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JANUARY 2006 NEWS ARCHIVES:

INDEX OF ARTICLES:
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ABDUCTIONS
ALIEN ABDUCTIONS
BILL O'REILLY INTERVIEWS UFO ABDUCTEES

AIRCRAFT ANOMALIES
TRAUMA OF 9/11 HEADING FOR THE BIG SCREEN
CHINA: STRANGE CRAFT CAUSES NEAR MISS

ANCIENT CIVILIZATION / ANCIENT EARTH
EARLY MAN WAS HUNTED BY BIRDS
CHINA BEAT COLUMBUS TO IT, PERHAPS
DEBATE CONTINUES OVER 40,000 YEAR OLD FOOTPRINTS

CELESTIAL AND MATHEMATICAL PRECISION IN ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE
2006-YEAR OF NEW UNDERWATER SHIPWRECK DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION

CRYPTOZOOLOGY / FLORA & FAUNA ANOMALIES
STRANGE FISH WASHES ASHORE IN CAYMAN ISLANDS
MALAYSIA CREATES TEAM TO TRACK 'BIGFOOT'
FRANKLIN COUNTY'S WILD CRYPTO ZOO
CATTLE MUTILATIONS FROM ABOVE

GEOLOGY / EARTH
TWO NEW LAKES FOUND BENEATH ANTARCTIC ICE
EARTH WARMS UP REGULARLY
CHANDLER'S WOBBLE
AURORAL ANOMALY

MARS
MINING ON MARS
MARS SYMBOLS AND PYRAMIDS
MARS HAS SEASONS
MARS VEGETATION AND CIVILIZATION

SPACE / SCIENCE
SKEPTICISM GREETS CLAIM OF POSSIBLE ALIEN MICROBES
BIO-ELECTROMAGNETIC WEAPONS
CHINA TO BUILD 'ARTIFICIAL SUN' ENERGY DEVICE

UFO / ET
CHINA OVERTAKES CANADA IN OUTER SPACE SEARCH FOR ALIENS
HUBBLE PHOTO OF UFO ARTIFACT

MYSTICISM AND UFO SIGHTINGS
CALIFORNIA: VIDEO OF EXPLODING UNKNOWN OBJECT 01-18-06

MISCELLANEOUS
CHEMTRAILS AND ALUMINUM HARM HEART, LUNGS AND PLANTS
THE CHEMTRAIL SMOKING GUN: PROOF OF GLOBAL GEOENGINEERING PROJECTS
MYSTERIOUS BOOMS RETURN


ALIEN ABDUCTIONS
UFO Abductions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland
Johannes Fiebag, Ph.D. Lecture in 1997
edited by Katharina Wilson

Dr. Johannes Fiebag was born in 1956, and is Germany's leading abduction research specialist. He has published many books about alien contact in ancient and modern times, and four books specifically about the abduction phenomenon in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Dr. Fiebag founded the CE-IV-Report, a newsletter for abductees, and he also organizes an annual meeting called Project Exchange that allows abductees to network with one another. In addition to CE-IV-Report and Project Exchange, Dr. Fiebag has also formed an interdisciplinary organization of psychiatrists, psychologists and other medical professionals who work to help traumatized abductees.

Full story: http://www.worldofthestrange.com/modules.php?
name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=4622
SOURCE: World of the Strange http://www.worldofthestrange.com/


BILL O'REILLY INTERVIEWS UFO ABDUCTEES

Last night (01-13-06) Bill O'Reilly, on his cable program The O'Reilly Factor, interviewed Clayton and Donna Lee concerning their claims that they have been abducted by UFOs.

O'Reilly was respectful during the interview but he also was honest in his assessment when he told them that a lot of people would think they are a couple of nuts for believing they had been abducted by UFOs. At the end of the interview he asked them if they had ever taken a lie detector test and neither of them had. In fact, they both laughed at the prospect and said that they knew what happened to them because they were there.

I have my thoughts about the whole idea of UFO abduction and aliens - in a word - demonic. Some research has shown that people who have claimed to be abducted by “aliens” have also been heavily involved in the occult, witchcraft and the New Age movement.

One interesting comment that Donna Lee made was that the aliens she saw were tall, blonde and looked “human like.” If you believe in the demonic realm, and also the written word of God, this makes total sense. Read about the Nephilim in the Old Testament and then you decide if alien abductions are real, demonic or something else. I'll stick with demonic any day.

SOURCE: http://writingright.typepad.com/writingright/2006/01/oreilly_intervi.html ;
UFO Casebook 2-06-06 http://www.ufocasebook.com/020606.html

 


TRAUMA OF 9/11 HEADING FOR THE BIG SCREEN
Four movies are in various stages of production; up first,
the story of passengers on
Flight 93”
By Heather Timmons
The New York Times

[IMAGE: http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2006/0102/20060102
_083448_AE03_911.1.jpg The site in Shanksville, Pa., where United Flight 93 crashed
 on Sept. 11, 2001. (AP / Ted S. Warren)]

Iver Heath, England - With a violent shudder, the front of a reconstructed Boeing 757 pitches toward the ground. Actors struggle not to slide from their seats, some screaming, one chanting, “Oh, my God.” A camera flits from seat to seat, stopping to focus on individual vignettes of terror, as an actor playing a hijacker barks, “Sit down!” over the loudspeaker.

After almost universally shying away from the topic for the past four years, Hollywood is turning in full force to the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Painful memories, all-too-familiar news clips and personal stories are now being transformed into big-screen dramas, as studios look for commercial value in the still-fresh trauma, while prompting the mass audience to revisit its thoughts and feelings.

This spring will bring the release of the first feature film to focus specifically on the attacks: “Flight 93,” from director Paul Greengrass, based on the hijacking that led to the crash of a United Airlines plane into a field in Somerset County, Pa.

The movie, to be released by Universal Pictures, is being filmed in Pinewood Studios (the site of many James Bond films). The filmmakers said “Flight 93” had the cooperation of all the families of the passengers who died on the flight. Many agreed to participate because they felt that previous attempts to document the crash focused on just the few passengers who had been able to make calls to their family members.

Greengrass directed “The Bourne Supremacy” but is perhaps better known for the 2002 movie “Bloody Sunday,” which reconstructed the notorious 1972 incident in which 13 unarmed civil rights demonstrators were killed by British soldiers in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

In “Flight 93,” Greengrass incorporates information about the disaster, including the plane's exact movements in the air, the times and content of phone calls to family members, recordings from inside the cockpit and reaction on the ground from air traffic controllers and the military, as well as details about the passengers' personalities and mannerisms provided by the families.

The goal is to weave what he calls “a believable truth” about what happened in midair. Many of the scenes in the plane are being filmed in long, grueling takes, with actors improvising dialogue and actions.

“One of the reasons why Flight 93 exerts such a powerful hold on our imaginations is precisely because we don't know exactly what happened,” Greengrass said in an interview on the set, a concrete hangar dominated by the sections of the rebuilt plane, which are on mechanized scaffolding to make them pitch and roll during filming.

“Which one of us doesn't think about that day and wonder how it must have been and how we might have reacted?” he asked.

Also in the works are several more traditionally structured dramas. Oliver Stone's movie about the last two men to be rescued from the World Trade Center, starring Nicolas Cage, is beginning production in Los Angeles. “Reign O'er Me,” directed by Mike Binder, to be released in 2007, will star Adam Sandler as a man who lost his family on Sept. 11 and is still grieving. Also is the works for 2007 is an adaptation of “102 Minutes” by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, a book that recreates the moments between the first plane's crash into the World Trade Center and the second tower's collapse.

“Hollywood has a long history of engaging with big historical narratives, and 9/11 is nothing if not a big, dramatic, historical narrative,” said Marita Sturken, an associate professor in New York University's department of culture and communication. Until now, filmmakers have largely avoided the events of Sept. 11 (with the exception of Spike Lee's “25th Hour,” which used the scars of New York City as a backdrop), partly from a sense that the trauma is too immediate to draw audiences.

“I don't know what the good time is” to make these movies, said Carole O'Hare, the daughter of Hilda Marcin, one of the 40 passengers and crew on Flight 93. “I do know that prior to this date, it would not have been a good time.

“We all knew it would come eventually,” she said, and “given the opportunity for input and involvement, I would rather have my say than be put in the background.”

A researcher for “Flight 93,” Kate Solomon, contacted the victims' families to solicit their support, and Greengrass and one of the film's producers, Lloyd Levin, met with many.

“When Paul and Lloyd came to us, they were very concerned about being as accurate as they could possibly be,” O'Hare said, and they promised to represent all the passengers, not just a few. “It's nice that you can include them all, and honor them all.”

If the Sept. 11 films are being made as commercial enterprises, Sturken said, they are also an important way for “our various cultures” to work out the meaning of the events behind them. The way these stories are told has much to do with the “way that we want them preserved,” she said.

