined. The blast would equal 880 million tons of TNT or 65,000 times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.Objects this size are thought to hit Earth about once every 1,000 years, and, according to recent estimates, the risk of dying from a renegade space rock is comparable to the hazards posed by tornadoes and snakebites. Those kind of statistics have moved the once-far-fetched topic of killer asteroids from Hollywood movie sets to the halls of Congress."Certainly we had a major credibility problem at the beginning - a giggle factor," said David Morrison, an astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

"Now, many people are aware this is something we can actually deal with, mitigate and defend against."In 1998, lawmakers formally directed NASA to identify by 2008 at least 90 percent of the asteroids more than a kilometer (0.6 mile) wide that orbit the sun and periodically cross Earth's path. That search is now more than three-quarters complete.Last year, Congress directed the space agency to come up with options for deflecting potential threats. Ideas seriously discussed include lasers on the moon, futuristic "gravity tractors," spacecraft that ram incoming objects and Hollywood's old standby, nuclear weapons.To help explore possible alternatives, former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart has formed the B612 Foundation. The organization's goal is to be able to significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015.

[Rasputin]

Uri Gellar buys home of Elvis on Ebay

Psychic Uri Geller and two partners have bought the Tennessee house Elvis Presley lived in before moving to Graceland, with a winning bid of $905,100 on eBay, he said on Monday. "We are unbelievably pleased. This is a piece of history," Geller said by phone from England."We intend to restore it to its old glory. We would like to bring sick children there (for tours), Palestinian children, Israeli children, American children," the Israeli-born Geller said. "Hopefully one day we might get approval to turn it into a museum."Presley bought the four-bedroom, two-bath house at 1034 Audubon Drive in Memphis in 1956 with a down payment of $500. He lived there for 13 months before moving to Graceland, the now-famous Memphis estate where he died in 1977.During his time in the white, ranch-style house with an outdoor swimming pool, Presley's career took off with hits such as "All Shook Up" and "Don't be cruel."

Geller identified the sellers as Mike and Cindy Hazen, who bought the house some years ago, though not from Presley, for about $180,000.Geller had original bid $300,000 last month but a bidding war ensued and the price ballooned, he said. During the process he was approached by dozens of people wanting to go in with him, he said. He chose two, New York lawyer Pete Gleason and Lisbeth Silvandersson, a Swedish-born jewelry maker who lives in England, as equal partners.He had set a ceiling price of $1.11 million, said Geller, who acknowledges a paranormal fascination with the number 11."As the clock closed on the bidding Sunday," Geller said, "I felt intuitively I got the price. I was text messaging Gleason and it was exactly 11 on my mobile phone and suddenly the radio started playing an Elvis song. That was Elvis telling me we got the house!"

[Rasputin]

Neanderthal yields nuclear DNA

The first sequences of nuclear DNA to be taken from a Neanderthal have been reported at a US science meeting. Geneticist Svante Paabo and his team say they isolated the long segments of genetic material from a 45,000-year-old Neanderthal fossil from Croatia. The work should reveal how closely related the Neanderthal species was to modern humans, Homo sapiens. Details were presented at a conference at New York's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and reported by News@Nature. It is a significant advance on previous research that has extracted mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) specimens. This genetic material is contained in structures that power cells; and although the information it holds is very useful, it is more limited in scope than the DNA bundled up at the cell's centre. This nuclear DNA is what really drives an organism's biochemistry. So far, Paabo and colleagues have managed to sequence around a million base-pairs, which comprises 0.03% of the Neanderthal's entire DNA "catalogue", or genome. Base-pairs are the simplest bonded chemical units which hold together the DNA double helix.

The genetic material comes from a 45,000-year-old male Neanderthal specimen found in Vindija Cave outside Zagreb, the News@Nature website reports. Preliminary analysis shows the bundle of DNA responsible for maleness in the Neanderthal - its Y chromosome - is very different from modern human and chimpanzee Y chromosomes; more so than for the other chromosomes in the genome.

[Rasputin]

The dark side of future technology

As far as anyone knows, the plight of civilization is nowhere near as dire as in the opening pages of Douglas Adams's "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," where alien spaceships are poised to destroy Earth to make way for an interstellar highway. Still, with resource consumption and environmental destruction rising at unsustainable rates, plenty of people view the future with alarm. That spotlights technologies like nuclear power, genetic engineering and nanotechnology, which are often cited as crucial to heading off economic and environmental disaster.The catch is that any technology powerful enough to improve life radically is also capable of abuse and prone to serious, unanticipated side effects. It's a great time to be a Hollywood screenwriter, but rough on policy makers and business strategists. Mix new technologies with the wide variations in how organizations and individuals behave, and you often have "a recipe for explosion," said Edward Tenner, author of "Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences." The table setter for fears about potentially useful technology was nuclear power, which emerged as an energy source while images of the waste laid to Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs in 1945 were still fresh.

"It's not the probability of a nuclear accident that matters in people's attitudes," said Charles B. Perrow, a risk analysis expert whose newest book, "Disaster Evermore? U.S. Vulnerability to Natural, Industrial and Terrorist Disasters," will be published this summer. "It's the possibility, which is very much there." Despite several close calls, the deadly explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 is the utility industry's sole catastrophic failure. But the costs imposed on power companies to manage risks had already halted expansion of the nuclear power industry in the United States and elsewhere in the 70's.

