Science Special News

[Rasputin]

Language of the gods

Anthony North: One of the most enigmatic places on Earth is Easter Island. Situated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 1,400 miles from its nearest neighbour, it produced a now extinct civilisation which should not have been able to socially evolve, who built mysterious stone statues that stared out to sea. Why their hundreds of statues were built, no one knows. But so fascinating are they that most people fail to realise that this is not the greatest mystery of the island. Ancient scripts: Rather, the Easter Islanders seemed to have the most peculiar writing. Known as Rongo Rongo, it has been found on numerous wooden carvings; and despite decades of research by our cleverest cryptologists, no one has yet decyphered what the writing means. Many thousands of miles away, on the banks of the lower Indus River in Pakistan, stand the ruins of the city of Mohenjo Daro. Built during the enigmatic Harappan civilisation, the entire culture seems to have died out in the early 2nd millennium BC. Hence, little is known of the people, or how they lived. One thing the people of the city did leave behind was an enigmatic script that, to this day, no one has been able to decypher. Many of the characters are of strange dancing men holding various objects in different positions in their hands. Looking at the script, you get the sense of the genesis of Hindu gods; their vibrancy as they dance, holding various objects in their many hands. But there is someting even more interesting about this script.

Scripts from the gods: If you compare many of the characters to Rongo Rongo, they are very similar. Indeed, this similarity is so obvious, yet so totally impossible, that few academics dare to admit the similarity. Pseudoscholars by the dozen would look at this similarity, note the thousands of miles that separate these totally isolated ancient communities, not to mention the time difference, and decide it is evidence of contact through a lost civilisation such as Atlantis. I do no such thing.

[Rasputin]

Makeover for Europe's Mars robot

The boss of the European Space Agency has asked his officials to find a new name for the flagship ExoMars mission. Jean Jacques Dordain said the rover concept had changed so radically since first envisioned and costed that it was really now a new venture. Mr Dordain will ask ministers in November for a near doubling of the 650-million-euro budget for ExoMars they originally agreed in 2005. The robot rover - whatever its name - should launch for Mars in 2013. "I am asking [my officials] to find a different way to define ExoMars because if we say 'this is ExoMars', for most of the ministers it means 'over-cost'. "And this is not over-cost because we are not speaking at all of the same mission; it is a completely different mission. This is to try to make ministers understand that this is not over-cost." ExoMars will be Europe's big space exploration project in the next decade. Beefed up: The plan is to put a hi-tech vehicle on the Red Planet's surface with a range of instrumentation capable of investigating the planet's life potential - past and present.

When the idea was first put to European space ministers three years ago, they embraced the project and actually gave it slightly more money than was being asked for at the time.

[Rasputin]

"Ghost" photographed in Leeds

Labourer michael Scheres says he and a pal unwittingly snapped the spook while working on the old Lewis's building, in The Headrow.Michael, of Belle Isle, Leeds, said: "I could feel it had gone really cold, I was shivering and this feeling was shooting up and down my spine. Liam, the lad I was working with, took the picture. When he saved it came up with the ghost on. He nearly dropped the phone. I couldn't believe what I was seeing at first." Michael said he had been in two minds about ghosts before Tuesday's close encounter."I did and I didn't," he said. I believed in the afterlife but never thought they were among us until I saw that picture."After the picture was taken, Michael says he looked into the history of the building, home to department store Allders until 2005.The 22-year-old says he discovered that in the mid-19th Century some builders were working in an area close to the sighting when their wooden scaffolding collapsed."They were all killed," he said. "Whatever is on that picture might be one of them, or it could be someone from the graveyard and memorial garden next door."Windmill Road resident Michael said one of his work colleagues had mentioned his own ghoulish experience.He added: "He told he could see something going past out of the corner of his eye, and he kept getting cold, but whenever he turned around there was nothing there."Michael isn't the only member of his family to have had a brush with the other side. His mum, Diane, claims that when she was about six she was visited by the ghost of a close friend of hers"It was a couple of days after he had been knocked down," she said.

And in 2006, Diane says she was shown a mobile phone picture of a ghost by two of her friends.Lewis's is not alone in having a resident wraith.Temple Newsam House is said to have several ghosts, ***kstall Abbey is haunted by a former abbot, while a phantom pianist is said to tinkle the City Varieties ivories in the dead of night.

