Science Special News

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Mystery after UFO sighting

In A scene reminiscent of the X Files, a couple have been left scratching their heads after a UFO sighting in their garden. Helen Hanreck, 49, was looking for her cats in the garden when she noticed a bright light in the sky.Miss Hanreck, of Longwalk, Istead Rise, claims she saw more than six red lights moving silently across the night sky.She claims the lights were moving slowly in an inverted V shape with a long tail.The insurance manager called to her partner, Nick Claydon, to have a look at the spectacle on September 8 at 9.45pm.Miss Hanreck says she hoped he would give her a rational explanation to the unexplained lights. She said: "I thought it was flying too close to other aircraft and I did think It's a terrorist attack heading for London'."But then I realised it was going the other way and heading south east. I called to Nick as I thought he would know what the lights were as he has a pilot's licence."But when he came into the garden we were both lost for words. We watched the lights for 10 to 15 minutes and it was like watching Chinese lanterns being dragged silently through the sky."

She added: "I am not a believer in spaceships and aliens but I called the police to report it."They told me a taxi driver had already phoned in about it, so I was relieved it was not just us."Mr Claydon, who also saw the UFOs, insists he and his partner are not "nutters".The 49-year-old said: "We are not flying saucer nutters. We are just normal people, although we did go to Roswell in America to see where a spaceship was supposed to crash.

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52 new species discovered in Borneo

Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: At least 52 new species of animals and plants have been identified during this year on the island of Borneo. The discoveries, described in a report compiled by WWF, include 30 unique fish species, two tree frog species, 16 ginger species, three tree species and one large-leafed plant species. All were found between July 2005 and September 2006.These findings further highlight the need to conserve the habitat and species of the world's third largest island.Stuart Chapman, International Coordinator of the Heart of Borneo programme, said: "These discoveries reaffirm Borneo's position as one of the most important centres of biodiversity in the world. The remote and inaccessible forests in the Heart of Borneo are one of the world's final frontiers for science and many undiscovered species are still waiting to be found there."The discoveries include: a miniature fish - the world's second smallest vertebrate, measuring less than one centimetre in length and found in the highly acidic blackwater peat swamps of the island; six Siamese fighting fish, including one species with a beautiful iridescent blue-green marking; a catfish with protruding teeth and an adhesive belly which allows it to literally stick to rocks; and a tree frog with striking bright green eyes.

For plants, the ginger discoveries more than double the entire number of the Etlingera species found to date and the tree flora of Borneo has been expanded by three new tree species of the genus Beilschmiedia.

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Now everyone's paranoid

Frank Furedi: There was a time when conspiracy theories used to be an object of middle-class scorn and humour. They tended to be about alien abduction or the faking of Elvis's death. Or - more sinister - that the Holocaust never happened. But now more and more otherwise intelligent, university-educated people are embracing conspiracy theories as they become more respectable and mainstream. Around 30 per cent of the British population believe that Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed were assassinated or were the target of some conspiracy. That's almost as high as the percentage of Americans who suspect that federal officials assisted the 9/11 attackers or took no action to stop it. Thirty-six per cent of Americans accept some version of a 9/11-related conspiracy theory. The State Department website indicates that it recognises that these theories have "a great appeal and are often widely believed" and is trying to fight it.When I visited the US this summer many of my colleagues accepted the rumour that officials had deliberately flooded black neighbourhoods in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

Yesterday a well-established solicitor explained to me how Mossad plotted Diana's death.It is the lack of trust in government and official authority that is boosting the influence of conspiracy theories. More and more people are sceptical about the official version of events. And when things go wrong we look for someone in authority to blame.

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Shadowing Bigfoot

He not only exists, he is living among us, according to Autumn Williams. He's been in the Cottage Grove and McKenzie areas, and over in Oakridge, among other places. And, yes, there are female Sasquatches, too. Otherwise, how would Bigfoot exist in the first place? "There's not just one," a bemused Williams says. "It's not the Easter Bunny." Williams is most definitely a Bigfoot believer. Her Web site, www .oregonbigfoot.com, lists 870 alleged Sasquatch-related reports in North America since the late 19th century, more than half of them in Oregon and 58 in Lane County dating back to the 1930s. "When you see something like that, it's not really a question of do they exist, but what are they?" says the 33-year-old Eugene woman who has been researching and looking for Bigfoot since she says she saw one at age 3 in the foothills of Washington's Mount Rainier. Sure, go ahead and say it. Or think it. Or whatever. How could anyone, in their right mind, believe in such a thing? A 7- to 8-foot-tall, hairy man-beast roaming the wilderness? Where's the proof? Where's a corpse? Some bones? Anything?

Jeffrey Meldrum, an associate professor of anatomy at Idaho State University in Pocatello and one of the leading Bigfoot researchers in the nation, says there may be two reasons evidence is scarce. First, there's "the nature of the beast itself," he says, citing Bigfoot's long life span and infrequent numbers, among other things. "When it dies, it's going to be an extremely rare event."

