A man named Luke Tipple, marine biologist most recognizably known for his work on the Discovery Channel, attached a laser beam to a shark. It was temporary. The laser was the lowest powered model produced by Wicked Lasers, which promoted the feat. The lemon shark was unharmed.

There was even a bit of scientific value, Tipple experimented with a new kind of clap that could be used in future tracking research.

Awesome right? Not so much, for some critics who found the stunt disrespectful to the animal.

“Is there a point of it? It has to have an objective,” Neil Hammerschlag, an assistant professor with the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, told Wired.

“I would say the attachment process sounds non-invasive,” Hammerschlag said. “I don’t think it’s going to cause any damage to the shark. It’s temporary. In terms of the goal, without knowing the specific scientific or educational application, it’s hard to say. But if this is just to respond to a scene in the Austin Powers movie, I don’t see value. You’re just causing unnecessary stress on the animal. It’s not respectful.”

This is why we can’t have anything nice. Like sharks. With frickin laser beams. On their head.

[Wired]

Blue Origin, the space exploration company founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is ready for it’s close up. Although notoriously secretive in comparison to companies like SpaceX, May is a huge month for Blue and now they’re ready to talk about it.

Not only have wind-tunnel tests come back positive for their Space Vehicle unit, but they are going to begin testing on the rocketry phase of their plan.

Alexander said the resulting spacecraft design “will be officially blessed” at a system requirements review in May. Also during May, Blue Origin expects to begin testing of the thrust chamber assembly for its BE-3 rocket engine at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, Alexander said.

The company, based in Kent, Wash., is receiving $22 million from NASA during the current phase of the space agency’s program to help commercial ventures develop space taxis for the post-shuttle era. The SV isn’t nearly as big as the space shuttle, of course, but it should be capable of transporting up to seven passengers to and from the International Space Station.

The MSNBC post brings up a very interesting issues. Although NASA is currently offering money to four companies Boeing Co., Sierra Nevada Corp., SpaceX and Blue Origin, many believe that list will shrink with the next round of funding. Many in congress would like to see the space agency pick one horse this early in the game.

No matter who NASA sprinkles with coin, the bang for the buck on such an investment could really pay dividends in cheaper, reliable options for ambitious research. Very interesting.

[MSNBC]

Okay, that’s a deliberately provocative headline, I apologize.

But after all I’ve read pushing back on the popularity of the Hunger Games film and book series while citing the 1999 novel and 2000 film Battle Royale as the originator of the reality television kill show concept, it’s worth mentioning that either invented the idea.

Even The Running Man, penned by a scrappy author named Richard Bachman (Stephen King’s pseudonym), published in 1985 comes decades after the grand daddy of them all… Richard Sheckley’s The Prize of Peril, originally written in 1958.

It follows Jim Reader, a poor young truck driver’s assistant who takes on a career as a professional reality show contestant. The shows that pay the most are ones where you risk your life and where you could be forced to take the lives of other contestants.

He finds himself on the biggest of them all, The Prize of Peril.

A quick read, Peril deals with a lot of similar themes to Hunger Games (contestant as public inspiration, help from viewers, game manipulation) and just goes to show that as long as television game shows have existed, we’ve dreamed of killing each other on them.

Link to story at Arthur’s Classic Novels

One average asteroid, half the size of the conference room they made their announcement in, can contain enough resources to power every space flight in the history of the NASA space program

When asked during Q and A how many resources can be mined out of one astroid, that was the response from Peter Diamandis. They key is identifying the right ones and developing the right kind of tech to mine them.

Private industry can iterate faster and take bigger risks that are inappropriate for government

One investor made the point that if his neighbor was mortgaging his house to invest in Planetary Resources, it would be inappropriate. Which is why a private company and not a government underwater in trillions of dollars in debt is the right agent to make this kind of progress.

Much was said about the assembly line mentality, where no model or build of a Planetary Resources spacecraft will be revered beyond a necessary step to the right solution, better than the last but inferior to the next.

As we saw with the nostalgia and reverence we have for our public spaceflight tech, that is very rarely the case with NASA projects.

Finding resources like water are key to life support in space and refueling for longer journeys

Water is a tremendously expensive resources to get into space. But if one were to find the elements to create it amongst the stars and create it in orbit, it fundamentally changes the game.

The cost and complication of life support and long distance travel is changed forever, the closer this comes to reality.

The immediate future is identifying asteroids with prospecting spacecraft

The first Arkyd 100 spacecraft should launch sometime within 12 to 24 months. The goal will be to provide intelligent data on Earth bound asteroids and what they might contain.

Mining spacecraft is a priority in the next 10 years

Arkyd 200 and 300 units will focus on making contact with and the mining of the asteroids. Although the panel was loathe to give hard timetables, 10 years was mentioned as point by which they hope to mine and return resources.

