Science Special News

[Rasputin]

Hot new mystery surrounds Saturn

For years astronomers have known that the upper atmospheres of Saturn and other giant planets are hotter than can be explained by absorbed sunlight. Today the mystery deepened. The phenomenon has long been blamed on a mechanism similar to what creates the aurora, or Northern Lights on Earth. On Earth, magnetic energy in the magnetosphere drives the aurora and heats the upper atmosphere. The giant planets are known for spectacular auroras at their polar regions. Scientists figured that heat generated by the auroras was blown toward the equator by some unknown process. But a new calculation reported in today's issue of the journal Nature finds that this mechanism, if at work on Saturn, would actually cool the upper atmosphere at the lower latitudes (closer to the equator). Scientists will have to go back to the drawing board to figure out what's really heating things up."This unexplained 'energy crisis' represents a major gap in our understanding of these planets' atmospheres," the scientists write.

"We need to re-examine our basic assumptions about planetary atmospheres and what causes the observed heating," said study team member Alan Aylward of the University College London.Some as-yet-unknown direct heating mechanism is possibly at work, the scientists speculate. One possibility: the breaking of "buoyancy waves" generated in the lower atmosphere.Figuring it all out could help researchers model the future of Earth's atmosphere.

[Rasputin]

Mathematics in ancient Egypt

The Greeks developed mathematics as a deductive science that reached its climax with Euclid of Alexandria in his masterpiece The Elements. Before that, during the ancient Egyptian era, mathematics was an inductive discipline of a utilitarian nature used to perform practical tasks such as flood control or land measurement using rope. It has been suggested that mathematics then amounted to no more than the two-times table and the ability to find two-thirds of any number. The whole structure of Egyptian mathematics was said to be based on these two simple rules, and indeed no evidence exists of a textual geometry with constructions and proofs.Yet, looking at the Egyptians' stunning monuments, as well as a civilisation that spanned three millennia, one might expect to find a similar element of grandeur in their sciences -- especially in mathematics and astronomy. How did they configure the manpower and materials needed to build more than 90 pyramids? It is obvious that to calculate the vast amount of computations they needed, the ancient Egyptians reached a fairly advanced mathematical knowledge.Several eminent Greek mathematicians -- Pythagoras, Thales and Archimedes, to name just a few -- worked in Egypt, and it is likely that Egyptian mathematics was absorbed into the body of Greek mathematics. The Giza pyramids offer definitive evidence of the ancient accuracy of measuring.

Built in the middle of the third millennium BC, shortly after the first known evidence of Egyptian writing, they predate by 600 years any early mathematical tools. The Great Pyramid of Khufu was built of 2,300,000 limestone blocks each averaging 2.5 tons. Simple calculations reveal that, since it took 20 years to complete, and assuming that work lasted eight hours per day, it was possible to fit 2,300,000/20 x 365 x 8 x 60 = 0.7 blocks per minute. In other words it took about 10 minutes to fit seven such huge blocks neatly into place at such an elevation. This does not account for the time taken to construct or demolish the ramp using to pull up the stones.

[Rasputin]

Mars' missing air might just be hiding

Rather than having had its air knocked out into space, Mars might just be holding its breath. New findings suggests the missing atmosphere of Mars might be locked up in hidden reservoirs on the planet, rather than having been chafed away by billions of years' worth of solar winds as previously thought.Combining two years of observations by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, researchers determined that Mars is currently losing only about 20 grams of air per second into space.Extrapolating this measurement back over 3.5 billion years, they estimate that only a small fraction, 0.2 to 4 millibars, of carbon dioxide and a few centimeters of water could have been lost to solar winds during that timeframe. (A bar is a unit for measuring pressure; Earth’s atmospheric pressure is about 1 bar.)According to the "warm and wet early Mars" model, liquid water once flowed on the red planet’s surface.

Evidence from channels and gullies recently spotted on Mars suggest the water layer might have been more than half a mile deep in places. For Mars to keep that much water in liquid form, the planet must have had a much higher atmospheric temperature, which scientists think was made possible by a strong greenhouse effect in the planet’s past.Mars' atmosphere must have been between 1 to 5 bars to maintain that kind of greenhouse effect, scientists think. But Mars’ atmospheric pressure today is only a small fraction of that—about 0.008 bars, or about 0.7 percent of the average surface pressure at sea level on Earth.