“There is a pretty big audience for that story,” she added, “if - and this is crucial - if people perceive it to be sensitively told.” Inevitably, some people will not want to watch these movies.

“Different people cope with very horrible experiences in different ways,” said Dr. Cynthia Pfeffer, a professor of psychiatry at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, who has treated many patients affected by the events of Sept. 11. Some people who were close to the situation or lost loved ones should probably choose to avoid the films altogether, because they will just reignite traumatic feelings, she said. Others may want to go with someone they can talk to about the movie afterward.

For Greengrass, though, it was the story's broader implications that inspired him to make “Flight 93.”

“Forty ordinary people had 30 minutes to confront the reality of the way that we're living now, decide on the best course of action and act,” he said. The passengers were the “first people to inhabit the post-9/11 world,” he continued. “They had to choose because they were in that airplane. Their choices are our choices, and their debate is our debate.”

SOURCE: http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_3365369
 


CHINA: STRANGE CRAFT CAUSES NEAR MISS

Bohai Sea -- Recently, China's CCTV reported that six Chinese Air Force pilots of the Flight Performance Teams witnessed a large unidentified aircraft formation flying toward them resulting in a near mid-air collision. Air traffic control radar systems were unable to observe and/or record the unidentified formation. On the CCTV program “Approaching Science” , Feng Yi, deputy team lead of the Chinese Air Force Flight Performance Team, a top level pilot with 3,000 hours of flying experience, talked about this unusual experience.

Image: Chinese J-11 Air Superiority Fighters:
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/uploads/03chineseflankersu-27j-11.jpg

Feng and his team were conducting the performance training over the Bohai Sea. At 9 a.m., the flight team reached an altitude of 21,000 feet. Suddenly a large unidentified formation of planes appeared just about 30 miles left to them flying from southeast to northwest. Feng reported this observation immediately to the Air Traffic Control Center and requested them to conduct a search, but no other airplanes were reported on radar. Feng's teammates have also seen the same aircraft formations. The airplanes both he and his team have seen, all represented different countries from different periods of history.

Propeller types as well as jets had been included in the formations. It is highly unlikely that all of the pilots had the same illusion at the same time. Some experts believe perhaps it was a scene from another dimension or even another time. China has the largest Air Force in the world with over 6,000 planes.
Thanks to Epoch Times. Jan 08, 2006.

SOURCE: http://english.epochtimes.com/news/6-1-8/36675.html
Filer's Files #3 - January 18, 2006
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/publish/article_53.php

 


RESEARCHER: EARLY MAN WAS HUNTED BY BIRDS
By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS
Associated Press Writer Jan 12, 2006

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- A South African anthropologist said Thursday his research into the death nearly 2 million years ago of an ape-man shows human ancestors were hunted by birds.

“These types of discoveries give us real insight into the past lives of these human ancestors, the world they lived in and the things they feared,” Lee Berger, a paleo-anthropologist at Johannesburg's University of Witwatersrand, said as he presented his conclusions about a mystery that has been debated since the remains of the possible human ancestor known as the Taung child were discovered in 1924.

The Taung child's discovery led to the search for human origins in Africa, instead of in Asia or Europe as once theorized. Researchers regard the fossil of the ape-man, or Australopithecus africanus, as evidence of the “missing link” in human evolution.

Researchers had speculated the Taung child was killed by a leopard or saber-toothed feline. But 10 years ago, Berger and fellow researcher Ron Clarke submitted the theory the hunter was a large predatory bird, based on the fact most of the other fossils found at the same site were small monkeys that showed signs of having been killed by a predatory bird.

Berger and Clarke had until now been unable to show damage on the child's skull that could have been done by a bird.

Five months ago, Berger read an Ohio State University study of the hunting abilities of modern eagles in West Africa believed similar to predatory birds of the Taung child's era.

The Ohio State study determined that eagles would swoop down, pierce monkey skulls with their thumb-like back talons, then hover while their prey died before returning to tear at the skull. Examination of thousands of monkey remains produced a pattern of damage done by birds, including holes and ragged cuts in the shallow bones behind the eye sockets.

Berger went back to the Taung skull, and found traces of the ragged cuts behind the eye sockets. He said none of the researchers who had for decades been debating how the child died had noticed the eye socket damage before.

Berger concluded man's ancestors had to survive not just being hunted from the ground, but from the air. Such discoveries are “key to understanding why we humans today view the world they way we do,” he said.

Berger's research has been reviewed by others and is due to appear in the February edition of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

SOURCE: http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/12/D8F39VDOF.html
 


CHINA BEAT COLUMBUS TO IT, PERHAPS
Jan 12th 2006
From The Economist print edition

Ancient map strongly suggests that Chinese seamen were first round the world
http://www.economist.com/images/20060114/0206BK1.jpg

THE brave seamen whose great voyages of exploration opened up the world are iconic figures in European history. Columbus found the New World in 1492; Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; and Magellan set off to circumnavigate the world in 1519. However, there is one difficulty with this confident assertion of European mastery: it may not be true.

It seems more likely that the world and all its continents were discovered by a Chinese admiral named Zheng He, whose fleets roamed the oceans between 1405 and 1435. His exploits, which are well documented in Chinese historical records, were written about in a book which appeared in China around 1418 called “The Marvelous Visions of the Star Raft” .

Next week, in Beijing and London, fresh and dramatic evidence is to be revealed to bolster Zheng He's case. It is a copy, made in 1763, of a map, dated 1418, which contains notes that substantially match the descriptions in the book. “It will revolutionize our thinking about 15th-century world history,” says Gunnar Thompson, a student of ancient maps and early explorers.

The map (shown above) will be unveiled in Beijing on January 16th and at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich a day later. Six Chinese characters in the upper right-hand corner of the map say this is a “general chart of the integrated world” . In the lower left-hand corner is a note that says the chart was drawn by Mo Yi Tong, imitating a world chart made in 1418 which showed the barbarians paying tribute to the Ming emperor, Zhu Di. The copyist distinguishes what he took from the original from what he added himself.

The map was bought for about $500 from a small Shanghai dealer in 2001 by Liu Gang, one of the most eminent commercial lawyers in China, who collects maps and paintings. Mr. Liu says he knew it was significant, but thought it might be a modern fake. He showed his acquisition to five experienced collectors, who agreed that the traces of vermin on the bamboo paper it is written on, and the de-pigmentation of ink and colors, indicated that the map was more than 100 years old.

Mr. Liu was unsure of its meaning, and asked specialists in ancient Chinese history for their advice, but none, he says, was forthcoming. Then, last autumn, he read “1421: The Year China Discovered the World” , a book written in 2003 by Gavin Menzies, in which the author makes the controversial claim that Zheng He circumnavigated the world, discovering America on the way. Mr. Menzies, who is a former submariner in the Royal Navy and a merchant banker, is an amateur historian and his theory met with little approval from professionals. But it struck a chord: his book became a bestseller and his 1421 website is very popular. In any event, his arguments convinced Mr. Liu that his map was a relic of Zheng He's earlier voyages.

The detail on the copy of the map is remarkable. The outlines of Africa, Europe and the Americas are instantly recognizable. It shows the Nile with two sources. The north-west passage appears to be free of ice. But the inaccuracies, also, are glaring. California is shown as an island; the British Isles do not appear at all. The distance from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean is ten times greater than it ought to be. Australia is in the wrong place (though cartographers no longer doubt that Australia and New Zealand were discovered by Chinese seamen centuries before Captain Cook arrived on the scene).

The commentary on the map, which seems to have been drawn from the original, is written in clear Chinese characters which can still be easily read. Of the west coast of America, the map says: “The skin of the race in this area is black-red, and feathers are wrapped around their heads and waists.” Of the Australians, it reports: “The skin of the aborigine is also black. All of them are naked and wearing bone articles around their waists.”

But this remarkable precision, rather than the errors, is what critics of the Menzies theory are likely to use to question the authenticity of the 1418 map. Mr. Menzies and his followers are naturally extremely keen to establish that the 1763 copy is not a forgery and that it faithfully represents the 1418 original. This would lend weighty support to their thesis: that China had indeed discovered America by (if not actually in) 1421. Mass spectrography analysis to date the copied map is under way at Waikato University in New Zealand, and the results will be announced in February. But even if affirmative, this analysis is of limited importance since it can do no more than date the copyist's paper and inks.

Five academic experts on ancient charts note that the 1418 map puts together information that was available piecemeal in China from earlier nautical maps, going back to the 13th century and Kublai Khan, who was no mean explorer himself. They believe it is authentic.

The map makes good estimates of the latitude and longitude of much of the world, and recognizes that the earth is round. “The Chinese were almost certainly aware of longitude before Zheng He set sail,” says Robert Cribbs of California State University. They certainly assumed the world was round. “The format of the map is totally consistent with the level of knowledge that we should expect of royal Chinese geographers following the voyages of Zheng He,” says Mr. Thompson.