Their team will be kept very small and move very fast

One of the few reasons Planetary Resources went public today was because they are currently trying to add engineering talent to their small Bellevue, WA based staff but couldn’t hope to do it quietly. They are very conscious of staff bloat.

Robots, not humans, are the future of asteroid mining for now

Humans are too expensive and not particularly necessary for the kind of prospecting they are looking to do. So any fear that we are getting into an Outland situation can be put on ice for a decade or so.

BONUS: Bad Astronomer Phil Plait spoke with Chief Engineer Chris Lewicki and has a great breakdown of the technical deets.

Also, just because this is the most excited anyone has been about prospecting since the gold rush, here is Will Ferrell’s legendary unaired Gus Chiggins sketch.

Peter Thiel has long been a heavy hitter in Silicon Valley. He was a co-founder and CEO of PayPal and made an early stage development in Facebook, even earning himself the “honor” of being portrayed in The Social Network film about the site’s founding.

But Thiel has bigger fish to fry. Fish like the creation of antimatter-based fuel. Or minting of artificial protein therapeutics. Of even the advancement of human cell reengineering.

All projects that are far too radical (as in improbable) to garner much money for serious research. Except for Thiel, who finds them much too radical (as in awesome) to not toss cash at.

His fund will be called Breakout Labs and it awarded six grants of $350,000 to the following companies.

3Scan: development of 3-D digital reconstruction of brain issue.
Arigos Biomedical: advanced organ cooling for long term storage
Immusoft: re-programming of immune cells
Inspirotec: identification and collection of any airborne toxin
Longevity Biotec: creation of therapeutic artificial protein technology
Positron Dynamics: production and collection of positron, could be used as fuel for space travel

The best part, the application process is open at Breakout. They will continue to award good money to insane causes until the future gets here.

[Kurzweil AI]

There are just some videos that you watch and realize, the future is not coming, it’s here. This is was one of those videos to me. Please, take a look at the Hover Bike. The full model an provide life of up to 10,000 feet.

A prototype will cost you just over $82,000 US dollars.

The video below features an RC Scale Model. It’s absolutely insane.

The best part of the website is that on the right sidebar it lists “applications” for the Hover Bike. They include Aerial Cattle mustering, Search and Rescue, Aerial Survey, Wildlife and Parks and other mundane tasks. As if you need a reason to have a Hover Bike. IT’S A FLIPPIN’ HOVER BIKE! The only applications they should list are: Being Awesome and Amazing Entrance To Random First Dates, Family Reunions & Proms.

[Hover Bike]

A shockingly well preserved Wooly Mammoth has been found in the far flung regions of Siberia and it could lead to the future resurrection of the species. The six-month old animal died over 10,000 years ago. It’s eyes and trunk are were found preserved in the permafrost.

But back to the main question, how does this lead to us bringing back the fuzzy beasts of yore?

Some scientists hold out hope that well preserved sperm or other cells containing viable DNA could be used to resurrect the mammoth lineage.

Despite the inherent difficulties, Dr Agenbroad remains optimistic about the potential for cloning.

“When we got the Jarkov mammoth [found frozen in Taimyr, Siberia, in 1997], the geneticists told me: ‘if you can get us good DNA, we’ll have a baby mammoth for you in 22 months’,” he told BBC News.

The beast did not initially yield a sufficient DNA sample but is being sent to Japan for further study. Meanwhile, scientists fret that further finds could be tainted by a burgeoning new black market trade. Siberian scavengers, who used to simply sell the recovered from the ice have since begun selling mammoth parts found in the permafrost online. For example, mammoth hair sells for $50 an inch.

In other news, does anyone have $50.

[BBC]

It’s go time.

The man who directed the most successful film in movie history twice is about to embark on his greatest adventure yet. James Cameron will begin his descent into the Pacific Ocean, weather permitting, sometime this weekend.

His mission is to make it to the bottom of Challenger Deep, the lowest known point in the ocean. His submarine, a revolutionary vertical design, will attempt to sink to the bottom as fast as possible so he can spend six hours investigating. He will be the first ever human to see the depths with his own eyes, the only previous crew (aboard the Trieste in 1960) to make it that deep hit the bottom to hard and caused a silt storm bringing visibility down to zero.

Cameron will also bring along 3D cameras to make a documentary of his voyage.

Godspeed James.

[Nat Geo]

What an awesome video of grand spectacle and awesomeness. A massive paper balloon launching goes awry which sets up hilarious consequences. Due to the crowd reaction, we are assuming no one was hurt. Enjoy.

[YouTube]

We really can’t say enough about this violin tribute to the many themes of Legend of Zelda as performed by the undulating Lindsey Stirling. Soaring vistas, sweeping renditions of nostalgia tugged melodies that would melt the heart of Ganondorf himself.

Also, we credit the whip smart number one YouTube comment to this post for the headline.

South Korean military men find themselves all in a lather when female pop stars Girl’s Generation surprise them for an impromptu concert. We don’t have any information on where this took place, but you can’t deny that’s a toe tapper of a song choice.

