Science Special News

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Mad Ludwig's flying car was a smart idea

It's been a long wait, but finally King Ludwig II of Bavaria can rest easy in his grave: 120 years after his death, German scientists have shown him to be one of the unsung pioneers of flight. Ludwig, whose fantastical castle at Neuschwanstein aptly featured in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, drew up plans for a flying car more than two decades before the Wright brothers took to the air, but when he tried to build it he was declared insane and stripped of his crown. But now German aeronautical experts who have studied Ludwig's designs say they would have worked. Sketches recovered from letters between the ruler and Austrian engineer Gustav Koch show the monarch had planned to create a fleet of flying machines that would take him across his beloved Alpine lakes to his many castles, including the fairytale Neuschwanstein. The craft he designed looked like flying cable cars powered by steam engines. They were decorated like peacocks. But his dreams of flying over the mountains of Bavaria only convinced his opponents that he was mad, and he was declared insane on 10 June, 1886, and deposed.

He died shortly afterwards and his drawings were consigned to an archive. Now aeronautical experts have dug them out and re-created them on computer. Dalibor Karacic is working on the project to re-draw the machines. He said: 'King Ludwig was unbelievably progressive. He understood technology. The flying peacock cars may have looked funny, but technologically they were sound and certainly would have worked. He couldn't have been mad, otherwise his ideas would never have worked. He was simply ahead of his time.'

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Cryptid discoveries abound in Vietnam

In 1992, Western scientists cataloged the ''discovery'' of the planet's largest new mammal in more than half a century, a forest-dwelling ox named the saola. Not merely a new species, it represented an entirely unrecorded genus of life. As of the publication of the fascinating Vietnam: A Natural History, scientists still had not sighted another free-ranging saola in the wild, although villagers sometimes kill an animal for meat.Since then, researchers in Vietnam have identified three new species of deer and a striking striped rabbit, 63 new terrestrial vertebrates and 45 fish. An animal once thought extinct on the Asian mainland, the lesser one-horned rhinoceros, was rediscovered. A wild pig, a monkey, a pheasant and at least two other varieties of birds have been re-sighted almost a century after they were identified and then vanished from scientists' view.The era of grand biological discovery pretty much ended long ago across most of the globe.

Not so for Vietnam, which continues its struggle to emerge from the darkness of war. This natural history, compiled by three scientists from the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at New York's American Museum of Natural History, is the latest chapter in the postwar development of one of the world's most remarkable, and mysteriously rich, landscapes.

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Is the Patterson Bigfoot film a hoax ?

A recent book by author Greg Long, The Making of Bigfoot, purports to "expose" the famous Patterson/Gimlin film taken on October 20, 1967 at Bluff Creek in northern California. In the book, Long interviews dozens of witnesses who claim that in one way or another, Roger Patterson was a crook and a thief, a liar and a swindler. Long, not being too particularly bright (and driven by a seeming hatred for Patterson) takes this to mean that if Patterson was all of this, he must have faked the film as well. He interviews two important people to his investigation, the man who claims to have worn the "suit", Bob Heironimus, and the man who claims to have made the suit, Philip Morris. However, there are discrepancies in both men's stories which cast doubt on their versions of the truth. There are apparently no less than two conflicting stories about the alleged "suit"; Heironimus' version describes a 3-piece suit made from skinned red horsehide which stunk, while Morris' version describes a 6-piece suit made from artificial materials. These two stories directly contradict each other, yet Long, his associate Kal Korff and television producer Bob Kiviat don't see anything wrong with that.

Now, two more stories as to the origin of the alleged suit have come out in the past 6 months; one comes from the mouth of Bob Heironimus, who claims that the maker of the suits for the film "Planet of The Apes" was the maker of the suit, which contradicts his earlier statement from Long's book; the second new story that has come out is that Heironimus' sister called Mrs. Roger Patterson, the widow of Roger Patterson, to try to get her to go along with a story of a GREY horsehide suit allegedly worn by Heironimus in the film so they could all make money off it. The problem is, Heironimus has been going around Yakima for over 30 years claiming that he had the suit that he claims to have worn in the film in the trunk of his mother's car.

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Evolution reversed in mice

US researchers have taken a mouse back in time some 500 million years by reversing the process of evolution. By engineering its genetic blueprint, they have rebuilt a gene that was present in primitive animals. The ancient gene later mutated and split, giving rise to a pair of genes that play a key role in brain development in modern mammals. The scientists say the experiments shed light on how evolution works and could lead to new gene therapy techniques. "We are first to reconstruct an ancient gene," said co-researcher Petr Tvrdik of the University of Utah. "We have proven that from two specialised modern genes, we can reconstruct the ancient gene they split off from. "It illuminates the mechanisms and processes that evolution uses, and tells us more about how Mother Nature engineers life." The study, published in the academic journal Developmental Cell, involved a suite of genes involved in embryonic development. Until about 500 million years ago, early animals had 13 such Hox genes. Then each gene split into four, making 52 genes.

Over the course of evolution, further mutations occurred, and some genes became redundant and disappeared, leading to today's tally in mammals of 39 Hox genes. The Utah team looked at two of these genes; Hoxa1, which controls embryonic brain development, and Hoxb1, which plays a key role in the development of nerve cells that control facial expressions in animals.

