Science Special News

[Rasputin]

Trevor the tramp

T. Stokes: With the rise in interest of all things paranormal, or maybe it just seems to be on every ones lips, certainly every night the T.V has a haunting programme or some similar aspect from the spooky spectrum, and every magazine contains a medium or astrologers wisdom for the masses, and just look in the back of each ladies periodical at the variety of experts on witchery, crystal healers and the dial a psychics. This has brought a new type of expert to the fore, the paranormal counsellor.For years each Spiritualist church would have someone who had studied what are know in the trade as “difficult cases” these can be unresolved hauntings, children with night terrors, haunted houses or just people in need of advice or a friendly chat, but unfortunately, more and more we hear of complaints against fraudulent practitioners, scam artists and rip-off cold readers.Some years ago during a bitter winter, our little Spiritualist centre had to open its doors each night for large numbers of local O.A.P’s to come in, we thought this is so good to have so much interest, But we learnt some while after, that it was cheaper for the O.A.P’s to come meet and chat in our little church than stay home and pay for lighting and heating,But every church must be welcome for all to come and be part of the whole.

We had every religion and belief system present, the only proviso was an open mind about life after death. A recent study by the big advertising companies who are always keen to find new gimmicks to sell products, suggest the craze for the next decade will be using spirituality to sell new produce in the way that sex was used in the past.For many years I like many others would beaver away behind the scenes as a guidance counsellor for paranormal situations, when the meteoric rise in current interest in these topics has meant, that new life has been breathed into many a spooky problem.With the internet now people the world over can reach out and touch you, And from strange places, I cannot believe how many contacted me from India and Pakistan, in reaction to a couple of magazine articles on the subject.People often want an arbiter in family disputes, an old couple were distressed to still see the shape of their old family dog asleep on the rug, when it died last year.A young child talks at night to a friend in his room, that no one else can see, but through the baby mike downstairs, he was heard having long conversations with this invisible friend, and in yesterdays mail, my daughter reads the tarot cards is this dangerous, ? But the strangest tale for some years was that of a recent haunting. An old couple from the North of England had turned their large rear garden into an allotment, where they grew some good varied produce, one day a tramp called and asked to do any odd jobs in exchange for a meal, and the lady of the house asked him to work on the allotment.The tramp had had a fine military career, but never had a family, and now retired from service, over time he stayed on in the potting shed, his sleeping bag under the main workshelf, and a little paraffin stove to cook his meals.The seasons ticked by and the tramp became a permanent fixture, growing prize winning produce from the little allotment.Some 7 years after he arrived he was taken unwell and died in hospital that night.Now, some 2 weeks later the wife happened to look out of the window before retiring to bed and saw a candle burning in the window of the potting shed.

The husband took up his walking stick and went to investigate, the padlock was intact and nothing was disturbed inside.Over the next few weeks many nights from their window a candle could be seen as when the tramp had been there, but it was when they noticed the spade and fork oiled and put away in the corner for the winter that they became afraid.My reply to this was that assuming this was no prank, then the soul of Trevor the tramp, for whatever reason did not want to go on and had stayed where he was most happy, tending the allotment and living in the potting shed.The man of the house would tease Trevor, that although a tramp with a beard and often very scruffy and unclean, his boots would be scrubbed and polished brightly as he turned in for the night.The many years of army life had ingrained this into him, and the man who owned the house swore he could hear a brush on leather at 8-30 each evening, regular as clockwork, and it frightened him.So this old couple were half out of their mind with worry over something so simple, not realising how easy it is to say to the soul of the man he was dead and he was to please stop worrying them.This morning I had an invitation to a psychology workshop for“people addicted to fixing” advertised for those who are too able and willing to help others,the workshop went on to say “ do you interfere in the lives of others “ ?“ do you try to control or boss other people “ ?Which planet are these psychologists from ?When old couples like this phone you ten times a day for help, how should you react ? Many experts are waiting for psychology to catch up with the recent advances in the popularity of the paranormal,Until then I will leave my psychology certificates in the drawer to gather dust, And get on with what I do best.

[Rasputin]

What is red mercury?

