Science Special News

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Bigfoot out of fashion in Malaysia

Bigfoot out. Mummified goblins in. A group of Malaysian myth investigators who claim to have a footprint mold of a giant, man-like "Bigfoot" creature said Friday they intend to sell it to raise funds for their next project _ determining if three ghoulish, mummified figures are real. The group Seekers-Malaysia, which has a reality TV program in Malaysia, said money raised from the sale of the alleged sasquatch footprint would be used to research the "three mummified ghouls," and to purchase new paranormal equipment, said spokesman Adrin Emman. The three supposed shriveled, skeletal-like creatures with razor-sharp teeth were provided for research purposes by their owner Bukhari Abdullah for two weeks. Pictures released by the group show one figure no larger than a human hand, while another appears to be the length of a human body. Stories about Bigfoot captured headlines in Malaysia last year after three fish farm workers reported seeing giant human-like creatures in southern Johor state's Endau Rompin reserve.

Seekers-Malaysia claims to have molded a Bigfoot footprint _ three times the size of a human head _ during an expedition to the area earlier this year. Bigfoot fever has since waned in Malaysia, with smaller creatures popular in Malaysian folklore now taking center stage. An ongoing exhibit at a museum featuring dozens of creatures from Malay folklore has drawn tens of thousands of visitors. Among the featured exhibits at the Shah Alam Museum include a supposed preserved mermaid, the apparent shriveled skeletal remains of a half woman-half snake, and a purported goblin trapped in a bottle. The museum says it has invited a team of researchers from "Ripley's Believe It or Not" to research the exhibits.

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Mystery ocean glow confirmed

Mariners have long told of rare nighttime events in which the ocean glows intensely as far as the eye can see in all directions. Fictionally, such a "milky sea" is encountered by the Nautilus in Jules Verne classic "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."Scientists don't have a good handle what's going on. But satellite sensors have now provided the first pictures of a milky sea and given new hope to learning more about the elusive events.The newly released images show a vast region of the Indian Ocean, about the size of Connecticut, glowing three nights in a row. The luminescence was also spotted from a ship in the area."The circumstances under which milky seas form is almost entirely unknown," says Steven Miller, a Naval Research Laboratory scientist who led the space-based discovery. "Even the source for the light emission is under debate."Scientists suspect bioluminescent bacteria are behind the phenomenon. Such creatures produce a continuous glow, in contrast to the brief, bright flashes of light produced by "dinoflagellate" bioluminescent organims that are seen more commonly lighting up ship wakes and breaking waves."The problem with the bacteria hypothesis is that an extremely high concentration of bacteria must exist before they begin to produce light," Miller told LiveScience. "But what could possibly support the occurrence of such a large population?"

One idea, put forward by the lone research vessel to ever encounter a milky sea, is that the bacteria are not free-living, but instead are living off some local supporting "substrate." "This previous excursion reported the presence of bioluminescent bacteria, which were found to be living in association with an algal bloom," Miller explained."So, our best working hypothesis is that we are witnessing bioluminescence produced by bacteria that are colonizing some kind of organic material present in the water," he said. "Satellite detection will hopefully allow us to target milky seas with properly equipped research vessels that will then be able to answer all these questions definitively."

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Humans strange, Neanderthals normal ?

Neanderthals are often thought of as the stray branch in the human family tree, but research now suggests the modern human is likely the odd man out. "What people tend to do is draw a line from our ancestors straight to ourselves, and any group that doesn't seem to fit on that line is divergent, distinct, unusual, strange," researcher Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told LiveScience today. "But in terms of evolution of our family tree, the genus Homo, we're the outliers and the Neanderthals are more toward the core."Humans are not at the inevitable end of a sequence, Trinkaus said. "It just happens that we happen to be alive today and Neanderthals are not."Trinkaus spent decades examining fossil skeletons and over time realized that maybe researchers looked at Neanderthals the wrong way. Over the last two years, he systematically combed through fossils, comparing Neanderthal and modern human skull, jaw, tooth, arm, leg traits with those of the earliest members of the genus Homo in terms of their shape. "I wanted to see to what extent Neanderthals are derived, that is distinct, from the ancestral form. I also wanted to see the extent to which modern humans are derived relative to the ancestral form," Trinkaus said.

Trinkaus focused on skeletal features that seemed most strongly linked to genetics, as opposed to any traits that might get influenced by lifestyle, environment or wear and tear. When compared with our common ancestors, Trinkaus discovered modern humans have roughly twice as many uniquely distinct traits as Neanderthals. In other words, Neanderthals are more like the other members of our family tree than modern humans are."In the broader sweep of human evolution, the more unusual group is not Neanderthals, whom we tend to look at as strange, weird and unusual, but it's us, modern humans," Trinkaus said.