Also, how many girls are in this group? 15? I think there are some that haven’t met each other yet.

[Washington Post]

The future is now. Amazing exoskeletons will be sold to consumers with spinal cord injuries for training, under doctor supervision for now, how to walk upright with the help of the device.

Your job is to balance your upper body, shifting your weight as you plant a walking stick on the right; your physical therapist will then use a remote control to signal the left leg to step forward. In a later model, the walking sticks will have motion sensors that communicate with the legs, allowing the user to take complete control.

Take a look at this bad boy in motion below.

[Kurzweil AI]

Trails of Tarnation is a western serial shot on 16mm film in Upstate New York and using awesome model sets and green screen to tell an equal parts hilarious/effective frontier adventure story. In the newest installment, “Stargazin’”, they are joined by Perry Bible Fellowship mastermind Nicholas Gurewitch as a menacing sharp shooter with a high warbling voice and a very particular way of honoring his enemies.

Well worth your time.

[Trails of Tarnation]

John Carpenter’s 1988 SciFi action masterpiece They Live needs to be remade every recession. It’s not a request, it’s a demand. And I have a proposal on when exactly to do it.

We can tie the productions to unemployment numbers. Once they hit a certain point, let’s say 7%, the rights holders commission a draft. The original film was released in November of ’88 (5.4%) but the nation had just come out of a crippling recession which topped out at 10.4% in 1982. We were as high as 7% in July of 1986.

In the film, our homeless hero played by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper makes friends with Keith David while taking a day labor gig at a construction site. It’s through this relationship and the introduction of a friendly vagrant commune that the bedrock of the socioeconomic underpinnings of the story are forged.

Put simply: There is no work. Life sucks. Take what you can get and shut up about it.

In today’s era of 8.6% unemployment. It’s a relatable narrative. A Google Image search for “They Live“ reveals inspired illustrations of both recession presidents. And unlike most stories that attempt to gain sympathy based on the economic plight of the underclass, They Live has a very simple solution everyone can get behind.

Aliens are controlling the planet using subliminal mind control. They use this to hide in plain sight. The rich are getting richer because they are in league with the aliens. We need to break their mind control hold on the proletariat so we can ultimately rise up and kill the aliens.

Class warfare as a justification for violence crass, easy and polarizing to say the least. Human survival as a reason for lethal action is primal, awesome and unifying. Throw in some brilliant creature design and no one can feel bad about Hot Rod murdering random strangers at the drop of a hat. Perfect action premise.

Thankfully, there has been talk of a remake. Unfortunately, it’s rumored to be based specifically of the source material for Ray Neely’s short story 8 O’Clock In The Morning. This has caused quite a stir since producer Eric Newman, who remade Carpenter’s The Thing earlier this year, insinuated that it would not include the iconic glasses which allows our hero to see behind the mind control curtain. More troubling for me, the story also lacks the economic subplot that makes They Live so instantly lovable for a theater full of people that know multiple unemployed people or are themselves without a steady paycheck. It’s also not particularly good.

It would be missing the point. Like remaking The Thing and removing the “the alien could be any one of us” device by constantly separating the alien from our survivors. Oh wait.

According to my proposal, we should have been hiring writers in December of 2008 when the unemployment rate hit 7.3%. Let’s not continue to make this mistake.

They Live is currently available on Netflix Instant. Watch it.

Netflix has made waves with their original programming pickups like House of Cards and Arrested Development, but either will have the honor of being the first original Netflix programming. Example Show is an avant guard tour de force featuring an unnamed protagonist doing gymnastics, running a model train and most notably giving a violent reading of a monologue from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Just search for “Example Show” in Netflix.

Example Show actually a in-house production done by Netflix staff (presumably shot on campus) to test screen resolutions and streaming capabilities for various levels of audio and video fidelity. It’s also awesome.

We recommend everyone add it to their queue and demand a season two.

SAVE EXAMPLE SHOW!

We’ve posted a poorly screen capped version of Julius Ceasar monologue (capped off by some awesome mouth pops) for those without Netflix. Thanks to Colleen Kelly for tipping us off to this.

Click AFTER THE JUMP to see a massive picture of this dude doing a cartwheel.

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.

The crew of a human vessel under attack by robots that take human form deal with the stress. Specifically Colin.

Performed by the hilarious Mitchell and Webb.

Houdini was a hack.

The following photo comes from a new campaign by the World Wildlife Fund. In an effort to save endangered black rhinos from rampant poaching, the WWF is trying to expand their range. The problem? Getting the big lugs from one place to another.

Thankfully for fans of awesome things, the safest way is also the most hilarious. Workers sedate the beasts and hook their legs up to a waiting helicopter. They then transport them in a 10-minute flight before depositing the gigantic creatures in their new homes.

[Live Science]

A gigantic lego man has washed ashore in Siesta Key, Florida. Acording to Boing Boing, the 8-foot tall Lego traveller has previously washed ashore in Holland and England.