[Rasputin]

Tackling the legend of the chupacabra

Its name translates to 'goat sucker' and the mystery of the Chupacabra (chu pa' ka bra) is one step closer to being solved. Researchers at UC Davis who were asked to dig into this mysterious creature. Those who've seen it say it almost always comes out at night. They say that it crawls in the weeds and lurks in the bushes, but this creature doesn't target people. According to the story it goes after goats, tearing off their heads and drinking the blood. When one Texas woman found one of these mysterious creatures dead she sent samples of it to UC Davis. The debate and the mystery have been around for decades; stories of a creature unknown to science, systematically killing goats and other animals. The sightings started in Central America where one veterinarian made the shocking claim the creature could even be part human. More recently, the mystery of the Chupacabra has crossed the border. Last month a woman in Texas found a hairless animal, its skin was blue and its teeth were jagged and strange.

Doctors say they received some tissue, a little bit of skin and also a tooth. At UC Davis inside one of the top animal labs in the world they dug into the mystery looked at the DNA knowing full well what some wanted them to find. "Coming from Texas and past experience I knew they suspected it was a Chupacabra." It was not.

[Rasputin]

'Ghost-like' white stag spotted in Scotland

A rare white stag has been observed on the west coast of the Highlands. The animal has been seen with other red deer by a member of the John Muir Trust, which has kept its location a secret to protect it from poachers. The killing of a white stag on the Devon and Cornwall border last year sparked outrage. Fran Lockhart, partnership manager for the trust, caught the young Highland deer on camera. She described it as "ghost-like". She said: "I am thrilled to know that there is a white stag roaming free out there in the Scottish Highlands and that I was privileged enough to be able to spend an hour observing him. "We will be watching this animal with interest, particularly as he will be reaching his full potential in the next couple of years." The trust said white deer were potent figures in the mythology of many cultures. Celts considered them to be messengers from the otherworld. They are closely identified with unicorns and their appearance is said to herald some profound change in the lives of those who encounter them. Found headless: White deer are often mistakenly thought to be albinos.

The trust said their unusual appearance was caused by leucism, a rare genetic pattern that causes a reduction in the pigment in the animal's hair and skin. Unlike albinos who characteristically have red eyes, deer with leucism have normal colouring in their eyes. The stag killed in England last year was found headless after being shot by a poacher.

[Rasputin]

Do meteors create life?

Meteorite impacts are often associated with huge disasters, mass extinction and why the dinosaurs disappeared from the face of the Earth some 65 million years ago. However, the opposite may also occur - that new and more varied animal life arises following such a catastrophe, is shown by new research conducted by the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen. Together with colleagues from Lund University in Sweden, two palaeontologists, Svend Stouge and Dave Harper, have discovered that the Earth in the so-called Ordovician period 490-440 million years ago was struck by more than 100 meteorites at one time, and that in the wake of this event, new and more varied life evolved in the oceans, which at that time were home to virtually all life on Earth. "You could say that biological evolution experienced a serious boost within a relatively short period of time. And, as is the case with, for example, volcanic eruptions or large forest fires, the impacts initially had a devastating effect on all life, but from the ashes arose a much richer fauna than had existed previously. And another interesting aspect is that this situation occurred 40 million years after the so-called Cambrian explosion. It was during this explosion that the first complex multicellular creatures appeared, even though scientists are still discussing whether this evolution was a rapid explosion or whether it took place over a longer period of time," says Dave Harper from the University of Copenhagen.

The conclusions of the two scientists are, among other things, based on computer analyses, chemical samples from meteorites, fossils and examination of different craters in Sweden, for example the large Lockne crater near Østersund in northern Sweden, which has a diameter of 7.

