So awesome.

KEMEROVO, April 29 (Itar-Tass) ? A resident of the village Senzaskie Kichi, Kemerovo Region, hunter Afanasy Kiskorov, claims that he rescued a Yeti during a spring flood on the mountainous river of Kabyrza. His actions were witnessed by local residents, Itar-Tass learnt at the administration of the Tashtagol district of the Kemerovo Region, a supposed habitation place of a hominid.

While fishing, Kiskorov and other local hunters heard strong ice crushing and shrill howling. Rushing to the piercing shriek, the huntsmen saw “a creature, covered with dark-brown fur,” in the river some ten metres from the bank.

“The strange creature, looking like a huge man, tried several times to get out of water and to stand up on both feet, but dropped into the water each time and was howling. The hunters stood frozen, and only Kiskorov hurried to offer help: he threw the creature the dry trunk of a young aspen tree, the creature clutched to it and crawled to the bank,” the district administration said.

This, of course, means the Yeti owes him a life debt. One only repaid through faithful servitude in a multitude of space adventures.

[Cryptomundo]

Newly released government documents confirm that Scottish police believed there was a strange, beautiful creature in the Highlands lake of Loch Ness, and no one was going to kill it on their watch.

The files from the National Archive of Scotland show that local officials asked Britain’s Parliament to investigate the issue and confirm the monster’s existence — in the interests of science.

“That there is some strange creature in Loch Ness now seems beyond doubt,” wrote William Fraser, a senior police officer, “but that the police have any power to protect it is very doubtful.”

…Fraser’s letter to officials in London warned that he feared hunters Peter Kent and Marion Stirling were “determined to catch the monster dead or alive” and planned to use a “special harpoon gun.”

Kent was preparing a major operation including 20 experienced hunters and Fraser said he warned of the “desirability of having the creature left alone.”

Why wasn’t this a Saturday morning cartoon show when I was growing up?

[Yahoo]

College football is a loud sport and in a game as verbally-dependent as football if a visiting team can’t relay their plays effectively or make last minute adjustments, it can be huge advantage for a home team. So it is no surprise that Penn State has not only done scientific research to determine the veracity, direction and variability of you and your hammered dorm friends screaming obscenities at the opposing quarterback and his dumb face… they plan to make it louder.

Next season, the university’s athletic department will put into play a new strategy to make its field even louder thanks to a team of acoustic scientists. The goal is to send a deafening wall of sound at the opposing team’s offensive line.

“We’re not going to let visiting teams get comfortable, and if you can’t get comfortable, you’re probably not going to perform as well,” said Guido D’Elia, director for communications and branding for Penn State football.

Working with D’Elia in 2007-08, Penn State graduate student Andrew Barnard recorded crowd noise during three home games. Using 11 sound meters strategically placed around the field, he compared volume levels when each team had the ball.

When the Penn State’s Nittany Lions were on the offense the noise levels inside 107,282-seat Beaver Stadium reached 75 decibels on the field. That’s about as loud as a car radio playing at a reasonable volume.

But the noise skyrocketed to 110 decibels — 50 times as loud — when visiting teams were on offense, drowning out the calls of the quarterback and making last-minute adjustments at the line of scrimmage very difficult.

We are guessing the exact strategy for amplifying the sound in the direction of the quarterback and offensive line is something they are going to keep close to the vest. However, if an Ohio State left guard passes out on the field whilst blood spills from his ears, you’ll know it’s working.

[Inside Science from Improbable Research]

The string of earthquake in Chile not only inspired an outpouring of foreign aide and worldwide attention, it’s also been the impetus for a ton of recently-minted ghosts to rattle around the areas in which they died.

Shadows cross the Cardenal Raul Silva Henriquez Bridge in Constitucion; Cell phone screens light up suddenly, as if trying to receive phone calls. The moans and tears of children and their mothers resonate throughout the wooded Curanipe camping grounds, where thirty people lost their lives on February 27th.

Situations such as these are being reported by residents of Region de Maule, who claim that they repeat over and over in the early morning hours. “It’s the people who died here. They’re asking to be found and be given a burial,” says Juan Morales Morales, who works nights doing repairs on the Constitución Bridge. Dozens of people died in this area while camping at Isla Orrego, at the mouth of the Maule River.

We’re guessing a regular morning ghost symphony of screams and cell phone rings won’t bolster the camping tourism in this area.

[Inexplicata]

Not exactly Men Who Stare At Goats, but here is some recently FOIA’d info about how the Pentagon oversaw experiments into forced narcotics dosing and mind control, all in an effort to get an edge on the godless communists in the Cold War.

