Science Special News

[Rasputin]

Original 'Star Trek' receives a makeover

The United Federation of Planets has never looked so crisp and full of dimension. CBS Paramount gave Trekkers reason to throw their pointy ears in the air Thursday with the announcement that all 79 episodes of the original Star Trek are being digitally remastered and will be heading into syndication next month for the first time in 16 years in honor of the sci-fi classic's 40th anniversary. Many of the series' beloved yet decidedly dated visual staples, from the galaxy glimpsed in the opening title sequence to the myriad otherworldly landscapes seen from the bridge of the starship Enterprise, will receive a CGI makeover to appeal to the sons and daughters of 1960s-era Star Trek fans who actually found someone to mate with. "Star Trek redefined science fiction and constantly pushed the envelope with concepts that were ahead of their time," John Nogawski, president of CBS Paramount Domestic Television, said in a statement.

"By giving the series a digital upgrade using the best technology available today, it will continue to be a leader in cutting-edge television programming as we introduce the series to a new generation of viewers." The hull of the Enterprise, as well as every other spaceship that passes by, will soon be computer generated, so it will no longer resemble a Frisbee with a couple of batteries attached to it. But rest assured, you loyalists out there--the digitally redone Enterprise is based on the original model, which is now docked for posterity at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. What the minds behind the redecorating want you to know, however, is that nothing is being altered too drastically, a la the changes that left Star Wars purists up in arms a few years ago--when Top of Form 1Bottom of Form 1George Lucas peppered the original three films with CGI "upgrades."

[Rasputin]

Can you really 'own' land on the Moon ?

Why not buy some land on the Moon? There seems to be plenty available on the Internet, including plots going at a bargain £14.25 per acre (plus tax and fees) from the Lunar Embassy, the company selling the 'property' of American entrepreneur Dennis Hope, who infamously claimed practically all of the Solar System in 1980 because no one else had. No one has officially recognized that Hope's lunar 'deeds' are anything more than novelty gifts. But more than 2 million have been sold since the 1980s, says the company, generating sales of millions of dollars out of empty space, leaving experts to wonder whether the commercial opportunities on the Moon might someday lead to real sales; and to suggest that perhaps they should.A growing body of financiers, lawyers and space enthusiasts believe that the recognition of personal property rights 'out there' is the only realistic way to finance the new frontier of commercially driven space exploration. Legal ownership of the Moon by countries is prevented by the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty. This has been ratified or signed by more than 125 countries, including all the main space players (the United States, Russia, Japan, China and India).

By its mandate, the American flags currently 'flying' on the Moon do not give the United States a greater claim to it over any other nation.But on the matter of private ownership, things are arguably more murky. The United Nations attempted to tackle this with the 1979 Moon Treaty, which states that no pieces of the Moon can become property of any "state, international or national organization or non-governmental entity or of any natural person". But, perhaps because the prospect of any risk in this area seemed so far away, hardly anyone signed: only 12 countries agreed, none of them major players in the space game.Louis Freedman, co-founder of the California-based Planetary Society, whose mission is to inspire planetary exploration and to seek out new life, testified to a Senate hearing on whether the United States should sign up: "I told them that making laws in the absence of knowing what you are trying to make a law about is not a good idea," he says.

[Rasputin]

Apaches go public with Bigfoot sightings

Footprints in the mud. Tufts of hair on a fence. Ear-piercing screeches in the night. These are only fragments of the stories now coming from the White Mountains in Eastern Arizona. For years the White Mountain Apache Nation has kept the secret within tribal boundaries. “We're not prone to easily talk to outsiders,” said spokeswoman Collette Altaha. “But there have been more sightings than ever before. It cannot be ignored any longer.” It is a creature the world knows as “Bigfoot”. “No one's had a negative encounter with it,” said Marjorie Grimes, who lives in Whitewater, the primary town on the reservation. Grimes is one of many who claim to have seen the creature over the last 25 years. Her first sighting was in 1982. Her most recent was in the summer of 2004, driving home from the town of Cibecue. She becomes more animated as the memory comes forth. “It was all black and it was tall!

