In 1875 a body was dug up while building a new train depot in Philadelphia. Thought to have been buried originally in 1800, the entire body has been turned into soap.
“This unusual preservation occurred because water seeped into the casket and brought alkaline soil with it, turning the fats in his body to soap through a type of hydrolysis known as saponification.”
Perhaps this guy should investigate what is going on down there.
Japanese scientists from Kyoto University have announced that they’ve managed to create a “palladium-like” alloy using what they label as “present-day alchemy.” They used nanotechnology to combine rhodium and silver into the new alloy, which they say could eventually replace the real thing in consumer electronics.
Professor Hiroshi Kitagawa and his team used nanotechnology to combine rhodium and silver to produce an alloy with similar properties to palladium, which is located between rhodium and silver on the periodic table. These two metals usually would not mix, as rhodium has 45 electrons and silver 47, and so are stable elements unable to react with each other under normal conditions. The research team overcame this hurdle by mixing rhodium and silver in solution which was then turned into a mist and mixed with heated alcohol. This process produced particles of the new alloy that are around 10 nanometres in diameter.
A natural event that inspired some of the most awesome Norse mythology ever will make an epic return to it’s homeland tomorrow.
Two beasts of Norse mythology are set to trouble the skies of northern Europe on Tuesday for the world’s first solar eclipse of 2011.
Ancient Viking legends recount that a giant wolf named Skoll chases the Moon, and its brother Hati pursues the Sun — and if either sinks their teeth into one and holds it back, an eclipse occurs.
For astronomers, though, eclipses are less superstitious affairs, occurring when the Moon swings between the Sun and Earth.
Tuesday’s event will be a partial eclipse. This occurs when a fraction of the Moon obscures the Sun, and to those in its shadow a “bite” seems to have been taken out of the solar face.
According to legend, humans are encouraged to make as much noise as possible when the eclipse happens, as to scare away the wolves. So, file that under “things to do.”
Thousands of dead blackbirds rained down onto Beebe, Arkansas to help ring in the new year. Welcome to 2011!
UPDATE: 100,000 dead fish have washed up on the banks of the Arkansas River as well. Get out while you still can.
It only gets weirder after midnight! More podcasts! More livestreams! More YouTube!
A huge thanks to Matt Finley, Bill Meeks and Ryan Crutchfield who have helped make this site so much more interesting with their writing.
From everyone here including publisher and dungeon master Andrew Mayne, constant victim of family-centric horror Brian Brushwood and wild-eyed moron Justin Robert Young, thanks for making 2010 the biggest year in our young history!
Guest starring Ashley Paramore. Subscribe to her on YouTube.
Recently, in the city of Elista in the Kalmykia Republic, spotlights strange lights were witnessed by hundreds of residents. The former head of the republic, and current president of the World Chess Federation, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, said that he was not surprised because he has met with these aliens before.
“Aliens told me: “You, humans, have not contributed anything to the development of the civilization, and you are cannibals. Isn’t this a manifestation of madness – being a cannibal?” the newspaper quoted the official as saying.
[Pravda]
It might be a fake chupacabra but it definitely got real murdered on a front lawn in Kentucky.
[Fox News]
In Kentucky, being unidentifiable and having no fur in winter can be a deadly combination.
Mark Cothren shot and killed an animal on Dec. 18 because he said he feared what it was, since he did not recognize it. He said the animal walked from the woods onto his front yard around 3 p.m. Cothren lives on Mount Carmel Church Road in Lebanon Junction.
“I was like: ‘every animal has hair, especially this time of year!’ What puzzled me is how something like that could survive through a winter with no hair,” Cothren said.
[wave3]
India’s space agency experienced its second launch failure of the year when a rocket carrying a communication satellite exploded shortly after takeoff.
Yashpal, a retired Indian scientist and independent commentator, said he was very disappointed by Saturday’s failure, but other countries too have experienced such problems.
“I hope it’s just one of those things,” Yashpal, who uses one name, told reporters.
Manned spaceflight is planned for 2016.
[MSNBC]
Andrew heroically plots how he can rid the world of all life to spite a master race of alien invaders. The team learns a new ghost hunting technique in the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ graveyard and Spiro & The Fudge return to solve a case involving a mysterious stranger, a fully cooked steak and acres of unknowable wilderness.
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Episode notes:
• Michael Crichton: States of Fear – Science or Politics
• Bjørn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist
Recomendations:
Andrew:
Pitch Black
The Keep
Brian:
Moon
Donnie Darko
Being John Malkovich
Justin:
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
New evidence suggests that female chimps in the wild copulate more often with males who share their meat with them on a regular basis. This validates a long held belief that the “meat-for-sex” trade is a key building block in both chimpanzee and early human hunter-gatherer societies.
We are sure there is a Christmas parable in here somewhere. Thanks to WT reader Dan Wheeler for sending this along.
Want to visit the real or imagined past and future without having a pack of wild Lybians trying to shoot you with a GD bazooka? Scientists have found evidence that you can travel through time where you comically meets a horny, teenage version of your mom using only your brain:
Researchers have found evidence for “chronesthesia,” which is the brain’s ability to be aware of the past and future, and to mentally travel in subjective time. They found that activity in different brain regions is related to chronesthetic states when a person thinks about the same content during the past, present, or future.
Heavy, Doc.
New Zealand’s military has released hundreds of documents from 1952-2009 containing drawings of UFOs and also supposed to contain examples of alien writing.
They are all online ready for you to examine.
[BBC]