Initially funded by the Navy, the project set out to study the effects of brain concussion. Soon after, scientists noted that a blow to the head prompted amnesia, leading to the pursuit of a drug-based technique to “induce brain concussion…without physical trauma.” Shortly thereafter, the project was transferred entirely to the CIA, because it involved “human experiments…not easily justifiable on medical-therapeutic grounds.”

Other programs, described briefly focused on mind-control. MK-NAOMI was after “severely incapacitating and lethal materials… [and] gadgetry for their dissemination,” and MK-CHICKWIT was designed to “identify new drug developments in Europe and Asia,” and then “obtain samples.”

Edgewood Laboratories, where many of the programs were carried out, is also identified as having tested an incapacitating chemical on prisoners and military personnel without the agency’s approval. The drug, EA#3167, was “appl[ied] to the skin” of subjects using an adhesive tape.

Read way more at the Danger Room blog.

[Wired]

The myth of the colossal squid as a fearsome aggressive predator has been sunk…

Measuring longer than a school bus and sporting tentacles covered in razor-sharp hooks, the colossal squid is the stuff of nightmares. However, new research suggests the enormous sea creature may not be the fierce hunter of legend.

This finding not only upends science’s understanding of the squid itself, but forces a reevaluation of its role in the entire ecosystem where it lives some 3,000 to 6,000 feet (914 to 1,830 meters) beneath the Antarctic sea.

This new view of the colossal squid comes from data analysis made by marine biologists Rui Rosa, of the University of Lisboa, Portugal, and Brad Seibel, of the University of Rhode Island. Rosa and Seibel looked at the relationship between metabolism (how the body’s cells turn food into energy) and body size for smaller squids in the same family and used the information to predict the metabolism of the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni).

(The so-called giant squid belongs to the genus Architeuthis, a different group of animals from the colossal squid.)

They found, the squid would’ve had a slower metabolism and so moved slower than expected, waiting for prey, rather than running it down. “Everyone thought it was an aggressive predator, but the data suggests otherwise,” Rosa told LiveScience. “It’s a squid that weights half a ton with hooks in its tentacles, but our findings show it’s more like just a big blob.”

And lo, the reconfiguring of the Giant Squid’s reputation begins. Out with the “menacing death machine”, in with the “lovable fatso”. The Hurley of the sea.

[Live Science]

UFOs? Horse apples! At least according to Timothy Leary. In case you are unaware of the outspoke academic and LSD poster boy’s theory on contact with alien life, here it is:

Leary felt that intelligent life exists throughout infinite space. But he felt that it was less “literal” and “nuts and bolts” than Ufologists believed, and that it was more of a mental, spiritual and interdimensional phenomena. He did not believe that spacecraft were the only thing that ET used to travel space. He said that it was unlikely that “ET packaged alien beings in spaceships and sent them hundreds of light-years through space so that they could land in farm pastures and rape little old ladies in Iowa.” He believed that mind, matter and space were far more complex than that simplistic model. Leary, though, was a bit contradicted on this though. When he passed, his own ashes were shot into space in a rocket.

So now you know.

[UFO Digest]

Let’s assume we live a universe of infinite dimensions. Let’s also assume that in one of those dimensions, we are aware of the this fact and have found a way to burrow a path another, concurrent dimension. Finally, let us assume it is 1985 and you need to communicate with other travelers from your point of origin.

How do you get in touch? How do you do it under the radar?

The alt weekly personals… duh.

In the fall of 1985, the Washington, D.C. City Paper featured a small ad in its “Personals” column which read: “O.T.O, A.A.: where are you, brothers and sisters?”

Readers of this section of the free paper state that the bulk of the messages in the personals are communications between members of the gay community, drug dealers, illegal immigrants, etc. dealers. The aforementioned ad, however, hailed the attention of anyone able to recognize the initials for the Ordo Templo Orientalis and Argentinium Astrum–occult lodges of the early 20th century, which might perhaps be experiencing a rebirth toward the latter decades of the same century. On the subject of these hidden messages in our cities’ newspapers and journals, Jacques Bergier, the prolific French author and scientist, commented: “I’ve often wondered if certain strange classified ads in the newspapers are in fact messages between superintelligent beings.” Bergier, coauthor of The Morning of the Magicians, dedicated a great deal of study to the problem of cryptology as a branch of paranormal research, and he also believed that even more detailed secret messages could be conveyed under the guise of specialized works, novels or even philosophical tracts.

Much more on this in the full article.

[Inexplicata]

From a 1909 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine.

It will soon be possible, for instance, for a business man in New York To dictate instructions and have them appear instantly in type in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up from his desk and talk with any telephone subscriber in the world. It will only be necessary to carry an inexpensive instrument not bigger than a watch, which will enable its bearer to hear anywhere on sea or land for distances of thousands of miles. One may listen or transmit speech or song to the uttermost parts of the world.