Welcome to America!

[Boing Boing]

Need light? Can’t afford electricity? Here is a novel solution being implemented in the slums of the Philippines. WARNING: it does involve cutting a hole in a roof.

Above is a clip of a 1979 victory for the Pittsburgh Steelers over the Dallas Cowboys. However, pay attention to the final few frames where what seem to be flashing objects are seen before the awesome 60 Minutes promo about a church in Florida encourages getting high on weed.

It is apparently a new conspiracy theory tying in two of my favorite subjects, UFO sightings and Pittsburgh Steelers football.

Click AFTER THE JUMP for a super slowed down version of the glimpse.

[Pittsburgh Sports and Mini Ponies]

An era before time. An era before aquatic decency. An era of totally bitching ichthyosaur fights!

New fossil finds indicate a very violent encounter (most likely) between two ichthyosaurs which left one scarred by deep gouges in the snout. Little is known for sure about the 20-foot-long creatures, since it has no living relatives. Since the bite pattern on the recovered fossil matches that of another ichthyosaur, it is telling that they fought amongst themselves for land and territory.

Either way, it’s a tragedy of epic proportions that these two beasts were fighting and killing each other before YouTube was invented.

[Cryptomundo]

Make no mistake: this is an intricate, delicate work of art no matter if it’s a commercial or not. A Japanese telco built a massive wooden gravity marimba operated by a single ball through a gorgeous woodland area.

The moral of the story? The woods are so boring you get ideas like this. Thanks to @Sandtiger on Twitter.

[YouTube]

The amazing music video for Alex Metric & Steve Angelo’s new tune Open Your Eyes finds us visiting a man who looks not unlike a young Rocky Balboa working over bums in the Philly underground boxing scene. However, instead of Apollo Creed looking for a new opponent, we find a fearsome boxing mech who has a habit of murdering his sparring partners while his sadistic creator laughs maniacally at the bloodshed.

Our rocky character is played by the hilarious Peter Serafinowicz from Shaun Of The Dead as well as the insanely funny UK TV sensations Look Around You and Spaced.

The song is ‘salright but the video is must see. SPOILER ALERT: not unlike the end of the Rocky, this story finds Balboa’s opponent wishing for no rematch, however, in this version our villain takes decisive action to reach his goal.

Thanks to Minion5051 for the tip via Twitter.

[YouTube]

Although this is barely within our news coverage area, we thought bringing you footage of this amazing machete slingshot/rifle hybrid would prove that this beautiful dream is indeed science fact.

Favorite moments in video:

• The sound of an oncoming car while our host is explaining his contraption. If you’re just randomly driving down the road and see this giant bald dude wielding such an insane weapon, what is your first thought? I’m glad I updated my will? What is Uncle Fester doing with a knife gun? I always knew this is how I would go?

• The startling accuracy of the weapon. Granted, we don’t know how many takes this took to edit down to the handful of successful attempts but still…

• He’s shooting a box for a home treadmill. A nation of overweight YouTubers express a tsunami of catharsis.

• He follows up a video of the most badass DIY weapon in a decade with a video spotlighting two tiny hand slingshots. As the old adage on genre writing goes, your monster movie is over when the gigantic bald dude stops firing machetes into a treadmill box with pants peeing velocity.

Only two elements that could have made it better:

• Slow motion

• Death metal

[BoingBoing]

That is all.

[Adventure Journal]

Students at the University of Toronto have built the first succesful human-powered Ornithopter (a machine that generates lift through the flapping of its wings). Dubber ‘The Snowbird,” the flying machine achieved. The flight lasted a scant 19.3 seconds, but it is still longer than any other attempt. You can find more info about the project here.

A POV trip for a engineer working on a 1,768 foot high transmission tower.

Thanks to Weird Things reader Alan for passing this along.

William Allen Barnes is a man on a mission. His journey to find and track the creature known as Bigfoot (although he is loathe to use that particular term) began on a fateful night camping in California.

But his story, begins with the best lede we’ve ever read while editing this site:

On a warm summer night in 1997, local Bigfoot researcher and part-time gold-mining enthusiast William Allen Barnes was plunged headlong into the world of cryptozoology.

His story is well worth reading. Including this incredible line:

“After it left, the adrenaline hit me and I just sat there and shook,” Barnes said. “I got up the next morning and left. It took me four years to go back out there into the canyon by myself, and my gun got bigger every year.”

A part-time gold-mining enthusiast rolling through the Cali campgrounds strapped like Duke Nukem? Hail to the king.

[The Union]

Pretty hardcore. Granted, the publisher of this site, Andrew Mayne has been known to gargle the stuff but this is awesome just the same.

Get way more detail on why this works at the man’s blog, including one of the most bad assed pictures you will see today.

Thank to Weird Things reader Mitzula for the tip.

[Pop Sci]

The dream is real! Marty McFly’s self-lacing shoes could become science fact as Nike filed a patent for the tech in 2009.