The way it walked; it was taking big strides. I put on the brakes and raced back and looked between the two trees where it was, and it was gone!” Grimes' son Francis has a story. Their neighbor Cecil Hendricks has a story. Even police officers have had strange encounters. Officer Katherine Montoya has seen it twice. On a recent Monday night dozens of people called into the tribe's radio station, KNNB, to talk about what they'd seen. Others came in person.

[Rasputin]

Organizations seek to verify UFO reports

We are not alone in the universe if the numerous sightings of unidentified flying objects are to be believed. Residents of planet Earth recounted seeing 105 UFOs to the National UFO Reporting Center in only the first 16 days of July, and many were in California. A Los Angelian saw a craft made up of two circles — one with several spinning orbs — floating straight up into the sky. Someone in Pittsburg titled his claim Holy Motherlode of a Mother Ship and wrote about viewing smaller ships entering and leaving a big vessel the size of five football fields. Both accounts are likely to be believed not just by ufologists, whove spent years investigating those unexplained floaters in the sky, but by astronomers as well. Though the two groups may not agree on much, both have come to the conclusion that we are probably not the only beings in the cosmos. Many recent UFO sightings have been reported from the Central Valley in Lodi, Stockton and Tracy, said Chuck Reever, the director of investigations for Mutual UFO Network, an international organization trying to resolve the enigma of UFOs that includes actor Dan Akroyd as a lifetime member. Once a sighting is reported, MUFON, as it is commonly called, may conduct a telephone or face-to-face interview, Reever said.

Photographs and other anecdotal evidence is then collected, including the size of the object, when it was seen and its possible distance from the viewer. Any physical evidence, such as pieces of material that cannot be identified as man-made, may be turned over to researchers. About 300 scientists donate their time to the all-volunteer organization, said International Director Jack Schuessler, who himself was an engineer with NASAs Johnson Space Center for 25 years. While about 1,200 cases are investigated annually, only about 10 to 20 percent remain unexplainable. Calls to, for example, the weather bureau to de-termine if balloons were launched or the military rule out some cases automatically.

[Rasputin]

Missing jet from 1953 UFO incident found ?

At 6:22 p.m. on November 23 1953, an F-89 Scorpion jet was scrambled from Kinross Air Force Base near the Michigan Soo to intercept an unidentified object detected in restricted airspace over the Soo Locks. The U.S. fighter was seen on radar over Lake Superior, merging with the craft it was pursuing.Then, it disappeared from radar.Never to be seen again.Ever since, the UFO-theorist circles have been speculating what might have happened.In October 1968, the Sault Star reported that aircraft parts believed to have come from a "high-performance military jet aircraft" had been discovered by prospectors on Lake Superior's Canadian side. Today, the UFO circles have started buzzing again, with speculation that a side-scan sonar image might be the missing F-89 Scorpion. The dive company's website indicates it's currently involved in a forensic investigation of the Canadian wreck site.

A company map shows the search area as being in Ontario waters off the tip of Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula.The dive company also intriguingly indicates that its sonar detected another "interesting" object near the sunken aircraft, that might be part of whatever it was that the jet was pursuing.

[Rasputin]

Who really sunk the Lusitania ?

T. Stokes: The sister ship to the Titanic, the great luxury liner the Lusitania, the worlds largest ship at the time, was leaving New York on May 1st 1915 on its journey to Liverpool, when it was sunk by German submarine U-20 piloted by Kapitan Walter Schwieger, or was it ? Voltaire said;” history is a lie commonly agreed on “May 1st is a special date in Illuminati archives as the day of Baal/Beltanethe devils day, also chosen to celebrate Russia’s revolution, by its foundersthe same U.[/B]S banking cartels that fund America and British war efforts.I first heard this story version many years ago from a senior freemason in London at the Hackney retired Seamen’s Mission, this man‘s father was present at Churchill’s initiation at age 26, much other relevant info was given in exchange for a large bottle of Scots whisky.Many years of research says to me it is true.The Lusitania’s sinking created outrage, that a passenger ship would be sunk, and was a determining factor in bringing in the U.S.A onto Britain’s side in W.W.1

