Science Special News

[Rasputin]

Contact: What happens if a signal is found

If you chanced to be among the handful of visitors wandering the lava-strewn landscape of northeastern California on July 18, 2006, you might have seen the preamble to what could be a very giant leap for mankind. In the dusty pastures edging the town of Hat Creek, in the northern shadow of moldering Mt. Lassen, ten antennas revved their motors, and panned the sky. They were making their debut as the first working elements of the Allen Telescope Array.This new instrument which—when completed—will brandish 350 antennas, can speed up the search for signals from other societies by hundreds of times and more. Compared to earlier efforts, it will turn SETI on its metal ear. We’re not talking about the difference between a Lexus and a Toyota; we’re talking about the difference between a Lexus and an oxcart.In the next two dozen years, the Allen Telescope Array will parse the nearest thousand light-years of space. If there are other occupants of this galactic neighborhood, we could turn up a signal.But then what? Would the discovery be put under wraps, either voluntarily or by government edict? If we found a signal, would you know?This is among the most commonly asked questions of SETI: what happens in case of a detection. Conditioned by television, movies, and a penchant for expecting conspiracy, a lot of people think that the truth would not be out there. They believe it entirely reasonable to expect that the military, worried that the aliens will threaten the planet, would surround the telescope with chain link, and redirect the data stream to the Pentagon. Another common assumption is that the government, figuring that the citizenry will lose its cool, stampede the streets, and provoke a seismic collapse of polite society, will keep the discovery under wraps.

Some even venture the thought that SETI scientists, for unspecified (and hard to imagine) reasons, would deprive themselves of future funding and the Nobel Prize by squirreling away their find.Not a chance. And the reason I say that is, first and foremost, because the handful of researchers doing SETI experiments are intensely keen to find treasure, not to bury it. But even if you don’t respect the integrity of the scientists, even if you think these dedicated folks have motives that are secret and suspect, then you should at least look at the process. Frankly, secrecy is ruled out by how the experiment is done.

[Rasputin]

My night with the devil worshippers

Ken Korczak: I want to tell you about a bizarre night many years ago when I accidentally found myself at a gathering of Satan worshippers. It was one of the freakiest nights of my life -- and I swear this story is 100 percent true. It happened about 27 years ago. I was a young man of 19 or 20, and I was out partying with some friends. We were at a keg party at someone’s cabin in a remote corner of northern Minnesota. For the record, in those days, I was a total nondrinker, but I didn’t mind hanging out with my pals who were swilling down beer like the Apocalypse was scheduled for the next morning. One of my buddies, whom I’ll call Sparky, suggested we go to another party he heard about about 20 miles away -- in an even more remote location of the northern woods near the Canadian border. So I jumped into the car with him and another friend, whom I’ll call Bucky. I wasn’t driving, despite being the only one sober. Ah, youth.

It was a dark night. The stars and moon were obscured by moldy low clouds. As we drove through the woods, the pine trees which hugged closely to either side of the rode looked like a jagged wall of shadowy sentinels guarding the exit ramp to Hell. We eventually turned up a long, narrow graveled driveway that opened into a wide yard of a place that had once been a small country church. The church was an ancient structure made of locally quarried granite stone. But it was no longer a church. Someone had clearly converted it into a home. There was a large campfire burning, almost a bonfire, out in the front yard. I immediately knew something weird was going on because around the fire were sitting about 15 people dressed in Druid-style hooded robes. I could see other shadowy figures milling about in the yard, moving in and out of the flickering firelight.

We got out of the car. Sparky and Bucky were totally baked. They had been slamming whisky shots on the ride over. We walked toward the hooded people around the campfire, and a I felt a swarm of cold spiders run up and down my spine because the hooded figures were chanting in some strange language while rocking back and fourth. My first thought was: “Let’s get out of here.” But my two drunk friends were already approaching the circle of chanters -- and to my consternation -- Bucky went up to them and started slapping them on the backs of their heads!

I expected immediate trouble, but to my amazement, not a single one of the robed figures reacted an iota to being slapped, and quite hard, on the back of the head. They just looked into the fire as if they were oblivious to all else. I rushed over to Bucky and pulled on his arm to get him away from the group. “Bucky!” I said. “What the hell are you doing? You’re going to get us killed out here! Let’s get out of here!” His response to me was something along the lines of “go (bleep) yourself!” In the meantime, Sparky seemed to have suddenly disappeared into the night. I asked Bucky: “Where’s Sparky? He has the car keys!” Bucky’s response was: “I don’t give a damn! Let’s go check out the house.”