[Rasputin]

Glaciers suffer record shrinkage

The rate at which some of the world's glaciers are melting has more than doubled, data from the United Nations Environment Programme has shown. Average glacial shrinkage has risen from 30 centimetres per year between 1980 and 1999, to 1.5 metres in 2006. Some of the biggest losses have occurred in the Alps and Pyrenees mountain ranges in Europe. Experts have called for "immediate action" to reverse the trend, which is seen as a key climate change indicator. Estimates for 2006 indicate shrinkage of 1.4 metres of 'water equivalent' compared to half a metre in 2005. Achim Steiner, Under-Secretary General of the UN and executive director of its environment programme (UNEP), said: "Millions if not billions of people depend directly or indirectly on these natural water storage facilities for drinking water, agriculture, industry and power generation during key parts of the year. "There are many canaries emerging in the climate change coal mine. The glaciers are perhaps among those making the most noise and it is absolutely essential that everyone sits up and takes notice. Litmus test: He said that action was already being taken and pointed out that the elements of a green economy were emerging from the more the money invested in renewable energies. Mr Steiner went on: "The litmus test will come in late 2009 at the climate convention meeting in Copenhagen.

"Here governments must agree on a decisive new emissions reduction and adaptation-focused regime. Otherwise, and like the glaciers, our room for manoeuvre and the opportunity to act may simply melt away." Dr Ian Willis, of the Scott Polar Research Institute, said: "It is not too late to stop the shrinkage of these ice sheets but we need to take action immediately."

[Rasputin]

Birmingham named "weirdest place"

Birmingham is the weirdest place to live in the UK. With freakish weather, including a tornado and a shower of frogs and tales of alien visits, the Second City comes first place in a spotters' guide to the country's real twilight zones. Almost two-thirds of Brummies believe in the supernatural after reports of giant hailstones hitting city streets and Martians dropping in for mince pies at the Rowley Regis home of Jean Hingley in 1979. Dr Kenny Webster, resident scientist at Birmingham Science Museum Thinktank, said: "It will come as no surprise to the residents of Birmingham that we live in our own twilight zone. "Birmingham has the youngest population in Europe and it is well recorded that children entering puberty report the highest number of ghostly sightings. It has even been suggested that imaginary friends might be ghosts." The shower of baby frogs which occurred in Sutton Park in 1954 is one of the curious incidents mentioned in the guide, put together by Euro Disney to promote its latest attraction called The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Sylvia Mowday had taken her young son and daughter to see a naval exhibition at the park when the sky suddenly turned dark. "I thought it was hail, but my son suddenly said 'It isn't hail, mum, they're frogs, baby frogs'," Mrs Mowday said.

"There were literally thousands of them. When we looked up we could see them. They covered our shoulders and umbrellas. This went on for about five minutes, but afterwards we were afraid to move in case we trod on them." Marian Baxter, historian and local studies librarian for Sutton, is familiar with the tale which hit the national headlines. She said: "It certainly isn't something which happens every day.

[Rasputin]

Vampire mythology

The idea of the vampire has caused some extreme behaviour. In October 1974 a drunkard was lured to the home of a Mr Lorca in Germany. Promising him food and shelter, instead, Mr Lorca descended on the man and bit him hard on the neck, drawing blood. Passing out, when the drunkard came round, he rushed out of the house and went to the police. Arriving a short time later, they found Mr Lorca asleep in a coffin with blood on his lips. Mr Lorca, it seems, liked to be called Count, ate only raw meat and was only active at night. Strange behaviour: Polish immigrant to the UK, Demetrious Myicura, was found dead in 1973. His room was covered in ceremoniously placed garlic. Said to have been terrified of a vampire attack, he choked to death on a clove of garlic he had placed in his mouth to protect him while he slept. Although tragic, we can see a degree of irony in such cases. But ideas of vampirism can affect entire societies. For instance, the Kashubs are a Christian sect of Slavs living mainly around Ontario who retain many pagan practices. As professor of Slavic languages Jan Perkowski discovered when he visited a Kashub farm in 1968, principal is their belief in vampires. Indeed, one wife had her upper incisors removed because she was a vampire. Upon death, elaborate measures must be taken otherwise the person will rise at midnight and suck the life and blood from family members. Mythical suckers: The above cases are modern survivals of a rich vampire mythology. Consider the ‘al', the half human, half animal vampire from Armenian folklore, thought to be based on the alu of Babylonian myth.

One eyed with iron teeth, tusks and snake-like hair, it wears a triangular hat that makes it invisible. Its victim is the pregnant woman and her unborn child, whom it strangles. The best defence against the al is to surround yourself with, and use, iron implements. The empusa is an ancient Greek vampire spirit which often appears as an alluring young woman. Its intention is to seduce young men and eventually enter them and consume their flesh and blood.