The real story has yet to be told. Pearl harbour and 9/11 were staged theatre pieces, and so was the Lusitania sunk with the same Illuminati game plan.The ships Captain, William Turner had shown himself to be fearless, rescuing a man and a boy from a sinking ship and other acts of heroism, he could also obey orders to the letter, but he was not a popular figure with Cunard Shipping, who felt that a ships captain should also have people skills to entertain the passengers en route, Capt. Turner son of a sea captain, yet lacked these skills, and was uncomfortable and silent, and would avoid travelling company.Poorly educated and leaving school aged 8, his family wanted him to enter the church because he was a superstitious man, who bought a brand new bowler hat before each voyage, and was jokingly referred to as “Captain Bowler”The ship Lusitania was sunk off the Irish coast on May 7th 1915,The inquest damned the experienced pilot of the Lusitania, Captain William Turner,for not following the established defensive custom of avoiding the U. Boats that gathered in the shallow waters off the Irish coast, in fact he almost ran into them, despite knowing in advance where they lay.The inquest also stated that although the Lusitania could outrun the subs, it was going at a much slower pace, and not zig-zagging as Admiralty practise dictated in its orders, especially as the destroyer escort H.M.S. Juno had been instructed to abandon the Lusitania some while previously.Winston Churchill was in charge at the Admiralty, the intelligence received by him, Lord Rothschild his mentor and benefactor, who also had access to all the admiralty documentation, and his war team pointed to the fact that the many German émigrés to America had been effective in keeping America out of the war, the worry to Churchill was simply that the U.S.A would remain isolationist, or worse although America could swing either way, it may yet support Germany.

So a plot was hatched by Churchill a 33rd degree mason, in the naval Masonic lodge, and Admiralty H.Q. with the bosses of Cunard, and the War Dept. to sacrifice Capt. William Turner, the Lusitania, and 1198 crew and passengers.The passenger ship that was barred form carrying any armaments, would be loaded with both heavy and light armaments with ammunition, within sight of the many German dock workers.This plan to load weaponry was known to be reported back to the German embassy, which it was.The German reply was to place advertisements in the newspapers of the U.S.AAnd repeat the warnings to both governments of the ships vulnerability,That any ships carrying weapons would be classed as warships.British and U.S forces officially dismissed this as scaremongering.Churchill planned the sinking of several ships, among them the H.M.S Hampshire and the Lusitania, counting on American feelings being high, yet the U.S authorities were in on it, but like Pearl harbour and 9/11 it suited their purposes to turn a blind eye. So Capt. William Turner was under orders to continue with the voyage, even though the destroyer escort was recalled, he was told to go slow, his path was plotted by the Admiralty to put the ship ”in direct danger” is the word used in Admiralty documents.Naval apologists have suggested that the captain may not have known of the weapons on board, but the first mate not only knew, but was issued with a side arm, so if he knew why not captain William Turner, ? Certainly statements by a New York celebrity, Mrs. E. Jacobs say many in the Jewish community knew that it contained weapons and would be sunk.The single page cargo manifest was signed by Capt. Turner,But a supplementary cargo manifest 24 pages long was produced after sailing time, this caused a row with the harbourmaster.This 24 page cargo manifest was destroyed in the mass culling of incriminating war documents pulled together from various sources in the 1960’s.Much other incriminating documentation was destroyed 2 years ago on the orders of Tony Blair.Be assured it contained a list of light to very heavy weaponry.The ship went down in under 18 minutes from one German torpedo, one torpedo was seen as giving long enough for the passengers and crew to reach the lifeboats, yet we are told from the very few survivors that after impact, a huge explosion occurred on board, away- from the point of impact.It was always the intention of the Churchill/Rothschild alliance that the Lusitania would be a sacrifice to bring in the U.S.A to join the British war effort against Germany,Underwater explorer and investigator, the highly reputable Robert Ballard is alleged to have told a reporter with intelligence back-grounding, that the ship wreck he saw on the seabed, had a small torpedo entry hole, but significant and unconnected explosive damage which had sunk the ship.