Moreover, some of the errors in the 1418 map soon turned up in European maps, the most striking being California drawn as an island. The Portuguese are aware of a world map drawn before 1420 by a cartographer named Albertin di Virga, which showed Africa and the Americas. Since no Portuguese seamen had yet discovered those places, the most obvious source for the information seems to be European copies of Chinese maps.

But this is certainly not a unanimous view among the experts, with many of the fiercest critics in China itself. Wang Tai-Peng, a scholarly journalist in Vancouver who does not doubt that the Chinese explored the world early in the 15th century (he has written about a visit by Chinese ambassadors to Florence in 1433), doubts whether Zheng He's ships landed in North America. Mr. Wang also claims that Zheng He's navigation maps were drawn in a totally different Chinese map-making tradition. “Until the 1418 map is scientifically authenticated, we still have to take it with a grain of salt,” he says.

Most forgeries are driven by a commercial imperative, especially when the market for ancient maps is booming, as it is now. The Library of Congress recently paid $10m for a copy of a 1507 world map by Martin Waldseemuller, a German cartographer. But Mr. Liu says he is not a seller: “The map is part of my life,” he claims.

The consequences of the discovery of this map could be considerable. If it does indeed prove to be the first map of the world, “the history of New World discovery will have to be rewritten,” claims Mr. Menzies. How much does this matter? Showing that the world was first explored by Chinese rather than European seamen would be a major piece of historical revisionism. But there is more to history than that. It is no less interesting that the Chinese, having discovered the extent of the world, did not exploit it, politically or commercially. After all, Columbus's discovery of America led to exploitation and then development by Europeans which, 500 years later, made the United States more powerful than China had ever been.

SOURCE: http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5381851

~AND~ OLD MAP FOUND IN A SHANGHAI SHOP MAY REWRITE HISTORY'S
VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY

The controversial chart, said to be an 18th century copy of a 1418 map made long
before Europeans
discovered” the New World.
By Mary-Anne Toy, Beijing
January 16, 2006

FRESH “evidence” to prove that Chinese navigators circumnavigated the world and discovered the Americas, Australia and Antarctica decades before Columbus, Magellan and others will be unveiled in Beijing tonight.

The evidence is said to be an 18th century copy of a 1418 map that includes the Americas and Australia well before Europeans “discovered” the New World.

If authentic, it means the Chinese beat Christopher Columbus by about 70 years, and 500 years of history would have to be rewritten.

The map's owner, Liu Gang, is a founding partner in one of Beijing's big commercial law firms. He is also a map collector, and in 2001 he spotted a beautifully drawn map of ink on bamboo paper in a Shanghai dealer's store.

According to Chinese characters on the map, it was drawn by one Mo Yi Tong in 1763 and was a gift to the emperor. It was a copy of a 1418 original, and carefully differentiates between later information added by Mo Yi Tong and the 1418 original, which included the Americas and Australia.

Given that Columbus did not “discover” America until 1492 — as every Chinese student is still taught — how could the Chinese have drawn an accurate world map in 1418?

These were the glory days of the Ming dynasty, when China's most celebrated mariner, Admiral Zheng He, made his epic voyages of discovery in the Pacific and Indian oceans to more than 30 countries with a mighty fleet of as many as 300 vessels.

His travels extended Chinese influence throughout South-East Asia, Africa, India and the Middle East. But he was never credited with rounding the Cape of Good Hope.

Mr. Liu suspected the map might be a forgery, or just wrong, but bought it anyway for $US500 ($A660). The Chinese experts he later consulted offered no explanation. His own research led him to the startling conclusion that Zheng must have sailed farther west than history had so far recognized, and before 1418.

If all this is sounding familiar, then it is. In 2003, a British amateur historian, Gavin Menzies, in his book 1421 — The Year China Discovered the World, made the controversial claim that between 1421 and 1423, a few years later than posited by Mr. Liu, Zheng He's fleets sailed round the Cape of Good Hope, up the coast of Africa, crossed the Atlantic, went down the coast of South America, through the Magellan Straits, down to Antarctica, over to Australia, around to what became the first American colony of Massachusetts, up to Greenland and reached Europe.

Though Menzies was savaged by many critics and most scholars for his use of circumstantial evidence and questionable assumptions, his book has become a bestseller, spawning a website, a two-part television series and plans for a film in the pipeline.

When Mr. Liu read Menzies' book last year it convinced him that the map was real and that it provided crucial evidence to back his theory. He contacted Menzies and arranged to release the map.

Tonight's unveiling of the map (actually a copy, as the real one is locked away in a bank vault, at a Beijing bookshop-cafe popular with expats, is unlikely to convince the skeptics and will enchant the true believers.

The Beijing launch is to be followed by a lecture in London tomorrow by Menzies to the Friends of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

The National Museum, on Tiananmen Square, which is holding an exhibition on Zheng He's undisputed achievements, does not include any reference to Menzies' theory and was unaware of Mr. Liu's map. A museum spokesman said most Chinese scholars dismissed Menzies' views.

Dr Gunnar Thompson, a Menzies supporter and researcher in new world voyages, said Liu Gang's map would “revolutionize our thinking” about 15th century world history.

Mr. Liu is not fazed by taking on the history establishment, and is confident that he and Menzies will be proved right, eventually.

THE RISE OF CHINA'S GREATEST MARINER, ZHENG


- He was 10 when the Han army invaded his central Asian home, ousting the ruling Mongols. The Han butchered the adult men and castrated the boys, some of whom, including Zheng, were taken to the capital to be palace servants.

- Within 20 years, the eunuch Zheng had risen to become a confidant of Zhu Di, the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty. At the emperor's command, he assembled a navy and set out to spread the glory of China to the world and establish trade.

- Between 1405 and 1433, he set sail seven times, reaching Iran, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania, India and Sri Lanka. His fleets, comprising 48 to more than 300 junks with a crew of up to 28,000, dwarfed that of the later European explorers.

- He is still revered as a god throughout South-East Asia. Last year was the 600th anniversary of his first epic voyage.

- After his last voyage, Confucian scholars in the imperial court, who had waged a losing battle against the eunuchs and who opposed exploration, finally won back control. They set about destroying all official records of the voyages.

- Zheng's tomb is in Nanjing.

SOURCE: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/01/15/1137259945225.html


DEBATE CONTINUES OVER 40,000 YEAR OLD FOOTPRINTS

It was a sensational discovery - human footprints said to be 40,000 years old, preserved by volcanic ash in an abandoned quarry in Mexico. The announcement, in July last year, created a flurry of excitement, but was then promptly dismissed by a second team of researchers who re-dated the rocks at 1.3 million years old, impossibly ancient to bear human traces.

The original claim has not gone away, however.

The first widespread evidence for the human occupation of North America came from the town of Clovis in New Mexico. The beautiful fluted stone-spear points made by the Clovis people are found on many sites and date back 11,500 years or so. They are believed to have been left by people who crossed a land bridge that once existed between Siberia and Alaska.

But there is an increasing body of evidence for earlier occupation of the Americas, dating back to a time when the overland route through the ice would have been impossible.

The best evidence probably comes from Monte Verde in Chile and dates back at least 12,500 years. But to have reached so far south by then, people must have entered the continent earlier still.

There have been many claims of earlier dates, but few have been substantiated. So the announcement of 40,000-year-old footprints from Mexico was greeted with skepticism and caution. It came from a team led by Silvia Gonzalez, a Mexican working at Liverpool John Moores University (JMU), UK.

In 2003, she was visiting a site at Cerro Toluquilla in the Valsequillo Basin. It is near Puebla, about 100km southeast of Mexico City. It is a dry environment with many small volcanoes and, in the distance, the smoking peak of Popocatepetl. She was hoping to find the geological context of deposits that had yielded animal bones showing possible butchery marks and dating back 20 or 30,000 years.

The researchers were looking for a vertical section through the rocks in the side of a small quarry, but it was overgrown and strewn with debris. As they were about to give up, they noticed that the floor of the quarry was made of a single layer of hardened volcanic ash called the xalnene tuff. It looks a bit like a badly asphalted car park.

'Mechanical' marks
Silvia Gonzalez had studied much younger human tracks in Lancashire and thought she could see similar markings in the volcanic ash.

“Suddenly, I began to see some marks on the top surface of the ash... and I recognized them as human footprints,” she told the BBC's Unearthing Mysteries program. “I felt quite shocked, because I knew already that this ash was very old.”

At first, her colleagues laughed at her, but soon they were brushing away the dust with excitement. A large area of the quarry has now been cleared and the researchers are making a detailed digital laser survey of the marks.