[Rasputin]

Evolutionary evangelism

Between intelligent design and evolutionary processes there’s a heaven and earth difference. CJ Stone explains: I’ve been having this weird sensation of late. I’m in a shop, or on the street, surrounded by other humans, when I get this startling feeling of being outside of myself and looking down on the world. All of a sudden it seems very strange to me. Us humans seem like oddly-shaped, twittering mammals, perched up on our hind legs, and living almost entirely in a world made up of the products of our brains, horribly divorced from nature and from the planet we inhabit. It’s a commonplace to refer to the human race as the high point of evolution. As Shakespeare puts it, in his inimitable way: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!” Obviously Shakespeare doesn’t know some of the people I know. Noble in reason? Infinite in faculty? The beauty of the world?

Overweight, opinionated and petty-minded would be a better description. Drunk on their own sense of self-importance. As it happens Shakespeare wasn’t referring to evolution when he wrote those lines. Evolution hadn’t been invented yet. In Shakespearean times the world was still being made in six days, and women were still being squidged together out of lumps of clay wrapped around a freshly plucked rib. How times have changed. These days we have DNA and genetic engineering. We don’t need plucked ribs. We have stem-cells instead. I have two friends who don’t believe in evolution. One is a fundamentalist Christian, who thinks we are all being conned by secular relativism, and who insists that the world is a lot younger than we are led to believe. The other is a follower of Madam Blavatsky. My friend, the follower of Madam Blavatsky, said: “there’s no such thing as evolution. Look, the lion is already perfect, the hippopotamus is perfect, the crocodile is perfect. Who’s ever heard of an un-evolved crocodile? None of the animals need to evolve. The only thing left to evolve on this planet is us humans.” I liked that line. Later I told it to my friend the fundamentalist Christian, and later again I overheard him saying it to someone else. I think I should have warned him that ultimately the line derived from Madam Blavatsky. Maybe then he might have thought twice about using it. I just like planting thoughts in people’s heads. Personally I don’t know whether evolution exists or not. I have no scientific background and cannot argue either way about the fossil record or about the processes of mutation in DNA.

It sounds like a plausible enough explanation to me. I’ve always accepted that evolution must play a part in the overall form that us mammals take, in the same way that I accept that the Earth goes round the Sun and that gravity makes things fall to the ground. It seems to me that the more elegant and simple an explanation, the more likely it is to be true. That applies to gravity. It also applies to evolution. Also – and this is where I get really puzzled – it seems to me that there is no necessary contradiction between the idea of a creator and the idea of evolution anyway. After all, wouldn’t it work just as well to say that evolution was the creator’s creation? If evolution exists, couldn’t the creator be manipulating it? Why do some people seem so obsessed with hanging on to one particular narrative interpretation of reality and defending it so aggressively against every other possible explanation? This has always struck me as a football supporters version of a cosmological debate. My team versus your team. My team, home or away, and I’ll fight you in the car-park afterwards if you dare to disagree. This seems to me to be equally true of both sides in the current debate around evolution and intelligent design in America. Some of the statements of the fundamentalist evolutionists seem just as religious in their fervour as those of the more traditional creationists.

[Rasputin]

80-yr-old woman eats stones for 70 years

There is a mystical old woman living in a small village in Guofu town, Qijiang county, Chong Qing city, China. The woman is nearly 80 years old. For the last 70 years, she has eaten smallstones every day and appears to be healthier than other villagers her age. According to the "Approaches to Science" TV program, Darong is a typical village in that area. However, because the strange old woman by the name of Luo Kairong lives there, this secluded village has become famous. A villager said, "She is very healthy. We have never seen her unwell. She is competent at several things. She can carry things in the fields in winter and cut firewood in her bare feet." We understand that Luo has eaten small stones for more than 70 years and even once ate half a wall. From her appearance, she looks like any other elderly peasant. There is nothing overtly different. Granny Luo said that she is particular about the stones she eats. She never eats "soft" stones; her favorites are the very hard green sandstones gathered from the mountains.

To her, the harder stones are tastier. She eats stones just like ordinary people munch on peanuts. Looking at the doubtful expressions in our eyes, she brings a red cloth bag from her house and stuffs her mouth with a handful of gravel. Granny Luo eats these stones nonstop and chews with great gusto. Seeing is believing. It is hard to believe that an 80-year-old woman could consume so many small stones. Granny Luo told us that her teeth have been worn down from eating the stones. She has had to replace her dentures three times. Then, why can an elderly person swallow a stone that is seemingly tasteless and hard to swallow without being choked or falling sick? Experts say this could possibly be related to the fact that Granny Luo has eaten soil since childhood.

[Rasputin]

Triple-Neptune system discovered

A trio of Neptune-sized worlds has been spotted circling a star 41 light years away, in the southern constellation Puppis. One of the planets is by far the smallest ever found in the “habitable zone” of a Sun-like star, where liquid water could exist.“The astronomer’s dream would be to be able to study the composition and structure of these planets to see exactly what they look like,” says Christophe Lovis from the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, whose team made the discovery.Future space-based missions like NASA’s Terrestrial Planet Finder and the European Space Agency’s Darwin project could realise that dream in 15 to 20 years. Over the past decade, astronomers have discovered about 170 planets orbiting stars beyond the Sun. More than 40 lie inside multiple systems – containing two planets or more.But so far, all these multiple systems have been dominated by at least one Jupiter-mass giant. Now Lovis and his colleagues have found a more petite multiple system containing three Neptune-sized worlds, and no whopping Jupiters.The team discovered the planets by monitoring their parent star for two years using a 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile.

The parent star, HD 69830, is about 80% as massive as our Sun and is significantly dimmer.The star “wobbles” due to the gravitational pull of the planet family orbiting around it. The team’s observations suggest the star has three planets, all of which lie closer to their star than the Earth does to the Sun. Their masses are at least 10, 12 and 18 times that of the Earth, respectively.Lovis suspects the two innermost planets are rocky and blisteringly hot. But the outermost one lies far enough from the star to be in a habitable zone, where liquid water can exist.