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Thousands flock to Malaysian 'ghost tree'

Thousands of people have been flocking to a small and hitherto unremarkable village in northern Malaysia to see what is being called the "ghost-tree" - a tree on which what appears to be a grotesque human face has appeared. It is a betel nut tree, a type of palm that is as common and everyday a sight in the tropics as an oak tree in rural Britain. But etched on one of the fronds of this particular tree is something that looks like a monstrous face, its teeth bared in a snarl and its eyes lost in shadow.It may sound like the plot of a Scooby-Doo cartoon, but people in rural Malaysia are taking it very seriously. Village elders have warned the thousands coming to see the face just to look and not to make any comments, for fear of arousing the wrath of the ghost.You could be forgiven for suspecting the locals have been indulging a little too much in chewing the betel nuts, the mildly intoxicating fruit of the tree, which are popular in many parts of Asia.

Sceptics have pointed out that the face appears to have changed dramatically since the first pictures of it emerged a few days ago, and become considerably larger, more distinct, and scarier and suggested that enterprising locals may have decided to give the thousands flocking to the site more to look at.Villagers have, after all, been selling photographs of the apparition to visitors for 2 ringgits (30p) apiece. But the credulous insisted the changing shape of the face over the days was just further evidence of its ghostly nature.

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Unknown writing found on Olmec tablet

Science magazine this week details the discovery of a stone block in Veracruz, Mexico, that contains a previously unknown system of writing; believed by archeologists to be the earliest in the Americas. The slab - named the Cascajal block - dates to the early first millennium BCE and has features that indicate it comes from the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica. One of the archaeologists behind the discovery, Brown University's Stephen D. Houston, said that the block and its ancient script "link the Olmec civilization to literacy, document an unsuspected writing system, and reveal a new complexity to this civilization." "It's a tantalizing discovery. I think it could be the beginning of a new era of focus on Olmec civilization," explained Houston. "It's telling us that these records probably exist and that many remain to be found. If we can decode their content, these earliest voices of Mesoamerican civilization will speak to us today."

Construction workers discovered the Cascajal block in a pile of debris in the community of Lomas de Tacamichapa in the late 1990s. Surrounding the piece were ceramic shards, clay figurine fragments, and broken artifacts of ground stone, which have helped the team date the block and its text to the San Lorenzo phase, ending about 900 BCE; approximately 400 years before writing was thought to have first appeared in the Western hemisphere.

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3rd rare white buffalo born in Wisconsin

A farm in Wisconsin is quickly becoming hallowed ground with the birth of its third white buffalo, an animal considered sacred by many tribes for its potential to bring good fortune and peace. Owner David Heider said "We took one look at it and I can't repeat what I thought but I thought, Here we go again". Thousands of people stopped by Heider's Janesville farm after the birth of the first white buffalo, a female named Miracle who died in 2004 at the age of 10. The second was born in 1996 but died after three days. Heider said he discovered the third white buffalo, a newborn male, after a storm in late August. Over the weekend, about 50 American Indians held a drum ceremony to honor the calf, which has yet to be named, he said. Floyd "Looks for Buffalo" Hand, a medicine man in the Oglala Sioux Tribe in Pine Ridge, S.D., said it was fate that the white buffaloes chose one farm, which will likely become a focal point for visitors, who make offerings such as tobacco and dream catchers in the hopes of earning good fortune and peace.

"That's destiny," he said. "The message was only choose one person." The white buffalo is particularly sacred to the Cheyenne, Sioux and other nomadic tribes of the Northern Plains that once relied on the buffalo for subsistence. According to a version of the legend, a white buffalo, disguised as a woman wearing white hides, appeared to two men. One treated her with respect, and the other didn't. She turned the disrespectful man into a pile of bones, and gave the respectful one a pipe and taught his people rituals and music. She transformed into a female white buffalo calf and promised to return again.

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New type of planet discovered

Astronomers using small automated telescopes have discovered a new type of planet that is far bigger than Jupiter but weighs half as much and has the density of cork. "It's baffling. We're never seen anything like it," said Robert Noyes, the Harvard University researcher that led the research team. "We know of rocky planets like Earth and gas giants like Jupiter. But this is different. It's four times lighter than water."The newly-identified planet, which does not yet have a name, is located about 400 light years from Earth, in constellation Lacerta, where it orbits the binary star ADS16402. Researchers discovered the planet with wide-field telescopes that scan the skies, looking for stars that dim briefly when a planet passes in front of them, as seen from Earth. The aperture of the telescopes is only five inches -- the kind of instrument used by amateur astronomers."If you could hold Jupiter in your hand, it would have the weight of an apple," said David Aguilar, a spokesman for the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass.