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UT professor debunks chupacabra myth

UT professor Pamela Owen can add one more title to her resume: educator, scientist and supernatural investigator. The producers of "Mystery Hunters," an educational TV program for kids, asked Owen to help identify bones reported to belong to the mythical chupacabra. The chupacabra, whose name means goat-sucker in Spanish, is a fabled creature which attacks and mutilates live-stock, sucking the blood of its prey.The bones belong to rancher Devin Macanally who shot the animal while it was attacking chickens on his ranch in Elmendorf. Photos of the animal, which later became known as the "Elmendorf Beast" show a small, hairless, dog-like creature.Owen, who holds a doctorate in mammalogy with a specialization in carnivores, said that when she first heard about the "Elmendorf Beast," she agreed with biologists' initial findings that it was some kind of coyote with severe mange.Owen's suspicions were later confirmed when the show's producers e-mailed her a photo of the creature's exhumed skull.

Owen, who has been identifying bones for the Texas Memorial Museum for six years, was able to recognize the skull almost instantly."I wrote back and said, 'Nice coyote.'" she said.Owen said she could understand how an average person could mistake the creature for a new species."What [Macanally] described was certainly not like any coyote," she said. "It was this hairless blue-skinned thing with disfigured teeth. This was a sick animal."What is called supernatural phenomena can often be explained within the context of a natural world, Owen said."I still think the stories are great, but they are based on interesting natural phenomena," she said.

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UFO sightings over Bahrain

A second GDN reader has come forward claiming to have seen a UFO over Bahrain on Monday evening, but one of the country's top astronomers has dismissed suggestions that it was a flying saucer. Indian Joy Michael, aged 35, claimed he saw a "strange sight" over the Bahrain Financial Harbour (BFH) at around 6.10pm while he was driving home from work.Mr Michael, who works as an administration and finance officer at Techind, said he told his friends about it, but they also dismissed the sighting. "I was driving home from work with a colleague of mine at 6.10pm when I saw this apparently revolving dish-like thing for a few seconds," said Mr Michael told the GDN yesterday. "But the report in the GDN proved something was there, for a while."The GDN carried a picture on its front page yesterday taken by a Sri Lankan couple, which they claimed showed a UFO that flew over them as they were driving along the Sitra Causeway. Engineer Omerdeen Hamad Idrees, aged 35, said he his wife, Shiyara, took the picture when they were on their way to Sitra Mall with their four-year-old son Imran at around 9pm.

Mr Idrees, who works for Products for Projects, said the object moved very slowly in the sky and made circular movements over Tubli Bay before passing over his car. However, Bahrain University applied physics professor Dr Waheeb Alnaser claimed there was probably a rational explanation.

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Arctic thawed in prehistoric global warming

The last time massive amounts of greenhouse gases were released into the atmosphere, the North Pole was an ice-free expanse of open ocean that was teeming with tropical organisms, a study has found. Scientists have discovered that the complete disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, 55 million years ago, coincided with a dramatic increase in concentrations of carbon dioxide or methane in the atmosphere - which must have caused global warming.After analysiing the sediments on the floor of the Arctic Ocean, an international team of researchers working for the Arctic Core Expedition (Acex) came to the conclusion that the region was once extremely warm, unusually wet, and ice-free.The scientists also found that the Arctic is currently experiencing one of the fastest temperature rises on record, with more sea ice melting each summer than at any time in hundreds and possibly thousands of years.

The Acex research team drilled frozen sedimentary cores from the ocean floor, which can be dated to 55 million years ago, a period known as the palaeocene-eocene thermal maximum (PETM). Surface temperatures in some parts of the world were then 8C (15F) higher than now.

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Designer creates floating bed

A young Dutch architect has created a floating bed which hovers above the ground through magnetic force and comes with a price tag of 1.2 million euros ($1.54 million). Janjaap Ruijssenaars took inspiration for the bed -- a sleek black platform, which took six years to develop and can double as a dining table or a plinth -- from the mysterious monolith in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 cult film "2001: A Space Odyssey.""No matter where you live all architecture is dictated by gravity. I wondered whether you could make an object, a building or a piece of furniture where this is not the case -- where another power actually dictates the image," Ruijssenaars said.Magnets built into the floor and into the bed itself repel each other, pushing the bed up into the air. Thin steel cables tether the bed in place.

"It is not comfortable at the moment," admits Ruijssenaars, adding it needs cushions and bedclothes before use.Although people with piercings should have no problem sleeping on the bed, Ruijssenaars advises them against entering the magnetic field between the bed and the floor.They could find their piercing suddenly tugged toward one of the magnets.

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Malaysia museum seeks ghost busters

A Malaysian museum will let a US research team from Ripley's Believe It or Not! conduct scientific tests on genies, ghouls and other paranormal items on display in an exhibition to determine whether they are real. The three-month Mysteries, Genies, Ghosts and Coffins exhibition at the Sultan Alam Shah Museum in central Selangor state has drawn criticism since it began in July 4. Some accuse it of being un-Islamic, while others have denounced the items as fakes.The exhibition has drawn tens of thousands of visitors. Officials say the approximately 100 items on display include a preserved mermaid; the shrivelled skeletal remains of a half-woman, half snake; a goblin trapped in a bottle; and other creatures from Malay folklore.Amzah Umar, chairman of the Selangor Museum Board, said on Friday the organisers and the owner of the exhibits have agreed to Ripley's request to examine the items. Ripley's Believe It or Not! is a franchise which deals in bizarre events, having started in 1918 as a newspaper cartoon panel featuring unusual and startling facts from around the world.

Umar said: "They have written to us for permission to analyse the items. A team from US will be coming to conduct scientific tests."This will put to rest any allegations that the exhibits are fake."He did not say when the tests would be conducted.