Three men have been cleared of trying to procure the raw ingredients for a "dirty bomb" which the prosecution claimed could have devastated a British city if it fell into the hands of terrorists. But mystery surrounds the material at the centre of the plot. So what exactly is red mercury?The most bizarre aspect of the trial of Abdurahman Kanyare and his two co-defendants was the fact that no-one in the court could be certain whether the terrifying substance on which the entire prosecution case was based actually existed. The prosecutor, Mark Ellison, admitted the police had no idea if there even was such a thing as red mercury - supposedly the main ingredient for a "dirty bomb" which could have devastated London. But he told the jury at the outset: "The Crown's position is that whether red mercury does or does not exist is irrelevant." He warned the jury not to get "hung up" on whether red mercury actually existed at all. Mr Ellison said the fact was that the three defendants had hit upon a meaning for it as a substance which was highly dangerous and expensive, and they pursued it. The indictment accused them of "conspiring together and with persons unknown to possess and article, namely a highly dangerous mercury-based substance, in circumstances which gave rise to a reasonable suspicion that it was to be possessed for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism."

It emerged during the trial at the Old Bailey that red mercury was something of an urban myth, a substance which was either radioactive or toxic or neither, depending on who you spoke to. Indeed some of the conversations between undercover reporter Mazher Mahmood and the prospective buyers were bordering on the farcical. At one meeting in a shopping arcade in Edgware, north London both sides kept asking what it was that they thought the other side was there to buy or sell. Mahmood kept repeating, probably for the sake of his covert recordings: "Now let's just make it clear what exactly it is you want to buy." Kanyare replied: "You know what we're here for." When he gave evidence Kanyare said he believed red mercury was a liquid which could be used to wash soiled money.

[Rasputin]

NASA's Mars plan has rocky future

NASA's scientific exploration plan for Mars is missing a few pieces, warns a report released Thursday. The space agency had asked the National Research Council, which advises the government on science issues, to evaluate its Mars plans, particularly in light of budget cuts to science missions.Headed by planetary scientist Reta Beebe of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, the NRC panel finds that Mars plans for the next decade — involving a series of robotic rovers and an orbiting science lab — broadly meet NASA's scientific goals.But after that, budget and planning woes threaten to derail NASA's goals, the report states, particularly the elimination of probes designed to return Mars rocks to Earth and a Mars-wide weather-monitoring network."If we are going to send people to Mars, we simply have to understand the planet," says Beebe.

NASA's 2009 plan to land a rover laboratory, the Mars Science Laboratory, fits with scientific goals, she says, "but beyond, there is a big threat to the program."More than $2 billion over five years has been diverted from NASA's planned Mars budget to the space shuttle and plans for a future manned space mission, says NASA's Doug McCuistion.."Overall, the report is a good one," says McCuistion, who heads the Mars Exploration Program. "They didn't find any big gaping holes in our plans but have given us good food for thought on the choices we face." But given budget cuts, McCuistion said a mission to retrieve Mars samples is unlikely until the 2020s. The panel made other recommendations to get NASA's Mars plans back on track, including:

• Ensure that a planned 2013 Mars orbiter is designed to include a science mission, "not simply to serve as a telecommunications relay."
• Delay until 2018 a proposed "astrobiology" lander designed to look for life on Mars. This would give scientists time to design instruments capable of building on the achievements of missions that take place in the less distant future.
• "Clarify" for the space-science community how mission costs are weighed against research benefits.

NASA has built up a sizable research community through the Mars rover programs and other missions, Beebe says. A disorganized or misdirected Mars exploration program that sacrifices fundamental research questions about the Red Planet will fritter away that expertise as scientists turn to more productive research, she says.

[Rasputin]

What lies in the outser Solar System ?