Some are clearly animal tracks left by perhaps deer and buffalo and running for several meters. Others do seem to resemble human footprints though there are few in a continuous track. They are of several sizes suggesting both adults and children.

The ash is too coarse to have left clear toe prints but some certainly appear to be from left or right feet with a raised arch and material bunched up behind the toes as the person pushed forwards up the gentle slope.

Gonzalez' colleague at JMU, Professor Dave Huddart, demonstrated the likeness to his own feet: “If I put my foot beside it, size 8½, it looks a typical size; it's got the characteristic figure-of-eight shape and the big toe is there, so it's a left foot.”

Professor Mike Waters of Texas A&M University is skeptical. He thinks the marks are products of the quarrying process and subsequent erosion. There are certainly some marks at the site that are very obviously due to that and seem much fresher - pick marks and tracks from mechanical diggers.

'Complex' scenario
More controversial still are the dates. Colleagues of Silvia Gonzalez at Oxford University used a technique called optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) that records the last time rocks were exposed to sunlight or heat.

That gave a variety of dates from the overlying sediments, but when applied to small fragments of what looked like brick or burnt clay within the volcanic ash, it produced a date of about 40,000 years.

That initially shocked Dr Gonzalez as it implied by far the earliest evidence of humans in the Americas. But it fitted in with dates of up to 38,000 years based on carbon 14 in shells in the sediments above.

In December, however, Paul Renne of the Berkley Geochronology Center in California published dates for the volcanic ash itself based on the powerful argon-argon technique that gave an age of 1.3 million years, far too old to be compatible with human footprints.

“I don't think that they are [footprints],” he told the BBC. “There are no trails of footprints that are consistent, the shapes don't really look like footprints, and, most importantly, there's a huge diversity of shapes, sizes and arrangements of these things.”

Professor Renne measured the age of several different grains in the ash and got the same age for each. Dr Gonzalez, though, says that the volcano responsible is complex. It interrupted explosively underneath a lake and lots of older material and lake sediment may have been caught up in the ash, distorting the date.

Further work
Furthermore, there do not seem to be the signs of erosion and weathering that would be expected if there had been a gap of more than a million years between the ash and the overlying sediments.

Professor Renne also looked at the magnetization of the rocks, partly to see if they might have been jumbled up and redeposited from an earlier material, which, he says, they were not. But he did find that the magnetic polarity was the opposite of the Earth's present magnetic field. The Earth's magnetic poles do occasionally flip.

“The last time the Earth's magnetic field had consistently reversed polarity was about 790,000 years ago, so the fact that we found reversed polarity magnetization in this rock tells us that it's older than 790,000 years,” he said.

Silvia Gonzalez' view? “We know that there are short-term 'excursions' of the magnetic field, and one of those happened 40,000 years ago, very interestingly.”

Professor Renne: “How did I know they were going to say that? There is a finite possibility that that is correct, but the probability is extremely low.”

It seems this debate really is going to run and run.

To answer the criticisms, Dr Gonzalez and her colleagues hope now to get permission to excavate for further footprints that would not be associated with any quarrying marks and to get more secure and consistent dates for the rocks.

“That would convince even the most intense critics,” she said. “We need to talk to each other to make a continental model of human migration across the Americas. It won't be done in a few years. It will take a lifetime, but we are not afraid to do that.”

If she succeeds, this little quarry could become one of the most important archaeological sites in the Americas.

A final comment from Professor David Meltzer, from Southern Methodist University, Dallas. He has researched and written extensively on the subject of the “first Americans” . He told the BBC: “I'm not averse to the idea of 40 000-year-old people in the New World - but I'm skeptical because we've been fooled before.

“We want to see it confirmed with all the evidence laid out so that we're not buying in to something that isn't there.”

SOURCE: BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4617466.stm
Conspiracy Journal #349 1/20/06 http://uforeview.tripod.com/conspiracyjournal349.html
 


CELESTIAL AND MATHEMATICAL PRECISION IN ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE
And we think we’re advanced
Melissa Hiebert Staff

Many ancient ruins demonstrate that the people who constructed them had not only a special regard for celestial bodies and mathematics, but also a spot-on accuracy. From Egypt to Mexico, there is no doubt that past civilizations were involved in incredibly complex space calculations, mathematics and architectural endeavors. Although many historians and archaeologists debate exactly what these civilizations did intentionally and what they did by mere chance, here are a few examples of how ancient architecture was created with mathematics and the cosmos in mind.

There are many examples of attention to spatial coordinates. For instance, the Great Pyramid’s faces are aligned with the four cardinal directions almost perfectly. In fact, they are less than 0.2 of a degree off. The pyramid is very precise, with the corners as little as two seconds of a degree (with 60 seconds in a minute of a degree, and 60 minutes in a degree) off of a 90-degree angle. In addition to this (although contested), the pyramids at Giza seem to match the stars of Orion’s belt with a certain precision.

The Site of Teotihuacan, “The Pyramid of the Sun,” as it has been dubbed, demonstrates advanced math. The pyramid’s base has a perimeter of 2932.8 feet, while the pyramid has a height of about 233.5 feet. If we take the ratio of base to height, we get about 12.56, or rather, 4p. Although to some this is thought to be a coincidence, the pyramid’s actual ratio is less than 0.05 per cent off of the true value for 4p.

The ancient Mayan site of Chichen Itza exemplifies the culture’s celestial orientation. The huge step pyramid (the pyramid of Kukulcan) that is the focus of the site has 91 steps on each of its sides, which add up to 364 steps. Adding the platform on top, there are 365 steps in total — the number of days in a year. Also, on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes (the first day of spring and fall, when day and night are the same length of time), the sunlight works to create a shadow of a giant serpent on the staircase that faces north.

A building called the Caracol, believed to have served as an observatory, is also found at the site of Chichen Itza. The windows are set up to align with certain points of interest. Although the top is damaged, remaining windows point to the northern and southern-most positions of Venus, the position of sunset on the Equinoxes, and the corners of the building itself point to the sunrises and sets of the solstices.

The Mayans had a sophisticated calendar, losing only one day in 6000 years. Their predictions of solar and lunar eclipses were incredibly accurate. As many have heard, they predicted a date that they believed would be the end of the world. This date, translated to our calendar, is on December 23, 2012. Although unlikely, the world is predicted to suddenly end in about seven years (if we have just translated the meaning of their calendar correctly).

The Mayans did have some rationale behind this number. This date marks the time in the precessional cycle of the earth that we will move out of the constellation of Pisces and on to the age of Aquarius.

What is global precession? I’m glad you asked. Everyone knows that the earth spins on its axis while it revolves around the sun. Most remember from grade 10 science class that the earth’s axis is not perfectly vertical, but rather tilted about 23.5 degrees. However, the axis is not always this way, as it slowly varies from about 24.5 degrees to 22.1 degrees, making a complete cycle every 41,000 years.

While it is moving in this way, due to varying gravitational forces, the axis wobbles (precesses) in a clockwise circle. Just imagine the way the axis of a top spins as it begins to fall. So, the angle of the earth stays the same (or somewhere within its three degree variance), but the direction in which it points changes. For example, our current North Star is Polaris (or Ursae Minoris), as the North Pole points towards this star. However, approximately 13,000 years ago, the North Pole would have pointed towards the star Vega, as it will do again in about another 13,000 years. It takes about 25,776 years to complete one precessional cycle.

Anyone ever heard of the song “Age of Aquarius” ? Well, this is in reference to the earth’s precessional cycle. Presently we are in the age of Pisces, which means that when the sun rises on the vernal equinox it rises in the direction that the constellation of Pisces is in the sky. However, due to precession, every 2160 years on the vernal equinox the sun rises in a different constellation. As mentioned above, we will be moving out of the age of Pisces and into the age of Aquarius around the end of 2012.

So, the Mayans figured there was something important to the changing of ages, hence their predicted death date. However, they are not the only ones who seem to have taken certain numbers into account. The perimeter of the Great Pyramid at Giza is approximately 3,023 feet and the height is 481 feet. In addition to exemplifying a ratio of exactly 2p, its measurements are said to possibly represent the Northern Hemisphere of the earth, on a scale of 1 : 43,200. Though controversial, some interpret this number as exactly 20 times the precessional number of 2160, representing the precession of the earth through 20 different zodiac constellations or
‘ages.’

These examples of precessional numbers, mathematics and celestial orientations found in ancient structures by no means scratch the surface of all of the occurrences (or at least, proposed occurrences) present at various historical sites, and even in cultural songs and myths. Whether or not various theories or speculations concerning these spectacular constructions are true or not (and we may never know), the meticulous precision that was put into planning, calculating and building them is hard to ignore, not to mention awe-inspiring.