[Rasputin]

Zeus devotees worship in Athens

Worshippers who believe in the 12 gods of ancient Greece have held a ceremony at the Temple of Zeus in Athens. This is a landmark event to celebrate official recognition of their religion by a court last year. The Greek Orthodox Church has said they are miserable resuscitators of a degenerate dead religion. But the ceremony went ahead, with crowds watching priests and priestesses, who said the event was a symbol of their civic rights. In 2003, white-clad worshippers performed an illicit ceremony at the Temple of Hephaestus, just below the Acropolis. At that time they were chased off the site by ministry of culture staff. Despite vigorous opposition from the highly conservative Greek Orthodox Church, a court last year officially recognised the revived ancient Greek religion. One of its leaders, Doretta Peppa, a writer who calls herself a high priestess, told the BBC the temples were built to respect the gods and now they were going to be put to their proper use.

Ms Peppa said she had been given official permission to use the temple, but there were fears that the culture ministry, which administers the site, might give way to pressure from the church. The president of the Association of Greek Clergymen, Father Efstathios Kollas, has described the followers of the Olympic gods as a handful of miserable resuscitators of a degenerate dead religion who wish to return to the monstrous dark delusions of the past.

[Rasputin]

Archaeologist digs for proof of Sasquatch

By day she's the Stanislaus National Forest's archaeologist. With a master's degree in anthropology, she makes sure prehistoric Native American sites in the woods are protected. She's also the forest's liaison with the Me-Wuk tribe. But it's what Kathy Strain does in her spare time that separates her from Forest Service colleagues. She's a Bigfooter. A student of Sasquatch. A yearner for Yeti. A true believer. "A strong case can be made that Bigfoot exists," said Strain, whose Jamestown-area home includes a room full of books, videos, cast footprints, notes and reports on the creature. "I've seen things I have no other explanation for." Not only that, but she says Tuolumne County and the forest she works on are among the huge creature's favorite haunts. She has catalogued scores of eyewitness accounts, has discovered a Sasquatch "nest" near Twain Harte and swears she was once close enough to the creature that dirt was still falling from the sides of deep,14-inch footprints it left behind. And get this: Strain is not crazy. In fact, her scientific credentials and employment by a huge, dead-serious and not terribly imaginative federal agency boost her stock as a guest speaker at Bigfoot conferences. But when she walks into the forest's Greenley Road headquarters, Strain leaves Sasquatch at the door. She doesn't demand that wide swaths of timberland be set aside as Bigfoot habitat.

Nor does she hector forest wildlife biologists with evidence or accounts she has collected. "Kathy has been an excellent archaeologist and employee," confirmed her boss, Forest Supervisor Tom Quinn. "And, at least in my four and a half years here, I have had no reports of Yeti conversations in the workplace." For the record, Quinn added, the forest has "no position" on Bigfoot. Which, less restrained Bigfooters might say, is like Australia having no position on kangaroos. NEXT TO THE deep woods near the Oregon border, Strain says, the Stanislaus Forest area is the nation's hottest Bigfoot spot. In the past six years she has documented more than 200 sightings and witness accounts. A few have come from co-workers looking to unburden themselves — after quitting time, of course — of long-held Bigfoot tales. Take the wildlife biologist who never forgot his 1993 trip to Bloomer Lake, above Pinecrest.

[Rasputin]

Does our Sun have a dimmer switch ?

There's a dimmer switch inside the sun that causes its brightness to rise and fall on timescales of around 100,000 years - exactly the same period as between ice ages on Earth. So says a physicist who has created a computer model of our star's core.Robert Ehrlich of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, modelled the effect of temperature fluctuations in the sun's interior. According to the standard view, the temperature of the sun's core is held constant by the opposing pressures of gravity and nuclear fusion. However, Ehrlich believed that slight variations should be possible.He took as his starting point the work of Attila Grandpierre of the Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2005, Grandpierre and a collaborator, Gábor Ágoston, calculated that magnetic fields in the sun's core could produce small instabilities in the solar plasma. These instabilities would induce lo*spam filter*ed oscillations in temperature.Ehrlich's model shows that whilst most of these oscillations cancel each other out, some reinforce one another and become long-lived temperature variations. The favoured frequencies allow the sun's core temperature to oscillate around its average temperature of 13.6 million kelvin in cycles lasting either 100,000 or 41,000 years.