[Nice Kicks]

The FDA has given a biotech tech firm the A-OK to start embryonic stem cell therapy trails. First up? An Iraq war vet who was paralyzed from the chest down in 2005.

Yesterday it was announced that Iraq War veteran and Marine Matt Cole, paralyzed from the chest down since a 2005 insurgent attack in Iraq, has enrolled as the first patient in the first FDA clinical trial of adult stem cells used to treat spinal cord injuries.

The procedure involves removing a couple of thousand adult stem cells from Cole’s bone marrow, multiplying them in the lab and injecting them into his spinal cord. That should happen later this month. Nine other patients have also been enrolled for this phase of the trial, which is being undertaken by TCA Cellular Therapy in Covington, La.

Is that super serum enough for you? Me too.

Now who wants to send Matt a shield… just in case.

[Business Wire via Pop Sci]

My feeble brain can’t process how this could be used, but I’m pretty sure it’s awesome.

“It’s kind of surprising that we’ve been using lasers for 50 years or so, and only now somebody noticed something pretty fundamental,” says Marin Solja?i?, a physicist at MIT who was not involved in the work.

Instead of amplifying light into coherent pulses, as a laser does, an antilaser absorbs light beams zapped into it. It can be “tuned” to work at specific wavelengths of light, allowing researchers to turn a dial and cause the device to start and then stop absorbing light.

“By just tinkering with the phases of the beams, magically it turns ‘black’ in this narrow wavelength range,” says team member A. Douglas Stone, a physicist at Yale University. “It’s an amazing trick.”

The option remains on the table to create a dual laser/anti-laser combo. Which is pretty much the coolest thing we’ve heard of today.

[Wired]

Not only will Austrian stuntman Felix Baumgartner attempt to redefine the official limitations of which height a human can fall from without dying immediately he also hopes to break the sound barrier on the way down.

Starting in the stratosphere at 120,000 feet above the ground, Baumgartner will leap from a capsule suspended by a helium balloon near the boundary of space.

Sponsored by the energy drink company Red Bull, Baumgartner’s mission — called Red Bull Stratos — seeks to extend the “safety zone” of human atmospheric bailout last set in 1960 by diver Joe Kittinger. This limit defines the uppermost altitude a human being can safely jump from.

Awesome. Also, he’s already leapt off the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. Double complete rainbow.

[Space]

Here is one paragraph for you to read:

“Accordingly, our own Universe may be the interior of a black hole existing in another universe.” So concludes Nikodem Poplawski at Indiana University in a remarkable paper about the nature of space and the origin of time.

If that doesn’t make you want to read the rest of this post, you’re a real silly goose.

[Technology Review]

Shooting a diamond bullet at anything might be the most Bowie badass thing ever conceived of, but if, as Chinese scientists are now theorizing it can also create nuclear power then we have a new favorite source of alternative energy.

[Popular Science]

A Japanese coal city abandoned in 1974 has been officially off-limits for anyone looking to explore the slowly decaying buildings that once was home to thousands. That did not stop this brave explorer and his trusty guide who not only infiltrated the infamous Battleship Island but took some super insane pictures while there.

[Gakuranman]

Last week we reported on how the FAA is clearing the way for Terrafugia’s new flying car. Now, thanks to the power of the Youtubes, we have video of this wondrous flying machine. It’s sleek as a thoroughbred, it’s seats are a feather bed, but I think I’ll let the 40 people who have already put down a $10,000 deposit test it for a while to make sure it doesn’t go ‘Bang-Bang.’

Japanese monitor maker Eizo released a pin-up calendar of provocative x-ray images. The company says they used computer graphics instead of real models.

Earlier this week Weird Things hipped you to a new jet pack that is set to go on sale. Now we are proud to inform you that the dream we’ve all had since seeing our first episode of The Jetsons is set to take flight.

The FAA has created an exception to help Terrafugia’s ‘flying car’ get off the ground. The company was having trouble making the prototype vehicle safe while staying within the weight limits for for a Light Sports Aircraft. This means it will most likely be available for consumers by late 2011. Expect new laws to ban texting-while-flying by 2012.

Drivers/Pilots can travel up to 450 miles in the air and enjoy 30 miles per gallon on the ground. No word on pricing, but you should probably start arranging that third mortgage right now to beat the rush.

UPDATED: with test footage thanks to @LHymas on Twitter.

Aw hell yeah.

The Jetpack achieves with 30 minutes of flight time and is fueled by regular premium gasoline, though you will undoubtedly earn some disbelieving stares at the petrol station. Since it has been built according to ultralight regulations no FAA recognized pilot’s license is required to fly one in the U.S., though this will depend on a country’s specific requirements. However, despite being significantly less complex than a helicopter to fly as pitch and roll are controlled by one hand, thrust and yaw by the other, Martin Aircraft won’t let anyone take receipt of their jetpack before completing their specially-developed Martin Aircraft Company approved training program. The pilot must also weigh between 140-240 lbs.