SOURCE: http://umanitoba.ca/manitoban/2005-2006/0104/9315.precision.in.ancient.architecture.php
AND PAG E-NEWS: January 24 www.pagenews.info

 


2006-YEAR OF NEW UNDERWATER SHIPWRECK DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION

The following article is a modified extract of a comment that I made to fellow underwater explorer, Steve Libert about several of my projects over the next three months. I hope that you enjoy....

I thought that it might be tough to top all the exciting and wonderful expeditions that I had in 2005 that included Titanic, Empress of Ireland, the Bermuda Triangle rescue aircraft - Martin Mariner PBM-5, various historical shipwrecks that ranged from naval to merchant and old treasure galleons to ocean liners (including a Blue Riband Cunard Liner Oregon).

2006 is shaping up to be an even better and more historic diving season that will be highlighted by our series of events surrounding the 50th Anniversary of the Collision and Sinking of the Andrea Doria. I will be releasing some new nautical forensic information and underwater video regarding this beautiful Italian liner's sinking that will change the historical perception of that tragic evening. In two weeks, I am off to Florida diving deep in the underground caves using a mixed-gas, closed circuit rebreather (as part of a cave diving course run by two of the world's best instructors - legendary Tom Mount and former British Special Forces diver Andrew Driver).

Hopefully we will find in situ evidence for some prehistoric species deep within these underwater caves (a mastodon or mammoth would be nice). In March, I have two presentations to give. The first presentation is at the American Academy of Underwater Sciences meeting at the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratory (FHL) in the San Juan Islands -located north of Seattle between the mainland and Vancouver Island, British Columbia about the latest scientific observations about the biological decay of Titanic. The second presentation of the month will be at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida about Diving to the Italian Liner Andrea Doria.

Before the end of the month of March, I am off to the Black Sea and this should be very interesting - perhaps, if I am very lucky, I might discover Noah's Ark (just kidding!). In addition, I have some other “secret” shipwreck explorations and projects that I can't quite divulge yet (don't want the bureaucrats to put a damper on all the adventure) but will provide some significant new information about several historic shipwrecks.

Thank you for your continued support for this web site which is globally the number one blog (weblog) for shipwrecks. I find that it is a perfect forum for me to get things off my chest without feeling inhibited about the dives, expeditions and science. As a corporation, Nautical Research Group is thriving and we have been able to pick and choose the best and most interesting underwater projects. Our unique blend of nautical archaeology and deep technical diving - wrapped around our roots in the biological sciences is unparalleled.

SOURCE: http://shipwreck.blogs.com/shipwrecks_historical_tim/2006/01/index.html
 


STRANGE FISH WASHES ASHORE IN CAYMAN ISLANDS
By Underwatertimes.com News Service

[IMAGE: The small sharp teeth are plainly visible
http://www.underwatertimes.com/news2/cayman_fish2.jpg]

[IMAGE: The long, eel-like tail tapers to a narrow point
http://www.underwatertimes.com/news2/cayman_fish1.jpg]

Cayman Brac (January 13, 2006)-- A strange looking sea creature washed up on the shores of Cayman Brac this weekend. Layman Scott found the fish while walking along the beach early Sunday morning. It is roughly thirty inches long, more than half of which is a long, eel-like tail attached to a fish body. It has pale pink scales, pectoral fins, a dorsal fin and a small feathery fin on its belly.

Local fishermen say they have not seen a creature quite like this before. It has boney bristles all along its spine, right down to the tip of its tail and small sharp teeth, which curve slightly inward.

The sighting has been reported to the Department of Environment, but meanwhile, The Bracker and Little Caymanian is inviting readers to see if they can identify this fish.

SOURCE: http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=91015267043
 


MALAYSIA CREATES TEAM TO TRACK 'BIGFOOT'
Jan 26, 10:56 AM (ET)

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - A southern Malaysian state will appoint a team of scientists and experts to hunt for a “Bigfoot” beast after the reported sighting of three giant human-like creatures, officials said Thursday.

Johor Chief Minister Abdul Ghani Othman said the state will form an official Bigfoot-tracking team in a serious bid to find evidence of such a beast following the reported sightings late last year in the Endau Rompin National Park forest.

“The mystery of Bigfoot's existence has attracted a lot of interest,” he was quoted as saying by the Bernama national news agency. “We hope the expedition will be able to prove its existence.”

Ghani's aide confirmed the report Thursday, saying state administrators decided to set up the team after a council meeting late Wednesday.

“Bigfoot” is a popular name given in the United States to giant hairy creatures walking on two legs. Sightings of such beasts have been reported in many parts of the world but their existence has never been proven.

Malaysian media have been gripped by Bigfoot fever since November 2005, when fish farm workers reported seeing three giant human-like hairy beasts at the edge of the Endau Rompin reserve. They also claimed to have seen a gigantic footprint which they photographed.

The photo was later printed by local newspapers.

Park officials have combed the site where the men claimed they saw the creatures, but found no physical evidence of their existence. However, they recorded more reports of sightings from Aborigine villagers who live on the park's fringes.

Tourism authorities are planning to capitalize on the sightings to attract visitors to Johor and the park. Wildlife officials said they may set up camera traps in the jungle to capture images of the creature.

SOURCE: http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20060126/D8FCF2LO3.html
 


FRANKLIN COUNTY'S WILD CRYPTO ZOO
by Tal H. Branco Guest Writer
January 10, 2006

Editors note: The following story was printed in an earlier edition of the Ozark Spectator, and is re-printed in the Charleston Express with permission.

During the past four years The RFP Research Project has received numerous reports from residents of Western Arkansas concerning wild animals they have seen that did not resemble any known native or exotic species.

One such report was received from a life-long resident of Franklin County in early August of this year. On August 17 the writer drove to Ozark to meet the witness. It was a coincident that Lucille Elders' Barnes News column in the Spectator that day mentioned another sighting of an enigmatic animal by a Cravens resident. Ms. Elders herself had seen one of the animals about a year ago, and wrote about the encounter in her column dated September 15, 2004.

The witness the writer had arranged to meet in Ozark is Harley Edgin who lives northeast of Ozark on the north side of Highway 352. The property consists of about 200 acres which is used for cattle ranching. In the fall of 1991 Mr. Edgin and a friend were driving across the property checking on the cattle when they observed two animals standing in the field watching the vehicle. Mr. Edgin stopped the truck, and looked closely at the animals. He and his passenger had initially thought they were seeing two coyotes, but they soon realized they could not identify the animals. The animals sat down on their haunches and nonchalantly watched the vehicle for a few minutes. During that time Mr. Edgin picked up his binoculars and looked intently at both animals for a short time. He then passed the binoculars to his passenger. The animals then ran to a barbed wire fence along the north side of the pasture and stopped beside it. At that time the animals were about 100 yards from the vehicle. The animals stood for a few minutes as the witnesses alternately continued to watch them through the binoculars. After a few minutes the animals turned and ran under the fence and into the woods.

Mr. Edgin stated the animals were unlike any he had ever seen. He said that one animal was about 5 inches shorter than the other, the larger being about 3 feet tall at the top of its shoulder. Both were about the color of a bobcat, with heads that seemed oversized for the bodies. The head and nose were noticeably more like a canine's than a feline's. According to Mr. Edgin the most noticeable feature on the head was the animals' ears. He stated the ears were unusually large for the size of the head. The ears were reportedly mule-like, about 6 inches long, with tufts of hair growing from their tips. He noted that the neck was also thick and muscular. He stated the animals had tails that were catlike, but longer than a bobcat's and shorter than a cougar's. He particularly noted the tails were rounded on the ends, and not pointed like a dog's.

He said the animals possessed massive chests and very muscular front legs. Their back legs were noticeably shorter, causing the back to be sloped like that of a hyena. When the animals ran, he stated they “pushed off” using their front legs, landed on all four feet, and continued their travel in that springing fashion.

Mr. Edgin stated that on three other occasions from 1995 to 1997 he saw one of these same mysterious animals. He said that two of those sighting occurred on a tract of land south of the road from Watalua to the junction of Highway 219. On each occasion Mr. Edgin was driving across the open field on that property and had a different passenger each time. Each time the occupants of the vehicle had an unobstructed view of the animal, and it appeared to match in all respects the animals previously seen by Mr. Edgin. During one of those encounters, the passenger saw the animal first and initially thought it was a deer, then decided it was a coyote, and finally decided he could not identify the animal. Mr. Edgin then attempted to run the animal down in the open field with his truck. He stated his truck came within 20 feet of the animal, but he was unable to hit it. After the animal ran away, the passenger was still in awe of what he had seen and quietly told Mr. Edgin, “There ain't nothing right about that thing.”

During Mr. Edgins' third encounter with one of the unknown animals on the same property, it was standing in the edge of the woods beside the pasture. He and a passenger watched it for about three or four minutes before it walked into the woods.