As we walked closer to the house, the dancing firelight revealed a large white cross hung upside down above the front door. I thought to myself: “Oh come on! Is this really happening? An inverted cross? Hooded zombies chanting around a fire? It’s all so cliché!” Of course, everyone has heard about all these aspects of devil worship, but to me, it always seemed like something out of a crummy B-horror movie. But here I was on a black night in the middle of nowhere about to enter a converted church adorned with the symbol of Satan. Once again, I want to remind my readers, I am not making even the smallest detail of this.

Listen: The last thing I wanted to do was enter that house! But Bucky had already staggered in ahead of me. I decided to follow, mostly because I hoped that Sparky had gone in there. I wanted to find him, get his car keys and get the hell out of there! Walking though those front doors was not easy. It was unnervingly dark inside. All I could see were vague outlines of what I assumed were various pieces of furniture and whatnot. But there was a dim rectangular outline of light coming from a closed door kitty-corner to my right. My idiot friend Bucky headed straight for it. I saw him open the door and plunge down the stairs which led to a basement. Against my better judgment, I followed.

Down the in the basement was a large empty room illuminated by hundreds of candles. A set of chairs were circled in the middle of the room, and sitting on each chair was an incredibly obese woman. Some of the women were just basically fat, but about half of them were enormous. Bucky had already pulled up a chair and joined this “round of mounds.” He was looking around and laughing. He was hurling insults at the women, making extremely crude references to their weight. Some of the women were wearing robes, but others were wearing normal clothing. None of whom seemed to mind Bucky's long string of fat jokes and extremely corse insults, which I can't repeat here. In fact, they seemed delighted at the arrival of Bucky, who was too drunk to be really coherent about anything. They all smiled broadly and stared at Bucky the way a cobra might eye a helpless frog. The women sitting next to him put their hammy, fleshy hands on Bucky’s arms and shoulders and started rubbing his chest. This only made Bucky laugh. Then he got up and said something like, "I can see why you guys might be hungry for a man!" Of course, I am giving only a mild version of what Bucky was really saying, but let's just say his comments would not normally be heard inside a church -- well, maybe in a church with an inverted cross hung over it, but you know what I mean.

I had heard enough. I had seen enough. I walked up briskly, grabbed Bucky very roughly by his shirt collar and dragged him rudely away from the group and back up the stairs. Thankfully, none of the women followed. They just watched and laughed as I dragged Bucky out. I hustled Bucky up the stairs and out the door. I was extremely thankful to be back outside. I gave Bucky a rough shove sending him sprawling to the ground. I resisted an urge to kick him in the ribs as he lay there, laughing like an idiot. Instead, I stood over him and shouted: “Dammit -- let’s find Sparky and get the (expletive) hell out of here!”

It was clear Bucky was no help to me, so I started looking around for Sparky. As I looked back toward the group of chanters around the fire -- and was totally amazed at what I saw next!

[Rasputin]

Ghosts created by low frequency sounds

Our story begins at a medical manufacturing facility in the midlands of Great Britain. Vic Tandy, an engineer from Coventry University, was doing research in a laboratory at the company. Tandy is an expert in computer-assisted learning. Workers at the lab told Tandy that the building was haunted, but being a reasoning man of science, he didn't believe them. At least, not at first. Late one night, when Tandy was burning the midnight oil all alone at the laboratory, he had a face-to-face encounter with the unexplained. As he sat at his desk working in the silent, desolate building, a gnawing unease began to overtake him. Although he couldn't put his finger on anything out of the ordinary, something was not right."I was sweating but cold and the feeling of depression was noticeable -- but there was also something else. It was as though something was in the room with me," Tandy said. "Then I became aware that I was being watched, and a figure slowly emerged to my left. It was indistinct and on the periphery of my vision, but it moved just as I would expect a person to. It was gray, and made no sound. The hair was standing up on the back of my neck -- I was terrified."Tandy steeled himself and turned to face the ghostly shape dead-on, but he said it immediately faded and completely disappeared. Concerned that his mind must be playing tricks on him, Tandy packed up and went home.

