Science Special News

[Rasputin]

Mystery fingerprints

Charn Parker: After I left my last live-in job as a health aid/companion/nurse in December of 1993, I moved into my own apartment and had planned to continue in this type of work as a live-out. However I fell on the ice during February of 1994 the year of our big ice storm. I fell very hard on my side and arm twice. To shorten this, I was put on permanent disability by Social Security. I lost my apartment at the time and my friend Brendan said, “You move in with me until you get back on your feet. I don’t want to see you on the streets.” Well, little did he or I know what he was saying. I was with Brendan from May of 1994 until May of 2003, a period of nine years. We became best of friends.

From My Journal: November 28, 1999
I awoke itching really bad. It was the first time in a week. Brendan was awake also and usually he is sound asleep at this hour due to his medication. We both kept hearing a steady high pitched sound. After listening for a few minutes and trying to figure out what it was, we started feeling nauseated – sick to our stomachs. Then we began to sense a second sound; a low whirring or humming sound. This all began at 2:45 AM and it is still continuing at 3:05 AM. We have checked around the apartment, out in the hall, listened out the windows and can find no source. It seems to be right in the apartment toward the living room area. The humming sound is now gone and the high pitched sound now sounds a bit muffled. The time is 3:30 AM. 3:45 AM the high pitch has quieted about 80% - going to bed. Awoke at 8:00 AM the sound is gone.

There was another evening in 1999 when I was outside taking a walk around the building and as usual I was enjoying the night sky. And up high in the sky I noticed three small stars; at least I thought they were. They were in a triangle form in the sky, then suddenly they shifted to a horizontal angle of what appeared to be about 45° at that point I knew they were not stars. I ran into the apartment I got Brendan to come out. There were the stars, still at an angle. I told him about the triangular design and he said, “You’re kiddin’ they really were like that?” Just then those stars changed back into the triangle appearance. He was really amazed at seeing those stars or ships? Then it was over, they were gone. They didn’t move off or fly away they simply – went out. Now for something that was very confusing and later became a very strange and eerie experience.

It was July of 2001 I was working on my website called Love Is the Goal. It consisted of my writings and approximately 360 poems I had written on various subjects. I had also included a Greetings to Send section that I had created. Birthday and other special occasions as well as holidays. I really enjoyed my website. I began noticing little marks that looked like fingerprints. They weren’t really adult size; nevertheless I asked Brendan if he has been touching the screen when he went on line. He said, “No!” So I dropped it, but I was sure he had and I had embarrassed him. So I cleaned them off and the next day they were back again. Sometimes they were larger than other times. There generally would never be less than about a dozen, but occasionally there were. Clean and clean and clean – it was really starting to piss me off. I just knew Brendan was touching the screen, but I didn’t say anything, I didn’t want him to tick him off. He said he didn’t touch the screen and I should have taken his word for it. I did and didn’t believe him; I didn’t know what to think. It went on for approximately one month.

I wondered if they might be spirits doing this. Was it ectoplasm? I checked and it did not seem that it would be that. Some of these wiped off almost like dust. The others however had an oily type of base. I took my finger and rubbed one. I couldn’t figure out what would be that greasy. They were even on the mirror behind the computer and on the living room window, a few. Never did I consider Aliens at this point. I am not sure or don’t remember what caused me to request a friend of mine to ask her boyfriend if he would photograph these with his digital camera; oh now I do remember. It was because I had contacted a gentleman in Australia about fingerprints I had seen in his or someone’s site about the paranormal. He wanted me to take a picture of the fingerprints. So her boyfriend came over the following day and took a picture. I had not removed the ones from the day before. We took three pictures. Then my friend Chuck came over from work at lunch time. He couldn’t believe I was getting fingerprints without touching the screen. He was amazed. So he brought a special screen cleaner and cleared them off. When I went to turn on my monitor the next morning there were no fingerprints to be seen and they never returned. I actually started missing them; goofy huh?

Then Chuck called me from his office. He was beside himself. He went to his computer and the screen was basically covered with fingerprints, in no particular order. Some looked smeared as if someone had dabbed their finger in something and smeared that area of the screen. Chuck being an Executive at the Hecht Company in Arlington, Virginia always cleaned his screen before he left in the evenings and he has a security lock on his office. No one could have come in and messed with his screen. Every two or three days he would have a fresh batch of fingerprints. I reiterate mine never returned!