Mr. Edgin left and came back with a another friend who brought along a gun. They reportedly found the animal's tracks in loose soil and leaves inside a cedar glade. The three men noted that the animals' front paws left tracks that were generally round like a cat's, and were about three inches in diameter. The back feet left similar but smaller tracks. Mr. Edgin stated the tracks were unusual in the fact that the front paw tracks were about 12 to 14 inches apart in the side-to-side direction, while the rear paw tracks were only about half that distance apart in that direction.

Mr. Edgin's last sighting of the animal occurred in 1996 or 1997 when one of the animals crossed Highway 219 in front of his truck just north of I-40.

Mr. Edgin had previously arranged for the writer to meet with other area residents who have also seen animals they could not identify. The writer spent two days interviewing those witnesses.

The close-up encounter that Geraldine Wyers' described was ominous and frightening. Her detailed observations portrayed an aggressive animal that has been similarly described in reports from Montgomery County Arkansas and from LeFlore and McCurtain Counties in Oklahoma.

Ms. Wyers stated that in mid-summer of 1994 or 1995 she drove alone to a small branch below a stock pond dam on the parcel of land on which Mr. Edgin had previously seen two of the animals. She went to the property to destroy a beaver dam on the branch, and to attempt to kill the beavers that had built it.

She said she parked her pickup truck in the edge of a field within about twenty yards of the beaver dam. When she exited the truck, she left the driver's side door open. She stated she destroyed the beaver dam and went back to the truck to get a .22 caliber, semiautomatic rifle which she loaded with ammunition. As she walked upstream away from the truck to find a place to conceal herself and wait for the beavers to return to the dam site, she heard a strange bird-like sound coming from across the branch. As she slowly walked toward the sound, she began to hear loud moaning sounds. She thought the sounds were coming from some kind of animal in great pain. As she slowly and carefully walked toward the sounds they diminished in volume. When she reached a point about 20 yards from the truck, she saw an animal crouched and watching her from the other side of the branch. She was less than 10 yards from the animal at that time. The bizarre and intimidating appearance of the animal reportedly caused her to freeze in fear. She said the animal's description generally matched those given by Mr. Edgin. She stated the animal's head was in fact massive, but it had canine upper teeth that extended two or three inches outside its mouth, and she saw blood on those teeth. She stated she could clearly see the animal was intently watching her and it was poised as if ready to spring in her direction. She had the distinct impression the animal was in no way afraid of her or the rifle. She was carrying the rifle at her hip in both hands and pointing forward. She momentarily considered drawing the gun to her shoulder and emptying the 19 shot magazine of long rifle bullets into the animal, but she quickly decided the animal was too large and too close for her to ensure she could get off enough shots to kill it before it reached her in a full charge.

She began to carefully, and very slowly, walk backwards toward the truck without taking her eyes off the animal. She was moving her feet a few inches at a time, and it seemed to her she would never reach the safety of the truck. When she finally did reach the truck, she stepped beside the opened door and slowly placed her right foot on the floor board. Only then did she briefly take her eyes off the animal to reach for the door handle. She immediately grabbed it, sat down on the seat, drew her left leg inside the cab and slammed the door shut. The second the door closed she heard and felt the animals impact against the outside of the door. She frantically started the engine and raced through the property to the main entrance gate. She opened the gate and hurriedly drove to Mr. Edgin's home, not remembering whether or not she had closed the gate to prevent the cattle from leaving the pasture. She then found the driver's side door was bent from the animal's impact.

The ferocious appearance and lack of fear of humans which Ms. Wyers observed were also noticed by an Ozark businessman who had a close encounter with one of the animals in Johnson County. The man stated he was in his pickup truck and stopped at a highway intersection north of I-40 when one of the animals walked closely past the driver's side of the truck, around the front of the truck and back down the other side. The animal reportedly stopped just past the end of the truck where it was brightly illuminated by the truck's taillights and brake lights where the driver was able to see it in his passenger side mirror. According to the driver the animal remained at the rear of the truck for nearly a minute, but it would turn its body to shield its eyes from the vehicles that were passing on the highway in front of the truck. This particular witness stated he clearly saw both upper and lower canine teeth outside the mouth of the animal. He said the animal's body and head were massive, and the jaws appeared to be wide and powerful. He stated the top of the animal's head was just below the bottom edge of the window openings as it walked past the truck. His description of the animal generally matched those given by Ms. Wyers and Mr. Edgin, although there was one notable exception. This witness estimated the animal's weight to be close to five hundred pounds. The animals seen by the other witnesses were estimated to weigh about 250 pounds. This witness was, by his own admission, very fearful of the animal, even though he was inside his pickup with the windows up during the encounter.

On a spring day about 1991, an animal similar to the ones described by the witnesses was also seen near the Belt Cemetery north of Ozark by two local women. Ruby Tolton and a relative had gone to the cemetery to do clean-up work when they saw a deer run from the woods into an open field behind the cemetery. When the deer reached the center of the field they saw an animal burst from the woods in hot pursuit. The women were very puzzled because they could not identify the obvious predator. They could plainly see that it was not a dog or coyote, although it appeared to be some type of canine, rather than a bobcat or mountain lion.

A similar animal was seen by an employee of a local utility company when it crossed Highway 219 about three miles north of I-40. The witness stated the animal ran across the road toward the creek on the west side. The man stopped his vehicle and got out of the truck to try to get a better look at the animal. He saw it standing and watching him from about 100 yards away, but the man could not identify the animal. As he watched, the animal sped across the creek, and with apparent ease and obvious agility, scaled the steep bluff on the other side and disappeared into the woods above it.

One of the witnesses vividly recalls driving to a local farm with her small children in the 1980s to pick purple hull peas, and being told by the farmer (now deceased) to park close to the pea patch and to watch her children closely. When she asked why, he told her he had recently seen a large, aggressive animal he could not identify near the pea patch. He said the animal was intimidating and showed no fear of him.

In the Cravens area northwest of Ozark the local residents have also reported seeing an enigmatic quadruped animals, although the descriptions of the animals seen in that area are basically the same, the descriptions are significantly different in some respects from those previously recorded.

The most pronounced difference between the descriptions from the two areas is in the length and size of the neck, and the angle of the neck in relation to the body when the animal is standing alert.

Ms. Lucille Elders, her son and another relative who have seen the strange animals in that area at close range report that the animals' necks are disproportional long for the size of the animals' bodies. Ms. Elder's son, who saw one of the animals at night on two occasions, particularly noted that the animal's long neck was held in a very upright, and somewhat awkward looking position when the animal stood watching him. He stated the neck was very thick, and the head was “fat.” He estimated the top of the animal's head was about 3 feet from the ground when it was watching him.

One resident of the Cravens area reported that the animal he saw had long ears. The animal seen by Ms. Elder was reported to have “small like ears.”

Anecdotal reports from this area indicate the strange animals have been recently seen by other residents. One rancher reportedly saw such and animal resting on a hay bale in his pasture. According to some residents, these animals have been seen in the area for generations.

Based on the variations in the descriptions of the animals seen in Franklin County, it seems there are either two separate types of enigmatic animals in the area, or there is one species that manifests very unusual changes in its appearance while growing to maturity.

The animals will probably never be accurately identified - or properly classified if they are in fact an unknown species - until their DNA profile has been examined by professionals in that field. While DNA can sometimes be obtained from a wild animal without it being killed, the odds are in this case that one of the animals will be shot by a farmer or rancher, or will be run over and killed while crossing I-40. If such an event occurs, and the animal still can't be identified upon close inspection, the preserved carcass would be of great interest to science and to the world in general.

Editor's note:
Tal H. Branco is a life-long resident of Arkansas and an avid outdoorsman. He learned to hunt, track and fish while a child living in the forests of South Arkansas. For over 60 years he has lived in central Arkansas. During part of that time he was trained and employed as a law enforcement officer. He received special training in Crime Scene Investigations and in the Collection and Preservation of Evidence. He was later employed for 23 years as a chemical analyst for an international corporation, and in that capacity established and supervised the operation of 5 laboratories in Brazil, 2 of which were located several hundred miles up the Amazon River. During that employment he spend his spare time hunting and fishing with the local Indians. He has hunted and fished in other countries and in numerous areas of the United States.

He has for the past 9 years served as a consultant and expert witness in an unrelated field. In his spare time he has done professional photography for publication, written Outdoor Sports columns for newspapers and a magazine, and authored a book which was recently published by the National Consumer Law Center in Boston.

He has investigated reports of enigmatic, (unclassified), animals for nearly thirty years, and founded The RFP, (Reclusive Forest Primate), Research Project about 15 years ago to gain help in pursuing those investigations. All of the members of the group are unpaid volunteers, and all have had personal encounters with enigmatic animals.

