This morning the world woke up to find out what the rest of us stayed up and watched happen: SpaceX launched their second spacecraft into orbit on a first of its kind mission to the International Space Station. The next few days involve more technical challenges. In a procedure akin to shooting a missile going 22,000 MPH into a trajectory with the ISS; SpaceX will try to pull off a rare feat capable of only a couple nations.

Meanwhile, what’s next for SpaceX?

Things are only getting started. Elon Musk has proposed an incredibly ambitious program for his company which is barely ten years old.

FALCON HEAVY

While SpaceX continues cargo flights to the ISS and launching satellites, next up is the testing and launch of the Falcon Heavy. SpaceX isn’t content with just building a replacement system for getting into space, they want to push the envelope even further.

Falcon Heavy is a rocket with 27 Merlin rocket engines (versus the Falcon 9’s nine). Slated to start testing later this year, Falcon 9 will be the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V’s that took us to the moon.

That’s this year.

The most powerful rocket in the world.

It’s the kind of rocket you’d use to send people to Mars.

Let me repeat, THEY PLAN ON TESTING IT THIS YEAR.

Even if it takes another year or two to get this up, anybody wants to to see what a mission to Mars will look like can take a trip like Justin Young and I did last night and watch SpaceX light the candle. This time on 27 Merlins instead of nine.

Check out an animation of this bad boy.

Falcon Heavy press conference

DRAGON CREW CAPSULE

SpaceX is building a Mars capable spaceship today. The bird flying over our heads right now is a proof of concept of a lot of the technologies that will go into making that happen. The most important system is safety.

To make the Dragon spacecraft the safest crewed space vehicle in the world, they need to build an escape system – something the Space Shuttle never had.

The Dragon will have built-in thrusters that will allow the spaceship to separate from the second and third stage in an emergency and land via parachute or rocket power. This rocket-powered launch would even allow the Dragon to land from orbit back on the launch pad without a parachute.

That’s crazy Buck Rogers technology, but that’s the plan. In researching the feasibility of this, Elon Musk and the SpaceX team came up with the most crazy idea yet:

A FULLY REUSABLE SPACECRAFT

Instead of trying to pull your rockets out of the sea and rebuild them, why not have them land back on the launch pad. While companies like Blue Origin are trying to build a single-stage to orbit system, SpaceX is developing a far more fuel efficient system that would allow each stage to land by itself.

A fully reusable rocket would take off and separate into two stages and a spacecraft. Each one would then use rocket thrusters to land back on the launch pad where they’d be inspected and refueled.

This is the space age version of passenger jets. SpaceX is working on this right now. Not ‘someday’, not in ‘the future’. Engineers are trying to solve these problems as we speak. The systems that go into making the Dragon crew-capable lead into the systems that will allow you to let your primary stage land back on the platform.

The cost savings are incredible. The Shuttle cost from $10-20,000 per pound. Falcon 9 costs about $2,300. A reusable craft takes this below $100. From $10,000 per pound to $100 in a decade. It could even go lower. Cheaper than a space elevator. Now that’s crazy talk.

You can see SpaceX’s vision for this in the animation. You can go outside and look up at the first step towards this right now.

The future is happening.

Elon Musk explaining reusable rockets

Justin Robert Young and Andrew Mayne at the SpaceX launch of the Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station.

It was EPIC and AWESOME.

I wanted to be Iron Man so bad when I was a kid, my hair smelled like Folger’s Crystals from wearing a coffee can on my head.

Not a joke.

I cut off the end of a tennis ball can, put a dish glove on it and made my own slapdash armor. You have to understand, this wasn’t a costume, in my demented little mind, I WAS MAKING MY OWN ARMOR.

I was obsessed with robots. I’d build little walking things from broken toys and Tupperware containers. When I saw my first Iron Man comic, my head exploded. Dude, you could BE A ROBOT.

In the above photo, my brother and I are dressed up as hybrid Iron Man/C3PO/R2-D2 characters. My dad made the costumes from popcorn tins, life vests, Legos and plenty of silver tape. If you wonder where my creativity comes from; look no further than my dad. He’s always been that awesome.

Before I decided to become a magician, back then I was a little inventor. My goal in life was to go to MIT. Why? Because that’s where Tony Stark went to school.

Life turned out differently. I got into magic, discovered other science heroes like Doctor Who, but I’d be lying if I don’t get a little nostalgic every time I see a coffee can and wonder what could have been…

For more from Andrew Mayne, visit his website: AndrewMayneBooks.com

GOOGLE PROJECT GLASS LOOKS AS PROMISING AS MICROSOFT’S VISION OF THE TABLET PC IN 2001…

Google has only released one video and little else on their project for bringing augmented reality to the masses, so it’s hard to cast aspersions on what’s the most vapory of vaporware. That said, I’ll pick apart the video; in that even with the use of After Effects and the potential to show us anything, their vision of the future seems rather timid.

Like the silly Nintendo Power Glove in Minority Report (far less impressive than Microsoft’s Kinect and ideas in the labs when the movie was made), we get a vision of the future that feels dated before it happens.

The future is not run on Nintendo Power Gloves...

Google’s glasses appear to just be a screen in front of your face with eye tracking. And I don’t mean that in the ‘iPhone is just a screen you touch’, way. It feels like Microsoft’s attempt at tablets in the early 2000’s. They figured your finger would just be a pointing device for Windows. Substitute ‘eye’ for ‘finger’ here and you get a shortsighted vision of the potential for this technology.

Google’s Glass doesn’t do anything different than what we do now. The screen is just in a different place. Think of how the iPad changed the way we interact with software or how Microsoft’s Kinect changed gaming. Augmented Reality could be bigger than all of this.

Touch interfaces took off when you realized that the medium had changed. Google’s Glass doesn’t feel that way. I don’t think they get their medium. My first case in point is the map feature:

How does Google envision using augmented reality to show us a map? They just float a regular map in front of you. Why not lay the map over on your field of view and actually show you a path to follow?

Second, let’s look at the trip to the book store. Obviously, Google doesn’t want to scare off brick and mortar partners with flashing deals to buy the book elsewhere. But why not use their already solid image recognition technology to hover reviews of the book or show us augmented publisher information. The same for the concert poster. Make the thing move. Show us what a connected world looks like.

Third, the apps were disappointing. When the girlfriend calls, why not make it look like she’s on the top of the building with him? Don’t just overlay reality, blend it. Why not create artificial elements in real space?

Fourth, show us virtual objects. What’s a virtual ebook look like to read or a magazine? I’d love to see what Google thinks the future of virtual items will be like with augmented reality. I have to image it’s more than a transparent screen.

That said, I’m excited that Google is taking the initiative on this. I’ll leave them with the words of Tom Hardy’s Eames in Inception, “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.”

For good time’s sake:

So some mouth-breather on this site decided to pour cold water on the idea of Helen Mirren playing Doctor Who. We’ll forget that this person up until recently called the Doctor “Dr. Who” and stick to the facts.

“It’s a gimmick”
Yes? And the problem is? If anything, this series needs, besides, actual better writing, is some fresh ideas and a new approach. Writing for Mirren could provide just that.

“It’s an unnecessary complication for an already too complicated premise”
What’s complicated about a Time Lord changing into a woman? This is nowhere near as big of a complication as time travel. Partly because it’s, you know, real. People switching genders is so old hat, it hardly counts as science fiction.

“It’s a young role”
Let’s get past the ageist and sexist comment and look at exhibit A .

Our favorite crazy Swiss aeronaut, Yves Rossy, was at it again. This time flying in formation with two jets. How much more bad ass does it get?

Sources tell us that shortly after he landed, Nick Fury arrived on the scene to recruit him for some special initiative.

Steve Jobs wasn’t just a man with great vision and instincts, he was a man that bet big on people, teams and concepts he believed in. Apple computers exist because Steve saw the potential in his friend Steve Wozniak’s hobbled together motherboard. The graphical user interface exists because Steve realized this academic notion that nobody knew what to do with was something that would make computers more personal, more accessible. He bet big on a couple of PhD’s and a fired Disney animator and shepherded Pixar for over a decade so it could eventually change entertainment and re-ignite the magic of storytelling.

At the Apple announcement the day before Steve Jobs passed away, we got another one of Steve Jobs’s visions of the future, a final legacy that will change everything, all over again. Like all his other visions, it was dismissed as obvious, incremental or no big deal. A year from now may prove otherwise.

From the beginning Steve Jobs has been dedicated to changing the way we interact with computers, making them more personal. Early Macs had text to speech functionality and primitive speech recognition. Both of these technologies have matured slowly over the last two decades. Neither in a groundbreaking moment. Part of the problem is that converting human speech into text is only a small part of the challenge.

Software and systems like Nuance, Vlingo, Google Voice Recognition and others have come a long way. But they still needed that magic touch to make them into practical alternatives. To do that you need three things: A powerful engine that can convert speech into text. Artificially intelligent software that can understand all the different ways you can phrase something and learn what you mean. And an over-arching idea on how it comes together and what it’s supposed to do for real people.

Watch the demonstration of the Siri voice assistant and you’ll see how Jobs and Apple saw beyond the present state of things and combined all three. Apple acquired the company and talent behind Siri because Steve Jobs recognized a team that got the way of the future. It wasn’t speech recognition. It was human understanding.

Siri is an AI system that learns things like an intelligent person. If you tell it “My mother’s name is Patricia”, it will remember that. When you tell it next time to “Send an email to my mom”, Siri knows that the “Patricia” in your contact book is who you meant when you say “mom”.

Speech recognition everywhere else is literal. It makes people bend to the way computers do things. You have to phrase things a certain way and be very specific. This has always been the antithesis of computing for Jobs. He believed that computing should conform to people.

Siri is built upon a lot of powerful technologies and concepts. Pundits who just saw it as another speech recognition platform totally missed the bigger picture. It’s a very big idea. If you ask it a question it doesn’t just do a Google search, it uses computational systems like WolframAlpha. Want to know the current distance to Mars for your kid’s homework? Siri will give you the actual answer and not just a search result that’s outdated and wrong.

A year from now voice interaction is going to be much more commonplace. It’ll go from just being text to speech and literal instructions, to a much more natural way to interact with our devices. Google’s impressive technology will continue to evolve. Apple’s Siri will get smarter. Other companies will continue to come up with brilliant contributions. iPhones, Androids and other devices will get better and better.

We’re about to see a paradigm shift in computing. All of the elements were there before. Natural language processing, speech recognition, AI. So was the GUI and mouse, the touchscreen, the MP3 player, the smartphone and the tablet. What they needed was someone to show us how to look at them and how to make them fit into everyday life so much so they become almost invisible.

Steve Jobs has always worked to put the hardware and the machine in the background. Siri is the next evolution of that goal. When you see the promotional video for the technology, it doesn’t feature people interacting with a piece of hardware, it’s merely a medium. It shows us people using technology in the most natural way possible, simply telling it what they need it to do. The last part of the video is the most touching. We see a young blind girl reading a Braille book and using her iPhone – a device she can’t even see – to send messages, interact and communicate with the rest of the world, the same as anyone else would. This is Steve Jobs legacy. This is how he changed the world, again.

Steve may passed away, but we’re only beginning to understand how big of a dent he kicked in the universe.

[More on Siri at Apple.com]

At a National Press Club luncheon today, Elon Musk, head of SpaceX announced plans for a reusable rocket that could dramatically lower the cost of going into space by a factor of 100. By amortizing the hardware costs over a lifespan of 1,000 launches, the capital costs per launch would be $50,000 (plus $200,000 in fuels costs and support). He compares the goal of the rocket to achieve the same level of reliability as a 747.

SpaceX envisions a three stage rocket where each stage returns to Earth via powered flight, as opposed to crashing into the ocean or burning up in the atmosphere.

In a speech that outlaid his goal of seeing humanity becoming an interplanetary species, he explained the need for this technology to help humanity make a permanent settlement on Mars. Musk suggested the cost of such a trip could eventually fall to the price of an ‘average California home’.

SpaceX

Click the image below for an awesome animation of their space flight mission profiles:

Along with announcement for an Elon Musk appearance at the National Press Club, SpaceX revealed new conceptual images laying out their vision for the future of spaceflight.

One image gives us our first look at what is probably the ‘Grasshopper’ reusable vertical take-off and landing rocket that SpaceX sought permission from the FAA to test at their McGregor field launch facility.

For more images, including the Dragon capsule doing a landing, check out the SpaceX page.

Those ambitious folks at SpaceX aren’t going to let American enterprise sit out the new space race. They’ve requested permission to test out a vertical take-off and landing rocket system at their test site in McGregor, Texas.

Although building on existing systems, like their Merlin engines, this is a new area of space flight for them. Previously they’ve focused on the more traditional approach of single-use rockets.

Recently, Jeff Bezos backed Blue Origin, tried a similar test, which ended in a crash after attaining 45,000 feet of altitude.

Both programs are very similar to the McDonnell Douglas DC-X single-stage vertical take-off and landing program which was abandoned in the 1990′s.

The FAA document

via SpaceRef.com and NasaWatch.com

Space X released a video today showing their plans and capabilities for their Dragon space capsule. Besides the ability to ferry crew to and from orbit and to the International Space Station, Elon Musk, head of Space X has said that the capsule itself would be capable of using its built-in rockets to land on any solid planet, moon or asteroid in the Solar System. He described the heat shielding as being rated for “Martian and lunar” velocities.

Landing is one thing. What about a return trip, some have asked? If you look closely at the video Space X released you can get some idea of what they may have planned for a trip to Mars.

In the screen grab you can see the Dragon crew capsule in the foreground. In back of it looks like a crew habitat made from the stage of a rocket. Further in back you can see a platform with what looks like an ascent vehicle perched upright. This solves the ascent question.