Researchers say they have found the first evidence that the frozen outer reaches of our solar system could be littered with many more objects than we think. Astronomers have been trying to get a picture of the region, known as the Kuiper belt, because it is believed to contain debris from the birth of our solar system and so could tell us how planetary systems form.About 1000 large bodies, including Pluto and the recently discovered Xena, have been located in the Kuiper belt so far.But smaller objects have evaded detection as they are about 15 billion kilometres from the Sun, making it impossible to see them even with a powerful instrument like the Hubble Space Telescope.Now an Australian team from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO) has used optical fibre technology to detect signs of smaller Kuiper belt objects for the first time.They did this by observing split-second 'winking', or darkening, of stars which suggests a Kuiper belt object is passing in front, or occulting the star.UNSW student George Georgevits presented his research at a recent workshop attended by international Kuiper belt experts in Italy.

His colleague Associate Professor Michael Ashley of UNSW says the observations offer the first evidence the Kuiper belt contains many more relics of the infant solar system than estimated."Basically our observation showed that that are many more, maybe five or 10 times as many, of the smaller objects than theory predicted," he says.Ashley says Georgevits and fellow researcher Dr Will Saunders of the AAO found evidence of many objects ranging in size from 300 metres to one kilometre across using a 6DF instrument on the UK Schmidt telescope at Siding Spring.The 6DF, which uses fibre optics, monitored 100 stars simultaneously over two weeks, the equivalent of 7000 star hours, or watching a single star every night for 3 years."We've got 100 fibres, each one of which is positioned on a star and then we feed the fibres into a high speed camera," he says.Ashley says it's been suggested there are around 100 billion objects in the belt, but the latest observations suggest this could represent only a fraction of what's there."We saw at least 100 very definite [occultations] and as ... you look for smaller, less significant events we could have seen up to 1000," he says.

[Rasputin]

Ghostly links to Scotland's past

Scotland has long been a country fascinated with the unexplained. Whether it is the haunting sounds of the headless drummer of Edinburgh Castle or the lonely child ghost pining for her doll in Mary King's Close, many of our most important historical moments and landmarks are associated with some form of paranormal activity.While there is a plethora of highly documented work on the existence and prevalence of ghosts in Scotland, many stories of sightings have also proved to be pranks of adolescents.During the 1930s in particular - with a surge in filmic, theatrical and literal representations of them in popular culture, coupled with the antics of the famous ghost hunter Harry Price at the Borley Rectory in England - ghosts were a popular fascination and a source of many mischievous deeds.One such case was highlighted in The Scotsman on 4 August 1936. James Frail, a young man from Fife, was fined for breaching the peace after spooking Harry Bayne on a farm in Kelty.

As the newspaper reported, Frail jumped out on the road in front of Bayne, emulating a terrifying spook before his victim "ran a distance of half a mile in a state of extreme fright and perspiring freely. Since then he had had pneumonia and, while that could not be deliberately attributed to the fright he had, the fact remained that he had been very ill since then."While this story gives us all a chance to muse over the style of newspaper reporting from the time, it is only one of many instances of such impish fun.Another tale comes from the far reaches of Campbeltown, on Kintyre. During the autumn and winter months between 1937 and 1939, The Scotsman noted how the citizens of Campbeltown, in particular women and children, were terrorised by practical jokers who masqueraded around the area.

[Rasputin]

Ancient human footprints discovered

About 20,000 years ago, humans trekked along the margins of a shallow lake in Australia, leaving behind records of their passage in the soft, wet sand. In 2003, an aboriginal woman who is likely a descendant of those early Australians stumbled across dozens of timeworn footprints in the same area. Excavations of the site have since uncovered hundreds more.The discovery, detailed in a recent issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, represents the largest collection of Pleistocene human footprints in the world, and the only footprints from that era ever found in Australia. In total, 457 footprints have now been uncovered."The preservation is just remarkable," said study team member Matthew Cupper of the University of Melbourne in Australia. "You can see quite clearly how mud oozes between the toes."The footprints were found in southeastern Australia, along the shore of one of 19 dried up lakes that comprise the Willandra Lakes system.The researchers believe the prints were made over a series of weeks or months about 20,000 years ago when the site was exposed.

Males and females, ranging from children to adults, are represented, and many of them seem to be doing different things."Quite a few people seem to be running and heading the same way," Cupper told LiveScience. "Some of the little children were walking slower. This may suggest that there were several events represented."Australia is thought to have first been colonized by humans about 50,000 years ago. Those who made the newfound footprints were likely the ancestors of today's Australian aborigines, the researchers say.