But in the great tradition of haunted house encounters, he didn't flee from the ghost-ridden building and swear never to return -- no sir, he came right back for more. And he got it.The morning after his weird sighting, Tandy took a break at the lab to spend some time on a hobby of his, namely the sport of fencing. He clamped a fencing foil in a vise so that he could make some adjustments on it, perhaps subconsciously thinking he might need the sword to fight off any unruly ghosts. Tandy briefly left the room, and then returned to see a phenomenal sight. The tip of the foil was vibrating intensely and continuously, for no apparent reason.The average person might have freaked out and concluded that the poltergeists were trying to go on a foil-whacking spree upside somebody's head. But not Vic Tandy, professional engineer. His first thought was that there might be low frequency sound waves coming from somewhere in the laboratory -- subsonic sounds that can be seen (in the form of surrounding vibrations) but not heard.

[Rasputin]

Hubble glimpses faintest stars

Researchers peering at the Universe's first-born stars have uncovered the key to predicting a star's destiny. Stars that don't have enough mass never shine, dying billions of years before their bigger counterparts. But astronomers have never been able to measure the exact mass limit, because the lightest stars that do shine can be simply too faint to detect. Now, new images show for the first time how big a star must be to avoid impending doom. Reporting in the journal Science, astronomers have viewed high quality pictures of some of the faintest stars in our galaxy for the first time. The images come from the dimmest members of the NGC 6397 cluster - ancient stars that orbit the Milky Way's centre in a close-knit group. "The light from these faint stars is so dim that it is equivalent to that produced by a birthday candle on the Moon, as seen from Earth," said lead author Harvey Richer, from University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. The Hubble Space telescope's advanced camera was focused on the stars for five days to detect the tiny pinpricks of light. Although the telescope would have been able to detect fainter stars, none could be found- so it appears that they simply don't exist. "We checked the instruments over and over again," said Professor Richer, "but we don't see any stars fainter than this". The new pictures finally answer one of astronomy's burning questions. By calculating the mass of the faintest ancient stars, researchers can work out the minimum mass needed for a star to survive.

Potential stars that fall just short of the limit die before they're even born. Almost everything about a star's fate is determined by the mass of the gas cloud from which it is formed. Gravity pulls the gas into a giant ball, or protostar. As the ball gets bigger and more solid, its centre becomes extremely hot. For large protostars, the heat becomes so intense that the star begins to burn hydrogen by fusion, and so starts to shine. These stars can sustain themselves for billions of years, because their heat is self-replenishing. Some could live longer than the estimated lifespan of our Universe - in effect, forever.

[Rasputin]

Your brain boots up like a computer

As we yawn and open our eyes in the morning, the brain stem sends little puffs of nitric oxide to another part of the brain, the thalamus, which then directs it elsewhere. Like a computer booting up its operating system before running more complicated programs, the nitric oxide triggers certain functions that set the stage for more complex brain operations, according to a new study. In these first moments of the day, sensory information floods the system—the bright sunlight coming through the curtains, the time on the screeching alarm clock—and all of it needs to be processed and organized, so the brain can understand its surroundings and begin to perform more complex tasks."The thinking part of the brain is applying a sort of stencil to the information coming in and what the nitric oxide is doing is allowing more refinement of that stencil," says Dwayne Godwin, an associate professor at Wake Forest University and lead author of the study, which was funded by the National Eye Institute. The little two-atom molecule, it seems, is partly responsible for our ability to perceive whatever it is we're sensing.

The finding, published last week in the journal Neuroscience, changes the way scientists understand nitric oxide's role in the brain, and it also has them rethinking the function of the thalamus, where it is released. The thalamus was thought to be a fairly primitive structure, sort of a gate that could either open and allow sensory information to stream into the cortex, the higher functioning part of the brain, or cut off the flow entirely. Godwin says the new research shows it's more accurate to think of the thalamus not as a gate but as a club bouncer, who doesn't simply allow a huge rush of people to go in or no one at all, but picks and chooses whom to let in and out.

[Rasputin]

Author gives life to aliens

If youve ever wondered if were alone in the universe, you may want to come to Tracy today and pick up a copy of Alien Log by Dr. Robert Farrell. The Arizona-based author will be signing copies of his book, which posits the theory that millions of forms of intelligent life are out there. Farrell, 66, a retired professor from Penn State University, where he helped start a plastics engineering technology program, said he wrote the book in the same vein as Michael Crichtons Jurassic Park — the fiction is steeped in scientific research. Ive always had a deep curiosity about the subject matter, he said. His own questions led to extensive, years-long research, during which he studied genetics, sociology, anthropology, cosmology, crop circles and other topics. He also pored over the wealth of accounts on UFO sightings and the work of Dr. John Mack, a Harvard University psychiatrist who studied and took seriously the phenomenon of alien abductions.