Space X has talked publicly and informally about its plans for the future of space exploration. Besides the forthcoming Falcon 9 Heavy lift rocket, that would be the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V, they’ve also talked about a Falcon X Heavy and Falcon XX vehicles with 250,000 pounds of cargo capacity.

From the video it looks like we can see three of the four components you would need for a Mars round trip. The Dragon capsule as a lander for the astronauts. The crew habitat visible in the background and the ascent vehicle on a platform further out. Not shown is the space vehicle that would be used to bring astronauts from Earth orbit to Martian orbit.

If you look at Space X’s plans for future rocket engine technology, there are plans for motors that would be more than capable of the return trip. The one thing we haven’t seen is what their plans are for the spacecraft itself. It’d be curious to see what Elon Musk and Space X think this would look like. Let’s hop for more videos.

Our eyes locked. Each one of us trying to stare down the other. A mortal man versus a cryptological enigma. My goal – satisfying scientific curiosity. His goal – to hide in the shadows until his blood rage send him into the night in search of more prey. In the end, he would win. But not without a sacrifice.

For the first time we present a Weird Things exclusive. Photo and video of the Chupacabra taken by me when I went on a walk in a South Florida park.

We’ve decided to not reveal the location of the park in order to protect this creature’s habitat. Should he prove a nuisance and begin to prey upon household pets or children, we reserve the right to take action. Until then, he’s free to prey upon whatever comes into his domain, including the elderly.

I came upon the creature in broad daylight. The hairless body, odd gait and features that harken back to a time when mammals and reptiles were much more closely related, immediately struck a cord. 30 yards in front of me, I knew what I was looking at: The Legendary Chupacabra. Sensing another hunter, it darted into the bushes. I gave chase and followed him into his lair.

Despite the tangled brush I managed to take out my iPhone and capture several photos and video you to see.

Some of you may look at these photos and claim it’s just a mangy raccoon. I suggest an alternate hypothesis: The Chupacabra is a shape shifter and he chose the form of a mangy raccoon. The burden of proof is on you.

This is the path where I first saw him as he tried to stealthily avoid my notice.

A chameleon like predator, he has the natural ability to blend into his background. Can you see him?

Here’s a close up shot of the beast we’ve nicknamed ‘Chupy’. Notice the cunning look to his eyes.

Andrew Mayne is publisher of WeirdThings.com. His latest book, The Grendel’s Shadow is available for the Kindle at Amazon.com.

Over at his Bottom-up blog (safe for work) Cato scholar and CS PhD candidate Timothy B. Lee makes a case that we’ll *never* be able to copy the human brain in software. He argues that the human brain is too complex and living systems impossible to replicate via mathematics. (I categorize these kinds of articles as the “Sorry nerds, here’s why you’re wrong”, variety.)

While I’d be the first one to point out the futility of arguing whether or not we will or will not be able to do something, I have a little trouble with his arguments (in a later post I’ll offer my own argument as to why it might be a bigger challenge than we realize).

“You can’t emulate a natural system because natural systems don’t have designers, and therefore weren’t built to conform to any particular mathematical model.”

Natural systems like physics and chemistry don’t have designers and we emulate those every day. Our ability to emulate them increase all the time. Starting from the middle ages when we had a very incorrect and non-empiracle view of these things, to today where we’re able to run simulations of what happens inside of atoms and at the point of the big bang.

An airplane wing works a lot like a bird wing in glide and we fly millions of miles everyday on a mechanical emulation of that living system.

Since brains are made of atoms, unless there’s some magical process going on that transcends physics, at some level you should be able to replicate a brain provided you have the right computational power. That computer could even be a jar of neurons (a method I don’t even think Lee considered).

At some point we’ll have computers with a greater number of virtual parts than the human brain. That’s the point that many think we’ll be able to replicate the brain. Knowing what and how to replicate it will be a challenge of course. We’re still figuring out how to make virtual proteins…

Following the graph of computational power over the last decade shows us that we’re nearing a point where the raw power should be possible.

To further make his point, Lee uses weather prediction as an example:

“Weather simulations, for example, are never going to be able to predict precisely where each raindrop will fall, they only predict general large-scale trends, and only for a limited period of time.”

Lee confuses a simulation for a predictive system. I can make a very simple program in just a couple lines of code that will predict with 100% accuracy the probability of a coin toss. It won’t tell you the outcome of a specific coin toss, but its results would be indistinguishable from any particular coin toss and no system could tell the difference between my virtual toss and a real one.

A replicated brain is going to have its own experience from its point of inception and be just as subject to chaos as weather, coins and other brains. It’s going to be no more confined to Newtonian physics than any living system. The fact that it behaves differently than the brain it copied is no more disproof of its utility than the fact that identical twins develop different thought patterns.

He makes his point further by saying that you can’t reduce neurons to transistors. And because they’re different, the difference between a computer and brain is too vast to bridge.

As I mentioned earlier, Lee seems to ignore entirely the premise of just creating a computer out of actual neurons. We can do that to a small degree today. There’s no reason to think that it can’t scale. Obviously a bunch of unstructured neurons are not the same as a living human brain, but the fundamental parts are similar and that’s a good start.

I think the biggest problem Lee has with this is in seeing a computer and a brain as a one-to-one analogy where the aforementioned transistors act as neurons. This of course would not work. A human neuron has way more complexity than a simple logic gate. That plus the other parts of the brain we’re just grasping their function, make it a complex task. Nobody is saying that it isn’t.

What AI researchers and people interested in the Singularity believe is that a living system isn’t irreducibly complex. At some level it’s made of the same kinds of atoms as everything else. And starting from that point you can write software that emulates the function of molecules, proteins and even cells. From there (giving enough computational power) you can replicate living systems. Brains should be no different.

Technological advancement moves in strange ways. It’s often the technologies that come from just outside our mainstream field of vision that change things the most radically.

The properties of semiconductors were well known decades before anybody thought they’d be a great way to shrink vacuum tubes into transistors and then microchips. The implications of a really big network where everybody you know is plugged into it with PCs and mobile devices was a hard concept for anybody to fathom.

I’d like to tell you about a technology on the horizon that could be bigger than anything else we’ve seen before and make possible all sorts of crazy things like Doctor Who-like Tardis boxes that are bigger on the inside, matter replicators and line-of-sight teleportation.

It’s a technology that’s already been proven in small forms in the laboratories and now faces the challenge of finding out if it can scale without ridiculous amounts of energy.

The concept began with a theory by Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein about what happens when matter gets really, really cold. Quantum physics informs us that we can never know the precise position and velocity of a particle. This means the more you know about one, the less you can know about the other. If you slowed down a particle enough and looked at it under some special microscope it would look like a blur. The act of slowing it down means that its exact position has to become literally fuzzy.

In laboratories we can see this fuzziness by creating a Bose-Einstein condensate; a bucket of atoms supercooled to the point that they behave like one uber-atom and quantum effects are magnified. One of the cool applications of this is the atom laser (it’s called a laser even though it’s not made of light).

An atom laser works by using a Bose-Einstein condensate to cool a group of atoms and then using a technique like magnetic fields or an actual laser to propagate (emit) the matter in some kind of beam. In the image you can see what a beam of sodium atoms looks like when emitted from a magnetic trap.

The potential for this is immense. It’s very much in its infancy and hard to tell what will actually become of it, but when you can reliably get matter to behave like light, amazing things are possible.

An awesome particle beam
You could use this to create an incredibly powerful particle beam that would be even more precise than a laser and create smaller microprocessor components and be used to etch out things like nano-scale devices out of solid matter.

Tardis boxes
The fact that you can change matter’s position to such an indeterminate state means that you could theoretically have two particles in the same space. This could allow for matter compression where you could squeeze a large amount of matter into a confined area. Like Doctor Who’s Tardis, this would give a box that’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Keeping molecules and complex structures from falling apart would be very big challenge however.

Teleportation
The ability of a matter laser to “project” beams of atoms means that a form of line-of-sight teleportation is theoretically possible. The image of the atom laser above shows a kind of crude form of that. If you could contain the beam over long distances through some other means or use a matter equivalent of a fiber optic cable, you could shoot atoms at near the speed of light from one point to another. At the receiving end the atoms are returned to a high temperature and reassembled, er somehow (see below).

Matter replicator
A Bose-Einstein condensate also makes interesting chemistry possible. You can cool down two different types of atoms and merge them to create molecules. You could theoretically do the same with an atom laser. Crossing beams could be used to create molecules and maybe even assemble more complex structures and build things out of scratch like the matter replicators on Star Trek.

It’s anybodies guess how far off any of these things are or even if they’ll ever happen in a way that makes it into day to day use. The biggest complications are often the unseen ones after you’ve proven what you thought was the most difficult part. That said, when the first laser was fired off in a laboratory, people could think of only a few applications for what was at that time an unwieldy technology. Decades later we can mass produce lasers for pennies apiece and use them in everything from Blue Ray players, to satellites to key chain toys.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_laser
http://cua.mit.edu/ketterle_group/Animation_folder/Atom_laser.htm

I don’t know how this got by us in 2006, but apparently scientists have finally figured out what makes Rice Krispies snap, crackle and pop. It turns out that the fact that they’re made by frightening little Lebensborn demon elves has nothing to do with it and the crackling sound is *not* the burning cinders of hellfire like we were told by our older brother when we were 8.

There’s a scientific explanation involving science and possibly chemistry. You can read more here and explain it to us in the comments: What Makes Your Cereal Go Snap, Crackle and Pop

Researchers studying nine patients who survived swine flu during the H1N1 pandemic have noticed that they produced a wide range of antibodies that could be used to fight off other strains.

Currently they’re looking to see if they can use this to make a universal vaccine that could fight off any type of influenza – even the ones we’re most concerned about here on Weird Things:

We’ll keep our fingers crossed and hope it doesn’t give us an immunity to the bad-ass day walker virus.

BBC News

Weighing in at over 6 billion times the mass of our solar system, astronomers have found the most massive black hole yet at the center of galaxy M87. Three times large than Pluto’s orbit, it’s very, very big.

Not to be outdone, chubby loving astronomers have their eyes on one that may even be even bigger than that one at 19 billion times the mass of our solar system. Woop woop.

Astronomers calculate mass of largest black hole yet

Over at CrunchGear they have a nice overview of why Minecraft matters. For the uninitiated, Minecraft is a fun sandbox game that lets you build things out of virtual blocks. The blocks have different properties and can be made into materials like glass. Think of it as the Matrix meets Legos. The game is hugely popular and shows how much we like to build and create. Some folks have gone as far as making deck by deck replicas of the starship Enterprise and actual working mechanical computers. Think about that one for a second.

One of the fascinating premises of movies like Tron and the Matrix is the idea of a computer powerful enough to simulate life itself. Although some process (like protein functions) are way beyond our current capabilities, replicating them virtually is an engineering problem and not an insurmountable scientific one. Sooner or later we’re going to see a research paper about a virtual bacteria that behaves precisely like its real world counterpart. From there it’s all a matter of scale before we’re creating virtual Olivia Wilde’s that have cellular chemistry every bit as complex as our own.

Aside from creating super intelligent AI, imagine if you took the 100 smartest people in the world and made virtual versions of them – and then you overclocked the computer. You’d be able to compress 100 years of scientific discovery into minutes. This is why concepts like the singularity give people the willies. It means that all those things we think of as being 1,000 years off in the future could be really just weeks away once you reach a certain level of computational ability.

Games like Minecraft and Sim City are the starting point to a very interesting journey. I hope we’re part of it.

A brief explanation of why Minecraft matters
Building mega objects in Minecraft

So a new research paper has come out and told us what Hollywood has been telling us for years; if we meet aliens they’re most likely going to act like 16th century conquistadors and take our resources and annihilate us in the process. Similar to Stephen Hawking’s dire warning it says contact would spell doom for us all. Space.com

The rational is that since that’s what we did in the past to other other civilizations, that’s what an advanced civilization will do to us.

There are some very serious flaws with this argument. Let’s take a look at a few of them:

1. Our galaxy is a really, really big place
The argument claims that aliens would come to earth and take our minerals and such. Why? Current estimates put the total number of planets in our galaxy in the hundreds of billions – maybe even the trillions if you count planetoids. Even if we assume an absurdly highly number of them have intelligent life, that leaves millions of planets to exploit for minerals and other resources.

The galaxy is not a bigger version of the earth. In the 15th century humans lived on every habitable continent. There was no place you could go for resources except Antarctica that didn’t have people living on it. Trying to exploit any place for resources meant that you were likely to come up against indigenous populations.

In a really big galaxy, there’s no reason to upset the locals unless that’s what you want to do.

2. Energy
Space is big. The distance between solar systems is huge. If you have some kind of technology that can easily bridge this gap or lesson the amount of energy you need to travel between stars, earth’s resources are going to look pathetic in comparison. Seriously, are we worried they’re coming here to steal our coal to fuel their space ships?

3. Comparative Advantage
Any sufficiently advanced species should have a grasp of economics. Like us, they may not always heed what they’ve learned, but if they’re flying about space they probably have a better grasp on prosperity than we do. If they’re profit motivated it would be the best possible news for us.

One of the most important principles of economics is comparative advantage. It basically means this; If you have two parties unevenly matched in skill and productivity, it’s always advantageous for both for the more skilled and productive party to let the lessor skilled party focus on production of whatever the first party is least efficient at – even if it’s more efficient than the second party.

An example would be Apple. By focusing all of its energies on designing iPhones and allowing a less-skilled party to make the iPhone, Apple increases its productivity and profit. The less-skilled party benefits by making the product. Both gain. If Apple focused all its resources on designing and making the iPhone they’d make less overall because it’s unable to maximize what it’s most efficient at.