[Rasputin]

New 'Bigfoot' photos released

A local legend is getting new life. In the last two weeks, there were three separate Bigfoot sighting in rural Atoka County. The final sighting included photos that some say is the mysterious creature itself.Talk to people around Clear Boggy Creek in Atoka County and you will here thousands of stories. But last week, the legend himself, Bigfoot, was supposedly spotted in those very woods.They have grown up on these woods and know them well. But last week, 13-year-old Morgan Whatley and her 12-year-old brother Garrett came across something strange right across the creek was a creature she'd never seen before.But the claims of the Whatley kids were passed off as a child's imagination. That changed just days later when a woman in her fifties had to be taken to a hospital. She reported seeing a big hairy creature in her yard and had an anxiety attack.

It's all over the newspaper and on everyone's mind; what was seen at boggy bottom? Some people say it is Bigfoot. Others aren't believers yet.A local store owner set up game cameras hoping to catch a glimpse. The pictures are below. We'll let you be the judge.

[Rasputin]

Past, present and future

Kathleen Meadows: I've been watching a series featured on the CBC recently called, “The Paranormal” whereby some unexplained mysteries, or beliefs are discussed and debunked by a notable scientist. The quoted scientist is picked by their long-standing research interest in the topic. The mystery/belief has been put through some rigorous investigation and of course ultimately denounced for its validity. This is not a new enterprise for science by any means. Yesterday's show looked at past, present and future. What the physicist from Harvard explained about the accepted formulae that is generally accepted to define linear time, is that it has always presented a conundrum to scientists that could never be resolved satisfactorily. The conundrum is that the formula offers no distinction between past or future calculations. Quite a conundrum! All us humans recognize that these are entirely different states of being. In this manifested time/space world we inhabit, “reality” dictates that we can only change the future, not the past. “So why can we not reflect this in our time calculations?”, asks the frustrated physicist?Another physicist points out that our reality is really a matter of perception. And if our present-day formulations are taken to the nth degree, we can only conclude that there are “alternate” realities that are not perceivable to our consciousness awareness. And that everything in this alternate reality is much larger than what exists in this reality!

I've been a diviner for almost 30 years and it's my vocation to look for patterns of emergence into a future that in the present moment is perceivable if you know what to look for or more accurately what to listen for. A future reality is perceivable if you listen carefully to that inner voice that declares without reservation, “This will be!” And frankly it's happened often enough in my life that I know this is true. The science I adhere to the most is one called phenomenology. Phenomenology states that each experience is real and all the burden of proof required is that it happened once - to you. That's enough. If you are looking for a place in science to prove that your experience of the paranormal is valid and provable because you experienced it, this is where you'll find your staunchest scientific supporters.To determine a future, to fully grasp the past, you must be here now. You must pull yourself right into this very moment, smell the aroma, feel the air currents, see the colours, shapes, sizes of everything in room, and listen carefully to that inner voice that is never wrong. That's the secret truth of divination. The more you are aware in this present moment, the more you will know the past and future on each side of it. All of time is right now.

Kathleen Meadows, M.A.

[Rasputin]

Australian 'Nessie' fossils found

Australia was once home to ancient reptiles that swam in huge icy lakes, fossil evidence suggests. The large, carnivorous reptiles lived 115 million years ago, during the age of the dinosaurs, when much of the continent was covered in water. Fossils of two new species of plesiosaur were discovered near Coober Pedy in South Australia. Plesiosaurs are popular in science fiction and are said to resemble Scotland's mythical Loch Ness monster. The Australian specimens are described in recent editions of the journals Biology Letters and Palaeontology. One, known as Umoonasaurus demoscyllus, was about 2.4m (7.2ft) long and had crests on its head, perhaps for display or mating purposes. "Imagine a compact body with four flippers, a reasonably long neck, small head and short tail, much like a reptilian seal," said the lead author of the two papers, Dr Benjamin Kear of the University of Adelaide. The other species, Opallionectes andamookaensis, grew to about 5m (16ft) long and had small needle-like teeth. Some 30 fossils were discovered at an opal mine near the outback mining town of Coober Pedy.