Like many before him, Ferrell asked himself the Fermi paradox: Because of the staggering age of the galaxy — billions of years old — and the vast number of stars, aliens should be everywhere. So where are they? Farrell said he thinks theyre already here.

[Rasputin]

NASA loses Moon walk footage tapes

The heart-stopping moments when Neil Armstrong took his first tentative steps onto another world are defining images of the 20th century: grainy, fuzzy, unforgettable. But just 37 years after Apollo 11, it is feared the magnetic tapes that recorded the first moon walk - beamed to the world via three tracking stations, including Parkes's famous "Dish" - have gone missing at NASA's Goddard Space Centre in Maryland.A desperate search has begun amid concerns the tapes will disintegrate to dust before they can be found.It is not widely known that the Apollo 11 television broadcast from the moon was a high-quality transmission, far sharper than the blurry version relayed instantly to the world on that July day in 1969.Among those battling to unscramble the mystery is John Sarkissian, a CSIRO scientist stationed at Parkes for a decade. "We are working on the assumption they still exist," Mr Sarkissian told the Herald."Your guess is a good as mine as to where they are."Mr Sarkissian began researching the role of Parkes in Apollo 11's mission in 1997, before the movie The Dish was made. However, when he later contacted NASA colleagues to ask about the tapes, they could not be found."People may have thought 'we have tapes of the moon walk, we don't need these'," said the scientist who hopes a new, intensive hunt will locate them.If they can be found, he proposes making digitalised copies to treat the world to a very different view of history.

But the searchers may be running out of time. The only known equipment on which the original analogue tapes can be decoded is at a Goddard centre set to close in October, raising fears that even if they are found before they deteriorate, copying them may be impossible."We want the public to see it the way the moon walk was meant to be seen," Mr Sarkissian said."There will only ever be one first moon walk."Originally stored at Goddard, the tapes were moved in 1970 to the US National Archives. No one knows why, but in 1984 about 700 boxes of space flight tapes there were returned to Goddard.

[Rasputin]

Was 'hobbit' a disabled caveman ?

The remains of a fossilised stone age pygmy, hailed as a new species of human when it was found two years ago, probably belonged to a disabled but otherwise normal caveman, researchers have claimed. The discovery of the 18,000-year-old “homo floresiensis” on the Indonesian island of Flores was thought to be a major development in tracing human evolution when it was announced in 2004. However, a new analysis of the 3ft skeleton, nicknamed the “hobbit”, along with other remains found at the site, has indicated they probably belonged to an early human suffering from microcephaly, a condition that causes an abnormally small head and other deformities. “The skeletal remains do not represent a new species, but some of the ancestors of modern human pygmies who live on the island today,” concludes a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one of America’s most respected scientific institutions. “The individual exhibits a combination of characteristics that are not primitive but instead regional and not unique but found in other modern human populations.” The controversy began in October 2004 when Nature, a leading British science journal, published what appeared to be a groundbreaking paper about a new species of human.

The original team, co-directed by Michael Morwood from the University of New England in Australia and Professor Radien Soejono of the Indonesian Research Centre for Archeology, made the discovery in the Liang Bua cave. The creature was found with fossils of animals including a snake, frog, monkey, deer and pig. “Here we have a creature that is substantially different from modern humans, a totally new species of our genus, that lived almost into historical times. This has a number of startling implications,” said Henry Gee, Nature’s senior editor for biological science, at the time.

[Rasputin]

A twist on naturalist

H.F.Raven: The word “Naturalism” brings various topics to mind: art, natural sciences, philosophy and sociological concepts, among the many things that this word may be used to rightly or wrongly represent. We may all be familiar with the famous writings of popular American Naturalist and Philosopher Henry David Thoreau, but are we also familiar with the opinions of Donald Watson or Elsie Shrigley? While the famous Thoreau may have his books on natural living and the government in most bookstores, and is immortalized in natural places such as Katahdin, there is more than one branch of society that may be considered, more or less, Naturalist. It is through this division of the term, however, that a large amount of confusion may arise, including practices that easily and even unknowingly challenge the very definition of natural. If you are truly unfamiliar with Donald Watson, it is unlikely you are unfamiliar with the term “Vegan”, which has quickly intentionally or unintentionally become a powerful and outspoken social movement that may indeed hold the connotation of “clique” in general society. The claims of various people that may be considered Naturalists often seem to conflict in ways that boil down to philosophical nit-picking. However, in recent years the claims of such group such as PETA may be difficult to ignore - groups harboring Vegans, among others who will valiantly defend their opinions.