I was looking at the prints with the zoom in option one day and I noticed they looked different – sharper, and then I noticed one particular one. It made me think of the pads of an animal. It had a pentagon shape to it. That is when the thought of Alien came to me. I didn’t know how they got in or why they would do this except to get my attention; but there it was. I am enclosing that picture for you so you can study it. It would be interesting to see what you think. A few days later another group of prints showed up on Chuck’s monitor. Three groups of three prints. He didn’t think to photograph them.

Chuck told me that I had made the comment that perhaps they could be Alien because of the triangle effect. He cleaned them off and after that they never appeared on his monitor again. I should add here that when reading Sight Unseen by Budd Hopkins I read on page 353 of Damoe and the Unmarked Helicopters, Will refers to the aliens as “greasy looking.” Well immediately I thought of the oily fingerprints in the picture, maybe and maybe not?

[Rasputin]

Mars probe spots lost Pathfinder lander

The most powerful camera ever sent into orbit around Mars has spotted yet another lander lying lifeless on its surface: Mars Pathfinder, which operated for three months in 1997. It may also have found the mission's tiny rover, Sojourner, which appears to have crawled towards Pathfinder after the lander had already died.NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which arrived at the planet in March 2006, has previously spotted four spacecraft on the planet's surface – the current rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, and the twin 30-year-old Viking landers. Now, it has used its ultrapowerful camera, called HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment), to identify the Pathfinder lander and scattered hardware from the mission, including the parachute and backshell it used during its descent a decade ago.The lander and some of these components had been seen before from orbit by NASA's now-lost Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. But HiRISE can resolve details between two and five times as small, imaging objects just under 30 centimetres across. "Before HiRISE came along, it was a lot like having a state road map to find a neighbourhood address," says geologist Tim Parker of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US. "Suddenly, it was like having a residential street map, or maybe even photos showing houses so you can recognise them."

Such images will help researchers interpret the geology around the landing site by bridging the gap between what previous, lower-resolution orbiters have seen of the site and what the lander itself saw at close range, he says. MRO's eagle-eyed vision is also being used to choose landing sites for future missions, such as Phoenix, which is due to launch in August.

[Rasputin]

Canadian coins bugged ?

They say money talks, and a new report suggests Canadian currency is indeed chatting, at least electronically, on behalf of shadowy spies. Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Department of Defence.Security experts believe the miniature devices could be used to track the movements of defence industry personnel dealing in sensitive military technology."You might want to know where the individual is going, what meetings the individual might be having and, above all, with whom," said David Harris, a former CSIS officer who consults on security matters.

"The more covert or clandestine the activity in which somebody might be involved, the more significant this kind of information could be."The counter-intelligence office of the U.S. Defence Security Service cites the currency caper as an example of the methods international spies have recently tried to illicitly acquire military technology.

[Rasputin]

Campaign to pardon the last witch

Mary Martin was 11 years old when her father taught her to box. She would come home from school scratched and bruised, her ears ringing with abuse from the playground. Mary Martin had the unhappy distinction of being the granddaughter of Britain's last convicted witch. Mrs Martin knew her grandmother, Helen Duncan, as a comforting woman she could trust, the granny with a special gift: talking to spirits. But this was April 1944, at the height of the war with Germany. Mrs Duncan had just been branded by an Old Bailey jury as a witch and spy guilty of revealing wartime secrets.Some 50 years after Mrs Duncan's death, a fresh campaign has been launched to clear her name, with a petition calling on the home secretary, John Reid, to grant a posthumous pardon. Her conviction, said Mrs Martin, was simply "ludicrous".

The appeal is winning international support from experts in perhaps the world's most infamous witch trial: the conviction and execution of 20 girls, men and women at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. "Helen Duncan was very much victimised by her times, and she too suffered," said Alison D'Amario, education director at the Salem Witch Museum.

[Rasputin]

Are we all martians ?

Life on Earth may have announced its arrival billions of years ago with a whistle and a thump, according to planetary scientists. Experiments by an international team of researchers back a controversial theory that life flourished on Earth after primitive organisms arrived aboard a meteorite, itself gouged from Mars by a giant impact. The theory supposes that life was able to gain a tentative foothold on the red planet as it cooled down and became more hospitable several billion years ago. At the time, the planet's surface was regularly bombarded with rocky detritus from the asteroid belt, knocking clumps of rock and the microbes living on them into space, where the gravity of the sun brought them hurtling towards Earth.Charles Cockell, at the Open University, who studies microbes in extreme environments, joined a team of German and Russian scientists to test whether microbes could survive the enormous shock of being blasted into space and crash landing on another planet.