They are made up of the mineral opal, which filled the spaces left by bones when the original fossil-bearing rock was dissolved away by acidic ground water. The fossils include several skeletons and a complete skull of Umoonasaurus, and a partial skeleton of Opallionectes. They are thought to be of juvenile animals, suggesting the lake was a breeding and nursery ground. Scientists believe sea-dwelling adults returned to the shallow inland waters to breed and raise their young. At the time, Australia was much colder, and the inland ocean would have frozen over in places during the winter.

[Rasputin]

Reward offered for spiritual healing proof

A group of rationalists of Indian origin here has renewed its offer of 16,000 pounds to any occult practitioner or spiritual healer who can scientifically prove the ability to cure people of any disease or solve any problem. Newspapers catering to Asian and Afro-Caribbean readerships have several pages of advertisements from such practitioners, promising magical cures and manna to those who believe in spells and occult practices.Lavkesh Prashar, president of the Asian Rationalist Society of Britain (ARSB), said such witch doctors and charlatans were exploiting superstitious and gullible people from these communities and earning thousands of pounds every year.Prasher said: "We challenge them to prove that they have magical powers under scientific conditions.They charge anything up to 300 pounds for a simple chat and claim they can cure anything from serious illness to bad luck."

The call was renewed at a recent meeting of the ARSB in Birmingham as part of the society's efforts to educate the people about the "so-called gurus and babas and tantriks who are exploiting the innocent people mentally, financially and sometimes physically as well".Prashar said: "If these babas and gurus have any magical or supernatural power then why not they accept our challenge? Why do they back off when we challenge them?"

[Rasputin]

Where are all the crop circles ?

Robert Hardman: Supernatural energy is, apparently, buzzing all around us from beneath the flattened wheat. John Latta from Seattle is wandering round in a trance-like state. Katharyn Henderson, 24, a teacher from New Zealand, is lying on the ground, lost in a cosmic daze. We are in the middle of a newly-discovered crop circle, an elaborate pattern carved into an unharvested field. This one is not a particularly memorable example but it is already attracting quite a crowd for one reason: the crop circle appears to be an endangered species. This summer will go down as a dismal year for strange apparitions amid the cereal. Numbers are way down and no one knows why. Those who believe the patterns are extra-terrestrial signals claim the alien messengers have despaired of planet earth and have driven their UFOs off to another galaxy. Others claim there is a farmers' conspiracy to destroy all circles as soon as they appear.

The curious death of a well-known crop-trampling enthusiast has also been cited, as has the present heatwave. No one has blamed John Prescott just yet but it can only be a matter of time. So, I am not surprised to find a busload of devotees embracing this formation outside the Wiltshire village of Avebury.

[Rasputin]

Black holes may not exist at all

They swallow everything that comes their way and exercise the world's finest minds, but the portrayal of black holes as awe-inspiring celestial menaces may be woefully inaccurate, a team of scientists claim. Indeed, they might not exist at all. According to the researchers, the traditional astronomers' view of a universe liberally sprinkled with invisible, all-consuming black holes should be replaced with an alternative that sees strange, magnetic balls of plasma floating in their place. If the finding is verified - an event some scientists do not see on the horizon - it would dramatically overturn a theory that emerged from an English geologist's calculations in 1784, was verified by Einstein and confined by four laws drawn up by Professor Stephen Hawking. The scientists, lead by Rudy Schild at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, spotted what they claim to be the death knell for black hole theory while observing a quasar, lurking nine billion light years from Earth. Quasars are believed to have black holes at their centres, but to test this assumption, the scientists set up 14 telescopes to keep an unprecedented watch on the object. By analysing the gentle flickering of the quasar, the team were able to probe the structure of its interior. They discovered a gaping hole in a disc of material surrounding the centre of the quasar, as wide as 4,000 times the distance from the Earth to the sun.