Ehrlich says that random interactions within the sun's magnetic field could flip the fluctuations from one cycle length to the other.These two timescales are instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with Earth's ice ages: for the past million years, ice ages have occurred roughly every 100,000 years. Before that, they occurred roughly every 41,000 years.Most scientists believe that the ice ages are the result of subtle changes in Earth's orbit, known as the Milankovitch cycles. One such cycle describes the way Earth's orbit gradually changes shape from a circle to a slight ellipse and back again roughly every 100,000 years. The theory says this alters the amount of solar radiation that Earth receives, triggering the ice ages. However, a persistent problem with this theory has been its inability to explain why the ice ages changed frequency a million years ago."In Milankovitch, there is certainly no good idea why the frequency should change from one to another," says Neil Edwards, a climatologist at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK. Nor is the transition problem the only one the Milankovitch theory faces. Ehrlich and other critics claim that the temperature variations caused by Milankovitch cycles are simply not big enough to drive ice ages.

[Rasputin]

Opus Dei complains over BBC drama

Controversial Catholic group Opus Dei has complained to the BBC about what it says is a "defamatory" portrayal in primetime drama Waking The Dead. Two episodes of the crime series, shown last weekend, featured devotees of the religious organisation embroiled in a gruesome double murder. Opus Dei said the BBC broke religious guidelines by showing its members as "murderers, thieves and adulterers". The BBC said it had not yet received an official complaint. Opus Dei was formed in 1928 in Madrid by the priest Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer. Its name means "the work of God". It encourages members to see religion as something that should direct every minute of their lives, rather than being a matter of just turning up for Mass and confession. But it has aroused controversy in the past, with critics calling it secretive and ultra-conservative, claims which its members deny. Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code novel famously painted the organisation as a power-hungry movement bent on covering up the truth about Christ's bloodline. Opus Dei claim it was this portrayal of their organisation that was the inspiration for Waking The Dead.

"The three characters portrayed as members are self-serving hypocrites whose main reason for belonging to Opus Dei is depicted as being their wealth," it said. "This portrayal is lifted from the Da Vinci Code, a book and film which claimed - against all evidence - to be based on fact." The group says the BBC has broken its own editorial guidelines on religion, which state: "We will ensure the religious views and beliefs of an individual, a religion or religious denomination are not misrepresented".

[Rasputin]

Carvings of ancient gladiators found

Italian police have recovered ancient Roman marble reliefs depicting stunningly lifelike gladiators locked in mortal combat after unearthing the hidden cache of grave robbers, officials said Wednesday. The 12 panels were found buried in the garden of a private home near Fiano Romano, about 25 miles north of Rome, and officials hailed the find as a major archaeological discovery and a blow to the illegal antiquities market. The reliefs date to the late first century B.C. and are believed to have decorated a tomb, yet to be located, in the Roman settlement of Lucus Feroniae, said Anna Maria Moretti, the superintendent for antiquities in the area north of Rome. The pieces, made of high-quality Carrara marble, are notable for their size and age and are among the finest examples from their period depicting one of Rome's favorite blood sports, Moretti said. The panels show bare-chested fighters, armed with swords and shields, engaged in duels while surrounded by trumpet and horn players who accompanied the phases of combat in the bloodied arena.

In one of the most dramatic scenes, a gladiator steps on the wrist of a downed opponent who raises a finger in a traditional plea for mercy. The reliefs will undergo restoration before being shown to the public at Rome's Villa Giulia Museum, officials said. Archaeologists have unearthed many similar representations, but interest in the new discovery goes beyond its craftsmanship, Moretti said.

[Rasputin]

Pluto rises again

The top scientist behind NASA’s mission to Pluto, Alan Stern, says the icy world is making a comeback among astronomers: The debate over Pluto’s planethood is resurging at scientific meetings, and even the International Astronomical Union hasn't yet delivered the final word on its planet definition. When all is said and done, it may be the IAU – or, as Stern terms it, the "Irrelevant Astronomical Union" – that ends up getting Plutoed, he says.You can probably tell already that Stern isn't a dispassionate observer when it comes to Pluto: He's the principal investigator for the New Horizons probe, which was launched a little more than a year ago to study the solar system's edge. The spacecraft is due to zoom by Jupiter next month, on its way to a 2015 rendezvous with Pluto and its icy neighbors.The IAU decision seemed to dis the $700 million mission even before it really hit its stride. But Stern says his disagreement rests on a deeper principle - that scientific classifications shouldn't be legislated in and out of existence."Science does not work the way the legal system works," Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, told me today. "We didn't vote on relativity or quantum mechanics.