In our alien contact scenario we’re the unskilled, inefficient party. Despite this, we still have value we can bring to a superior civilization. That value may be in providing services, cheap labor or producing reality television. Whatever it may be, the most valuable thing we can offer isn’t our resources, but 7 billion individuals with varying degrees of creativity and ingenuity. Comparative Advantage

However…
If they’re a bunch of religious zealots who abandoned everything they learned that gave them prosperity or secular zealots with no regard for the concept of individuality, we’re screwed.

So Justin Robert Young and I have been scoping out murder scenes, ancient burial grounds and sites of all out massacres in research for our Weird Things Live project (where we investigate paranormal phenomena in front of a live internet audience). On a recent moonlit night standing in the middle of a mass killing field I had an epiphany. What are we going to do when we make contact with some kind of demonic spirit that may have caused people to go on murderous rampages and infect the scene with some kind of contagious inter-dimensional gloom? We need protocols and stuff.

Sure, we’re skeptics and we don’t actually believe in ghosts and spirits, but to be scientific about it, we have to accept the possibility that our premise could be wrong and this stuff is pure concentrated wickedness. We have a moral imperative to do something when we come face to face with wicked evil supernatural forces. So I decided to develop a plan and protocol for capturing and containing all that evil we’re going to encounter for your entertainment pleasure. I’ll describe our method for the capturing process in a later post. Here I’ll describe how we plan to contain it for transport and permanent confinement.

Level 1: Ghosts aren’t real Our first level of protection is based upon the virtual scientific fact that ghosts aren’t real. While we’re confident this should protect us and you, it’s only our first defense.

Level 2: Physical confinement We’re going to use airtight glass jars to physically contain the malevolent spirits. If there is some unknown physical property to dark spirits (like some kind of intelligent airborne bacteria) this should help confine them inside a physical medium.

Level 3: Sacred ground Inside each jar we plan on putting dirt from some kind of sacred holy ground where spirits are able to chill out peacefully. Our plan is that this should contain the spirit long enough to transport it to our final containment area.

Level 4: Sacred seal Using the Egyptians as a guide, we’re going to seal the jar with some kind of inscription designed to keep evil spirits inside. As we know from movies, breaking sacred seals are a bad thing, so we’re going to get some and put them on our jars. So don’t break them.

Level 5: Super Evil Super Max We’ve staked out a couple of remote plots of land located near burial grounds. We plan to bury these jars of tortured souls in this resting spot that will then be festooned with a variety of religious artifacts. We plan on bringing in some kind of Holy Man (under blindfold) to consecrate the grounds. We also plan on creating a ring of powder and pouring holy water everywhere.

That’s just the starting point. Your suggestions are welcome. Our goal is to keep adding to our final resting spot of evil as we capture more spirits. For it to work we’re going to have to keep the actual location a very closely held secret. We don’t want some interlopers to stumble in there and unleash what may be the greatest concentration of evil ever.

If this sounds silly to you, ask yourself this: Would you want these jars filled with the presumed spirits of serial killers and maniacs under your bed at night? When asked if they’d briefly wear a sweater that belonged to a serial killer (dry cleaned no less) most people flat out refuse. I’m sure they’d be even less happy to have our jars buried in their garden.

Tracking down rumors of a “Spider Forest” in our own South Florida backyard, Weird Things editor Justin Robert Young and myself found ourselves ambushed whereupon Mr. Young was savagely attacked by a spider.  With Mr. Young locked in mortal combat with the beast, it was all I could do to shout encouragement and reach for my iPhone to try to capture the epic battle.  The climax of which is embedded below (Warning: not for the feint of heart).

As soon as we set foot in the forest we got the sense of foreboding that WE DID NOT BELONG THERE.  It wasn’t just the impossible number of spider webs and spiders that covered nearly every square foot of the forest, it was the sense that all of the webs were interconnected into one giant web that we had haplessly found ourselves walking into.  Every footstep into the forest sent a silent vibration on to the meta web letting the spiders know that prey had been ensnared.  A million eyes were upon us…

The deeper we went the darker it became as the foliage began to turn the forest into an arboreal cave.  The other animals one might find in the forest were deathly silent.  They were there to be sure, but moved around with a gallows quietness.  Further in it became apparent that we had stepped into a labyrinth from which we may never emerge.

In the black heart of the forest the attack occurred under most peculiar circumstances.  I was trailblazing and using my height to boldly knock down any webs that would impede our safe passage.  As I scouted ahead I heard a shout from behind.  I turned to see Justin punching into the air in a desperate attempt to defend himself from the vicious beast that was trying to devour him.

The spider moved too quickly to get an accurate description, but it was easily as large as my open hand.  I helplessly watched as the spider flew around Justin using its web to trap him.  No sooner would Justin try to swat at it then would the spider swing to the other side.  It became immediately apparent what the spider’s strategy was; like a great white shark or a crocodile that uses a victim’s thrashing to ensnare them deeper into their jaws, this cunning creature was using Justin’s furious energy to wrap him into its web so tightly there would be no escape and the spider could drain him of his vital life fluids at its leisure.

With the image of a comatose Mr. Young searing into my mind’s eye, knowing the spider’s devious intent to use its victims vain attempts to free himself against him, I knew I had but one solution: Render the panicked Justin Robert Young unconscious lest he trap himself so surely in the creature’s web the only escape would be through the shedding of his mortal coil.

I tried to plan the quickest and most humane strike.  A Ju-Jitsu punch to the head?  A Mui-Tai kick to the chest to knock the wind from his lungs, making him take pause?  All of this made complicated by my admittedly encyclopedic knowledge of martial arts techniques.  Had I wanted to kill my target the choice would have been immediately and the results deadly.  In this instance I deliberated for too long.  For this I apologize to Mr. Young.  My hesitation in striking him unconscious could have cost him is life.  A life I’m no doubt certain he would gladly sacrifice in the service of Weird Things, but a life stricken down too soon no less.

Instinctively pulling my iPhone from my pocket to capture this conflict, the spider suddenly changed its tactics.  It became clear that it had not been aware of my presence.  This is not an uncommon occurrence.  It’s been said that I have a preternaturally stealthy manner not unlike those invisible masters of Ninjitsu.  Some of this is second nature to me, part of it is due to training I received in certain places from people to whom I have sworn secrecy.  Once the spider sensed that I was there and all eight of its cruel eyes were locked on me its attack became a retreat.  In the presence of a greater predator it knew this battle could not be won.  For sure his plan to incapacitate Mr. Young was almost complete, but the moment I materialized into view it knew its hope of devouring Mr. Young unmolested was lost.

As quickly as it appeared, the spider faded back into the forest.  I had to resist every urge to leap off the trail chase after it and kill the beast out of loyalty to my friend, but vengeance had to be put on hold to make sure that Mr. Young was indeed okay.  As we made sure that he hadn’t been bitten and injected with some deadly venom, I realized that chasing after the creature would have been a very bad idea.  Its retreat could have been a ploy to separate the two of us to divide our efforts to defend ourselves.  My bloodlust impulse to seek out the foul creature and drive my fists into it carapace had to be abated.  Now was the time for logic and reason.

We hastily made our exit.

In retrospect we are left with several questions.  Since I was in the advance we know that the spider was laying in wait to attack.  There was no web for Mr. Young to step into.  Was this attack a genuine attempt?  Or was it a feint to test our defenses?  While my catlike ability to prowl unobserved may explain why the spider didn’t sense me and attack, it still doesn’t confidently explain why I wasn’t attacked at any point even though I was in the lead throughout the expedition.

I suspect the ambush was the forest as a whole trying to find out if it could pick off our party one by one from the rear until we were all ensnared.  Unsure of our who or what we were, it sacrificed one spider to find out.  I cannot say for sure what it made of us.  Clearly it saw Mr. Young as prey.  As for myself, I have no idea if it saw me as prey or predator.  I do know that I am happy that we escaped with our lives intact.  And next time, and there will be a next time, we will step into the forest more aware of its treachery and have perhaps some of our own to offer up in response.

In the meantime, although Mr. Young seemed unscathed beyond physical exhaustion from the ordeal, psychological speaking it was quite traumatic.  I know he would appreciate your well wishes to a speedy mental recovery.  Please let him know in the comments below that your thoughts are with him.

As we prepare for tomorrow’s live hunt for what is known as the “Night Creeper”, we thought we’d share with you some photos from a recent reconnaissance of the area. Our first nighttime recon resulted in Justin and I getting stopped by the police FYI. It appears we’re not the only ones paying attention to the weird reports coming from the area.

What stood out most to us is the fact that this area forms a triangle with two other hotspots of unusual activity and they both have large bodies of water nearby that lead straight to the Everglades – a wild environment filled with cryptid and unusual phenomena.

On Monday night’s live show (9PM EST) we plan to go into a tunnel that’s the main access point between the wetlands and the area of interest. We’re not assuming it’s a cryptid or some other creature that’s been sighted. We just find it very interesting.

During our daylight investigation we found signs that something was living underneath there or at least spent some time there. The above photo shows a very large fish head that was dragged 10 feet above the bank into a dark corner. A raccoon or Gollum? We hope to find out.

Deep in the Amazon researchers are exploring the remnants of a city that dates back to 200 AD. Little is known about the inhabitants and some speculate that this could have been the source of the rumors of El Dorado. Click through for the video. Scientific American

The always provocative h+ magazine surveyed the experts at the Artificial General Intelligence Conference to get a grasp of when they though machines would get really smart.

The results are very interesting:

While the median guess is the 2020′s, some are saying we won’t see any robo super geniuses for a century or more. While we can appreciate their optimism in the delay of our demise, it feels a little bit like surveys of physicists in the 1920′s about the use of atomic energy as a weapon. That was considered a far off thing too…

How Long Till Human-Level AI?

Researcher Masahiro Hotta at Tohoku University has developed a framework by which it could be possible to teleport energy vast distances. The implications for this are pretty amazing. Could we use this to power deep space missions? Teleport power from the sun? Build a Death Star? One can dream.

He gives the example of a string of entangled ions oscillating back and forth in an electric field trap, a bit like Newton’s balls. Measuring the state of the first ion injects energy into the system in the form of a phonon, a quantum of oscillation. Hotta says that performing the right kind of measurement on the last ion extracts this energy. Since this can be done at the speed of light (in principle), the phonon doesn’t travel across the intermediate ions so there is no heating of these ions. The energy has been transmitted without traveling across the intervening space. That’s teleportation.

link: Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy

What’s more awesome than a giant ancient crocodile? A really giant snake that ate it for lunch.

A 60-million-year-old relative of crocodiles described recently by University of Florida researchers in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology was likely a food source for Titanoboa, the largest snake the world has ever known.

link: Ancient crocodile relative likely food source for Titanoboa, largest snake ever known

Prolific Weird Things scribe Matt just posted his criticism of Avatar’s bioelectric network premise. Basically he feels that director James Cameron is trying to make it a parable of earth and our resource use – and that it’s an unfair comparison because Pandora has all sorts of nifty features like consciousness uploading that we don’t. I disagree.

The bioelectric network Matt takes exception to was just one example that Cameron was using to make a much more important point.

While on the surface Avatar seems to be have a hippy “save the rain forest” tone, it’s a lot deeper than that and has a scientific and ecological world view even a libertarian could agree with.

Resource use is a complicated issue. Cameron was trying to point out that we often don’t see the real value of the things in front of us. And he wasn’t suggesting the value of Pandora was the Na’vi’s religious beliefs – they didn’t seem to have any. A point the movie touched on a little and the accompanying Avatar field guide went into in great detail was all of the scientific knowledge of Pandora. Disease and starvation were problems facing Earth of 2154 and Pandora had solutions for that, but the government enforced monopoly of RDA (the company that runs things on Pandora) had no interest in shaking up the status quo. When the government won’t allow any competition, why change things? They had no interest in curing the problems of Earth using newly discovered Pandora science because as long as Earth was in a crisis the government backed their monopoly.

On present day Earth the difference between poor countries and rich countries has very little to do with natural resources. The countries with the highest GDPs are the ones that export information technologies and have a scientifically literate population. If your wealth comes from just pulling things out of the ground, you’ll eventually run into trouble when you don’t have anything more to pull out of the ground. Making matters worse, because your entire industry is tied up in what’s basically unskilled labor, you never develop schools and training that put you on a forward path.

Pandora, like Earth, is filled with incredible scientific knowledge with practical applications on Earth. The message of the movie was that the RDA was ignoring that because the could only see the value of one resource. Like an American car company or 90′s OS maker, they had no vision of the future other than their own.

The greatest wealth of the 21st century is probably going to come from biotech. Fuel, food, medicine and materials are going to come from us exploiting genes of various life forms on our planet. Scientist-entrepreneurs like Craig Venter are collecting vast databases of all the genetic information on our planet so they can engineer microbes that can turn CO2 into fuel or create new medicines. This is made possible by studying how life on Earth functions and then using what we’ve learned to create new technologies.

The moral of Avatar is that the greatest resource is knowledge – scientific knowledge. If the RDA saw the wealth that was around them besides the mineral they were after they would be even richer and life on Earth would be much better. The best capitalists are the ones that look to the future. Cameron, a physics major, explorer and multi-millionaire knows this and his movie reflects this value.

Immortality, plentiful resources and endless energy could happen in the 21st century – as long as we see the world around us and learn how to use its resources wisely.