"This new planet would have the weight of a ball of cork. If you put it in a tub, it would float.The discovery was announced early today at a news conference in which scientists said they also have determined that, over time, Earth has had distinct types of atmosphere. And if they can identify any of those types on another celestial body, they could tell whether the planet does or did host forms of life ranging from bacteria to sizable animals

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67 dinosaurs discovered in one week

One recent week in the Gobi Desert produced 67 dinosaur skeletons for a team of paleontologists from Montana and Mongolia who want to flesh out the developmental biology of dinosaurs. Montana State University paleontologist Jack Horner said Wednesday that the same area yielded 30 skeletons last year, so researchers at MSU and Mongolia's Science and Technology University now have about 100 Psittacosaurus skeletons. The skeletons ranged in length from one to five feet and stood about two feet tall."That's what I was there for -- getting as many of those as we could possibly get," Horner said as he waited for the rest of the MSU team to return to Bozeman.He was specifically looking for Psittacosaurus fossils because it was a very common dinosaur and would give him lots of specimens, Horner said. It would also keep away poachers and commercial fossil hunters who work in the area, but prefer rare fossils. Horner wants a large number of fossils so he can compare variations between skeletons and changes during growth. The Psittacosaurus dinosaur, also known as a "parrot lizard," was a plant-eater that lived about 120 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous Period, Horner said. It was an ancestor of horned dinosaurs like the triceratops."The reason I went after Psittacosaurus was because I figured I could get more of those dinosaurs in the shortest period of time than any other dinosaur," Horner added.

Horner and his group left near the end of August for Mongolia. Joined there by Bolortsetseg Minjin and her team of Mongolian students, the paleontologists drove two days out of Ulan Bator. There, in a few square miles of badlands, they worked from sun-up to sundown and collected dozens of fossils.This summer's fossils have all been excavated and are now at the Mongolian university, Horner said. Jamie Cornish, marketing director at MSU's Museum of the Rockies, said the bones belong to Mongolia, but Horner may obtain casts of them. Horner added that he will be able to study some of the fossils in Montana, but they will be returned to Mongolia.

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First female space tourist blasts off

Iran-born American telecommunications entrepreneur today became the world's first private woman space tourist as a Russian rocket carrying a US-Russian crew lifted off the Baikonur space centre in former Soviet Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan. Anousheh Ansari, 40, paid USD 20 million for space ride ticket to spend ten days at the International Space Station (ISS). "The lift-off took place at 8.09 a.m. Moscow time (9.39 a.m. IST)," the Mission Control Centre for the Soyuz TMA-9 situated in Stellar Town Korolyov near here said. The Russian Soyuz TMA-9 space ferry lifted off in less than 24-hours after the US space shuttle Atlantis undocked from the ISS and began its journey back to Earth. Nine minutes after lift-off the Soyuz reached its orbit at an altitude of over 200 kilometres. Ansari is to conduct three experiments: two for the European Space Agency and one for Russia's Energia Space Corporation.

She will return to the earth with the crew of the 13th expedition. She started training at the Gagarin training centre in Russia as a backup for Japanese space tourist Daisuke Enomoto, who failed his medical tests. The Soyuz TMA-9 space ferry with Ansari, NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin will dock with the ISS on Wednesday. They are due to return to earth on September 29.

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Arctic ice melting rapidly, study says

Arctic sea ice in winter is melting far faster than before, two new Top of Form 1Bottom of Form 1NASA studies reported Wednesday, a new and alarming trend that researchers say threatens the ocean's delicate ecosystem. Scientists point to the sudden and rapid melting as a sure sign of man-made global warming."It has never occurred before in the past," said NASA senior research scientist Josefino Comiso in a phone interview. "It is alarming... This winter ice provides the kind of evidence that it is indeed associated with the greenhouse effect."Scientists have long worried about melting Arctic sea ice in the summer, but they had not seen a big winter drop in sea ice, even though they expected it.For more than 25 years Arctic sea ice has slowly diminished in winter by about 1.5 percent per decade. But in the past two years the melting has occurred at rates 10 to 15 times faster. From 2004 to 2005, the amount of ice dropped 2.3 percent; and over the past year, it's declined by another 1.9 percent, according to Comiso.A second NASA study by other researchers found the winter sea ice melt in one region of the eastern Arctic has shrunk about 40 percent in just the past two years.

This is partly because of local weather but also partly because of global warming, Comiso said.The loss of winter ice is bad news for the ocean because this type of ice, when it melts in summer, provides a crucial breeding ground for plankton, Comiso said. Plankton are the bottom rung of the ocean's food chain."If the winter ice melt continues, the effect would be very profound especially for marine mammals," Comiso said in a NASA telephone press conference.The ice is melting even in subfreezing winter temperatures because the water is warmer and summer ice covers less area and is shorter-lived, Comiso said. Thus, the winter ice season shortens every year and warmer water melts at the edges of the winter ice more every year.