It’ll cost you about 90k to get into the jet pack lifestyle and a waiting list has already formed.

[Business Week]

[Actual Test Footage Of Jet Pack!]

Weird Things Live: Hunting the Night Creeper from Andrew Mayne on Vimeo.

Last Monday night in front of a live internet audience we set out to solve the mystery of the Night Creeper. Ghost? Frogman? Or something else? Although we’re pretty sure we figured it out, we haven’t definitively proved our theory. The mystery continues…

Running time 55 minutes.

Check out our photos of the scene on Flickr.

So you find a totally sweet cone-shaped rock but can’t shake the idea that it’s somehow special. Where to do you go to get clarity on what the geological oddity really is?

If you are Oregon couple Donald and Debbie Wesson you haul it down to a county fair, which leads you down a path of academic trail to realizing you’ve got your hands on a meteorite.

Wesson finally began asking around after watching a television program about meteorites. He took the rock to a local county fair in Castle Rock, Washington in the summer of 2009, where he spoke with a member of the Southern Washington Mineralogical Society.

The find was referred to Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., where initial sample tests showed it was probably a meteorite. Final confirmation came from the Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory at Portland State University, which classified the Morrow County meteorite as an L6 ordinary chondrite that had been highly shocked (S5) but minimally weathered (W1).

The latest find represents a relatively common type of meteorite, according to Melinda Hutson, a planetary scientist at Portland State University who helped make the classification. But, she added that it has several intriguing features.

Also, they got an Elephant Ear and rode the Flying Dutchman.

[Space]

The brilliant Phil Plait once penned an epic disemboweling of the film Armageddon which in turn morphed into a hilarious live talk that I was lucky enough to see in person. But it looks like at least one epic of the Michael Bay tour de force would be more of an omen than originally suspected.

Yes folks, Owen Wilson has offered his services to NASA just in case.

Just kidding, but it does look like our best defense from asteroids might be nuclear weaponry.

That’s the opinion of David Dearborn, anyway, who says we may need to tap our nuclear arsenal if a life-threatening asteroid suddenly comes into view. Dearborn, a research physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, laid out the nuclear case in a talk here Tuesday at the semiannual meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Dearborn’s research on nuking asteroids is a fairly natural outgrowth of his other work, which has involved weapons development and testing, as well as three-dimensional modeling of astrophysical processes. He has run numerical simulations of how a nuclear detonation either near or on the surface of a threatening near-Earth object could divert or fragment it, and has found that with a little bit of lead time the weapons could do the job rather well.

And cue the music.

[Scientific American]

Realistic bear paw shoes. Do I have to explain, what you can do with realistic bear paw shoes?

[If Shoes Could Kill]

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]

Ladies and gentleman, meet your new favorite band, Hevisaurus:

The band was born when a flash of lightning and witches’ spells revealed, cracked and brought to life five metal dinosaur eggs buried deep in a mountain 65 million years ago — around the time most other dinosaurs became extinct.

Or so goes the “official” creation story of the long-haired reptiles in spiked bracelets and black leather billed as the world’s only Jurassic metal band.

In reality, the idea hatched in the mind of drummer Mirka Rantanen, 38, a veteran “headbanger” who has played with numerous bands including the Finnish power metal group Thunderstone.
“For years and years you seriously try, and then you toss up this one crazy idea, and everyone gets excited,” said a bemused Rantanen in an interview.

It all started a few years ago when Rantanen attended a children’s concert with his own kids, now five and 11.

“What if I started making music for kids?” he thought. “What if it was heavy metal, since that’s what I’ve been doing for 25 years?”

Did you watch that video? Jesus Christ, seriously. How epic is that power ballad?!?!?

Find their more rocking anthem AFTER THE JUMP…

[Yahoo]

Apparently, the larger head has attacked the smaller one. Sleep with one eye open, smaller head.

[BBC via BoingBoing]

[Pravda]

As chronicled in yesterday’s New York Times a new wealth of heroes conceived by one of the fathers of modern comics, Jack Kirby, have been unveiled by California animation company whom he worked for later in his career. The firm that owns them, Ruby-Spears Productions, is planning of making them into new comics, cartoons and films.

But which are we most interested in? Golden Shield of course. According to the article:

Among the unrealized projects that Mr. Kirby helped create or contribute to were “Golden Shield,” about an “ancient Mayan hero seeking to save earth in the apocalyptic year 2012.”

Ever the visionary…

Who needs context?

[@xmasape]

Thanks please follow @Michael_Rooker. Special thanks to Matt Finley for his work on the Rooker articles.

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…

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?

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.

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)

One movie. Five people, living or dead, at the screening. Who and why?
Today’s screening: “Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn”

This sequel (or remake – debate rages on) to his revelatory debut feature “The Evil Dead” finds Sam Raimi revisiting a rustic cabin where dark forces are accidentally unleashed after an archaeologist’s taped readings from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis are played aloud, invoking evil spirits that protagonist Ash must fight off. The film continues the original’s cartoonish approach to violence, while upping the quantity of slapstick and one-liners.