The primary focus of his research has been on the large, hirsute bipedal primate that is commonly called “Bigfoot,” or “Sasquatch.” He also writes a column, “The Reclusive Forest Primate Chronicles,” about these animals and their encounters with people in hopes of obtaining information from readers concerning recent sightings so that those sightings can be investigated.

SOURCE: Charleston Express
http://www.charlestonexpress.com/articles/2006/01/11/news/news01.txt
The author can be contacted by e-mail at: or by phone at (501) 352-1159.

 


CATTLE MUTILATIONS FROM ABOVE

Cattle mutilations are back, but this time there's a really disturbing element: proof that at least one animal was dropped from above.

“The 31st cattle mutilation has been discovered on a Red Bluff, California, ranch where I visited and collected samples from another mutilation back in the mid-1990s. One of the mutilated calves even had tree branches wound in its legs, implying it had dropped from above through the trees - similar to all those cattle the ranch hand heard and saw drop through trees in Sand Spring, Oregon, in the 1970s.”

SOURCE: Brief report from Unknowncountry.com Jan. 8-14, Whitley Streiber
Detailed article and pictures at:
http://www.earthfiles.com/news/news.cfm?ID=1038&category=Environment
 


TWO NEW LAKES FOUND BENEATH ANTARCTIC ICE
by Staff Writers, New York NY (SPX) Jan 31, 2006

[MODIS satellite image showing location of Sovetskaya Antarctic research station and 90ºE Lake in relation to Lake Vostok: http://www.terradaily.com/images/antarctic-two-new-lakes-modis-bg.jpg]

Lying beneath more than two miles of Antarctic ice, Lake Vostok may be the best-known and largest subglacial lake in the world, but it is not alone down there. Scientists have identified more than 145 other lakes trapped under the ice. Until now, however, none have approached Vostok's size or depth.

In the February 2006 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, scientists from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a member of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, describe for the first time the size, depth and origin of Vostok's two largest neighbors.

The two ice-bound lakes are referred to as 90ºE and Sovetskaya for the longitude of one and the Russian research station coincidentally built above the other. The scientists' findings also indicate that, as suspected with Lake Vostok, an exotic ecosystem may still be thriving in the icy waters 35 million years after being sealed off from the surface.

Geophysicists Robin Bell and Michael Studinger of Lamont-Doherty combined data from ice-penetrating radar, gravity surveys, satellite images, laser altimetry and records of a Soviet Antarctic Expedition that unknowingly traversed the lakes in 1958-1959. The shorelines of the lakes appeared in satellite images of the region as perturbations in the surface of the East Antarctic ice sheet. In addition, because the ice is effectively floating on the surface of the lakes, the ice sheet exhibits slight depressions over the lakes that appear in radar and laser elevations.

Bell and Studinger, along with colleagues from the University of New Hampshire and NASA, report that the 90ºE Lake has a surface area of 2,000km2, which is about the size of Rhode Island, and is second only to Lake Vostok's 14,000km2 surface area. Sovetskaya Lake was calculated to be about 1,600 km2. Both are sealed beneath more than two miles of ice.

The lake depths, estimated to be at least 900 meters, were calculated from gravity data taken during aerial surveys in 2000 and 2001. Because gravitational force is directly related to mass, a decrease in gravitational pull over the ice sheet corresponds to a decrease in mass beneath the ice. “Over the lakes, the pull of gravity is much weaker, so we know there must be a big hole down there,” said Bell.

Their depth, along with the fact that they are parallel to each other and Lake Vostok, indicate that the lake system is tectonic in origin, the authors conclude.

Shallow lakes scooped out by glaciers or a meteorite impact can quickly fill with sediment, and thus are short lived. Lakes created by faulted blocks of the Earth's crust, however, are deeper and don't fill in as rapidly. Many of the smaller sub-glacial lakes scientists have identified so far are believed to be shallow “ephemeral” lakes that were suddenly sealed off by the ice.

The combination of heat from below and a thick layer of insulating ice above keeps the water temperature at the top of 90ºE and Sovetskaya at a balmy –2 degrees Celsius, despite temperatures on the surface that can drop to –80 degrees Celsius in winter. Since the lakes are bounded by faults, Bell said it is likely the lakes receive flows of nutrients that could support unique ecosystems. Moreover, laser mapping of the ice sheet surface by NASA's Ice Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) revealed that this water-ice boundary, or ceiling, is tilted.

“Since the surface is tilted, we know that the ice sheet changes thickness over the lake and that will drive circulation in the lake,” said Bell. “This will provide mixing and distribute whatever nutrients are in the lake, which is an important component of subglacial ecosystems.”

This, along with the tectonic origin of the lakes, supports the idea that despite climate changes on the surface over the last 10 million to 35 million years, the volume of the lakes have remained remarkably constant, providing a stable, if inhospitable, environment that may harbor an ancient and alien ecosystem adapted to life beneath the ice sheet. However, just how, when or even whether scientists will risk the possibility of contaminating the lakes to confirm their suspicions remains the subject of an ongoing international debate.

SOURCE: http://www.terradaily.com/reports/
Two_New_Lakes_Found_Beneath_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet.html
 


EARTH WARMS UP REGULARLY

Hundreds of thousands of years worth of climate records in ice cores show there is nothing unusual in a global warming trend over the past 25 years.

Marine geophysicist Bob Carter, a professor at Queensland's James Cook University and leading climate change skeptic, said the effects of human activity would barely register in the long-term history of climate change.

He told, “The Weekend Australian” that ice cores from Antarctica “tell us clearly that in the context of the meteorological records of 100 years, it is not unusual to have a period of warming like the one we are in at the moment.” Dr Carter disputed the theory that human activity was making a current - natural - warm period hotter: “Atmospheric CO2 is not a primary forcing agent for temperature change.” He argues that “any cumulative human signal is so far undetectable at a global level and, if present, is buried deeply in the noise of natural variation.”

Fellow skeptic William Kininmonth, a former director of the Bureau of Meteorology's National Climate Centre, agreed. He wrote in a 2004 book, “Climate Change A Natural Hazard,” that there was “every reason to believe that the variability's in global temperature and other climate characteristics experienced over the past century are part of the natural variability of the climate system and are not a consequence of recent anthropogenic activities.” But other leading scientists, who blame human activity for climate change, say the “denialists” are a one-to-99 minority.

Will Steffen, director of the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies at the Australian National University, said: “There is no debate. The debate is over.” The evidence that human activity had increased emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, adding to natural warming, was “overwhelming,” he said. For scientist and University of Adelaide academic Tim Flannery there was also no argument: humans had turned up the heating and only humans could keep a lid on it. The argument that human activity did not contribute to global warming was “not a credible hypothesis to build policy on,” he said.

SOURCE: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/
common/story_page/0,5744,17752119%255E601,00.html
Filer's Files #4 - January 25, 2006
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/publish/article_54.php
 


CHANDLER's WOBBLE

Hmm! The below article discusses two 3.5 year periods within a seven-year cycle. That sounds familiar, now doesn't it? Other than that I have no idea what the author is talking about. But it does sound like something important to watch during these end-times, now doesn't it?
--
We are likely headed towards a similar 20 year season of increase in tectonic activity, beginning with a major increase in volcanism during 2006-08 and the occurrence of more 7.0 plus quakes, even as many three per month for many years afterwards.

SOURCE: http://www.michaelmandeville.com/
earthmonitor/polarmotion/2006_wobble_anomaly.htm
AND PAG E-NEWS: January 27 www.pagenews.info
 


AURORAL ANOMALY

Play the video clip. Download it, if possible, and keep it. In the middle you'll see how the aurora seems to spurt out from a certain point. That point seems to correspond to the Radarsat image culled by Rod M. Cluff, so we have some new confirmation.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/new_year_aurora.html
Link to the clip itself is: http://www.nasa.gov/mov/105423main_FUV_2005-01_v01.mov

Notice, if you scroll the play bar of the video backwards and forwards manually, you can see the aurora's tralis apparently streaming out of the 'polar opening.' Also, the 'opening' itself appears to be moving around the center of rotation. These are all interesting observations. I have links to this and other material available on the blog http://hollowplanet.blogspot.com.

FURTHERMORE, that video clip displays the fact that the aurora originates from the surface (actually, within it) and that it then shoots outwards. This is different than having the auroras originate with the solar winds, in which case it would shoot downwards. Scrutinize it. Download it and save it. -- Dean

SOURCE: ANOMALOUS-IMAGES AND UFO FILES newsgroup
 


MINING ON MARS

Keith Laney writes, “In my seasoned opinion some Mars images seem to show what may be or may have been mining on the surface. Officially most of these are referenced as 'Exhumed craters' by MSSS, a naming indicative of a well tuned sense of irony, and a term which I find to be a most revealing and befitting; Exhumed by whom? Who is doing the mining Mars? Perhaps we need to be! The mineral wealth of an entire planet lies before us, wide open to our satellite eyes.”