They gathered colonies of micro-organisms including cyanobacteria, which live in rocky fissures, lichen, which smother their surfaces, and spores of the hardy bacterium Bacillus subtilis, and sandwiched them between slices of gabbro, a coarse-grained rock similar to that known to make up Martian meteorites. The researchers then used high explosives to fire a steel plate at the sandwiched organisms and after each shot transferred the microbes to a dish to see if any had survived. The shocks were equivalent to those suffered by Martian meteorites that have been found on Earth, with pressures of up to 50 billion pascals. One pascal is equivalent to the pressure exerted by a £5 note resting on a surface. The pressure in a car tyre is equivalent to 200,000 pascals.

[Rasputin]

Newspaper claims UFO was 'light display'

Sam Willey: On January 7th 2007 Alienationsam.com reported on an event which occurred in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire on Christmas Eve 2006. The key witness who wishes to remain un-named informed me that the a newspaper in the area has covered the story. I went over to the newspapers website and discovered an article which is explaining the UFO as being a "club lights display" however the witness told me on the phone on January 12th 2007 that it was absolutely not a lights display and I tend to agree. The following article is from the "Fenland Today" newspaper the article is quite bias but since Alienationsam.com is dedicated to the seeking of the truth i feel obligated to present the sceptical side of this event. I hope to get in touch with the newspaper shortly and hopefully get in touch with the eyewitnesses and hopefully get a wider view of the scale and magnitude of this event.

Fenland Today: Last week we reported how one couple had been left baffled after spotting a 'huge white light whirling in a clockwise rotation' above houses in the Fenland Road area late on December 24. They described how the mass of light had lingered for several hours before finally disappearing. There were various theories on just exactly what the phenomenon was, with some believing it truly was an alien visitor, other younger readers even thought it could be Father Christmas, and one man took it to be a religious sign or possibly the Aurora Borealis.

[Rasputin]

Knots develop in String Theory

Ever since string theory was first proposed by Leonard Susskind in 1969 it has been plagued by ridicule and controversy, but the theory still continues to attract serious attention from prominent scientists. As with any theory amendments have to be made, and recently Susskind has come out and conceded that his initial model is likely only one small part of a much larger and more complex multifaceted megaverse. But many in the scientific community are resisting this revolutionary train of thought, and claim that Susskind has no evidence, and therefore no reason, to continue with this folly. But regardless of which camp you choose to side with, recent discoveries in astrophysics may soon put this little quandary to rest. The initial motivation behind introducing string theory was to amend the Standard Model so that its fundamental units would become one-dimensional, elongated objects, rather than zero-dimensional particles.

With such a model, string theorists hoped that a cogent and more consistent quantum theory of gravity would be revealed, in addition to a number of other fantastic consequences that would also follow. Some of these consequences may seem fairly mundane to the layperson, such as a unified theory of everything, which would amalgamate scientists' current understanding of the four basic forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetic, weak and strong). But some of these consequences, such as multiverses and other dimensions, seem more akin to science fiction.

[Rasputin]

Sleep paralysis happens all the time

Imagine waking up in the night and being unable to move. So you lie there for what seems like hours, trying to wiggle your fingers or toes, but you are paralyzed.You want to call out for help, but you can't draw a deep enough breath to make a loud sound.Eventually, you're able to move a little, and then your whole body begins to respond again. Scary, huh? Weird, too.But it happens to people all the time.It's called sleep paralysis, and it typically occurs at the very beginning or end of sleep. The experience lasts only a few minutes at the most, and there's no harm done -- aside from the fright."It's terrifying the first time it happens," said Dr. Barbara Phillips, director of the Samaritan Sleep Center and chairwoman of the board of the National Sleep Foundation.Phillips said in an e-mail interview that sleep paralysis happens as the body is coming out of REM -- or rapid-eye-movement -- sleep."During non-REM sleep, our brains are 'turned off' but our bodies can be active," she said. This is when people experience sleep disturbances such as tooth-grinding or sleepwalking."In contrast, our brains are very active (probably as active as when we are awake) during REM sleep, but we are actually paralyzed," she said. Researchers think that's what keeps us from acting out our dreams.