• Buster Keaton (1895-1966), Actor
Though one may be straight faced and the other manic, Buster Keaton and Bruce Campbell share a workmanlike dedication to slapstick, flinging their bodies into the blind peril of exploding china and collapsing buildings. I’d love watching Keaton marvel at Campbell’s blood-smeared antics. Supposedly, there’s a lost scene from “The General” where Keaton gets curbed by his own severed foot.

• Garrett Brown (1943- ), Cinematographer
Brown, best known for inventing the Steadicam, may have already seen Evil Dead 2, which is infamous for featuring some of the most ridiculously over the top Steadicam shots ever. Still, I’d like to watch every tree-dodging, Campbell-flinging moment of footage with him. It’d be like taking flashlight-inventor David Missel to watch cops beat winos with Maglites.

• H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), Author
Known for his dour, madness-tinged tales of the dread elder gods, horror writer H.P. Lovecraft created the now-standard macabre MacGuffin, the Necronomicon. I’d like to show him Evil Dead 2 in hopes of putting a smile on his sad, tired face. Plan B: introduce him to a real elder god… The Tickle Monster.

• Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), Archaeologist
Travelling everywhere from Jerusalem to Hungary, Bell investigated ancient ruins and hidden cities all across Europe and Asia. While I can foresee her response to my post-screening question, “So, has that ever happened to you?,” I can’t predict her asnswer to my follow-up, “So, like, what would you do if it did?”

• Pat Graham (?), Film Critic
Now, I don’t need everyone to enjoy everything I like, but critic Pat Graham panned “Evil Dead 2”, “Predator” and “The Fly.” “Evil Dead 2” doesn’t really need more praise, but I still want this guy to re-experience it. And while he’s at the screening, the cops can raid his house to make sure he isn’t planning to rag on “Re-Animator” or murder Santa.

Ah, moons. So often overshadowed by your rocky, gassy, and thermonuclear overlords, you help invoke tides, stabilize axial tilts, sculpt and replenish rings, and provide at least one species with a stepping stone to timidly venture from the safety of their home planet. In this article we pay tribute to all those underappreciated planetary custodians by recognizing five of the downright weirdest moons in the solar system.

1. Titan (Saturn)

Imagine a dreamy world with clouds, wind, rain, rivers, lakes, shore lines, sand dunes and seasons, and this distant moon of Saturn is probably the last destination that springs to mind. Titan not only exhibits all of these familiar characteristics, but it is also the only moon known to have a thick atmosphere – composed mostly of nitrogen too, just like Earth.

That’s where the similarities just about end, though. If you excitedly read the paragraph above, hopped into the nearest spacecraft, journeyed the 750 million miles to Titan, landed on the surface and casually strolled outside to stretch your legs or go for a swim, you might be in for an unpleasant surprise. With no oxygen to breath, its thermostat set to a chilly -179° Celsius, impenetrably dim, hazy skies and vast lakes filled with liquid natural gas; Titan offers a fairly unforgiving environment for life as we know it.

2. Io (Jupiter)

Like a cosmic game of tug o’ war, Io is gravitationally pulled in several directions at once by its parent planet and fellow Galilean moons. All this interaction generates a heck of a lot of internal heat that eventually needs to be released. As a result, the Jovian moon is currently the most volcanically active body in the solar system. The tidal forces inflicted on Io are so strong that its solid surface may contract and expand as high as 330 feet, as opposed to Earth’s comparatively pathetic high and low tides of about 60 feet.

3. Europa (Jupiter)

It’s been about 30 years since hydrothermal vents were discovered in Earth’s oceans, and along with them the first community of organisms that relied on minerals and bacteria extracted from deep within the planet to survive, rather than sunlight. As evidence began to mount that a liquid water ocean could exist beneath Europa’s icy crust, so then did the possibility of finding life beyond Earth.

The same processes responsible for turning Io into an overflowing cauldron of silicate and sulphur could also play a key role in keeping Europa warm enough for microbial life to survive in a sub-surface ocean. Unfortunately, sending Bruce Willis and his crack team of oil drillers to find this ocean would be a mission somewhat difficult for NASA to justify in today’s economy, so we may have to wait a decade or two before probes can investigate the moon a little closer to make sure it’s worth the effort.

4. Mimas (Saturn)

I could rattle off a few mildly interesting facts about this moon, like how it’s largely responsible for creating the famous Cassini Division in Saturn’s rings or that it was almost shattered by an enormous impact that left a 130-kilometer-wide crater; but you’re probably staring blankly at the picture above, wondering if you should stock up on canned goods and hustle your family into a bomb shelter to await inevitable invasion by the Galactic Empire (coincidence? Or… cosmic conspiracy?!). FYI: My bunker has Wi-Fi.