PETA, standing for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is hardly an unknown group. Since 1980 the group has made headlines time and time again, voicing powerful claims -- that are sometimes considered radical by those not members of the group -- about the wellbeing of animals. One of the aspects of the group called PETA is the existence of the “Lettuce Ladies”. These are women who expose themselves to the public adorning their bodies with nothing but a few leaves of lettuce to cover themselves. The wild attire, combined with the obvious sexually-charged character and magnetism of the clothing - assuming a majority of men will look at attractive women in very little clothing - is an effective and popular method to spread information on Veganism and PETA philosophy. The philosophy of Veganism in particular, however, has been around under that name since the middle of the 1940's. Strongly separating itself from Vegetarianism, Veganism avoids - often with inviolable conviction - the use of any animal product for use or consumption. This includes foods such as meat, fish, eggs and dairy products, as well as a variety of other products with some sort of animal or insect used in the processing, such as honey, silk, leather, feathers, and even the ingredients in some breads. Vegans, although a small portion of the Vegetarian population, are some of the most forthright of the society that could often be considered Naturalist or "back to Nature".

Many valid points, though, are brought against Veganism when the diet is overlooked. Without the proteins and amino acids found in animal products humans can be put in dangerous straights. There are ways to obtain such things from a peculiar and wide diet of plants and other non-animal products, as composes the diet of many Vegans. Tofu and other plant-based foods are popular in the forms of burgers and hot dogs - but is this really in accordance with the very nature of Veganism, especially since the more creative Vegan foods may be wholly impractical and needlessly expensive? After all, hot dogs and hamburgers, for example, are staples of the glorified American diet, and the meat in such products can often come from questionable or undesirable sources. Clearly, though, Vegans accept eating tofu, rice, and other ingredients in the likeness of these foods which they so strongly object to. Is this ironic, since Vegans often debate their point with clerical pride?Many points can continually be brought up against Veganism. Using sexually-charged methods to advertise their philosophy, often speaking inexorably against those who are not Vegan, and playing upon social stereotypes, fads, cliques and the general youth population can be seen as questionable at the very least, and corrupt or deceptive at the very most - but Vegans are not the only who may be considered Naturalist, Environmentalist or “in touch” with Mother Nature. Even so, the obvious Vegan belief that plants are not sentient can vex and bring into open questioning and wonder many philosophies and the definition of sentience or consciousness itself. Are plants not lifeforms, just as animals and insects?

Naturals or Nudists seemingly use similar methods to advertise their unusual philosophy. By playing upon the aforementioned topics and the subconscious or conscious desires and imaginations of many humans, one could say that members are attracted in a questionable, cult-like fashion. Although many Nudists are in fact entirely innocent in their philosophy, along with many Vegans, the possibility cannot be ignored. In all likeness, Nudism, being spread in a similar way to Veganism, could be used to promote refutable promiscuity, sex parties and a possibly dire change in society. Exposing the flesh for spiritual or natural purposes seems inherently natural, as it would seem to state. Although it is personal choice, one must wonder if Nudism could indeed be used for social -- let alone quite carnal -- purposes. One only has to look to today's youth and social changes to realize that many would unknowingly or intentionally use Nudist or similar philosophies to promote the following of a glorified sexual instinct and promiscuity. We may never really know for sure if such beliefs are based on the principles of innocence, or those of lust. The fact of the matter is that the definition of Naturalist, or the definition of Natural as a whole are interpreted and may be used very different by different people. These terms, more than many other terms in language, go hand in hand and should seemingly be, by definition, the least refutable known terms. Vegans, PETA, and Nudists are only several of the many groups on the fine line between Natural and Unnatural.