The inference from this and other info, being a controlled explosion on board was designed to insure the ship sunk.Rothschild whose banks loaned the British the finances for all wars at colossal interest rates, was part of a syndicate with J.P Morgan who was threatening to buy up the North Atlantic shipping lines including Britain’s White Star, so the Lusitania would have been rendered useless anyway, and in 1903 Cunard boss Lord Inverclyde took the threats seriously and lobbied the Balfour administration for a £2’6 million loan to build the Lusitania and the Mauritania, Britain agreed to pay the annual sum of £150,000 to keep the ships available for war, this was down to Rothschild lobbying against Germany for some considerable time previously, while Nathan Rothschild plotted the downfall of the Russian royal family and the revolution, confiscating the Romanov wealth and bank accounts, critics have said that Rothschild representativesPlanned the war to bring about their plans for profit and world government.Rothschild would have followed the rule that “profit is all “The same Hebrew root word is behind the terms for both god and money “shekels and Shekinah” which explains the worship of money. Churchill and the Rothschild syndicate, planned to push the German authorities in every way into sinking the Lusitania. This is known in intelligence circles slang as a “dangle”.

[Rasputin]

Missing footage on 'Dark side of the Moon' ?

Could a never-completed Pink Floyd video hold the answer to the missing moon tape mystery currently plaguing NASA? NASA workers and their affiliates around theworld have been quietly looking for hi-resolution films from the Apollo moon landings more than 30 years ago. To date, what we'veseen on television were pictures taken by cameras shooting a videomonitor... if you will, pictures of grainy pictures. But the original hi-res videos are still out there... somewhere... lost in the maze of government storage facilities. What's more, time is running out. Those magnetic tapes degrade over time and the playback equipment used to display their images is about to be mothballed. So NASA has launched a formal investigation... and perhaps a key in that probe rests with Australian music video producer Peter Clifton. Here's where the story gets even stranger than it has been so far. Back in 1979, Clifton was working on a Pink Floyd video... to go along with the smash-album "Dark Side of the Moon."

He wanted some footage of Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon... so he sent away $180 and got back a half-hour reel of 16-millimeter film from the Smithsonian. "I had this idea that I could take segments out of Dark Side of the Moon and make them into a TV special," said Mr Clifton to Australia's The Age. "On a visit to Washington, I went to Smithsonian and asked if they had any shots of rocket ships travelling. He said, 'well, we can give you highlights of the moon shot.' Clifton never finished the Pink Floyd video... and the film satin his vault for years.

[Rasputin]

Human brain 'hard-wired' for supernatural

The human brain is hard-wired to be susceptible to supernatural beliefs as a result of tens of thousands of years of evolution, a British psychologist said today. Religion and other forms of magical thinking continue to thrive, in spite of a lack of evidence and the advance of science, because people are naturally biased to accept a role for the irrational in their daily lives, according to Bruce Hood, Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol.This evolved credulity suggests that it will be impossible to root out belief in ideas such as creationism and paranormal phenomena, even though they have been refuted by evidence and are held as a matter of faith alone.People ultimately believe in them for the same reasons as they attach sentimental value to inanimate objects like wedding rings or teddy bears, and recoil from artefacts linked to evil, as if they are pervaded by a physical "essence". Even the most rational people behave in these irrational ways, and supernatural beliefs are part of the same continuum, Professor Hood told the British Association Festival of Science in Norwich today.To demonstrate, he asked members of his audience if they were prepared to put on an old-fashioned blue cardigan in return for a £10 reward, and had no shortage of volunteers.