5. Triton (Neptune)

Billions of years ago Triton is thought to have existed as one of two nameless, oversized snowballs in the Kuiper Belt, happily traveling around the sun while orbiting a common center of mass with its companion. At some point in time this duo moved a little too close to Neptune and the gas giant’s superior gravity proceeded to capture what is now Triton by wrenching the object out of its heliocentric orbit, subjecting it to a future of planetary subordination. One of the repercussions of this traumatic event is also what makes Triton so unique; it is the only large moon in the solar system that has an orbital direction opposite to that of its planet’s rotation – also known as a retrograde orbit.

Unfortunately for Triton, its orbital energy is being steadily depleted by the conflicting influence of Neptune’s rotation. As a result, the moon is gradually drifting closer to Neptune, all but ensuring one of two unhappy fates: breaking apart due to tidal forces or violently crashing into Neptune in a mere few billion years.

Special thanks to Sky News’ Viewers’ Editor Paul Bromley. We writes, what looks to be a pretty awesome blog.

One movie. Five people, living or dead, at a screening inside the head of Weird Things Culture Researcher Matt Finley. Who comes and why?

John Carpenter’s 1982 remake of “The Thing From Another World” re-imagines the latter’s rampaging monster as an insidious, parasitic shape-shifter that takes the form of anyone it kills. The scientists who unwittingly unleash the alien threat are trapped at a remote Antarctic research station, where the prolonged isolation and inability to determine who has been assimilated lead to a fevered downward spiral of paranoia, fear and violence.

• John Campbell Jr. (1910-1971), Author of the short story “Who Goes There?”
Though Campbell’s story inspired both films, the shape-shifting element, present in his story, was removed for the ‘50s version in favor of a boilerplate alien menace. The fact that Campbell didn’t live to see Carpenter’s more faithful adaptation is devastating, and I hereby declare Shenanigans on it.

• Roald Amundsen (1872-1928), Norwegian Explorer
Amundsen and his team were the first humans to reach the South Pole, arriving on December 14, 1911, and beating rival British explorer Robert Scott by just 35 days. Amundsen would surely relate to the film’s portrayal of Antarctica’s baron, freezing conditions, the inner ache of isolation and the out-sized masculinity of a scotch-swilling Kurt Russell.

• Ron Moore (1964- ), Screenwriter/Producer
Best known for his revelatory contemporary reimagining of the ‘80s sci-fi series “Battlestar Galactica,” Moore is currently at work on a script for a remake of/prequel to “The Thing.” I want him at the screening so that I can say, “I love ya’, buddy, but are you sure about this?” and then give him a haircut.

• Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926), German Psychiatrist
Most famous for dividing the diagnosis of “psychosis” into two separate, distinct forms, “manic depression” and “dementia praecox,” Kraeplin also introduced the term “paranoia” into the vernacular of the psychiatric profession. I want to get his opinion on my theory that just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean that this adorable pure-bred husky isn’t the thing.

• Goldie Hawn (1945- ), Actress
This otherwise nerdy group of writers and scientists could sure use some occasional, amusing real-life Kurt Russell anecdotes, and who better to provide them than the mother of his kids? Goldie can tell us all about when a frustrated Kurt poured liquor into their home chess computer, or the time he ordered her to “call it Plissken.”

This was a welcome surprise for us here at Weird Things.

Awesome evil magic duo Barry and Stuart sent me a link to this clip from the Sun. Apparently some kid caught a ghost on his camera phone…look familiar?

Look at the fun you too can have with Ghost Vision! Available here for only $15

Popular Science article

Exactly whose dream is Nara Dreamland in Japan? The now closed park has its own princess castle, Matterhorn ride, Jungle Cruise and many other eerily similar versions of famous Disney attractions. It’s also got a building covered in swastikas.
Two intrepid tourists visit it before it closed (or was it already closed!).
A brochure for the park (in Japanese).
Google maps satellite view.

American hero, frontiersman and all around awesome cultural icon Daniel Boone liked to tell tall tales. One of his tallest was his claim that he once shot and killed a 10 foot hairy creature he referred to as a “yahoo”. Skeptical Inquirer thinks that he may have been lifting a little from Gulliver’s Travels. Link We think they’ve never fought in the revolutionary war.

In a modern context, Yowie is the generic (and somewhat affectionate) term for the unidentified hominid reputed to lurk in the Australian wilderness. It is an Australian cryptid similar to the Himalayan Yeti and the North American Bigfoot.

Rather confusingly, Yowie (or “Yowie-Whowie”) is also the name of a completely different mythological character in native Australian Aboriginal folklore. This version of the Yowie is said to be a bizarre, hybrid beast resembling a cross between a human and an ape with big red eyes on the side of his head, big canine teeth and large fangs. It emerges from the ground at night to eat whatever it can find, including humans. This creature’s characteristics and legend are sometimes interchangeable with those of the bunyip.
Read more on Wikipedia