It would seem as though through Naturalism we should be able to define the very meaning of the word, but such is not currently the case. Humans are naturally able to consume meat and animal products, and have so for thousands of years- only social constructs prevent some from doing so. Humans may be born nude, which is also inherently natural, however it is not practical to not wear clothing in non-tropical environments with conditions possibly harmful to the human. In other environments clothing has a purely social purpose.Through the objective study and quiet observation of the natural world and our natural history we have been able to discover the aspects of nature that we already accept and realize, most prominently the scientists and spirituals in this field. In time a larger consensus may be founded on Naturalist and Nature groups that lay on the line -- from the spiritual and religious, to the nude. For now, however, and the foreseeable future, such free groups will continue to coexist with the majority of the very different society that they are wholly a part of. Whether people conform to these groups because of carefully researched personal beliefs, because of fads, because it is the “hip” thing to do or because they desire to be part of an alternative social group for various very personal and human reasons, their presence in our world cannot be denied or overlooked. The philosophies and questions brought up by such free-thinking groups, regardless if they are personally disagreed with, can be used to benefit all of humanity through research, investigation and philosophical evaluation. We all have something to learn from the philosophies of others, even if they are against our own. This, in turn, is the most Natural aspect of their existence.

[Rasputin]

Man survives 1000m fall

A man from Bloemfontein survived a 1 000m fall by landing in a ploughed field after his parachute failed to open properly while he was executing his first jump. Shocked family and friends stood watching at Tempe airport in Bloemfontein as Benno Jacobs, 35, struggled to disentangle the ropes of his parachute while hurtling through the air at a dizzying speed. "As it was my first jump, I thought it was only a bad jump, and not a fall," said the father of two. Jacobs didn't even break a bone or tear a ligament. He suffered a few bruises, a bruised lung, a swollen lip and an aching body. "It's a miracle. I wasn't really injured." Jacobs was admitted to the neurological unit of Bloemfontein Medi-Clinic for observation. The only things on his mind as he was falling about 1 066m on Saturday afternoon, were his children and a prayer. "It must have been a very short prayer," he smiled. His mother-in-law, Rika van der Spuy, who watched him fall, described the incident as an absolute miracle on Sunday. "It was terrible," she said.

"Everybody was in a shocked state. Nobody could believe that he had survived." Usually a jump took about six minutes, said Jacobs. Although it felt like ages, Jacobs hit the ploughed land within 60 seconds of leaving the aircraft. Jacobs, Daniel van der Spuy, his brother-in-law, and Theunis Lambrechts, a colleague, did a parachute course at the Bloemfontein parachute club on Friday evening. The three men executed their first jump on Saturday afternoon. Jacobs said he immediately realised the ropes were tangled.

[Rasputin]

UFOs buzz aeroplane near Moscow

On Wednesday several people who were flying from Russian town Volgograd to Moscow witnessed quite an unusual situation. The first person who noticed it was Eugenia Kazarinova. She was the first who accidentally photographed an invisible UFO that was following the plane. Eugenia Kazarinova saw nothing but a beautiful landscape outside the illuminator, but when she took several photos she noticed strange lights on them. She was worried and showed the photos to other passengers. They began to take photos using their cameras and mobile phones. The strange lights were present on almost all the photos. The passengers became panic stricken because the lights didn’t look like another plane and couldn’t be seen with the naked eye.

Today experts can’t give any official explanation of this strange phenomenon. Some of them say that it could be the reflection of the plane but the photos reject this hypothesis.

[Rasputin]

Team finds 'proof' of dark matter

US astronomers say they have found the first direct evidence for the mysterious stuff called dark matter. Dark matter - which does not emit or reflect enough light to be "seen" - is thought to make up 25% of the Universe. By contrast, the ordinary matter we can see is believed to make up no more than about 5% of our Universe. Until now, astronomers have only been able to infer the existence of this dark material through the gravitational effects it has on ordinary matter. The researchers have discovered what is effectively the gravitational signature of dark matter. This signature was created by dark matter and ordinary matter being wrenched apart by the immense collision of two large galaxy clusters. "The kinetic energy of this collision is...enough to completely evaporate and pulverise planet Earth ten trillion trillion times over," said team member Maxim Markevitch of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, US.

Study leader Doug Clowe, from the University of Arizona, said: "This provides the first direct proof that dark matter must exist and that it must make up the majority of the matter in the Universe." Astronomers have known since the 1930s that these galaxy clusters have far too much gravity to be explained by the amount of visible matter in them alone. This extra gravity has two possible explanations. One is that most matter in the clusters is in a form we cannot see, because it does not absorb or emit light. A second explanation is that gravity does not behave the same way in galaxy clusters light years in size as it does on Earth.