The hole, they believe, could only be caused by a vast ejection of material propelled by a strong magnetic field. Because black holes do not have magnetic fields, Dr Schild's team suggest in The Astronomical Journal, the quasar must be powered by a dense ball of plasma called a MECO (magnetospheric eternally collapsing object). But according to the astronomers' theories the MECOs' existence precludes the possibility of black holes. "I believe this is the first evidence that the whole black hole paradigm is incorrect," said Darryl Leiter, a scientist on the team told the New Scientist.

[Rasputin]

Bigfoot lawsuit kicks up a notch

Sometimes, with this Bigfoot business, it's hard to know what to believe. And that's not even addressing the purported existence of the publicity shy ape.No, there is a fissure among three Bay Area Bigfoot researchers. It all came to light when the Mercury News wrote a story about a July 11 lawsuit filed by C. Thomas Biscardi, a Redwood City man who bills himself as a ``World Renowned Bigfoot Researcher.''He sued North Bay residents Carole Rubin and Robert Shorey of the Great American Big Foot Research Organization, of which Biscardi used to be CEO.It seems, Biscardi said, that the pair and their organization owed him $185,000 and the return of his Bigfoot library, which included many treasures of the animal and its legacy, including films, pictures and plaster footprint casts.Rubin thinks -- to quote her directly -- that Biscardi ``is interested only in self-promotion and not in the genuine study and research of Bigfoot.'' Rubin and Shorey said the deal was to pay him $65,000 and an additional $60,000 if profits came in, which they didn't.

And they promised another $125,000 for Bigfoot-finding expeditions.And while most grown-ups think Bigfoot is an amusing myth, Rubin said her group spent more than the $125,000 on expeditions last year -- paying for high-tech gadgets and whatnot to find the elusive primate, more than what's needed to satisfy their deal.

[Rasputin]

Experts to check out Trevor crop circle

From the road it doesn't look like much. Just a field of ripening wheat stalks, rippling in the breeze.At the top of a rise partway into the field the even pattern of golden wheat breaks up a little bit, like there was a patch of seed that didn't take. The stalks aren't as crowded there, and when the wind moves past it's not the same even, water-like ripples that move across the rest of the field.In that spot, circles of wheat have been bent over, the once upright stalks now running horizontal in a counterclockwise circle.Trevor has a crop circle.Mary Sutherland, a investigator with Burlington UFO and Paranormal, learned of the circle earlier this week, when a man who lives near the field sent her an e-mail.In the e-mail he told Sutherland about the circle, noting that it could just be that someone drove around in the field, but there are no tracks leading up to the disturbed area.

Instead, it's like a giant wheel lay flat in the field and spun, pushing the wheat over gently but firmly, so that it stayed bent but did not strip the grains from the stalks. Sutherland went out to investigate after she learned of the circle. She took photos and soil samples, and she called in the experts. One was coming in Friday to take aerial photographs, she said. Another group was due to stop by the field today. They'll likely bring Geiger counters and audio equipment, and they will compare wheat from within the circle and without, to try and figure out if the circle is real or if it is a hoax.Sutherland believes it is real."If it was a hoax, they would have made it more visible from the road," she said.

[Rasputin]

Scotty to return to the final frontier

The remains of actor James Doohan, who played the starship Enterprise's chief engineer "Scotty" on "Star Trek," will be blasted into space in October, the company organizing the flight said this week. The actor who inspired the catchphrase "Beam me up, Scotty" — even though it was never actually uttered on the show — died a year ago at the age of 85. On the program, when Capt. James ***k ventured off the spaceship Enterprise and faced peril, he would demand Scotty "beam" him back up to the safety of the ship. Houston-based commercial company Space Services originally planned to blast Doohan's remains into space last year, but the flight was delayed to allow more tests on the rocket. Space Services spokeswoman Susan Schonfeld said the new launch date was set for October. Doohan's ashes will be blasted up along with the remains of around 100 other people, including astronaut Gordon Cooper, who first went to space in 1963. After a short flight, the rocket will return to Earth with the capsules holding the remains.

A second flight in December or January will send a capsule containing Doohan's remains into orbit, where it will remain for several years, Schonfeld said. "Whatever goes up must come down," Schonfeld said, adding that the capsule would eventually drop out of orbit and burn up in Earth's atmosphere.