He then informed them that the cardigan used to belong to Fred West, the mass murderer."Most hands went down," he said. "When people did wear it, most people moved away from them. It’s not actually Fred West’s jumper. But it’s the belief that it’s Fred West’s jumper that has the effect. It is as if evil, a moral stance defined by culture, has become physically manifest inside the clothing."Similar beliefs, which are held among the most sceptical of scientists, also explain why few people would agree to swap their wedding rings for identical replicas. The difference between attaching significance to sentimental objects, and believing in religion, magic or the paranormal, is only one of degree, Professor Hood said.

[Rasputin]

Doctor leads time travel research

Experiments aimed at unlocking secrets of time travel are being led by Aberdeen University. Researchers are examining the fabric of space time and what science fiction authors refer to as the fourth dimension. Dr Charles Wang will study the microscopic movement of atoms, which can be affected by the earth spinning. He said: "This is a very interesting possibility which cannot entirely be ruled out by physics." Television's Dr Who and the Back to the Future movies promised the concept of time travel. Albert Einstein said instead of considering space to be a shapeless vacuum it should be looked at as an object. The theory is for something to exist it must have length, breadth and thickness, the three dimensions. It must also have something else. An object exists from the moment it is created to the moment it is destroyed. In between those moments is the duration of time - the so-called fourth dimension.

HG Wells wrote the Time Machine about it - now Dr Wang hopes to make it real. He is a reader in the College of Physical Sciences and a member of the Aberdeen centre for applied dynamics research. Dr Wang said he is waiting for the European Space Agency (ESA) to launch a science satellite to aid his research. He told BBC Scotland: "If you have curved space time, the time circles and you might just travel in time. "If we can slow down the atom and isolate it and guide into the fluctuation then there's a possibility it's there. "The increased sensitivity obtained by a space experiment certainly makes a space mission very worthwhile. "If successful the results will have a profound impact on our understanding of the fundamental nature of space and time in the universe." Dr Wang however has time on his hands, as the ESA satellite is not due for launch until 2015.

[Rasputin]

Telephone telepathy - does it exist ?

Many people have experienced the phenomenon of receiving a telephone call from someone shortly after thinking about them -- now a scientist says he has proof of what he calls telephone telepathy. Rupert Sheldrake, whose research is funded by the respected Trinity College, Cambridge, said on Tuesday he had conducted experiments that proved that such precognition existed for telephone calls and even e-mails.Each person in the trials was asked to give researchers names and phone numbers of four relatives or friends. These were then called at random and told to ring the subject who had to identify the caller before answering the phone."The hit rate was 45 percent, well above the 25 percent you would have expected," he told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

"The odds against this being a chance effect are 1,000 billion to one."He said he found the same result with people being asked to name one of four people sending them an e-mail before it had landed.However, his sample was small on both trials -- just 63 people for the controlled telephone experiment and 50 for the email -- and only four subjects were actually filmed in the phone study and five in the email, prompting some scepticism.

[Rasputin]

Golden age of dinosaur discovery ahead

The next several decades could prove a golden age for dinosaur hunters looking to discover new species of the ancient reptiles. A new statistical analysis predicts that more than 1,300 unique dinosaur genera await discovery by paleontologists. In biology, a genus is an organizational group made up of one or more separate species; the plural of genus is genera."It's a safe bet that a child born today could expect a very fruitful career in dinosaur paleontology," said study co-author Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania.But that child's grandchildren might not be so lucky, Dodson said, as new discoveries will decline sharply in the early 22nd century, according to his new analysis.Since dinosaur research began in earnest in the 19th century, 527 genera have been found; that number is increasing by about 15 percent each year. The majority of dinosaur species are known based on a single fossil specimen.

The researchers predict that 75 percent of all discoverable genera will be found within the next 100 years, and 90 percent within the next 140 years. Dodson predicts that 1,850 dinosaur genera will eventually be known.The new study, which Dodson co-authored with statistician Steve Wang of Swarthmore College, is detailed online in the journal for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[Rasputin]

70 years since last Tasmanian Tiger

Thylacine researcher Col Bailey was not even born when the last captive Tasmanian tiger died in 1936. But that hasn't stopped him devoting his life to proving their continued existence.The 69-year-old has spent 40 years investigating thylacine sightings and has no plans to retire until he has conclusive proof that the elusive Tasmanian tiger has survived."I believe strongly that it's still here," he says."I'm so convinced it's here that you never lose hope. You've got to be in the right place at the right time."Thursday marks the 70th anniversary of the last captive Tasmanian tiger's death at the now defunct Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart.Hobart City Council minutes from 1936 note the tiger's death and order "attempts should be made to get another one".But it was already too late.A one-pound government bounty encouraged the killing of more than 2,000 thylacines between 1888 and 1909.