"With sleep paralysis, the paralysis that is normal during REM sleep intrudes into the waking state for one reason or another," she said.Kathryn Hansen, director of the St. Joseph Hospital Sleep Wellness Center, put it this way: "The brain wakes up before the body wakes up."Sometimes, sleep paralysis is accompanied by hypnagogic hallucinations, or "waking dreams," Phillips said.In many such cases, people think they see a dark or menacing figure in the room with them, or they hear a strange sound but can't pinpoint the source. Some researchers have hypothesized that people who report alien abductions are experiencing sleep paralysis in conjunction with such a hallucination.

[Rasputin]

Napoleon's mysterious death unmasked

Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: A new investigation into Napoleon Bonaparte’s cause of death might finally put to rest nearly 200 years of lingering mysteries about the illness that killed the French emperor during his island exile, a UT Southwestern Medical Center scientist reports.American, Swiss and Canadian researchers applied modern pathological and tumor-staging methods to historical accounts and found that Napoleon died of a very advanced case of gastric cancer that stemmed from an ulcer-causing bacterial infection in his stomach, rather than a heretofore belief of a hereditary disposition to the cancer. The analysis, which also refutes rumors of arsenic poisoning, points to gastrointestinal bleeding as the likely immediate cause of death.The report, available online and in the January edition of Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology & Hepatology, indicates that the despot’s demise was imminent.

“This analysis suggests that, even if the emperor had been released or escaped from the island, his terminal condition would have prevented him from playing a further major role in the theater of European history,” said Dr. Robert Genta, professor of pathology and internal medicine at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study. “Even today, with the availability of sophisticated surgical techniques and chemotherapies, patients with gastric cancer as advanced as Napoleon’s have a poor prognosis.”Napoleon, born Aug. 15, 1769, ruled France in the late 1700s and early 1800s. He conquered much of Europe, but he was ultimately defeated at the battle of Waterloo in 1815. The British then exiled him to St. Helena, an island in the South Atlantic Ocean.

[Rasputin]

Man's phone spontaneously combusts

A cell phone in the front pocket of a Vallejo man's pants spontaneously combusted, quickly ignited his clothes and left the man with second- and third-degree burns across at least half his body, according to investigators. Luis Picaso, 59, was apparently sleeping on a white, all-plastic lawn chair in his room late Saturday night and was awakened as he was ablaze, said Vallejo Fire Department investigator and spokesman Bill Tweedy. By the time authorities arrived shortly before midnight, Picaso was on the floor of the bathroom. He was in stable condition Sunday, Tweedy said Monday night. The plastic lawn chair -- a petroleum product causing a high-heat fire -- had melted. Picaso's soccer jersey -- made of quick-burning nylon -- was almost completely burned away. "I did find one scrap on the floor," said Tweedy. "Cotton holds up the best," said Tweedy. "The only thing he had on that was cotton was his underwear. Everywhere the nylon was, that's where he got burns." Tweedy said that from the burn patterns on Picaso's clothes and body, it was clear the fire began in the right front pocket of his polyester-blend slacks. "There were no matches," Tweedy said.

"There were no lighters. He wasn't smoking. The only source was the phone that was in his pocket. I know he didn't spontaneously combust." Tweedy declined to name the manufacturer or model of the phone. "I don't believe it's a problem with any particular cell phone maker," said Tweedy. "It's a piece of electrical equipment. All electrical equipment can have a malfunction. This is a freak accident. ... It could be any brand of phone that could do that."

[Rasputin]

Leopard sighted near Arlington, UK

A Langney man spotted a large black cat 'the size of a labrador' near his home on Monday night. John Hescott was exercising his two Yorkshire terriers at 10.30pm when he saw the animal 100 yards from where he was standing.This follows a sighting of a creature believed to be a black leopard near Arlington last week, as reported in the Gazette on Wednesday.Mr Hescott was with his dogs on an area of verge near his house when he saw the big cat walk from a play area in Faversham Road into a service road.He said, "We've also got a labrador cross Alsatian and it was the size of that. It just looked around but didn't seem in any hurry."Mr Hescott has reported the sighting to the police.Sussex Police can confirm they received a report of a possible sighting of a big cat in the Langney area of Eastbourne on Monday January 8, around 7pm.

A police spokesperson said, "It's important to note that this report is of a possible sighting."There have been countless similar reports in the local media over the years."Many 'big cat' theories have been put forward but none, to my knowledge, have been substantiated by firm evidence."