Florida is under attack from giant snakes. If that’s not bad enough, in a turn fit for the SyFy channel, authorities now worry that different breeds of python may be merging together into some new kind of “super snake”. From the Sun-Sentinel:

…state environmental officials worry that the rock python could breed with the Burmese python, which already has an established foothold in the Everglades. That could lead to a new “super snake,”…

The rock python, native to Africa is know for eating crocodiles and even children. If it breeds with the more common Burmese python, the hybrid could end up being even meaner and larger than either individual species.

The semi-good news is that the cold weather is bringing them out into the open and killing a few off. The bad news is that we might be left with really hardy snakes seeking out warm places. Did we mention that Weird Things HQ is located in Florida right off a canal?

link: Pythons in Everglades: African rock pythons add to worries about snakes in Everglades – South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

According to some scientists at the Daily Mail, the answer is yes. A long term global warming trend due to CO2 emissions doesn’t preclude the possibility of nature deciding to flip the bit at least for a few decades and make things cooler.

Even though United States and other parts of the world are experiencing record cold temperatures, climate scientists are quick to point out (and rightly so), that doesn’t change the fact that CO2 absorbs infrared energy that would normally bounce back into space and that we’re producing a lot more CO2 than ever. The big question is how much does this CO2 contribute to global temperatures and how much warming is due to other natural factors?

The debate gets sticky when people claim it’s either one or the other. Professor Mojib Latif, a UN scientists and leading member of the IPCC is a global warming scientist who fully accepts that CO2 is a contributing factor to climate change – but questions how much. Global warming proponents are critical of him for suggesting that not all temperature increase is due to man made CO2. Global warming deniers (not the same as skeptics) are upset that he still believes CO2 is a contributing factor.

His data is based upon the role the oceans play in contributing to global temperatures. He attributes the latest cooling trend to ‘multi-decadal oscillations’ (MDOs). He called the current cooling temps back in 2008. His research goes on to indicate that we could be in for a several decade long mini ice age before things get warmer again thanks to nature and man-made CO2.

If this is the case, then there’s an argument to be made that we should be thankful of all the CO2 we put in the atmosphere, because the winters are going to be milder than they would have had we miraculously stopped producing CO2 in the 1990′s.

The more we study climate, the weirder it gets. A recent study mentioned here at Weird Things a few weeks ago pointed out that core sample data indicates that historical temperature changes can come a lot faster than previously thought. Frequent mini ice ages may be the norm. You can read the Live Science article here: Big Freeze: Earth Could Plunge into Sudden Ice Age

The Daily Mail: The Mini Ice Age Starts Here

Discover Magazine has a very intriguing story: In 1913 two farmers uncovered a skull in South Africa that still has paleontologists scratching their heads. The so-called Boskop Man was first thought to be a distinct genus while some argued he’s a variation of anatomically modern humans.

What made Boskop Man unique and the the other similar skulls found like him is that his brain was much, much larger then ours in relation to ours. Based on what we can infer about brain size between species, his (and her) larger brains and neocortex suggest this ancient race of man was way smarter than us. How much smarter?

In a classroom with 35 big-headed, baby-faced Boskop kids, you would likely encounter five or six with IQ scores at the upper range of what has ever been recorded in human history. The Boskops coexisted with our Homo sapiens forebears. Just as we see the ancient Homo erectus as a savage primitive, Boskop may have viewed us in somewhat the same way.

Boskop Man is believed to have lived between 30,000 to 10,000 years ago. Why this super-genius vanished is a mystery. The Discover Magazine article postulates some interesting theories, but no concrete leads. One potential scenario is that he just blended in with the rest of us as a wise uncle:

At his new dig site, FitzSimons came across a remarkable piece of construction. The site had been at one time a communal living center, perhaps tens of thousands of years ago. There were many collected rocks, leftover bones, and some casually interred skeletons of normal-looking humans. But to one side of the site, in a clearing, was a single, carefully constructed tomb, built for a single occupant—perhaps the tomb of a leader or of a revered wise man. His remains had been positioned to face the rising sun. In repose, he appeared unremarkable in every regard…except for a giant skull.

Maybe they just leap-frogged us altogether?

link: What Happened to the Hominids Who Were Smarter Than Us? | Human Evolution | DISCOVER Magazine

link: Boskop Man – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

After the discovery of Neptune in 1846 astronomers began to wonder if there were other planets beyond its orbit. The discovery of Pluto (now not a planet) seemed to answer the question, but others wondered if even further out a larger earth-sized object could be waiting to be discovered.

Space.com has a fascinating claim made by a planetary scientist, Alan Stern at the Southwest Research Institute:

“When the solar system’s story is finally written, it’s much more likely that it will have closer to 900 planets rather than the nine that we grew up with.”

900 planets? How could that be possible? Anything Earth or Mars-sized in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune would be visible; but beyond the Kuiper Belt is the Oort Cloud:

Brown and Stern say that the Oort Cloud represents a more likely prospect for worlds the size of Mars or Earth. The Oort Cloud surrounds our solar system with billions of icy bodies at distances as far out as 50,000 times the distance between the sun and Earth.

Now these planets are likely to be colder than Hoth, but who knows what we could do with some extreme terraforming…

link: Earth-Sized World Could Lurk in Outer Solar System – Yahoo! News

Sphere.com reports that the Pentagon has launched a program called Transformer X with the intent of developing flying cars for the battlefield. Awesome.

The objective of the Transformer (TX) program is to demonstrate a one- to four-person transportation vehicle that can drive and fly, thus enabling the warfighter to avoid water, difficult terrain, and road obstructions as well as IED and ambush threats

Everyone is well aware of the promise of flying cars and the fact that they still aren’t here. While investment schemes like the Moller Flying Car seemed only able to produce tantalizing proof of concept videos, there’s reason to hope that we may actually see real honest to goodness flying cars after all. Carbon composites have made it possible to make extremely lightweight airframes. New engine technologies have made engines far more powerful and lightweight. And computing has advanced far enough to solve the balance problem faced by very early designs.

So lets hope that billions of our tax dollars get this one right and maybe Elon Musk can bring it to market for the rest of us.

link: Pentagon’s Transformer Programs Aims to Build Flying Car – Sphere News

Natalie Angier at the New York Times has an interesting article that suggest if your goal in life is to avoid eating other sensitive, feeling communal creatures, going vegan isn’t enough. According to plant biologists, our leafy friends experience a world of sensation and try to avoid pain – a hallmark for many of what you should and shouldn’t eat:

Just because we humans can’t hear them doesn’t mean plants don’t howl. Some of the compounds that plants generate in response to insect mastication — their feedback, you might say — are volatile chemicals that serve as cries for help.

This is why we should eat as many cows as possible. A cow eats millions of blades of grass, each one a soulful howling poet, and this genocide must be stopped, one juicy delicious steak at a time…

link: Basics – Another Challenge for Ethical Eating – Plants Want to Live, Too – NYTimes.com

In the latest Scientific American theoretical physicists Alejandro Jenkins and Gilad Perez speculate that there might be a greater chance of life developing in other universes with different physical laws and that our own may not be as finely tuned as once thought.

Our recent studies, however, suggest that some of these other universes—assuming they exist—may not be so inhospitable after all. Remarkably, we have found examples of alternative values of the fundamental constants, and thus of alternative sets of physical laws, that might still lead to very interesting worlds and perhaps to life. The basic idea is to change one aspect of the laws of nature and then make compensatory changes to other aspects.

For example, if life really is possible in a weakless universe, then why does our own universe have a weak force at all? In fact, particle physicists consider the weak force in our universe to be, in a sense, not weak enough. Its observed value seems unnaturally strong within the Standard Model. (The leading explanation for this mystery requires the existence of new particles and forces that physicists hope to discover at the newly opened Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva.)

The Voynich manuscript, a mysterious medieval document that has confounded the best cryptographers for centuries may finally have been cracked.

A researcher studying the manuscript suggests that the secret coding may be anagrams created by a young Leonardo da Vinci? Does it sound far fetched? We’ll have to ask Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon…

Read: Voynich manuscript decoded?

Wikipedia

Gizmodo reports that the brains at MIT have decided to take a new direction for creating Artificial Intelligence. They’ve thrown out some age old assumptions and are considering new alternatives to concepts line the Turing Test.

We’re glad somebody decided it was time to bring Skynet online sooner than later. We don’t want to be in the geriatric ward when it’s time to fight the machines.

Gizmodo

LiveScience is reporting that the latest core sample data gives more credibility to the scientifically challenged sci-fi movie The Day After Tomorrow‘s rapid freezing scenario. Except we suspect they didn’t actually see the movie because the rapid freezing scenario there was literally a wall of freeze that hits you like a beam from Mr. Freeze’s freeze gun.

Anyhow, the latest data supports the idea that rapid melting could lead to rapid cooling in the Northern Hemisphere.

Starting roughly 12,800 years ago, the Northern Hemisphere was gripped by a chill that lasted some 1,300 years. Known by scientists as the Younger Dryas and nicknamed the “Big Freeze,” geological evidence suggests it was brought on when a vast pulse of fresh water – a greater volume than all of North America’s Great Lakes combined – poured into the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.

For a different reference to what a rapidly frozen world could be like we suggest the Paul Newman film Quintet.

link: Big Freeze: Earth Could Plunge into Sudden Ice Age – Yahoo! News

According to Spaceflight Now, NASA researchers are about to release new evidence that a Martian meteorite shows evidence for life. The research team originally announced the discovery of the meteorite back in 1996. There was a lot of controversy over what exactly they found. Critics pointed out that the kind of bacterial fossil they claimed to have found was far smaller than any terrestrial example and may have been a product of geology. But the science hasn’t stopped:

Now, 13 years after the Martian meteorite life story emerged, the science team finally feels vindicated. Their data shows the meteorite is no smoking gun but is full of evidence that supports the existence of life on the surface of Mars, or in subsurface water pools, early in the planet’s history.

link: Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Martian meteorite surrenders new secrets of possible life

Here’s Wikipedia’s article on the meteorite:

On August 6, 1996[4] ALH 84001 became newsworthy when it was announced that the meteorite may contain evidence for traces of life from Mars, as published in an article in Science by David McKay of NASA.

The electron microscope revealed chain structures in meteorite fragment ALH84001 Under the scanning electron microscope structures were revealed that may be the remains—in the form of fossils—of bacteria-like lifeforms. The structures found on ALH 84001 are 20-100 nanometres in diameter, similar in size to the theoretical nanobacteria, but smaller than any known cellular life at the time of their discovery. If the structures are really fossilized lifeforms, they would be the first solid evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life, aside from the chance of their origin being terrestrial contamination.

link: Allan Hills 84001 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Is the story finally over for the Kecksburg UFO case? A lawsuit against NASA and an attempt to use the Freedom of Information Act has left UFO researchers as frustrated as ever. Check out the story on Space.com: SPACE.com — Is Case Finally Closed on 1965 Pennsylvania ‘UFO Mystery’?

From Wikipedia:

The Kecksburg UFO incident occurred on December 9, 1965 at Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, USA. A large, brilliant fireball was seen by thousands in at least six U.S. states and Ontario, Canada. It streaked over the Detroit, Michigan/Windsor, Ontario area, reportedly dropped hot metal debris over Michigan and northern Ohio, starting some grass fires, and caused sonic booms in western Pennsylvania. It was generally assumed and reported by the press to be a meteor.

link: Kecksburg UFO incident – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

According to NewScientist, Researchers examining the data from 1000 galaxy clusters streaming in one direction are puzzled by what is causing this. One interpretation of the data suggests that we’re looking at the effect of a neighboring universe on our own.

There could be an exotic explanation. Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, thinks the flow is a sign of a neighbouring universe. If the tiny patch of vacuum that inflated to become our universe was quantum entangled with other pieces of vacuum – other universes – they could have exerted a force from beyond the present-day visible horizon.

Would this Universe have the same physical laws as our own? Is it some weird mirror universe where a mirror version of you is reading a blog called Normal Things right now? We must investigate…

link: Mystery ‘dark flow’ extends towards edge of universe – space – 16 November 2009 – New Scientist

From the always reliable Pravda we get strange accounts of “black archeologists” (tomb raiders) who encountered some strange phenomena digging up World War II era graves

In 1997, a group of six people headed to Luban in the Leningradsky region, where the ruins of Makaryevsky monastery destroyed during the war rest amidst the swamps. Nearing the ruins, the group noticed bonfire flames. They were shocked to find out that the bonfire was hanging right in the air. As soon as they approached the ruins, the bonfire disappeared.

This would seem like a warning to any rational person…

“We excavated the bodies of six Russian and 11 German soldiers, four of which were Wehrmacht soldiers in a swamp trench shelter. We cut the logs and discovered decomposed German boots with bones sticking out. Then we began a more careful excavation, and found pelvic bones, a spine, and ribs. Little by little we dug out remnants of four people. It was getting dark. We left the skeletons at the trench and camped out on a meadow about 200 yards away.

This lead to more strange occurrences including hearing German music and laughter and finding fresh tank treads in the morning.

We have no idea what they were thinking. Digging up Nazi graves only equals one thing: Zombie Nazis. That’s a proven fact.

link: Tomb Raiders Digging WWII Graves Witness Inexplicable Phenomena – Pravda.Ru

The following report from over 100 years ago purports to be the first documented encounter between man and alien. It seems the aliens made a gross misjudgment in how much carry-on baggage they were allowed and were unable to take a human souvenir.

Reported by the “Stockton Evening Mail” November 25th, 1896.

THREE STRANGE BEINGS

“Were it not for the fact that I was not alone when I witnessed the strange sight I would never have mentioned it at all. Wednesday afternoon I went out to Lodi and Lockeford in company with Camille Spooner, a young man recently arrived from Nevada. I went to the places mentioned in quest of material to form an exhibit to represent this county at the Fresno Citrus Fair. We left Lodi on the return trip, I should judge, shortly before 6 o’clock, and we were jogging along quietly when the horse stopped suddenly and gave a snort of terror.”