We don't vote on any scientific discovery, because it just doesn't work that way. ... The IAU can vote that the sky is green, but that doesn't mean people will follow, because it's not."Stern said recent developments have borne out his view. He pointed to the agenda for the European Geosciences Union's annual meeting in Vienna this April, which headlines a forum titled "What Is a Planet?""Astronomy is not the only discipline that deals with planets, and the criteria defined by astronomers might not be shared by planetary scientists, for example," the agenda abstract reads.

[Rasputin]

UFO’s seen over South Shore sky

It's hard to draw a surfer's attention away from the next wave, but whatever was in the southwest sky Friday evening around 6:20 p.m. drew a crowd along Kewalo Basin and Ala Moana Beach Park. Honolulu resident Peter Hollingworth described what he and many others saw as two lights circling in the sky, about 45 degrees above the horizon.Video of one of the lights was recorded from the KHON 2 SkyCam. “These two little fireballs with a stream behind it,” said Hollingworth. “Looked kind of like a shooting star but it just kept going. They changed directions a few times, at first it was coming in then it turned, then it went out then it came back in again." Hollingworth was surfing with his 12 year old son when the unexpected show began. “I was a little concerned. I told him come over and sit with me - this might be the last surf session we ever have together because this thing's coming straight for Honolulu. It looked deadly to me it was kind of spooky.”So what was it? The National Weather Service says nothing showed up on their radar at the time of the sighting and the Federal Aviation Administration didn't report anything unusual.

The U.S. military conducted a missile defense test off of Kauai Friday evening but the test didn't begin until 7:20 p.m.“This in a sense is an unidentified flying object,” said University of Hawaii astronomy professor Gareth Wynn-Williams. “It's something in the sky that's moving that we haven't identified.” Wynn-Williams believes there's a simple explanation behind the UFO’s. “It's probably a contrail of some kind,” he said while watching video of one of the lights at his Kailua home. The professor says contrails are caused by high flying airplanes burning hydrogen based fuels.

[Rasputin]

Stonehenge builders' houses found

Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: A huge ancient settlement used by the people who built Stonehenge has been found, archaeologists have said. Excavations at Durrington Walls, near the legendary Salisbury Plain monument, uncovered remains of ancient houses. People seem to have occupied the sites seasonally, using them for ritual feasting and funeral ceremonies. In ancient times, this settlement would have housed hundreds of people, making it the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain. The dwellings date back to 2,600-2,500 BC - according to the researchers, the same period that Stonehenge was built. But some archaeologists point out that there are problems dating Stonehenge itself because the stone circle has been rebuilt many times.

Consequently, archaeological material has been dug up and reburied on numerous occasions, making it difficult to assign a date to the original construction. But Mike Parker Pearson and his colleagues are confident of a link. "In what were houses, we have excavated the outlines on the floors of box beds and wooden dressers or cupboards," he explained. The Sheffield University researcher said this was based on the fact that these abodes had exactly the same layout as Neolithic houses at Skara Brae, Orkney, which have survived intact because - unlike these dwellings - they were made of stone.

[Rasputin]

Biblical natural cures

Jaime Licauco: It was the late Sir Jason Winters who first told me of passages in the Christian Bible that talked about healing using natural substances. He cured himself of terminal throat and mouth cancer by researching herbs mentioned in the Bible. He said the Bible contained advice to eat certain fruits and their seeds to heal various illnesses.Out of his desperate efforts to find a cure for his dreaded disease, he traveled to different continents and talked to rabbis and priests of different religions to identify the fruits and herbs mentioned in the Bible. No one could tell him.But, by combining several natural plants with biblical references, he developed a tea that cured him of cancer. Doctors said it was a miracle. That tea is now sold all over the world as Sir Jason Winters Tea.Could it be that it is God’s plan that for every disease that afflicts humans, there is something in nature that will cure it?For why should God allow a disease to emerge if there was no hope of curing it? It just doesn’t make sense.So even the so-called incurable modern illnesses—cancer, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (Aids), Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, arthritis or Ankylosing Spondylitis—must have a natural remedy. However, people have not yet discovered it.

Recently, I was reading the Catholic edition of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible and I came across a book in the Old Testament not found in other editions of the Bible. This is the book of Tobit, which is placed between the books of Nehemiah and Judith.According to the introduction or commentary about this portion of the Old Testament, the Book of Tobit is “about a righteous Jew (named) Tobit, who is in exile in Nineveh, and Sarah, who is tortured by a demon in Media. God sends the Angel Raphael to help both Tobit and Sarah. Tobit’s son, Tobias, goes with Raphael to Media, binds the demon, and marries Sarah.”