[Rasputin]

Stonehenge did not stand alone

Recent excavations of Salisbury Plain in southern England have revealed at least two other large stone formations close by the world-famous prehistoric monument. One of the megalithic finds is a sandstone formation that marked a ritual burial mound; the other, a group of stones at the site of an ancient timber circle. The new discoveries suggest that many similar monuments may have been erected in the shadow of Stonehenge, possibly forming part of a much larger complex, experts say. The first monument—a 9.2-foot-long (2.8-meter-long) sarsen stone—was found lying in a field next to the River Avon, 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) east of Stonehenge, which is located near the modern-day city of Salisbury.

The riverside sarsen—large sandstone blocks that occur naturally in southern England—had been stood upright, archaeologists say, like the blocks that form the main structure of Stonehenge. A team lead by Colin Richards of Manchester University and Joshua Pollard of Bristol University found the hole that originally held the stone, dug between 2500 and 2000 B.C., as well as human remains and artifacts that date to the same period.

[Rasputin]

Human/neanderthal skull found

A 40,000-year-old skull found in a Romanian cave shows traits of both modern humans and Neanderthals and might prove the two interbred, researchers reported on Monday. If the findings are confirmed, the skull would represent the oldest modern human remains yet found in Europe. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, will add to the debate over whether modern Homo sapiens simply killed off their Neanderthal cousins, or had some intimate interactions with them first. DNA samples taken from Neanderthal bones suggest there was no mixing, or at least that any Neanderthal genetic contribution did not make it to the modern DNA pool.

But Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis has in the past found bones that he believes show both modern human and Neanderthal traits, and now he and colleagues have found a skull. The skull, probably that of a teenager, has been dated to 40,000 years ago and shows many modern traits. But it also is a little flatter than most modern Homo sapiens, and exceptionally large upper molars more associated with Neanderthals.

[Rasputin]

A crowded womb

A twin leans over and kisses the cheek of her sister in a heart-warming picture that would not be out of place in any family home. Yet these siblings are a not even born and the astonishing images have been captured on a new 'four-dimensional' ultrasound scan of the womb. The scans are a highly developed form of traditional ultrasound where very high frequency sound waves are used to produce images of what is inside the body. As with older forms of ultra-sound, sound waves a emitted from a transducer, or probe, which is placed on the mother's abdomen and then moved to 'look at' areas in the uterus. These sound waves bounce back off the foetus, helping to create a 'picture' of the child on a screen. The new 4D scan us ses the same frequency of sound waves w as in a normal ultrasound. But the sound waves are directed from many more angles, producing a 'real-time' video of the foetus as it moves and allowing scientists to say the images are in four dimensions.

This advanced technology has allowed scientists to capture the development of foetuses like never before, including twins and triplets jostling for space in the womb while grasping each other's hands and even faces. The images have also allowed scientists to create life-size silicone models and astonishing computer-generated images of the multiple foetuses, some of which are seen in the pictures shown here. For the first time, it has also been possible to see detailed pictures of 'vanishing twin syndrome' - where a foetus dies and is re-absorbed into the womb, often in the early stages of pregnancy.

[Rasputin]

Aliens welcome in Rachel, Nevada

It would be logical for this town to consider sisterhoodwith Loch Ness, Scotland, home to a putative aquatic monster whose reported "sightings" have fired up imaginations for decades. Rachel, population about 100, also has a lake, a mystery at the bottom of it and the business savvy to turn it into a lucrative enterprise. Groom Lake, about 25 miles southwest of here, has not held any water since probably the last ice age, but even an attempt to sneak a peak from one of the surrounding mountaintops will bring out the authorities. Pat Travis has seen many a truth seeker ending up in handcuffs. "Remember, if even as much as your toe gets inside the restricted area, they'll grab you, and you'll end up paying a $600 fine," Mrs. Travis said. She is the owner of Little A'Le'Inn, Rachel's only restaurant, bar and motel, which is booming with curious visitors. Mrs. Travis tells the story about a man who set off a major security alert as he stretched his hand across the boundary to grab a rock as a souvenir. Sirens blared, she recalls, searchlights pierced the dark and black helicopters swooped down from out of nowhere to nab the intruder. Bone-dry Groom Lake and its immediate surroundings are known as Area 51, the U.S. government's single most closely guarded facility. It is so secret that Pentagon officials are not authorized even to acknowledge its existence.

It is protected by somber-looking camouflage-clad men who careen around the ridges in sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, backed up by a network of cameras, motion sensors and listening devices. For local residents, what could be better for business than a good secret next door? A dusty gravel road runs through a picturesque Joshua tree grove, then veers to the right before revealing a slew of red-and-white warnings not to proceed any further. The camouflage men are parked on the hill above -- engine running, ready to pounce.