[Rasputin]

Americas settled 15,000 years ago

A consensus is emerging in the highly contentious debate over the colonization of the Americas, according to a study that says the bulk of the region wasn't settled until as late as 15,000 years ago. Researchers analyzed both archaeological and genetic evidence from several dozen sites throughout the Americas and eastern Asia for the paper. "In the past archaeologists haven't paid too much attention to molecular genetic evidence," said lead author Ted Goebel, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University in College Station. "We have brought together two different fields of science, and it looks like they are coming up with the same set of answers." The article, which is published in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science, shows that the first Americans came from a single Siberian population and ventured across the Bering land bridge connecting Asia and North America about 22,000 years ago. The group got stuck in Alaska because of glacial ice, however, so humans probably didn't migrate down into the rest of the Americas until after 16,500 years ago, when an ice-free corridor in Canada opened up. Scientists have long agreed that the first Americans came from northeast Asia, according to Goebel.

But the new article—which analyzed genetic and archaeological evidence from 43 sites, including a dozen sites in Asia—better pins down the makeup of the first Americans. Genetic evidence, for instance, points to a founding population of less than 5,000 individuals. Some geneticists had also previously suggested that the migration across the land bridge could have occurred as early as 30,000 years ago.

[Rasputin]

Real-life possession documented

An american woman who levitated, demonstrated paranormal psychic powers and spoke foreign languages unknown to her was clearly demon possessed, according to a board-certified psychiatrist and associate professor of clinical psychiatry at New York Medical College. The unnamed woman, with a long history of involvement with Satanic groups, was observed by a team of priests, deacons, several lay assistants, psychiatrists, nuns, some of whom also had medical and psychiatric training, levitating six inches off the ground while objects flew off shelves in the same room, according to Dr. Richard E. Gallagher, who documented the case in the February issue of the New Oxford Review. "Periodically, in our presence, Julia would go into a trance state of a recurring nature," writes Gallagher. "Mentally troubled individuals often 'dissociate,' but Julia's trances were accompanied by an unusual phenomenon: Out of her mouth would come various threats, taunts and scatological language, phrases like 'Leave her alone, you idiot,' 'She's ours,' 'Leave, you imbecile priest,' or just 'Leave.

' The tone of this voice differed markedly from Julia's own, and it varied, sometimes sounding guttural and vaguely masculine, at other points high pitched. Most of her comments during these 'trances,' or at the subsequent exorcisms, displayed a marked contempt for anything religious or sacred."

[Rasputin]

Wreck of German raider Kormoran found

The wreck of the German merchant raider Kormoran, believed responsible for the war-time sinking of HMAS Sydney in November 1941, has been found off the Western Australian coast.Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, along with Australian Defence Force heads, announced the discovery at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on Sunday.He said the search body called Finding Sydney made the discovery on Saturday, about 150km west of Shark Bay. "We are one step closer as a nation to hopefully finding Sydney," Mr Rudd said."This is an important part in solving a 65-year-old puzzle."Australia's greatest maritime mystery claimed the lives of the Sydney's 645 crew.Sailing from Sumatra back to Fremantle in November 1941, the warship encountered what purported to be the Dutch freighter Straat Malakka off the West Australian coast.But the freighter was really the disguised German mercantile raider Kormoran.After an ensuing fight, the Sydney went down with all hands and represents the greatest ever loss of life in an Australian warship.

It was also the largest vessel of any country to be lost with no survivors during the Second World War.The 317 survivors from the 397 crew aboard Kormoran were picked up over ensuing days, giving the only eyewitness accounts of what occurred.

[Rasputin]

Another look at the Phoenix lights

It has been 11 years since Arizonans saw something in the night sky that remains a topic of conversation to this day. On March 13, 1997, a swath orbs in a V shape known as the Phoenix Lights passed silently overhead. Sightings launched a debate that continues. Were they military flares, an unknown government experimental aircraft or something other-worldly? Dr. Lynne Kitei, a Paradise Valley physician, wrote a best-selling book on the Phoenix Lights, and was executive producer of an award-winning documentary about the subject. An updated version of the 80-minute documentary - with new information, new interviews and new footage - will be shown Sunday at the Harkins Shea 14 Theatre in Scottsdale. "It has been a labor of love and a work in progress since we started," Kitei said. The new versions includes interviews with Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who was the sixth man to walk on the moon. "He created or founded the organization, the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which combines science and spirituality, which has been my work in this right along with the Phoenix Lights," Kitei said. There is also an interview with a now-retired Phoenix Police Department 911 operator who fielded calls about the lights that night, confirming the sighting's timeline and sharing details provided by callers. "It also confirms that the police were very well aware of what was going on. They actually did some things that have never been shared before, which is exciting in itself," Kitei added. The documentary includes an interview with a commercial airline pilot, who along with his wife, saw the lights and said they were definitely not flares, and revelations by former Gov.