“Looking up we beheld three strange beings. They resembled humans in many respects, but still they were not like anything I had ever seen. They were nearly or quite seven feet high and very slender. We were both somewhat startled, as you may readily imagine, and the first impulse was to drive on. The horse, however, refused to budge, and when we saw that we were being regarded more with an air of curiosity than anything else, we concluded to get out and investigate. I walked up to where the strange looking persons were and addressed them. I asked where they were from. They seemed not to understand me, but began – well, “warbling” expresses it better than talking. Their remarks, if such you would call them, were addressed to each other, and sounded like a monotonous chant, inclined to be guttural. I saw it was no use to attempt a conversation, so I satisfied myself with watching and examining them. They seemed to take great interest in ourselves, the horse and buggy, and scrutinized everything very carefully.”

WEIGHED LESS THAN AN OUNCE EACH

“While they were thus engaged I was enabled to inspect them as well. As I have already stated, they were seven feet in height and very slender. I noticed, further, that their hands were quite small and delicate, and that their fingers were without nails. Their feet, however, were nearly twice as long as those of an ordinary man, though they were narrow, and the toes were also long and slender. I noticed, too, that they were able to use their feet and toes much the same as a monkey; in fact, they appeared to have much better use of their feet than their hands. I presently discovered that this was probably a provision of nature. As one of then came close to me I reached out to touch him, and placing my hand under his elbow pressed gently upward, and lo and behold I lifted him from the ground with scarcely an effort. I should judge that the specific gravity of the creature was less than an ounce. It was then that I observed him try to grasp the earth with his toes to prevent my lifting him. You can readily understand that their slight weight made such a provision necessary, or they might be blown away.”

“They were without any sort of clothing, but were covered with a natural growth hard to describe; it was not hair, neither was it like feathers, but it was as soft as silk to the touch, and their skin was like velvet. Their faces and heads were without hair, the ears were very small, and the nose had the appearance of polished ivory, while the eyes were large and lustrous. The mouth, however, was small, and it seemed to me that they were without teeth. That and other things led me to believe that they neither ate nor drank, and that life was sustained by some sort of gas. Each of them had swung under the left arm a bag to which was attached a nozzle, and every little while one or the other would place the nozzle on his mouth, at which time I heard a sound of escaping gas. It was much the same sound as is produced by a person blowing up a football.”

OF INDESCRIBABLE BEAUTY

“From the description I give I do not want you to get the idea that these creatures were hideous. In appearance they were markedly the contrary. They were possessed of a strange and indescribable beauty. I can express myself in no other way. They were graceful to a degree, and more divinely beautiful than anything I ever beheld.”

“The strangest part of the story is yet to come. It is the lights they carried. Each held to his hand something about the size of a hen’s egg. Upon holding them up and partly opening the hand, these substances emitted the most remarkable, intense and penetrating light one can imagine. Notwithstanding its intensity it had no unpleasant effect upon our eyes, and we found we could gaze directly at it. It seemed to me to be some sort of luminous mineral, though they had complete control of it.”

“Finally they became tired of examining us and our horse and buggy, and then one of them, at a signal from one who appeared to be the leader, attempted to lift me, probably with the intention of carrying me away. Although I made not the slightest resistance he could not move me, and finally the three of them tried it without the slightest success. They appeared to have no muscular power outside of being able to move their own limbs.”

STRANGE AIRSHIP

“Well, after trying in vain to move either of us they turned in the direction of the Woodbridge canal, near which we were, and as they flashed their lights towards the bridge we beheld a startling sight. There, resting in the air about twenty feet above the water, was an immense airship. It was 150 feet in length at least, though probably not over twenty feet in diameter at the widest part. It was pointed at both ends, and outside of a large rudder there was no visible machinery. The three walked rapidly toward the ship, not as you or I walk, but with a swaying motion, their feet only touching the ground at intervals of about fifteen feet. We followed them as rapidly as possible, and reached the bridge as they were about to embark. With a little spring they rose to the machine, opened a door in the side, and disappeared within. I do not know of what the affair was built, but just before it started I struck it with a rock and it gave no sound. It went through the air very rapidly and expanded and contracted with a muscular motion, and was soon out of sight.”

“I have a theory, which, of course, is only a theory, that those we beheld were inhabitants of Mars, who haw been sent to the earth for the purpose of securing one of its inhabitants. I feel safe in asserting that the stories being told by certain San Francisco attorneys are clumsy fakes, and should not be given credence by anyone.”

-Colonel H.G. Shaw. Lodi California.

According to ScienceNews, lightning isn’t just for powering your time traveling Delorean. Using the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, scientists were able to detect the signature of the production of anti-matter particles in gamma ray emissions from lightning flashes.

During its first 14 months of operation, the flying observatory has detected 17 gamma-ray flashes associated with terrestrial storms — and some of those flashes have contained a surprising signature of antimatter.

This of course lends even more credibility to the hypothesis that lightning can be as useful of a way to obtain super powers as cosmic rays. The presence of gamma rays and antimatter particles makes them both good options. We hope Marvel Comics can take some time off from overdoing their zombie premise to write a Fantastic Four series with Ben Franklin as Reed Richards.

link: Signature Of Antimatter Detected In Lightning / Science News

In Michael Crichton’s 1969 novel Andromeda Strain (and subsequent film and recent TV mini-series) the premise is about an extra-terrestrial microorganism that threatens to wipe humanity off the planet through truly horrific blood clotting. It was an interesting take on the threat from outer space scenario.

So if we earthbound humans have to worry about space organisms turning our blood into dust, what do astronauts on long term space missions have to stress out about? According to a report in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (via PopSci): Earthborn bacteria mutating into killer diseases.

It turns out that bacteria that we’ve evolved pretty good defenses for could overwhelm our immune systems if we’re cooped up together on long term space voyages. So add that to the already growing list of space hazards including radiation, zero-g bone loss, space madness and your holodeck trying to kill you.

Mutant Bacteria Are Likely to Threaten Future Space Travelers | Popular Science

Want to know how our robot overlords are going to implant our circuitry? Silk.

From Popular Science:

…in the quest to make our bodies ever more bionic, researchers have now developed implantable silicon-silk electronics that almost dissolve completely inside the body, leaving behind nanocircuitry that could be used for improved electrical interfaces for nervous system tissues or photonic tattoos that display blood-sugar readouts on the skin’s surface.

When we were fitted with our implants on the alien mothership, it was nothing like this. For starters there was lots of easy listening jazz music and we’re pretty sure they used angora instead of silk.

Check it out: Silk-Silicon Implantable Electronics Conform to Tissues, Then Melt Away | Popular Science

Technology Review: Implantable Silicon-Silk Electronics

Want to meet up with some of the folks behind Weird Things? Plan on being in South Florida on Saturday? Want to pay your respect to Carl Sagan? Meet James Randi, Phil Plait and others?

Then meet us at Carl Sagan day at Broward College this Saturday, November 7th.

Website: Carl Sagan Day

Can’t make it there? We’ll be live streaming it. Details to follow…

In an interesting experiment to see how well terrestrial bacteria might survive on Mars, a group built their own Mars simulator.

From UniverseToday.com:

A team led by Giuseppe Galletta of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Padova simulated the conditions present on Mars, and then introduced several strains of bacteria into the simulator to record their survival rate.

So how did the experiment turn out?

The results – some of the strains of bacteria were shown to survive up to 28 hours under these conditions, an amazing feat given that there is nowhere on the surface of the Earth where the temperatures get this low or the ultraviolet radiation is as strong as on Mars.

We can all discuss this at the upcoming Carl Sagan Day: Carl Sagan Day Saturday November 7th

Bacteria Could Survive in Martian Soil | Universe Today

Originally from Arxiv and here

The crew of the Diasan Shinsho-maru were plunged into the ocean off the coast of Japan when they tried to haul in their net filled dozens of giant jellyfish.

Each of the jellyfish can weigh up to 200 kg and waters around Japan have been inundated with the creatures this year. Experts believe weather and water conditions in the breeding grounds, off the coast of China, have been ideal for the jellyfish in recent months.

Lately the Sea of Japan has been invaded by the giant creatures. Overfishing of their natural predators is one probable cause.

Giant creatures brought on by environmental damage wreaking havoc on Japan; what an interesting story point…

link: Japanese fishing trawler sunk by giant jellyfish – Telegraph

Giant Jellyfish: Arctic Lion’s Mane | Cyanea capillata

After thorough forensic analysis of the remains of the lions featured in the film Ghosts in the Darkness (based in part on the book The Man-eaters of Tsavo – which I kid you not, was bedtime reading in my household growing up), researchers from University of California, Santa Cruz have concluded that the murderous pair of lions only ate 35 people and not the 135 some had reported.

By looking at isotopes in the teeth of the lions (currently on display at the Chicago Field Museum) scientists were able to put together a very detailed picture of the lions eating habits:

The results suggest that during the final months of what John Patterson described as the lions’ “reign of terror,” fully half of one lion’s diet consisted of humans, with the balance made up of mid-sized grazing animals such as gazelles and impala. Strikingly, the other lion ate very few humans, subsisting instead on herbivores. That dietary disparity leads Dominy and Yeakel to infer that the Tsavo lions worked together to scatter everyone, both humans and wild game, setting the stage for one to gorge on humans and the other to feed on herbivores.

While some may say that 35 or 135 is really just detail, especially since the research only shows how many humans the lions *ate* and not just murdered, it’s a fascinating example of how modern science can be used to look at historical accounts.

Reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

UCSU: Legendary “man-eating” lions of Tsavo likely ate about 35 people–not 135, say scientists

Tsavo maneaters – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We’re planning our next podcast and we want you to be a part of it.

What weird thing do you want the “brain trust” to discuss? Just post it in the comments.

The problem with orbs (besides trying not to take a photo with them in a dusty home) is that once you accept the scientific explanation, they become quite boring.

Although they’re readily explained by basic physics and can be easily replicated, some people still hold the idea that orbs are evidence of the paranormal.

MsEVP’s Flickr set shows her interpretations of orbs. She enlarges them several hundreds of times and sees mysterious images inside of them. You be the judge:

Flickr link

Thanks to the wonder of Microsoft’s Synth technology, we can explore haunted cities of the dead from the safety of your own home and avoid any avenging mummy unpleasantness.

Check out this Synth of the Necropolis of Saqqara, an Egyptian burial site dating back to the First Dynasty. (Microsoft Silverlight plugin required.)

link Photosynth – Necropolis of Saqqara

According to an article from the October 1936 issue of Modern Mechanix, invisibility wasn’t just a possibility, it was a reality. The author credulously reports a description of an invisibility ray, but states emphatically that, “This is no illusion done by some magician, no trick of mirrors, it is asserted, but an actual performance of a new device which produces and projects what, for lack of a better name, may be called an ‘invisible ray.’”

Read the description of the potential applications and decide for yourself…

SUPPOSE that out onto a stage come eight chorus girls performing an intricate dance. Gradually something seems to happen, the heads, faces, and upper parts of the bodies of the girls seem to be disappearing. In fact, little by little they do become invisible to the audience until at last only eight pairs of legs are seen gracefully skipping about on the stage in perfect rhythm. You rub your eyes and begin to think you’d better see an oculist right away, but while you are worrying about it, back into your vision come the eight girls, wholly there and dancing gaily as though they had not just given you the shock of a lifetime. Or suppose again that a girl is sitting atop a piano, singing. The piano begins to fade from sight; finally the girl is left sitting in midair, nonchalantly swinging her feet and blithely singing, as though her perch was perfectly substantial.

If you did not think that you were just “seeing things,” right off you’d say, “Some invisible wires, or anyway, a cleverly arranged set of mirrors.” But you would be wrong in your guess. At least so says Mr. Adam Gosztonyi, the inventor of a machine which he claims can accomplish just such disappearing acts as have been described.

For something that’s not a magician’s trick, it’s kind of odd that all of the theoretical applications are theatrical in nature.

At that same time an illusion known as Pepper’s Ghost and the Blue Room was well known to magicians. It did *exactly* the same thing as described in the demonstration and under the same conditions. Check out a YouTube video here of a historic recreation of the effect (two facts: 1. It uses a mirror. 2. I’ve touched it).

In defense of the Modern Mechanix reporter, it’s a really awesome effect.

link: Modern Mechanix Invisibility At Last Within Grasp of Man

In the Michael Crichton book Congo and movie by the same name, he describes a race of super-apes almost on par with man in intelligence. Like much of Crichton’s work, he based this on science speculation. For thousands of years there have been stories of ape-men that fell outside our conventional definitions of humans, gorillas, chimps and orangutan.

In 500 BC, Hanno the Navigator, a Carthaginian explorer described this encounter off the Western coast of Africa:

At the terminus of Hanno’s voyage the explorer found an island heavily populated with what were described as hirsute and savage people. Attempts to capture the males failed, but three of the females were taken. These were so vicious they were killed, and their skins preserved for transport home to Carthage.

The name the intrepreters gave for them was “gorillae”. 2,000 years later explorers would use that word to describe modern day gorillas. But were they gorillas? Hanno described finding these “savage people” in a place far from where gorillas are known to inhabit (the historical version of the story is in Greek and not Hanno’s native Punic, suggesting it’s been repeatedly rewritten). Taking it at face value, it could be that Hanno found an isolated group of gorillas that went extinct. But if it was a distinct population of gorillas on that island, it’s very likely it was a unique species of gorilla with its own behaviors and characteristics (gorillas are now divided into two distinct species with two subspecies each).

By 1847, after the gorilla had been discovered by the West, we had a clearer picture of the major ape species: Humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutan. But since then stories of other species have persisted.