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Head-butt by horse restores man's sight

A second World War veteran who was blinded in his right eye when he was hit by shrapnel can see again after being head-butted by a pedigree racehorse. Doctors tried in vain for 64 years to restore Don Karkos's sight, until My Buddy Chimo stepped in. Hours after the horse smacked the 82-year-old paddock security guard in exactly the same spot as the shrapnel gashed his forehead in combat in 1942, he realised his vision was returning. "I was putting a collar around his chest, and he whacked me real hard with his head," Mr Karkos told the New York Daily News. "Being kicked is part of the job, but I've never been hit that hard. "I was pretty shaken up, kind of dazed. Then, later that night, I started to get the vision back in my right eye. "It was unbelievable. I've been seeing doctors all my life, and they've always told me there is nothing can be done."

Although his vision is still not perfect, Mr Karkos has been able to see about 15ft with his damaged eye since the incident at the Monticello Raceway racecourse in New York state two months ago. "What happened is still a mystery to me," he said. "But I do know I had got used to not seeing things and bumping into walls, and I don't do that anymore."

[Rasputin]

Photographing the dawn of time

To a casual observer it could be the psychedelic creation of a mischievous puppy that has dipped its paws in paint. But it may be one of the most extraordinary pictures ever snapped.It is, scientists said yesterday, the glow from the first things to form in the universe, more than 13 billion years ago. Snapped by NASA's Spitzer space telescope, the bizarre objects must have existed within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.An Australian astrophysicist, Ray Norris, said the NASA team may have found "the holy grail" of astronomy.What the ancient objects are remains a mystery. One possibility is stars, the first to light up after the dawn of time. They would have been "humungous", said NASA, "more than 1000 times the mass of our sun". Or they may be "voracious black holes". While black holes are invisible, heat emitted by matter plunging into them can be detected."Whatever these objects are," said Alexander Kashlinsky, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, "they are intrinsically incredibly bright and very different from anything in existence today." The image was made by Spitzer shooting pictures of five areas of the sky. All light from stars and galaxies in the foreground was then removed, leaving only the ancient infrared glow."Imagine trying to see fireworks at night from across a crowded city," Dr Kashlinsky said.

"If you could turn off the city lights, you might get a glimpse at the fireworks. We have shut down the lights of the universe to see the outlines of its first fireworks."Professor Norris, from the CSIRO's Australia Telescope, said the image did not show the objects themselves, but their glow that was radiating from all parts of the sky, because "the early universe is all around us".

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Hardy bug re-opens Mars debate

Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: Controversial claims have again emerged that Martian microbes could have established themselves here on Earth after hitching rides on meteorites. A handful of bacteria on Earth today have the ability to survive exposure to extremely high levels of radiation that would kill other organisms. Now, a team of scientists argues that the bugs could only have evolved this unusual ability on a planet like Mars. The claims by a Russian-American team appear in the journal Astrobiology. Recent discoveries of water in the permafrost on Mars and signs of subsurface water in mid-latitude regions have raised hopes that the Red Planet might host the right conditions for life. According to one theory, impacts on the surface of the Red Planet could have thrown Martian rocks into space, which wandered the vaccum before tumbling through Earth's atmosphere and crashing down as meteorites. If these Martian meteorites contained any life forms able to survive the journey, they might have been able to gain a foothold on our own planet, scientists speculate.The best-studied radiation-resistant microbe is Deinococcus radiodurans.

It can withstand several thousand times the lethal dose of radiation for humans, and has been nicknamed "Conan the bacterium" by microbiologists. But other scientists say that radiation tolerance is a side effect of the defence mechanism bacteria such as D. radiodurans have developed to protect against dehydration. D. radiodurans and other radiation-resistant bacteria survive because they are very efficient at repairing their DNA. But this is also useful for surviving extreme desiccation in arid environments. The team led by Alexander Pavlov at the University of Arizona, US, rejects this alternative explanation.

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So was David Icke right ?

The much ridiculed world of David Icke has been shocked into real-life turmoil by a court case that threatens to bankrupt Britain's self-styled conspiracy guru. Icke is fighting to retain copyright of the 16 books he has written over the same number of years. He is involved in a legal battle with a business associate over the written work, artwork and printing disks of his self- published tomes on the theme that we are all victims of a sinister global campaign. The case, which is being fought in the US, is costing Icke huge amounts. Since losing his job as a BBC sports commentator 15 years ago, after he appeared on the Wogan show in a turquoise shellsuit claiming to be the son of God, Icke has eked out a living from his bizarre theories. He explains: "It's emotionally frustrating when you put 16 years of work in and take enormous amounts of ridicule and now you turn the corner and someone is trying to take it all from you." But, he adds guardedly, things are "well on the way to being sorted". Icke claims to have built up a worldwide following that hangs on his every word. He still spouts his pet rants: that we are ruled by a sinister elite called the Illuminati whose bodies are inhabited by shape-shifting reptiles. The difference is that, apparently, more people now agree with him. Icke says the tide has turned because his accurate predictions of world devastation and gloom have given him credibility.

