[Space]

A mysterious ripple on Lake Washington has locals scratching their heads. I love how the reporter throws NOAA under the bus at the end.

[King5 via The Mysterialist]

Check out these awesome 3D images of a 49 million-year-old huntsman spider that was trapped and preserved in amber.

[The Epoch Times]

The CDC has published a plan in case of a zombie outbreak. I am disappointed that their emergency kit does NOT include any weapons at all. That does not sound like a valid plan to me and I will definitely be upgrading the proposed kit with some additional items.

“If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine). It’s likely that an investigation of this scenario would seek to accomplish several goals: determine the cause of the illness, the source of the infection/virus/toxin, learn how it is transmitted and how readily it is spread, how to break the cycle of transmission and thus prevent further cases, and how patients can best be treated.”

[CDC via Geekologie]

A hulking figure in the woods lunches toward you and your hunting party. In the woods, instinct and a steady hand are your only weapons and this is no different. In the split second before you pull the trigger, time slows down. You wonder if you’ll regret this, what this creature is and why he became so enraged.

Time’s up. Trigger pulled. The hairy creature slumps to the ground, drawing last breath in the form of desperate, sputtering heaves.

You just killed Bigfoot. The good news is, you aren’t alone. According to a compilation of press reports by RobertLindsay.com beginning in 1829 at least 36 people have reportedly shot and killed Sasquatch. The bigger question is what people do with the body?

Some folks buried the noble creature. Some stuffed the corpse so it could be secretly displayed to the upper crust at a member’s only country club. Some turned over the remains to shadowy government officials.

Great research.

[RobertLindsay.com via Cryptomundo]

“Something isn’t right. A snake that size shouldn’t be that slender,” says Chris Brennan, resident expert on giant snakes for WeirdThings.

According to Brennan, the color scheme resembles an anaconda which has a wider head and heavier build. Furthermore, the tail shouldn’t taper off the way it does for an anaconda of that size and the width should be at least double what it looks to be in the photo.

Brennan is a former park ranger who along with his licensed trapper father has helped capture nuisance reptiles around South Florida for 20 years.

The color and shape of the beast looks like a juvenile rainbow python or carpet python, adds Brennan. Carpet python would be more realistic because they don’t have a distinctive pattern, for example spots.

If it’s not photoshopped it would have to be an arboreal species trying to find dry land. However, this is far larger than a native species of snake so if the picture is legit, Brennan says it’s likely the species was imported from elsewhere.

This is not to say that stories of bizarre animals becoming displaced by the opening of flood gates in Mississippi should be dismissed whole cloth.

“If they are not seeing insane animal migration it’s a miracle,” says Brennan.

“When encountering a giant species in a wild, it looks alien,” he added. “You can divide a length of what someone says they saw by half.

“Always remember kids, while giant species of snakes are dangerous they are just as scared of you as you are of them.”

A snapshot of what is being called the “Morganza Snake” has been making it’s rounds on Facebook causing an uproar as people argue whether it is “real” or “fake.” We have heard from all the city and government officials that with the opening of the Morganza Spillway, that we may see animals (snakes, gators, bears, deer, hogs) in places that we don’t normally see them as they seek higher ground from the water pouring into areas designated to relieve the swelling Mississippi.

[WAFB via Cryptomundo]

In a release, the Petoskey Department of Public Safety said officers pulled the man back onto the roof and found a baton type striking weapon, a can of chemical irritant spray, and a pair of lead lined gloves.

The suspect, a Harbor Springs resident, was arrested for trespassing and possession of dangerous weapons.

I like to think he wears lead-lined gloves in case his buddy Superman needs help with any Kryptonite.

[Click On Detroit via Phantoms and Monsters]

The boys each have to spend $500,000 in the most bizarre way possible leading to robotic carnage, bullets, Bigfoot, mint juleps and a very special visit from a King of Kings. Brian recoils when explained the concept of Necropants. Andrew tells tale of man who flew across the Grand Canyon using a rocket pack.

Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s new SciFi book The Grendel’s Shadow for only .99 at Amazon.com by clicking the image below!

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Picks:

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• 2010: A Space Odyssey
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Justin-

• The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness by Steven Levy
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Andrew-

• Hell House

“It’s just really, really weird,” said Jerry Vinski, director of nearby Raritan Valley Community College’s planetarium, who conducted tests on the site. “We dug around and couldn’t find anything. We used metal detectors because all meteors have metal in them, and we couldn’t find anything, large or small.”

[Daily Record]

They call them hot Jupiters. A series of gas giant planets in far off solar systems that appear to circle their star in two very peculiar ways. First, it swings perilously close. Second, a quarter of them seemingly do it backwards compared to the normal orbit behavior.

But how the so called “flipped hot Jupiters” come to be is fascinating. In essence they begin like our own Jupiter, as a gas giant further out in the solar system. At some point, they come in contact with a larger planet whose orbit is so similar it eventually begins to “interact tidally”:

This tidal squeezing is like friction, dissipating energy and causing the planet’s orbit to shrink.

Sometimes, while this process is happening, the orientation of planet’s orbit can be shifted so it’s not in the same plane as the other planets. Occasionally, the orbit can be changed so much it completely flips around.

“We saw this for the first time because we did the calculation much more carefully than people had ever done before,” Rasio said. “The basic physics is just Newtonian mechanics. All of that comes out naturally of simply calculating these very tiny gradual changes that build on.”

Emosewa.

[Space]

Residents of Binh Dong Commune of Binh Son District in Quang Ngai, Vietnam have been overrun. Strange, gigantic footprints in the snow. An otherworldly howl piercing the still of night.

The beast, whatever it is, left a grisly calling card for one dog owner.

However, no one has seen the strange creature that could have caused such large footprints measuring almost 12-15cm. Over 20 dogs have also been killed in the area and now around 280 households of the commune are living in panic.

Nguyen Thi Bich Ngoc, a 70-year-old woman was the first to find her dead pet dog on the night of May 7. She said that her dog was found without its head and some body organs.

Meanwhile, a few villages over, a pack of wild dog-like animals are taking their liberties with a local neighborhood. Biting anyone who attempts to interrupt their meals of chickens, pigs, goats or horses.

Here is how they are described:

…in the border districts of Si Ma Cai and Muong Khuong in the northwestern province of Lao Cai, people have repeatedly seen strange species of dog like animals.

The strange creatures have bitten about 15 people in Ban Me, Thao Chu Phin, Quang Than San and Si Ma Cai communes in the two districts.

According to local residents, the strange doglike creatures have slender, long bodies, slanting red eyes and their fur coat is marked with white spots, black and white spots or yellow stripes.

What is happening to Vietnam? Did someone open a hellmouth?

[VietnamNet]

Last week a lightning storm started a chain reaction destroying transformers and leaving 4000 people without power. At least that is the official story; check out the video for three minutes of chain reaction goodness.

[dallasnews]

[Star-Telegram]

The Cold War has just begun. The next several decades will be defined by an escalating race of espionage and technological one-upsmanship. You owe it to yourself to give your nation every advantage. That includes investigating the shadowy world of ESP and the transmission of messages from one brain to another.

So the tests begin. On animals at first. A hypothesis is formed that two bonds would be universally easy to detect changes in: A) the natural relationship between mother and child B) the continuity of life itself. Logical, no?

Comrades, this is the gilded pathway to hell as you blink to reality and find yourself on a Soviet submarine killing baby rabbits.

The document continues: “According to Naumov, Soviet scientists placed the baby rabbits aboard the submarine. They kept the mother rabbit in a laboratory on shore where they implanted electrodes (EEG?) in her brain. When the submarine was submerged, assistants killed the rabbits one by one. At each precise moment of death, the mother rabbit’s brain produced detectable and recordable reactions.”

Experiments like this when on through the 1970s with a particular focus on documenting if other animals could innately sense one of their own kicking the bucket.

[Mysterious Universe]