Fife Symington who witnessed the sighting. Kitei said UFO sightings have been accelerating worldwide thanks, in part, to technology, and she hopes that in her lifetime, the question who was the driving force behind the Phoenix Lights and other sightings will be answered. She said people are capturing sightings on their cell phones and are actually looking because they are more educated about the topic.

[Rasputin]

Nerve neckband used in 'telepathic' chat

A neckband that translates thought into speech by picking up nerve signals has been used to demonstrate a "voiceless" phone call for the first time. With careful training a person can send nerve signals to their vocal cords without making a sound. These signals are picked up by the neckband and relayed wirelessly to a computer that converts them into words spoken by a computerised voice. A video (right) shows the system being used to place the first public voiceless phone call on stage at a recent conference held by microchip manufacturer Texas Instruments. Michael Callahan, co-founder of Ambient Corporation, which developed the neckband, demonstrates the device, called the Audeo. Users needn't worry about that the system voicing their inner thoughts though. Callahan says producing signals for the Audeo to decipher requires "a level above thinking". Users must think specifically about voicing words for them to be picked up by the equipment. The Audeo has previously been used to let people control wheelchairs using their thoughts. Watch a video demonstrating thought control of wheelchairs "I can still talk verbally at the same time," Callahan told New Scientist. "We can differentiate between when you want to talk silently, and when you want to talk out loud." That could be useful in certain situations, he says, for example when making a private call while out in public. The system demonstrated at the TI conference can recognise only a limited set of about 150 words and phrases, says Callahan, who likens this to the early days of speech recognition software.

At the end of the year Ambient plans to release an improved version, without a vocabulary limit. Instead of recognising whole words or phrases, it should identify the individual phonemes that make up complete words. This version will be slower, because users will need to build up what they want to say one phoneme at a time, but it will let them say whatever they want. The phoneme-based system will be aimed at people who have lost the ability to speak due to neurological diseases like ALS – also known as motor neurone disease.

[Rasputin]

Defining witchcraft

Anthony North: The French court of the Sun King, Louis XIV, was a flamboyant, extravagant place. But underneath the facade was a cauldron of hatred, deceit and social climbing. And underpinning the more unsavoury factors of the court was a conspiracy of murder and supposed witchcraft. After the suspicious deaths of several of the French nobility, Louis ordered the Commissioner of Police, Nicholas de la Reynie, to investigate. Opening the Chambre Ardente, or Burning Court (a black draped room with candles), in 1677, over the following three years, 320 people were arrested and 36 were executed. La voison: Reynie's investigation began with the arrest and torture of fortune teller Marie Bosse, who had boasted that she could be hired to kill husbands. Under torture she began a series of confessions and namings of others. Reaching right up to the heart of the French court, a Coven was unearthed. Practices described included using naked females as altars, and cutting the throats of babies to drink their blood. At the centre of the Coven was Catherine Deshayes, a short, plump, but not unattractive ‘witch' better known as La Voisin. Controlling her Coven from a Paris villa, she indulged in astrology and seances, and police found various poisonous potions, wax images and other paraphernalia. But her speciality was alleged to be poisoning the husbands of those who wanted to climb socially, and give love potions to others. Towards the end of the affair, the King's mistress, Madame de Montespan, was implicated in the Coven, though she escaped with her life.

La Voisin was not so lucky. She was burned alive in February 1680, popularly being associated with the Devil, but proclaiming her innocence to the end. But was La Voisin associated with the Devil? Devil worshippers?: Medieval theologian St Thomas Aquinas did much to associate witchcraft with the Devil, arguing that demons formed an evil army of lesser angels in league with Satan; demons who could lure humans to his service.