Channel 5 is to screen a documentary on Boxing Day called David Icke: Was He Right? In January 1999, he wrote that "between 2000 and 2002, the United States will suffer a major attack on a large city". In his 1990 paperback, Truth Vibrations, he declared: "The years after the millennium will see gathering conflict all over the world to the point where the United Nations will be overwhelmed." And in the same book he predicted severe hurricanes around the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans after 2000. "People think I'm some kind of prophet but I'm not someone who gets my information from the ether," says Icke. "I've been given the coordinates about how things work."

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Jesus painting opens and closes eyes

A mysterious painting of Jesus is attracting people from all over the Czech Republic. The picture shows the face of the son of God with his eyes open and closed. Many visitors to Oldrich Klima's "Gallery of Handicrat" in Pilsen are asking if it's a trick of the light or something more spiritual. Jesus with his eyes closed - that's what this 150-year-oil oil painting shows... or does it? Take a step back and the son of God is staring at you with clearly open eyes. "It's really mysterious. Everyone who sees it agrees there is something deep inside the painting. Some people are coming back again and again to see it," says Antique dealer Oldrich Klima The painting - by an unknown artist - was bought by Klima. Since he put it in his shop in Pilsen he's been inundated with visitors. "People react very differently, some positive or negative. When I saw him for the first time I was horrified. Now I feel quite friendly towards him. He has features of goodness and now I don't see anything bad," says Klima.

One woman visitor insisted the picture depicts both an angel and the devil. No-one knows if that was the artist's intention. But for around $450 the painting could be yours to look at home - or is it looking at you.

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Slouching toward chimeras

What happens when you cross a human and a mouse? Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke but, in fact, it's a serious high tech experiment recently carried out by a research team headed by a distinguished molecular biologist, Irving Weissman, at Stanford University's Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine. Scientists injected human brain cells into mouse fetuses, creating a strain of mice that were approximately 1 percent human. Dr. Weissman is actively considering a follow-up experiment that would produce mice whose brains are 100 percent human. What if the mice escaped the laboratory and began to proliferate in the outside environment? What might be the ecological consequences of mice who think like human beings, let loose in nature? Dr. Weissman says he would keep a tight rein on the mice and if they showed any signs of humanness he would kill them. Hardly reassuring.In a world where the bizarre has become all too commonplace, few things any longer shock the human psyche. But, experiments like the one that produced a partially humanized mouse at Stanford University stretches the limits of human tinkering with nature to the realm of the pathological.The new research field at the cutting edge of the biotech revolution is called chimeric experimentation.

Researchers around the world are combining human and animal cells and creating chimeric creatures that are part human and part animal, reminiscent of the ancient Greek chimeric myths of human-animal hybrids. The first such chimeric experiment occurred many years ago when scientists in Edinburgh, Scotland fused together a sheep and goat embryo-two completely unrelated animal species that are incapable of mating and producing a hybrid offspring in nature. The resulting creature, called a Geep, was born with the head of a goat and the body of a sheep.

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The reindeer's story

As every child knows, Father Christmas' sleigh is pulled by a small herd of reindeer, led by Rudolph with his red nose. What is less well-known is that Rudolph was only dreamt up in 1939 and until 1822 reindeer were just an obscure kind of deer living in Lapland. Unfortunately for Rudolph and his ilk, real wild reindeer are under threat. To add insult to injury, according to some research published this month, female reindeer are making such bad choices during the mating season, they could be helping speed up their own demise. The somewhat bizarre idea of reindeer pulling a portly man in a beard on a flying sleigh was dreamt up by the poet Clement C Moore in a poem created for his children. Rudolph was not one of those eight reindeer but was the creation of writer Robert May, who was commissioned to write a Christmas story for the US department store Montgomery Ward, in 1939. In the first year alone, 2.5 million copies were given away to shoppers and Rudolph took his first, flat-footed steps to fame.Although reindeer are now mainly confined to Russia and Norway, they used to occur in northern England and Scotland. The Vikings are thought to have hunted them, as did the Earl of Orkney 800 years ago. A small, free-ranging herd has been reintroduced to the Cairngorms, though. They were brought over by Mikel Utsi in the 1950s. Utsi, who was originally from Lapland, thought the Cairngorms reminded him of home. Indeed, the Cairngorm National Park is the UK's only remaining remnant of Arctic tundra.

Originally, Utsi believed they might prove to be a good source of meat. Now the Cairngorm Reindeer Company has 130 reindeer, none of whom are eaten."It's a rather special herd," says Tilly Smith, the company director. "Once people have come and visited them, and once they've all got names, it's a bit difficult to eat them." Smith had written to Utsi's wife asking if she could help out with the reindeer as a volunteer after she had finished her zoology degree. "I have always been fascinated by deer," she says. "My dad loved muntjac deer, which were introduced by the Duke of Bedford. He did a lot of the early work on their natural history and I helped him."