The 19th Century French-American explorer Paul du Chaillu described a species of ape whose behavior doesn’t quite describe what we know about chimpanzees or gorillas.

This ape, whose singular cry distinguishes at once from all its cougeners in these wilds, is remarkable, as bearing a closer resemblance to man than any other ape yet known. It is very rare and I was able to obtain but one specimen of it. The face is bare and black. the forehead is higher than any other ape, and the cranial capacity greater by measurement. The eyes are wider apart than any other ape. The nose is flat. The cheek bones are high and prominent, and the cheek sunken and lank. The sides of the face are covered with a growth of straight hair, which meeting under the chin like the human whiskers, gives the face a remarkably human look. The arms reach below the knee. The ears are very larger, and are more nearly like the human ear than those of other apes.

Saying that it was a “gorilla” or a “chimpanzee” isn’t as helpful of a classification as we might think. Natural history museums are filled with interesting specimens that push the boundaries of gorilla and chimpanzee taxonomy, but are still within those boundaries. A skull and a DNA test can tell us something about how a creature lived, but not the whole picture. A modern day Dane and a pygmy bushmen look about as different as you could imagine, but genetically they’re the same species.

Science encounters a lost race of apes
The idea that of a living chimpanzee or gorilla species with much different physical and behavioral traits (like the gorillas in Congo) got a big boost from the scientific community when credible reports began emerging from the Congo of a large ape that displayed both chimp and gorilla like behavior.

Shelley Williams PhD, a specialist in primate behavior had this encounter with the “Bili Apes” in the Congo: From Wikipedia

“We could hear them in the trees, about 10 m away, and four suddenly came rushing through the brush towards me. If this had been a mock charge they would have been screaming to intimidate us. These guys were quiet, and they were huge. They were coming in for the kill – but as soon as they saw my face they stopped and disappeared.”

Williams continues:

“The unique characteristics they exhibit just don’t fit into the other groups of apes,” says Williams. The apes, she argues, could be a new species unknown to science, a new subspecies of chimpanzee, or a hybrid of the gorilla and the chimp. “At the very least, we have a unique, isolated chimp culture that’s unlike any that’s been studied,”.

Genetically, evidence indicates the Bili Apes are identical with known chimpanzees. But there’s more to physiology and behavior than what’s encoded in the genes. While there are conflicting reports about the physical traits of the Bili Apes, the consensus is that they are larger than common chimps and much bolder.

Presently they are threatened by bush meat hunters and gold miners who are encroaching into their habitat.

Conclusion
With the verification that there is indeed a Bili Ape that has its own distinct behavior and appearance, it’s a reasonable hypothesis that there have been other species and sub-species of chimpanzee and gorilla in historic times with their own particular behavior and physiology that have since gone extinct.

That some of these were smart or closer to humans in behavior is not an unreasonable speculation. Given the friction that exists today between humans in the region and other humans as well as primates, it’s not hard to imagine their extinction being at least human influenced.

So if there was a race of super-apes, chances are we killed them. It’s the Planet of the Apes in reverse…

Bili Ape – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From myth to reality – meet the chimps who eat lions

Welcome to the Weird Things podcast featuring Andrew Mayne, Brian Brushwood and Justin Robert Young.

In this episode we discuss giant snakes, selling your soul to the devil, uploading your memory, a vampire named James Brown and Justin and Brian’s willingness to fly in Andrew’s potentially murderous flying machine.

Story link: Python eats alligator (fail)

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http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings02.mp3

This Halloween Weird Things and the James Randi Educational Foundation will try to make contact with the ghost of Houdini! Details to follow…

iTricks.com Magic News, Magic Videos and Podcasts » Blog Archive » This Halloween: Mayne, Brushwood, Randi & Young Will Attempt To Find Houdini… Will You?

Travelet.com has this fun tourist destination known as Rookund in the Himalayas. It’s a lake filled with skeletons:

Roopkund is better off known as “The skeleton lake” due to the presence of an enormous grave that holds about 300 to 600 skeletons. This discovery has revolutionized the world of ancient history ever since 1942, when a park ranger came across this mass deposition of bones. It probably is an in-accessible frozen lake that requires about four day travel to reach from the nearest locality. Recently, it has become an important spot for the visitors as they learn and conjecture this advent of science.

link: Roopkund – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
link: Roopkund The Mysterious Skeleton Lake | Travelet

Welcome to the first official episode of the Weird Things podcast featuring Andrew Mayne, Brian Brushwood and Justin Robert Young.

In this episode we discuss krakens, killer sharks, Brian’s policy on eugenics and Justin’s homicidal sleepwalking defense.

Story link: Marlin vs. shark video

Subscribe to the Weird Things podcast on iTunes
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http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings01FINAL1.mp3

So how does the story of the first vampire to set foot on American shores begin – like the most frightening episode of Deadliest Catch ever. An excerpt from a New York Time archive article circa 1892:

Twenty-five years ago he was charged with being a vampire and living on human blood. He was a Portuguese sailor, and shipped on a fishing-smack from Boston up the coast in 1867. During this trip two of the crew were missing, and an investigation made. Brown was found one day, in the hold of the ship, sucking the blood from the body of one of the sailors. The other body was found at the same place, and had been served in a similar manner.

It’s a hard life at sea. Even harder with a vampire on your boat.

Newsweek has an interesting article about an ancient monument located in the middle of a golf course in Southern Ohio. Before you get upset about this suburbification of a historic site, it’s important to remember that if they hadn’t put a golf course there, there would be a subdivision there and nothing to see. Newsweek

In fact, the Earthworks have become something of a dwarf star within the golf course’s universe. Carts zip over sacred embankments. A cherished mound doubles as the ninth tee. The Earthworks are a National Historic Landmark, and they are under consideration for the UNESCO World Heritage list of cultural and natural wonders.

Here’s a view from Google Maps:

Getting a little weirder, in 1860 explorers claimed to have found an artifact there with the following Hebrew inscription:

Remarkable Archaeological Discovery in Ohio. – Article Preview – The New York Times

As a rule, child endangerment in the name of science is only fun when it’s the children doing the actual endangerment. In this video three high school students (Max Shepherd, Robert Draper and Brit Garner) build and test their own homemade human powered hovercraft.

If you want to build your own old-fashioned motor powered hovercraft, check this out: Instructables Hovercraft

Need to get your mechanical elephant off your hands? Contact us at Weird Things.

Thanks to Make Magazine for spotting the original YouTube clip.

50 meters off the coast of Laconia in Greece archeologists are mapping the oldest submerged city in the world.

From ScienceDaily:

Possibly one of the most important discoveries has been the identification of what could be a megaron — a large rectangular great hall — from the Early Bronze Age period. They have also found over 150 metres of new buildings including what could be the first example of a pillar crypt ever discovered on the Greek mainland. Two new stone built cist graves were also discovered alongside what appears to be a Middle Bronze Age pithos burial.

The University of Nottingham’s video on the expedition:

Pavlopetri – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
World’s Oldest Submerged Town Dates Back 5,000 Years

Over time fads and tastes change. You’d think that at least Yeti’s could remain immune to this kind of cultural pressure. Sadly no. His appearance and behavior has changed over the years.

From the December 27th, 1937 Milwaukee Journal, we have one of the earliest accounts ever of a Yeti.

When Col. Bury was a little more than 20,000 feet up on the desolate slopes of Mount Everest, helmeted against the intense cold, he suddenly stopped as though he had been struck. There before him in the glistening snow were the marks of what looked like a naked human foot.

He called the coolies. They were terrified, and exclaimed that the tracks were those of a “wild hairy man,” one of the race of “abominable snowmen.”

Black hair and a tail?

A Tibetan shepherd who claims to have shot one, vowed that he was eight feet tall, leapt 20 feet, and had a tail on which he could sit without slipping on the ice. The snowman had long black hair, and an appetite not merely for yaks, but for human beings.

Fans of lovable, white haired and perhaps only slightly grumpy Yeti’s will be disappointed to find out that back then they came across as more like cold loving cannibal naked meth heads then lonely Wampas wanting hugs from Jedis and the occasional Tauntaun jerky treat.

The Milwaukee Journal. – Google News Archive Search

The story of a faraway island still inhabited by legendary creatures has been a captivating idea since before Homer wrote down the Odyssey. Recent incarnations include the works of Jules Verne and stories like King Kong, Jurassic Park and recently Where the Wild Things Are.

When we think of fascinating creatures we tend to put them into two categories, those that came before recorded history and those that came after and are mostly still around. While we can comprehend recent extinction and acknowledge that our caveman ancestors dealt with beasts that are no longer around, we tend to think of things having been the status quo since we started writing stuff down – with the exception of a dodo bird or two.

The truth is a little bit weirder. A number of fantastical creatures continued on well into recorded history and only vanished quite recently. Oddly enough, many of these creatures survived on remote islands (this isolation might explain why they survived as long as they did).

Here’s a list of amazing beasts that survived in remote places well into historical and almost modern times. Some are sure things, others are a little far-fetched. All are just as plausible as another.

The last Wooly Mammoth died on Wrangel Island (Near Russia) probably around 1,700 BCE – close to the reign of Ramesses the Great and over 1,000 years after the Sphinx was built.

The Elephant Bird was a giant bird (a ratite to be precise) native to Madagascar that went extinct in the 1600′s. At 10 feet tall and close to 1,000 pounds in weight, this was no dainty emu. Given what we now know about dinosaurs and their relation to birds, this is one scary creature.

Megalania was a giant monitor lizard that may have survived into historic times. At 26 feet long and 4,000 lb in weight, it’d be the closest you’d come to seeing something that looked like a classical depiction of a dinosaur. Some cryptozoologists claim recent sighting as evidence that that there may be populations still alive in New Guinea and Australia.

The Giant Hutia was a large rodent that got as large as 440 lb – as big as an American Black Bear. Indigenous to the West Indies it may have been hunted to extinction by aboriginal humans but some may have lived into historic times. One smaller species may have survived as late as when the Spanish explored the Caribbean.

Homo floresiensis – “The Flores Man” or “Hobbit” was a possible distinct humanoid species that is believed to have died out 12,000 years ago. However local folklore about creatures called “Ebu Gogo” that match the description of these creatures suggests that they may have existed as recently as the late 19th century.

Have you seen Jonathan E. Caldwell? He’s still missing after 60 years. The Air Force has some questions they’d like to ask him about the flying saucers in his barn.

Was his disappearance part of a sinister conspiracy? Or a way for him to escape his angry investors after his flying machine failed to fly?

St. Petersburg Times – Google News Archive Search

Jonathan Edward Caldwell – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From Psychology Today we get this less than riveting ghost story from sleep specialist Dennis Rosen, M.D. who determines that part of his patient’s sleeping disorder may be attributed to a ghost in the house. It starts off pretty good:

“Do you ever see or hear something you know isn’t there as you are falling asleep or waking up?” I asked her. “We have a ghost in our house” she answered. “His name is Simon”. I looked over to her father to see his response, and was surprised to see him nodding his head in agreement. The conversation then continued, with both the patient and her father taking part.

What happens next you ask? Not much. It’s less entertaining than a debunking…

Since then, I have met with the family a few more times. Besides helping my patient with her sleep apnea, sleep hygiene, and schedule, I have learned more about Simon (that he prefers to hang out in the basement, and that he likes to walk through people when they’re doing the laundry).

We’re not sure what to make of this. Are you saying he’s real? A figment of the families imagination that you’re patronizingly entertaining?

We understand you’re a sleep specialist, but we need more information or at least help Simon with his sleep hygiene.

link: A ghost in the house | Psychology Today

In this video, CNN investigate Mirador, the cradle of the Mayan civilization and home to the largest pyramid (by volume) in the world. Mostly covered by jungle, it’s in the middle of a threatened region rampant with grave robbers and drug traffickers. Because of it’s remote location it’s not as explored and well understood as other ancient cities.

From Wikipedia:

The civic center of the site covers some 10 square miles (26 km²) with several thousand structures, including monumental architecture from 10 to 30 meters high. There are a number of “triadic” structures (around 35 structures), consisting of large artificial platforms topped with a set of 3 summit pyramids. The most notable such structures are three huge complexes; one is nicknamed “El Tigre“, with height 55 metres (180 ft); the other is called “La Danta” (or Danta) temple. Depending on calculation techniques, the Danta temple is considered as tall as 72 meters, and considering its total volume (2,800,000 cubic meters) is one of the largest pyramids in the world¹.

According to Carlos Morales-Aguilar, a Guatemalan archaeologist, the city appears to have been planned from its foundation, as extraordinary alignments have been found between the architectural groups and main temples, which were possibly related to solar. The study reflects an importance of urban planning and sacred spaces since the first settlers.

The photo below shows a pyramid covered in vegetation.

link: El Mirador – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
link: Video – Breaking News Videos from CNN.com

Does this sound kind of familiar? From the Detroit Tribune in 1858:

We have learned the full particulars of the balloon ascension…on Thursday, its subsequent descent, and its second ascension and runaway with the aeronaut while beyond his control…

While internally at Weird Things we were calling the balloon boy story a likely hoax given our own personal experiences in building such crafts (and the credulous nature of the father), it should serve as a cautionary tale.

The long history of being an aeronaut (what they used to call people who flew before airplanes) is a dangerous one. In the Google news archives you can find stories of missing and killed in action aeronauts going back almost 200 years. Here are a few of the more interesting ones:

Journals: Fate Of The First Aeronaut

Terrible Adventure of an Aeronaut

BALLOONIST FALLS TO DEATH.; Aeronaut Drops 700 Feet

SEEK FOR AERONAUTS IN SIERRA MADRES

Here’s one of the earliest aeronaut adventures we could find: From a London Paper

Listen up Philip K. Dick fans, Total Recall (We Can Remember it For You Wholesale) is now a reality – at least for flies. According to ScienceDaily:

By directly manipulating the activity of individual neurons, scientists have given flies memories of a bad experience they never really had, according to a report in the October 16th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication.