[Rasputin]

'Hobbit' human 'is a new species'

Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: The tiny skeletal remains of human "Hobbits" found on an Indonesian island belong to a completely new branch of our family tree, a study has found. The finds caused a sensation when they were announced to the world in 2004. But some researchers argued the bones belonged to a modern human with a combination of small stature and a brain disorder called microcephaly. That claim is rejected by the latest study, which compares the tiny people with modern microcephalics. Microcephaly is a rare pathological condition in humans characterised by a small brain and cognitive impairment. In the new study, Dean Falk, of Florida State University, and her colleagues say the remains are those of a completely separate human species: Homo floresiensis. They have published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The remains at the centre of the Hobbit controversy were discovered at Liang Bua, a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, in 2003. Researchers found one near-complete skeleton, which they named LB1, along with the remains of at least eight other individuals.

The specimens were nicknamed Hobbits after the tiny creatures in JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. The researchers believe the 1m-tall (3ft) people evolved from an unknown small-bodied, small-brained ancestor, which they think became small in stature to cope with the limited supply of food on the island. The little humans are thought to have survived until about 12,000 years ago, when a volcanic eruption devastated the region.

[Rasputin]

The Majestic 12 documents

Lonesoldier: When we think of shadowy government agencies we get the picture of unknown faceless people, with pasts erased and faked deaths. But with this particular investigative group, for the first twenty years this is the exact opposite. In the first ten years the group included famous and well known government and defense officials and officers and scientists such as General Dwight Eisenhower, Dr Robert Oppenheimer, and even Professor Albert Einstein, to name but a few of its members. It begins way back in 1941, when something is recovered in the San Benndino Valley, Los Angeles. This "Something" is described as an "Unexplained Aircraft". Dr Vannevar Bush and Franklin D Roosevelt's correspondence to Chief Of Staff George Marshall contained advice to research the "Atomic secrets learned from study of celestial devices". However it was also advised not to share such secrets with the Soviet Union. They believed these "Atomic Secrets" could lead to a "Super Weapon of War."

In 1942 another such "Celestial Device" is found in Missouri, it seems what happened in Roswell July 1947 wasn't the first recovery of a so-called "Flying Saucer". This is the true beginning of Majestic Twelve, under its then name of "Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit" and its scientific branch "The Special Committee on Non-Terrestrial Science and Technology.” February 22 1944 - more correspondence is sent, it contains advice for the Chief Of Staff and members of the IPU. A Recommendation is put forward by Dr Bush and Professor Einstein:"I also agree that the application of non-terrestrial know-how must be used in perfecting super weapons of war to effect the complete defeat of Germany and Japan". After this idea to use technology not of this world for the sole purpose of defeating America's and its Allies enemies, there is another recommendation:"In view of the cost already incurred in the Atomic Bomb program......Our principle object is not to engage in exploratory research of this kind, but to win the war as soon as possible."

At first the IPU, doesn't seem too concerned with secrecy and cover-up, however in the next paragraph they advise (in the light of being at war, where unscrupulous espionage elements may be trying to get their filthy mitts on such sensitive information.), to keep such matters to those who already know, namely the leaders and top scientists of the IPU, and chief of staff. Also in this memo not only do we see the first evidence of cover-up, but also the first admittance of alien life."I appreciate the effort and time spent in producing valuable insights into the proposal to find ways of advancing our technology and national progress, and incoming to grips with the reality that our planet is not the only one harboring intelligent life in the universe."So for a while at least the subject isn't touched until the end of the war. The atom bomb successfully explodes on Hiroshima, followed closely by Nagasaki ending World War Two. Are we to presume from the earliest dated documents, that a portion of the credits to winning World War Two should be given to the owners of the "Unexplained Aircraft" of "Non-Terrestrial" origin? The story is just beginning as Dr Oppenheimer and Prof Einstein, send another correspondence. They propose new laws and guidelines, for they believe by their evidence that contact with "Extra-Terrestrial Biological Entities" was only a matter of time. They both go to great length on how the situation should be handled, with everything from settling of celestial visitors on our planet including asylum claims, to legal claims of the moon or even mars that may be made by "E.B.Es". They also express great concern about their technology, stating perhaps spacecraft may one day be carrying nuclear warheads. In this letter from Oppenheimer and Einstein, we see the first use of the phrase and abbreviation of "Extra-Terrestrial Biological Entities". They also admit the existence of space vehicles...