He went on to say the that a digitally compiled “book of faces” would be the most successful way to hook up with the girl you had a crush on in high school 8 years after you graduated.

[Google Book via Boing Boing]

Probably not, but maybe!

A mystery object in a galaxy far, far away could be a supermassive black hole that got booted from its home galaxy’s center, according to a new study.

Then again, the strange body could be a rare type of supernova or an oddball “midsize” black hole—more massive than black holes born when single stars explode but “lighter” than the supermassive ones at the centers of galaxies.

“All three of those [options] are exotic and have something peculiar to them,” said study co-author Peter Jonker, an astronomer with the Netherlands Institute for Space Research in Utrecht.

Guess which option we’re rooting for? I’ll give you a hint, the site isn’t “Moderately Surprising Things.com”. I believe in the ejected!

A breakthrough in how we understand brain development has led a group of researchers to totally change a developing fish brain into one that looks like another species of fish…

In another part of the study, the team wanted to see if they could use chemicals to change the patterns of gene expression and hence the brain development of the embryos. Could they, in fact, alter the brain of a rock-dwelling embryo to that of a sand-dwelling embryo? Turns out they could.

Sylvester treated the embryos with lithium chloride for three to five hours during an early stage of anterior-posterior patterning. After treatment, he returned the embryos to fish water and then took samples for study at different developmental stages. He found that each time he checked, treatment with lithium chloride up-regulated Wnt signaling, which led to a reallocation of brain precursors to the posterior thalamus.

So for those of you with “Playing God” bingo cards, please mark down that square.

[Science Daily]

Above is a scene from Animal Planet’s series River Monsters. But although some fish look straight up and down bizarre (see the massive fugly catfish above) that doesn’t necessarily make them dangerous.

For example, hippos and alligators are far more murderous than say piranhas, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t once a fish that could cause some serious trouble.

A relative of the piranha, the Megapiranha, grew to 3-feet-long (1 meter), or four times the size of today’s piranhas. Scientists aren’t sure why the fish-beast had seven teeth arranged in a zig-zag row, while today’s piranhas sport six teeth. Fortunately the mega creature is not much of a threat, having died out several million years ago.

Read the whole Live Science article for far more info.

[Live Science]

With all the talk of flooding in Tennessee, it helps to look back into history to gain perspective. After all, at least it wasn’t the megaflood that completely redefined that Alaskan landscape 15,000 years ago.

One of at least four megafloods from ancient Glacial Lake Atna, the deluge breached ice dams and covered more than 3,500 square miles (9,065 square kilometers) of land of what is today the Copper River Basin northeast of Anchorage. (The lake would’ve covered Rhode Island three times.)

Megafloods by definition have a flow of at least 264 million gallons of water per second (1,000 million liters of water per second). The largest known freshwater megaflood released about 4,500 million gallons of water per second (17,000 million liters of water per second) and originated out of Glacial Lake Missoula in Montana.

The megaflood from Atna likely had a flow of about 792 million gallons of water per second (3,000 million liters of water per second), and released a total of as much as 336 cubic miles (1,400 cubic kilometers) of water – enough to cover an area the size of Washington, D.C., to a depth of 5 miles (8 km).

So, at least they have that going for them.

In all seriousness, if you’d like to help by donating money or time to the relief effort in Tennessee, head here for more information.

[Live Science]

Scientists might be able to gawk at a piece of asteroid that hasn’t been through the horrific re-entry process after a Japanese satellite sends a sample it collected back to Earth on June 13th.

Why do we care about this? It could revolutionize how Bruce Willis and a ragtag gang of oil drillers save the world…

As you can see in the picture, it’s covered in rubble, and lacks impact craters! This is strong evidence that it’s not a single, monolithic body; in other words, it’s not a solid rock. It may instead be more like a pile of rubble, an asteroid that has been shattered repeatedly by low-speed impacts with other rocks, but had its own gravity hold it together like a bag full of shattered glass.

Asteroids like this may comprise a significant percentage of all the asteroids we see. And if one of them is headed toward Earth, how we deal with a rubble pile may be very different than how we might try to push a solid rock out of the way. Studying Itokawa is therefore very important… and may just save the world.

The sample return capsule will land in Woomera, Australia, where it hopefully will not be attacked by venomous Koalas (everything Down Under can kill you).

Sweet.

[Bad Astronomy]

We told you about this yesterday… but be prepared to witness the heart that was restarted 24 hours after it died in a Harvard laboratory.

[Singularity Hub]

Available on pre-order for only $24.99!

Thanks to reader Vox Anon for the tip.

[Go Hero Shop]