One wonders if the bad experience starts with some grad student plugging wires into your brain…

So far this has only been tested on flies. There’s no word yet when we can implant memories of our trip to Mars or learn Kung-Fu in seconds, but we’re sure it’s a top priority for these researchers. At least it should be.

link: Scientists Give Flies False Memories

A staple of science fiction is the suspended animation chamber. It’s how we send astronauts to faraway places, punish criminals (we’re not quite clear on how sending bad guys into the future where they can expect longer, healthier lives and really cool technology is punishment) and sending our heroes forward in time.

The development of this technology has taken researchers down different paths from just plain freezing people to drug cocktails.

One of the more promising innovations in the search for suspended animation is the discovery that certain poisonous gases at low levels can actually slow down the metabolism without killing the organism. CNN.com has an interesting report from the lab of biologist Mark Roth at the Fred Hutchinson Research Center:

She turns a dial, and the sealed enclosure starts to fill with poison gas — hydrogen sulfide. An ounce could kill dozens of people.

The rat sniffs the air a few times, and within a minute, his naturally twitchy movements are almost still. On a monitor that shows his rate of breathing, the lines look like a steep mountain slope, going down.

At first glance, that looks bad. We need oxygen to live. If you don’t get it for several minutes — for example, if you suffer cardiac arrest or a bad gunshot wound — you die. But something else is going on inside this rat. He isn’t dead, isn’t dying. The reason why, some people think, is the future of emergency medicine.

We won’t ruin it for you, but the rat turns out okay.

His pioneering research got him a MacArthur prize which then lead to 600 million in venture capital funding. The military is looking into his technology as a way to save lives on the battlefield.

Right now the biggest hurdle is dealing with larger mammals. The process works on rats allowing them to slow their respiration to 10% of normal with no apparent cell damage. Scaling up to humans is a challenge.

This is fascinating research but the article fails to give due credit to the pioneer of this kind of suspended animation, Buck Rogers. It was while exploring an abandoned mine that he came in contact with a poisonous gas that put him in suspended animation for 500 years.

link: Scientists hope work with poison gas can be a lifesaver – CNN.com

link: Metabolic Flexibility and Suspended Animation

link: Suspended animation – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We know Charles Babbage as the inventor of the Difference Engine, the pre-cursor to the modern computer, but what about Charles Babbage, investigator for the occult and supernatural? As a young man he decided to find out if Satan was real – by trying to invoke him in a demonic ritual.

In his biography he recounts his attempt at summoning the dark lord…

I carefully collected from the traditions of different boys the visible forms in which the Prince of Darkness had been recorded to have appeared. Amongst them were — A rabbit, An owl, A black cat, very frequently, A raven, A man with a cloven foot, also frequent.

After long thinking over the subject, although checked by a belief that the inquiry was wicked, my curiosity at length over-balanced my fears, and I resolved to attempt to raise the devil. Naughty people, I was told, had made written compacts with the devil, and had signed them with their names written in their own blood. These had become very rich and great men during their life, a fact which might be well known. But, after death, they were described as having suffered and continuing to suffer physical torments throughout eternity, another fact which, to my uninstructed mind, it seemed difficult to prove.

As I only desired an interview with the gentleman in black simply to convince my senses of his existence, I declined adopting the legal forms of a bond, and preferred one more resembling that of leaving a visiting card, when, if not at home, I might expect the satisfaction of a return of the visit by the devil in person.

I then placed myself in the centre of the circle, and either said or read the Lord’s Prayer backwards. This I accomplished at first with some trepidation and in great fear towards the close of the scene. I then stood still in the centre of that magic and superstitious circle, looking with intense anxiety in all directions, especially at the window and at the chimney. Fortunately for myself, and for the reader also, if he is interested in this narrative, no owl or black cat or unlucky raven came into the room.

The reported failure of the devil to appear increased his skepticism of religion. he decided to seek out other evidence of the paranormal so Babbage and friends started a Ghost Club to investigate apparitions and other unusual phenomena:

If they heard of a phantom, these spiritual detectives speedily put themselves in pursuit ; and a haunted house was doubtless as welcome a phenomenon to them as an extraordinary dwarf, a calf without joints, or a kitten with six legs, was to the first Fellows of the Royal Society. Letters many were written on these topics, and some of the correspondence, we are told, was both ‘ interesting and instructive.’ It was certainly a very business-like mode of dealing with spectres, and indicates the true method of establishing these beings in their rights, or of expelling them, as creatures of fancy, from human philosophy.

Charles Babbage and his friends in the Ghost Club would go on to form another group calling themselves “The Extractors”. To get into that club you had to produce six certificates, three saying that you were sane and three that you were mad.

Babbage’s biography is a fascinating read. He had an extremely curious mind. It’s no surprise why he was so ahead of his time. If one were prone to believe in demons and the occult, it should make you wonder if the man who created the most advanced machines to ever exist really was unsuccessful at raising the devil…

Below are some links to his works on Google Books. Well worth checking out.

link: The Living age … – Google Books
link: Journals: Living Age (1844 – 1900)

It was ten years ago today that Fight Club was released. Both the film and the book by Chuck Palahniuk explored a variety of themes. Besides the intricacies of soap making, starting your own cult and the downside of consumer culture, at its heart is a story about a man with a strange condition that causes him to develop an alternate personality. In psychological parlance, that’s called dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder.

In the book and film this alternative personality resulting from this disorder was quite liberating for the main character.

Many people have asked if this is even a real condition. Prior to the 19th century people who displayed radically different personalities were assumed to be possessed. In the 19th century it was explored on somewhat more scientific, if not rigorous grounds. From Wikipedia:

These conversion disorders were found to occur in even the most resilient individuals, but with profound effect in someone with emotional instability like Louis Vivé (1863-?) who suffered a traumatic experience as a 13 year-old when he encountered a viper. Vivé was the subject of countless medical papers and became the most studied case of dissociation in the nineteenth century.

That was all it took for writers from Mary Shelley to Edgar Allen Poe to start running with the concept of one person inhabited by two or more personalities.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde explored the notion of an alter ego acting entirely on the impulses of your id.

Fight Club in many ways is a descendent of these concepts. Both Mr Hyde and Tyler Durden displayed extremely anti-social behavior – the exception being in Tyler Durden’s case, author Chuck Palahniuk created a narrative structure that made it justifiable from the assumed point of view.

Despite case studies giving some credence to the condition and the plethora of scientific rationales provided, some remained skeptical. A number of researchers who initially believed the condition to be genuine began to second guess that assumption when they paid closer attention to some of the more celebrated cases of the field’s pioneer Jean-Martin Charcot. From Wikipedia:

In the early 20th century interest in dissociation and DID waned for a number of reasons. After Charcot’s death in 1893, many of his “hysterical” patients were exposed as frauds and Janet’s association with Charcot tarnished his theories of dissociation. Sigmund Freud recanted his earlier emphasis on dissociation and childhood trauma.

Eventually the book the Many Faces of Eve published in 1957 and the film adaptation caused a resurgence in diagnosis of the condition as did the book and later film Sybil did in 1974. From Wikipedia:

Skeptics claim that people who present with the appearance of alleged multiple personality may have learned to exhibit the symptoms in return for social reinforcement. One case cited as an example for this viewpoint is the “Sybil” case, popularized by the news media. Psychiatrist Herbert Spiegel stated that “Sybil” had been provided with the idea of multiple personalities by her treating psychiatrist, Cornelia Wilbur, to describe states of feeling with which she was unfamiliar.

It’s particularly interesting how uniquely American this condition is (unless you buy into the premise that hyper-consumerism was the flashpoint for developing a split personality in Fight Club). From Wikipedia, figures from psychiatric populations (inpatients and outpatients) show a wide diversity from different countries putting the legitimacy of the condition under suspicion.

Despite the clinical controversy over this condition, there remains a fascination in many of us over the idea of developing a stronger personality capable of doing the things we’re unable to bring ourselves to do.

It’s that fascination with alternative personalities and the expression of free will in Fight Club that still resonates today. We know what it is, but we just don’t know how to express it. Weight loss and substance abuse treatment are billion-dollar industries because we can’t quite get our bodies and minds to agree on things.

Where Hyde and Durden were expressions of the id, self-hypnosis and pseudo-psychology like NLP offer the promise of giving you control over your id to allow your higher functioning free will the ability to overcome your animal instincts.

Is the next desired evolution in mankind, not a physical one, but the ability to actually do the things we want?

Jeckyll and Hyde was about a Victorian scientist who may have been a bit repressed. Fight Club was the story of an everyman who felt emasculated by modern civilization. For both of them, part of their expression involved extreme violence and unleashing the id. Arguably in Durden’s case the violence (in particular the destruction of private property) was a byproduct of the world not being the way he wanted it to be and not something done for the sole sake of violence.

The lesson we can learn from Fight Club (we’ll pass over its conflicted view of personal freedom and anti-Capitalist message) and Jeckyll and Hyde is that the more civilized man is, the more frustrated he is by his inability to exert complete free will over his actions. So frustrated that he’s willing to start cults that destroy individuality and embrace violence to let that inner animal out to wreak havoc.

On one level Fight Club is about setting loose our id to unleash its fury that it can’t express itself in a less id-like way. And that is what we call a paradox.

link: Dissociative identity disorder – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Killjoy Sally Younger at Popular Science says:

Despite its gusty reputation as a “gas giant,” Jupiter’s blood-red clouds hide a dense, rocky core that’s perhaps 20 times as massive as Earth. That core blocks any spacecraft’s passage through the center of the planet, but even a detour through the clouds would be a disaster.

Oh really Sally? Maybe you should try telling that to this man. He drove a car through a mountain. A mountain. Have you ever done that? Nope. Didn’t think so.

Of course Buckaroo Banzai also opened a gateway into the 8th Dimension and narrowly averted an invasion from the Lectoids of Planet X. But he fixed it! For someone that awesome, flying through Jupiter would be a cinch. We demand a retraction.

Is it Possible for a Spacecraft to Fly Straight Through Jupiter? | Popular Science

What’s cooler than a giant cave? A giant haunted cave. Mammoth cave, one of the largest cave systems in the world is filled with all kinds of lore. Some say it’s the largest haunted place in the world. Prairie Ghosts has collected several stories of haunting. The spookiest ones are from the rangers and tour guides who work in the caves:

Another story, told by an experienced tour guide named Joy Lyons, tells of a tour that was taken a few years ago in the company of a large group and two guides. When they reached a point on the trail called the “Methodist Church”, they usually turned out all of the lights so that visitors could experience what the cave was like in pitch blackness. She was standing at the back of the group when the lights went out and she could hear the lead ranger talking about the experience. Then, she felt a strong shove against her shoulder. The assault was hard enough that she had to step forward to keep from falling over. She turned to another ranger, who was supposed to be standing next to her and she whispered to him to stop clowning around. A moment later, the lead ranger ignited the wick on a lantern and she saw that the other ranger, she had thought was close to her, was actually about 70 feet away. There was no way that he could have shoved her and then walked so far in complete darkness.

“There was no one near me,” she said, “but it was a playful shove. There are a number of us who feel things in various parts of the cave. It’s not frightening — but it’s something else.”

Cue the spooky music and check out this slideshow of Mammoth Cave from Flickr:

link: Mammoth Cave National Park – a set on Flickr

link: MAMMOTH CAVE: WORLD’S LARGEST HAUNTED PLACE

Sea Monsters are awesome. What’s even more awesome than that? Live blogging your investigation of said sea monster in 1855! How is that even possible? In 1855 the New York Times was on the cutting edge of tech journalism utilizing telegraphs and locomotives to report the news live from the scene:

Having received this morning very private information, a vague account of the discovery of another sea-serpent near our city, we immediately dispatched seventeen of our reporters to the spot, having first “chartered” the “exclusive” right of the telegraph, and eleven locomotives.

By securing an communications connection via telegraph, reporters were able to send back a blow-by-blow account of their investigation as it unfolded.

Two minutes past 10 o’clock A.M – Serpent’s head seen – struck at one of the party with a stick – blow missed – terrible splashing.

One o’clock P.M. – Serpent showing himself frequently; struck at by Zedekiah Hornbush; club hit Zeke Williams; fight; puddle very rily.

Two o’clock P.M. – Serpent hit by a boy with a stone; dove when hit with a triple bellow – (that sounded as if it came from a neighboring pasture,) rose to surface again; hit by Dutchman; blood flowing from Serpent’s nose; awful scene; contortions of reptile; final capture.

What was this mysterious creature that Zedekiah and Zeke fearlessly confronted with their clubs? The report doesn’t quite get into specifics other than to say it may be of the “Garter” species – which suggests that it’s what we call a Garter snake today. They point out that there is no doubt he was in some relation to the Serpent that tempted Eve, “as he looks very wicked”. Wicked indeed. Remember this was four years before Darwin published The Origin of Species.

The story is a fascinating read and well worth checking out: Sea-Serpent in Wisconsin–another Monster–Terrible… – View Article – The New York Times

Inspired by this and recent accounts of a nearby sea monster, the Weird Things staff is contemplating live blogging its own expedition to find such a creature. We’ll keep you posted.

With the current debate over nationalized health care a lot of facts and figures are flying fast and loose. It seems like for every point of view there’s a data set to support it. In the discussion of what the ideal system should be two facts are often overlooked. The vast differences in life expectancy from state to state (Washington DC = 72 and Hawaii = 80) and the country with the most old folks in the top ten oldest people list: The United States with 6. All are women.