This was dated one month prior to the Roswell incident, June 1947.So what would you consider to be the single most important moment in human history? The advent of organized religion? The invention of sanitation? The first time "The Black Album" by Metallica hit the shelves of you local record store? How about definitive proof that we are not the only intelligent life to inhabit this universe? If you chose the last option, chances are you're utterly confused by the whole situation. And to most on our planet (save for the few that hold the keys to the proof) are completely oblivious to the fact that it happened. July 4th 1947, the Roswell incident occurs, the crash of not just one but two "Flying Saucers". At first the authorities release the flying saucer story to cover up the "Mogul Spy Balloon" project. Mogul was being developed to eavesdrop on soviet atomic tests, documents state that the first saucer collided with a mogul prototype. They recovered the first saucer, complete with bodies and took them to Roswell Army Air Base, home to the very first atomic bomber squadron. A few days later they had allegedly captured a second saucer, intact. No crew or bodies were recovered. They then realized the importance of the finds, they decide to retract the claims of the saucer crash and recovery, instead choosing to compromise their highly secretive atomic snooping balloon. For the next few days they scramble working night and day to unlock the secrets of what they had in their possession. In September 1947 the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit changes into the newly organized Majestic Twelve, its members included Dr bush, Einstein, Oppenheimer, General Twining.

They answered directly to the president, it was decided that an air of secrecy should be held therefore all topics pertaining to EBEs, Saucers, and technology should be deemed above top secret, lest soviet spies should run their red paws over the most highly sensitive information. With this the Central Intelligence Agency was created to help with this task, and for the gathering of information, this soon expanded to be the main intelligence agency in the United States.For a few years things remained the same. MJ12 gave annual reports to the president and his chiefs of their progress. But by 1950 the beginnings of distrust started to show within the group, when General Twining resigned from his post, followed shortly by his mysterious suicide. Einstein left shortly after, and contracted cancer from which he died in April 1955. Oppenheimer, was kicked out of the group, he too died of cancer in February 1967. The Group was reshuffling members almost constantly, some of the members rejected, soon met there own deaths. By 1961 the group was extremely powerful even more so than perhaps the president, commanding elements of the military and intelligence community. John F Kennedy gained presidency in 1961, he like his predecessors is briefed on the whole gambit by Majestic Twelve.

Kennedy dissatisfied with majestic's progress on all matter alien, decides to shift funding from the organization, to NASA for the space race with the Soviet Union. Strange communiqué in one of the documents hints to the assassination of John F Kennedy. What is also clear, is that a need to know basis for presidents is put into effect, they no longer answered to the president, and would only inform if it was deemed absolutely necessary. Nothing can prove that Majestic Twelve was responsible for the death of Kennedy but, they can be linked, as few documents state. With the arrival of Richard Nixon in office, something forces the group to brief Nixon on their secrets. For the first time Majestic Twelve, are also known as the code name Jehovah. A half burned set of documents are recovered, apparently Nixon ordered a whole load of majestic twelve documents to be destroyed, he didn't want to be seen connected with Kennedy's death. Majestic then set up the Watergate hotel scandal, to take the heat off of them, Nixon proclaims innocence then resigns in 1974. This is about the time that Majestic Twelve go underground, hardly anything is heard about them. Some documents indicate that they sought monetary funding from private investors. The last document is dated 1998.

[Rasputin]

Seeking Da Vinci's lost masterpiece

After 32 years on the trail of Leonardo da Vinci's lost masterpiece "The Battle of Anghiari," Maurizio Seracini thinks he is on the verge of solving one of the art world's greatest mysteries. The Italian engineer and art expert reckons he knows where the fresco, which disappeared nearly five centuries ago, might be hidden -- behind a wall right where it was painted, in Florence's Renaissance town hall.Now that the Italian government has given him the go-ahead to complete his investigation, Seracini says he is just a few months away from finding out once and for all.If he is right, there is no overestimating the importance such a discovery would have."At the time of Leonardo the contemporaries considered this not only his best work of art but also 'the' best work of art, the masterpiece of all," Seracini said in his office near the Palazzo Vecchio, where he believes the painting is buried.

"So, we are searching for the most important masterpiece of the Renaissance, the highest point ever achieved, and the most important masterpiece of Leonardo," he told Reuters.Florence's leaders commissioned Leonardo, then at the height of his career, to paint a fresco celebrating the Florentine Republic's victory over the Milanese in a battle on the plains of Anghiari that took place on June 29, 1440.