[Rasputin]

Did the Nazis recover a UFO ?

Recent years have seen the emergence of a rumour that float around the internet like moths to a flame about a crashed UFO in the Black Forrest in 1936 which was spirited away to the dark heart of Nazi Germany. There it was to be dismantled and dilligently studied by, it is claimed, the members of the Vril Society. While no historically verifiable evidence for this tale has come to light, the idea of alien technology that has fallen into the hands of a select group, was already the subject of a film in Germany in 1920.Just two years after the defeat of Germany in the First World War, a little known silent film was released. Entitled Algol, it tells the story of a superior extraterrestrial from the Dogstar, who donates incredible technology that enables a wealthy industrialist to enslave the world by this free energy device. Lost for decades, copies of the film have surfaced in recent years. The illustration here is of the alien being, poised far away in the eternal blackness of the universe.

One may wonder how the age old ritual of the trafficking with otherworldly beings and intelligences, the angelic beings and the demons of the old magical textbooks, evolved with the aide of a film like Algol that expressed a specific message or thought, and gradually transformed into alien entities from far away planets in the feverish and strange undercurrents of the German occult movements.

[Rasputin]

The world's oldest computer ?

It looks like a heap of rubbish, feels like flaky pastry and has been linked to aliens. For decades, scientists have puzzled over the complex collection of cogs, wheels and dials seen as the most sophisticated object from antiquity, writes Helena Smith. But 102 years after the discovery of the calcium-encrusted bronze mechanism on the ocean floor, hidden inscriptions show that it is the world's oldest computer, used to map the motions of the sun, moon and planets. 'We're very close to unlocking the secrets,' says Xenophon Moussas,an astrophysicist with a Anglo-Greek team researching the device. 'It's like a puzzle concerning astronomical and mathematical knowledge.' Known as the Antikythera mechanism and made before the birth of Christ, the instrument was found by sponge divers amid the wreckage of a cargo ship that sunk off the tiny island of Antikythera in 80BC. To date, no other appears to have survived. 'Bronze objects like these would have been recycled, but being in deep water it was out of reach of the scrap-man and we had the luck to discover it,' said Michael Wright, a former curator at London's Science Museum. He said the apparatus was the best proof yet of how technologically advanced the ancients were.

'The skill with which it was made shows a level of instrument-making not surpassed until the Renaissance. It really is the first hard evidence of their interest in mechanical gadgets, ability to make them and the preparedness of somebody to pay for them.' For years scholars had surmised that the object was an astronomical showpiece, navigational instrument or rich man's toy. The Roman Cicero described the device as being for 'after-dinner entertainment'. But many experts say it could change how the history of science is written. 'In many ways, it was the first analogue computer,' said Professor Theodosios Tassios of the National Technical University of Athens. 'It will change the way we look at the ancients' technological achievements.'

[Rasputin]

UFO lit up northern skies

Calls streamed in to local police stations during the night after an unidentified flying object darted over the night skies in northern Norway. A top astronomer, though, thinks it was another meteorite.Several police districts logged reports from members of the public who observed something flying at high speed."What they're talking about here is some sort of flying object, and we can't explain what it was," Oddgeir Slettli, operations leader for the Midtre Hålogaland Police District, told dagbladet.no.Observations were reported from Finnsnes to Trondheim. The main search and rescue station in northern Norway (Hovedredningssentralen Nord-Norge) reported that calls also came from crews on board ships off the northern coast, according to Dagbladet."It was colored white, green and gold, and lights seemed to blow off it like it was a sparkler," said one observer, Andre Grønmo. "It looked like it was a comet, and it was around four- to five times larger than a plane, and it flew much faster."Slettli said others described a "green, lighted ball with a tail" that flew low.

He said neither the Defense Department's radar station or its rocket facility at Andøya, nor the tower at Evenes airport, which serves Harstad and Narvik, had picked up the object.Slettli said calls came from people in Narvik, Vesterålen and Lofoten among other places, just before midnight on Monday.A flurry of reports also came over the Coast Guard radio, and from an SAS flight and a Hurtigruten (Coastal Voyage) passenger ship.Knut Jørge Røed Ødegaard, one of Norway's most well-known astronomers, said he thinks the UFO was actually another meteorite, a large rock containing a lot of chemical elements. There have been confirmed reports of at least two meteorites hitting Norway since June.