Strong demand from zoos overseas further reduced the wild population.Two months before the captive tiger's death, thylacines were added to Tasmania's list of protected species.Fifty years later, they were officially declared extinct.But many refuse to accept the thylacine is gone.More than 1,000 sightings have been reported since 1936, providing hope the world's largest marsupial carnivore may still exist.

[jjbb]

Khaterat-e- Kodaki

ایرنا:مطالعه در زمينه بررسي فراموشي در كودكي نشان ميدهد زماني كه كودك به ۱۰سالگي ميرسد خاطرات مربوط به زمان پيش از شروع مدرسه را به تدريج فراموش ميكند.
به نوشته نشريه '' ''memoryدر اين مطالعه كه ۱۳۶كودك ۶تا ۹ساله بررسي شدند، كودكان رخدادهايي را كه پيش از چهار سالگي رخ داده بود فراموش كرده بودند، اين در حاليست كه كودكان ۳تا ۴ساله به راحتي ميتوانند حوادث مربوط به ۲سالگي خود را بخاطر بياورند.


با گذشت زمان كودكان ۱۰ساله نميتوانند خاطرات اوليه خود را به خاطر آورند.
دانشمندان هنوز به دليل اين فراموشي دست نيافته اند

[Rasputin]

Mars rover nears 'treasure trove'

Nasa's robotic Mars rover Opportunity is closing in on what could be the richest scientific "treasure trove" of its mission so far. Within the next two weeks, Opportunity should reach the rim of a crater wider and deeper than any it has visited in more than two-and-a-half years on Mars. Rocks exposed in the walls of Victoria Crater could open a new window into the geological history of the Red Planet. Opportunity has been exploring Mars' Meridiani Plains since January 2004. Its "twin", the Spirit rover, continues to explore Gusev Crater on the other side of the Red Planet. Images from Nasa's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft show a stack of layered bedrock about 30-40m (100-130ft) thick in the walls of Victoria. "We have a fully functional vehicle with all the instruments working. We're ready to hit Victoria with everything we've got," said Byron Jones, a rover mission manager at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Ray Arvidson, deputy principal investigator for the rovers, said that exploring the rocks in Victoria Crater would greatly increase understanding of past conditions on Mars, including the role of water. "In particular, we are very interested in whether the rocks continue to show evidence for having been formed in shallow lakes," said the scientist, who is based at Washington University in St Louis, US.

[Rasputin]

Is a shadow government at Mount Weather ?

Mount Weather is a top-security underground installation an hour's drive from Washington DC. It has its own leaders, police, fire department - and laws. A cold war relic, it has been given a new lease of life since 9/11. And no one who's been inside has ever talked.Mount Weather is officially the Emergency Operations Centre of the Federal Emergency Management Authority (Fema); and, less officially, a massive underground complex originally built to house governmental officials in the event of a full-scale nuclear exchange. Today, as the Bush administration wages its war on terror, Mount Weather is believed to house a "shadow government" made up of senior Washington officials on temporary assignment. Following the collapse of the USSR, Mount Weather seemed like an expensive cold-war relic.

Then came September 11. News reports noted that "top leaders of Congress were taken to the safety of a secure government facility 75 miles west of Washington"; another reported "a traffic jam of limos carrying Washington and government license plates." As the phrase "undisclosed location" entered the vernacular, Mount Weather, and a handful of similar installations, flickered back to life. Just two months ago, a disaster-simulation exercise called Forward Challenge '06 sent thousands of federal workers to Mount Weather and other sites.