Of course the United States is the 3rd most populous country (300 million), but with a global population of well over 6 billion people, all things being equal, we should only account for 1 out 20 (or just half an old person in the top 10).

So what gives?

It could be that our geriatric care is actually pretty good. But perhaps there’s something else at work. In the Robert Heinlein novel Methuselah’s Children, he described a very clever low-tech longevity project: Pay people with really old grandparents to have children. In the novel, over time this lead to a race of people that lived hundreds of years.

Has the land of opportunity created a natural program for breeding some of the oldest people? We don’t know. But asking why Americans tend to cluster at the far end of the bell curve is probably a worthwhile question.

Oldest people – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ever wonder what it looks like to see a spacecraft land in the middle of a field? Wonder no more. NASA has posted a great Flickr set of photos showing the return to earth of Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté and Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Michael Barratt in their Soyuz craft.

Welcome to earth.

Apparently it’s snake week here at Weird Things, previously we reported on researchers discovering the stomping grounds of the largest snake ever, Titanboa. Now comes some fun news from the U.S. Geological Survey: We’re being invaded by giant snakes!

High-risk species—Burmese pythons, northern and southern African pythons, boa constrictors and yellow anacondas—put larger portions of the U.S. mainland at risk

It gets better!

Two of these species are documented as reproducing in the wild in South Florida, with population estimates for Burmese pythons in the tens of thousands.

That’s right, tens of thousands.

Just how long can a Burmese python get?

According to Wikipedia: A Burmese Python at the Serpent Safari Reptile Zoo in Gurnee, Illinois , USA was billed as the heaviest living snake in captivity. In 2005, it weighed 183 kilograms (403 lb) at a length of 8.2 metres (27 ft).

Get ready for thousands and thousands of giant snakes South Florida. Sidenote: Weird Things is looking for a desert climate to relocate to.

link: Science Daily: Report Documents Risks Of Giant Invasive Snakes In The United States

link: USGS Release: Report Documents the Risks of Giant Invasive Snakes in the U.S. (10/13/2009 12:00:00 PM)

There’s no shortage of explanations for the demise of the newspaper industry. Could one more be the complete lack of face to face confrontation with paranormal creatures like zombies?

We at Weird Things lament the days when a brassy gal like Inez Wallace would leap feet first into adventure and track down an actual zombie and find out the supernatural and scientific explanations.

Check out these excerpts from her May 3rd, 1942 column in the Milwaukee Sentinel:

Although I rode a short distance each day into the mountains, I had practically given up hope of ever seeing a Zombie.

Then, one sultry afternoon, I was riding slowly toward Haiti’s capital when I saw HIM. Or, perhaps, I should say IT.

He was standing at a spot where a cane and a cocoa plantation met – just standing.

What did this creature look like you ask?

His face was neither the bronze of the Jamaican Negro nor the ebony black of the Haitian I had come to know in these mountains. The color was a sickly gray – like fresh Russian caviar and his skin, drawn tight over his bones, resemble old parchment.

There could only be one conclusion!

The thing before me was a ZOMBIE!

Read on for all the exhilarating details: The Milwaukee Sentinel – Google News Archive Search

German researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development have discovered a gene mutation in certain individuals that seems to give them enhanced mental abilities.

…people graced with this genotype showed more activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, activity that is probably linked to metabolism of the brain chemical dopamine.

This extra dopamine may increase the reward response making people more prone to learning things quickly.

As we know from history (Marvel Comics history), it’s the X Gene that separates mankind from the next generation of super mutants. While there’s no immediate application for this discovery, other than explaining why some of us feel more like Forrest Gump than Professor Xavier, long term implications could include gene therapy – giving us all an extra boost.

The fact that German researchers discovered this should surprise no one.

link: Gene Mutation May Speed Learning – Yahoo! News

Science Daily reports that a Smithsonian research team has uncovered the first megafossils of a neotropical rainforest.

Titanoboa, the world’s biggest snake, lived in this forest 58 million years ago at temperatures 3-5 C warmer than in rainforests today, indicating that rainforests flourished during warm periods.

While, modern day snakes have been measured over 30 feet in length, it’s been speculated that that the warmer climate contributed to Titanboa’s 42 foot length.

If 58 million years sounds like a good amount of distance to keep between you and a creature capable of swallowing you and all your friends whole, keep this in mind from a recent National Geographic article on the creature:

So could Titanoboa-size snakes return with global warming? “Maybe,” study co-author Jonathan Bloch said. “They definitely could, or maybe … the warming could happen so rapidly that [snakes] wouldn’t have time to adapt.”

Let’s hope this cooling trend continues.

link: First Neotropical Rainforest Was Home Of The Titanoboa — World’s Biggest Snake

link: VIDEO: Biggest Snake Found

What’s better than a photo? A photo of a ghost. What’s even better than that? Capturing that photo on a friend’s iPhone. Of course the problem is, ghosts are never very cooperative and not likely to show themselves on demand. That’s why we’ve created this handy tutorial for faking a ghost image on a friend’s iPhone.

via http://www.iPodTricks.com

Mike from the Bigfoot Discovery Project explains on his latest YouTube video an investigation into a recent sighting. Did Bigfoot make the nest they found? Or was it a homeless person?

The US Defense department has green-lit a two-year $10 million dollar program to look for practical applications of the Casimir Effect. This is a quantum of effect with potential in everything from energy to levitation.

It’s the quantum version of the attractive force that pulls two ships at sea closer together when they’re nearby. Hendrick Casimir, discoverer of the effect, speculated that two metal plates held apart from each other in a vacuum could tap into the energy in a vacuum that quantum electrodynamics predicts.

Getting actual energy from the effect has proved quite elusive. Now researchers are exploring the potential of the repulsive and attractive forces created by the Casimir effect. One possibility is levitation. From the Scientific American article, researcher Hong Tang:

Then we’re going to engineer the structure of the surface of the silicon device to get some unusual Casimir forces to produce repulsion,” he says. In theory, he adds, that could mean building a device capable of levitation.

We’re all for device capable of levitation – even on the nanometer scale.

link: Research in a Vacuum: DARPA Tries to Tap Elusive Casmir Effect for Breakthrough Technology: Scientific American

link: Casimir effect – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

According to Science News, hypnosis is gaining new found respect in the laboratory as experiments indicate that hypnotic suggestions actually have a measurable effect on parts of the brain.

In one experiment, suggestion of a paralyzed hand actually changed the way the brain routed instructions for motor movement differently than those with no instruction or those told to just imagine their hand was paralyzed.

The Mesmerized Mind / Science News

Hans Rollman, professor of Religious Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland, writing for the Telegram has shared some details about Newfoundland sea monster lore. The best part? These are amphibious man eaters!

A sea creature of considerable ferocity is also known to the Inuit of Labrador. Nennorluk derives its name from the polar bear (Nennok, nanuk), but the Inuktitut affix “luk” indicates its evil intent. One of the earliest mentions of the Labrador Nennorluk appeared in David Crantz’s “History of Greenland.” Crantz, preserving a 1773 tradition from Nain, says that the legendary amphibious creature “hunted and devoured the seals.” Each of its ears was “large enough for the covering of a capacious tent.” Worse yet, the “beast did not scruple to eat human flesh, when he came on shore.”

link: The Telegram – St. John’s, NL: Columns | Newfoundland and Labrador sea monsters

Check out this video that’s eerily remiscent of the 1980′s TV series V and District 9 (if the aliens spaceships were made from vaporous ice crystals and not actual technology…).

The Sun has an article here on it: Mystery UFO halo in clouds over Moscow | The Sun |News

As the Hollywood and occult hype machines spin into overdrive about the proposed end of the world on December 21st, 2012, at least one person who may or may not know something about it says it’s all bunk. According to an AP story, Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan Indian Elder had this to say:

Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. “I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff.”

Another person who should know points out:

“If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn’t have any idea,” said Jose Huchim, a Yucatan Mayan archaeologist. “That the world is going to end? They wouldn’t believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain.”

He goes onto suggest this doomsday thing is a Western concept we’re projecting onto the Maya. So if the Maya say it’s bunk, who should we believe? Them or the folks who remade Godzilla?

link: Mayan Year 2012 Stirs Doomsday Theories – International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News – FOXNews.com

Mark your calendars. August 31st, 2009 may have been the day the insects got the upper hand in their war against mankind.

Reportedly, a truck driver for the Minot Air Force Base 91st Missile Wing lost control of his vehicle when a “large insect” flew into the cab and (attacked) landed on his back.

When one solitary bug accomplishes what all of our enemies combined have been unable to do, it’s time to start buying Raid by the bulk.

‘Large insect’ sparked missile truck’s crash – Military- msnbc.com

Remember that time you went to take a photo and when you looked at it your iMac screen mysteriously shown through your body as if you were an ephemeral spirit because deep down your souls are intertwined? I do.

Got a weird photo? Send it to JustinRobertYoung@Gmail with “Weird photo” in the subject line or upload it to Flickr and tag it #weirdthingscom.

I took this photo outside Disneyland. It’s of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. No retouching took place. This is exactly how the photo appeared!

Want to see something spooky? Click on these slideshows and see some various ghost photos on Flickr.

The spirit photographs of William Hope

Vintage Spirit Photography

Seances

Got a spooky photo or video you want to share? Upload it to Flickr and tag it with #weirdthingscom

According to ScienceDaily it turns out those ugly yellow splotches of bug guts on your car can serve science. They use the bug guts to to do DNA sequencing to determine species distribution and other information.

To gather genetic material, they utilized a simple but effective collection method – the front bumper of a moving vehicle. Two samples of bug splatter were collected, the first after driving from Pennsylvania to Connecticut, and the second after traveling from Maine to New Brunswick, Canada.

link: Bug Splatter On Your Car’s Windshield Is A Treasure Trove Of Genomic Biodiversity

Excitement over augmented reality applications for the iPhone and other devices is certainly justified to an extent. But let’s not forget the original augmented reality baring device as imagine by James Cameron, the Terminator T-800.

What we want is Terminator vision like Arnold had, to help us hot wire cars, find appropriate wardrobe and decide who lives and who dies. Hopefully we can use Terminator vision to fight off the inevitable machine apocalypse – instead of it being used to murder us all one-by-one.

In the meantime, maybe we should call a moratorium on any more augmented reality develop for platforms named “android”.

It took 2,500 years but investigators finally cracked the case of out what killed an Egyptian woman. What makes this particularly interesting is how recent DNA extraction techniques made it possible to extract fragments of tuberculosis bacteria DNA. She had been misdiagnosed just a decade earlier as having been killed by ovarian cancer.

After analyzing ancient DNA from tissue samples, Helen D. Donoghue of University College London and colleagues say that the mummified woman, who lived around 600 B.C. and was entombed in Thebes, died of tuberculosis, not ovarian cancer.

link: Observatory – Revising the Diagnosis Behind an Ancient Death – NYTimes.com

Researchers now speculate that an island chain once inhabited by the Minoan’s may have been a much larger island that was wiped out in a volcanic eruption that sent tidal waves as far as Israel.

Speculation has abounded as to whether the Santorini eruption inspired the legend of Atlantis, which Plato said drowned in the ocean. Although the isle is often regarded as just an invention, the explosion might have given rise to the story of a lost empire by helping to wipe out the real-life Minoan civilization that once dominated the Mediterranean, from which the myth of the bull-headed ‘minotaur’ comes.

link: Real Tsunami May Have Inspired Legend of Atlantis – Yahoo! News

link: Google Maps

Technically John P. Holdren wasn’t the science advisor when he made his dire predictions of an Ice Age and Ice Age powered super tidal waves bringing destruction upon us all in 1971. He was just trying to make sense of the data at hand back then (global cooling!) – and maybe give it a teensy tiny Roland Emmerich dramatic effect.

John Tierney over at TierneyLab at the NY Times points out some essays by Holdren and longtime doom and gloomer Paul Ehrlich that have been republished over at Zombietime.

Although they noted that the greenhouse effect from rising emissions of carbon dioxide emissions could cause future warming of the planet, they concluded from the mid-century cooling trend that the consequences of human activities (like industrial soot, dust from farms, jet exhaust, urbanization and deforestation) were more likely to first cause an ice age.

Holdren’s speculation and conclusion that forced abortion and mass sterilization would be viable and Constitutional avenues for population control to stave off environmental disaster are certainly out of box ideas. In his defense, the 1970′s was a scary time for Science Fiction. Logan’s Run, Silent Running and THX 1138 did not present an inspiring view of the future. Then again, outside Star Trek (which also prophesied a 21st Century collapse of civilization), what sci-fi films have a hopeful view of the future?

link: Holdren’s Ice Age Tidal Wave – TierneyLab Blog – NYTimes.com and zombietime

The recent discovery of another megalithic site near Stonehenge has added yet another layer to the mystery.

The presence of “Blue Stonehenge” approximately a mile away suggests that it was part of a larger scheme. What these stone age land developers had in mind is still a matter of debate.

Sheffield University’s Professor Mike Parker Pearson, Director of the project, said: “It could be that Blue Stonehenge was where the dead began their final journey to Stonehenge. “Not many people know that Stonehenge was Britain’s largest burial ground at that time. Maybe the bluestone circle is where people were cremated before their ashes were buried at Stonehenge itself.”

link: ‘Blue Stonehenge’ Discovered By UK Archaeologists

The Russian space research institute IKI has announced ambitious plans to explore the planet Venus. Is this a sign that they’ve forgone Mars because the “Red Planet” is just so cliche now? Or do they know something we don’t?

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Russia plots return to Venus