M0401289 The Coppermine:
http://barsoom.msss.com/moc_gallery/ab1_m04/images/M0401289.html

When shown with a couple of earthen examples, we can see some fair amount of familiar similarities, the result is pretty striking. Inside the blue box above is what appears to be very intricate structure along the right rim:

http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/uploads/02marsmining1.jpg

In the green box upper right is a pit mine in Nevada, and in the orange box at top left is the stunningly similar Copper pit at Ajo AZ. See http://www.keithlaney.net/ for more details.

SOURCE: Filer's Files #2 - January 11, 2006
George A. Filer,
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/publish/article_50.php

 


MARS SYMBOLS AND PYRAMIDS

Let us accomplish some deductive reasoning. Cairo happens to mean Mars in Egyptian, and we learn that part of pyramids were painted red, symbolizing the planet Mars. I visited the Great Pyramid of Cheops and the Cairo Museum and came away with the feeling the Great Pyramid could not be built today with modern engineering, much less 3000 years ago.

Besides the 3 million multi ton blocks of stone used to build the structure, it is set upon a tremendous solid base. Upon entering the pyramid there is a tremendous ascending hallway of thirty ton granite blocks set upon one another.

http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/uploads/03pyramidgrangallery.jpg

This is the Grand Gallery with an ascending stairway and polished walls rising 28 feet high. The Great Pyramid is bare of symbols or writing anywhere, unlike all the burial crypts of the Pharaohs. Instead we are in a building that seems to be designed as a bomb shelter or to deflect incoming meteoroid impacts. On Mars we find similar pyramid shaped structures.

NASA/JPL photo D&M Pyramid:
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/uploads/03marspyramidfort.jpg

We can speculate that intelligent inhabitants of Mars used the pyramids for protection, and brought this technology to Earth when they realized the end was near. Admittedly, this argument is weak, but subscribe to these files and you may be surprised by the evidence we are collecting that may convince you.

SOURCE: Filer's Files #3 - January 18, 2006
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/publish/article_53.php
 


MARS HAS SEASONS

[IMAGE http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/uploads/4marsjungle.jpg]

Norman Bryden writes, “I think many people have seen evidence of extraterrestrial life and the great astronomer Percival Lowell was right about the seasons on Mars, and those seasons have been photographed repeatedly. There are what look like canals also.” NASA management chooses to ignore the seasons or anything that has to do with extraterrestrial life. Some of the most compelling evidence I have come across is the testimonies of the more than 450 government and military officials of the Disclosure Project. Among the testimonies is Karl Wolf who Edgar Mitchell recommended to come forward about what he knows. Karl witnessed high resolution photographs of many huge structures on the back side of the Moon.

According to the testimony, on the back side of the Moon are huge towers, buildings more than a half mile in size, radar dish shaped buildings, spherical buildings and what look like huge power plants and more. http://www.disclosureproject.org/

The green in the image from Valles Marineris seems to be where you would expect water and nutrients to collect to feed plant life. In some regions the blanket of green is so thick and the rough terrain is so well covered, words like 'Amazon' 'Oasis' and 'Jungles' come to mind.

In the lower regions of images from Mars are what look like blue ponds, rivers and lakes. Life is so tenacious that I believe Mars is a living planet, looking at all the evidence and taking it all into consideration. Thanks to Norman Bryden
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/marsexpress/
032-060404-0097-6-co-02-VallesMarineris.jpg

SOURCE: Filer's Files #4 - January 25, 2006
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/publish/article_54.php

 


MARS VEGETATION AND CIVILIZATION

[IMAGE http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/uploads/4marscity.jpg]

Mars has many places where structures and roads can be seen. They don't look like any vine, river, dried mud or lava flows. There are many openings and sort to accommodate another mobile intelligent species.

The greenery on Mars and the abundance of water and weather would support an atmosphere. I believe there is an atmosphere on Mars. There are many openings where a species could enter and leave through to interact with the planet surface and the surface has been greatly modified.

Good luck with the images and take care. I will send more when I can. Thanks to Norman Bryden

MARS MGS IMAGE: HIVE DWELLINGS AND ROAD NETWORK *PIC*
http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.net/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=121992

SOURCE: Filer's Files #4 - January 25, 2006
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/publish/article_54.php
 


SKEPTICISM GREETS CLAIM OF POSSIBLE ALIEN MICROBES
Special to World Science Jan. 5, 2006

Particles at about 1000 times actual size (courtesy Godfrey Louis):
http://www.members.aol.com/scipage/images/Redcells2.JPG

Shaded area represents the state of Kerala in India. (Courtesy Nichalp):
http://www.members.aol.com/scipage/images/kerala2.JPG

A paper to appear in a scientific journal claims a strange red rain might have dumped microbes from space onto Earth four years ago. But the report is meeting with a shower of skepticism from scientists who say extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof—and this one hasn’t got it. The scientists agree on two points, though. The things look like cells, at least superficially. And no one is sure what they are.

“These particles have much similarity with biological cells though they are devoid of DNA,” wrote Godfrey Louis and A. Santhosh Kumar of Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, India, in the controversial paper. “Are these cell-like particles a kind of alternate life from space?”

The mystery began when the scarlet showers containing the red specks hit parts of India in 2001. Researchers said the particles might be dust or a fungus, but it remained unclear.

The new paper includes a chemical analysis of the particles, a description of their appearance under microscopes and a survey of where they fell. It assesses various explanations for them and concludes that the specks, which vaguely resemble red blood cells, might have come from a meteor.

A peer-reviewed research journal, Astrophysics and Space Science, has agreed to publish the paper. The journal sometimes publishes unconventional findings, but rarely if ever ventures into generally acknowledged fringe science such as claims of extraterrestrial visitors.

If the particles do represent alien life forms, said Louis and Kumar, this would fit with a longstanding theory called panspermia, which holds that life forms could travel around the universe inside comets and meteors.

These rocky objects would thus “act as vehicles for spreading life in the universe,” they added. They posted the paper online this week on a database where astronomers often post research papers.

Louis and Kumar have previously posted other, unpublished papers saying the particles can grow if placed in extreme heat, and reproduce. But the Astrophysics and Space Science paper doesn’t include these claims. It mostly limits itself to arguing for the particles’ meteoric origin, citing newspaper reports that a meteor broke up in the atmosphere hours before the red rain.

John Dyson, managing editor of Astrophysics and Space Science, confirmed it has accepted the paper. But he said he hasn’t read it because his co-managing editor, the European Space Agency’s Willem Wamsteker, handled it. Wamsteker died several weeks ago at age 63.

A paper’s publication in a peer-reviewed journal is generally thought to give it some stamp of scientific seriousness, because scientists vet the findings in the process. Nonetheless, the red rain paper provoked disbelief.

“I really, really don’t think they are from a meteor!” wrote Harvard University biologist Jack Szostak of the particles, in an email. And this isn’t the first report of red rain of biological origin, Szostak wrote, though it seems to be the most detailed.

Szostak said the chemical tests the researchers employed aren’t very sensitive. The so-called cells are admittedly “weird,” he added, saying he would ask his microbiologist friends what they think they are.

“I don’t have an obvious explanation,” agreed prominent origins-of-life researcher David Deamer of the University of California Santa Cruz, in an email. They “look like real cells, but with a very thick cell wall. But the leap to an extraterrestrial form of life delivered to Earth must surely be the least likely hypothesis.”

A range of additional tests is needed, he added. Louis agreed: “There remains much to be studied,” he wrote in an email.

The researchers didn’t dispute the panspermia theory itself, which has a substantial scientific following. “Panspermia may well be possible,” wrote Lynn J. Rothschild of the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., in an email. “I’m just not so sure that this is a case of it.”

Others viewed the study more favorably.

“I think more careful examination of the red rain material is needed, but so far there seems to be a strong prima facie [first-glance] case to suggest that this may be correct,” said Chandra Wickramasinghe, director of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology at Cardiff University, U.K., and a leading advocate of panspermia.

The story of the specks began on July 25, 2001, when residents of Kerala, a state in southwestern India, started seeing scarlet rain in some areas.

“Almost the entire state, except for two northern districts, have reported these unusual rains over the past week,” the BBC online reported on July 30. “Experts said the most likely reason was the presence of dust in the atmosphere which colors the water.”

The explanation didn’t satisfy everyone.

The rain “is eluding explanations as the days go by,” the newspaper Indian Express reported online a week later. The article said the Centre for Earth Science Studies, based in Thiruvananthapuram, India, had discarded an initial hypothesis that a streaking meteor triggered the rain, in favor of the view that the particles were spores from a fungus.

But “the exact species is yet to be identified. [And] how such a large quantity of spores could appear over a small region is as yet unknown,” the paper quoted center director M. Baba as saying. Baba didn’t return an email from World Science this week.

The red rain continued to appear sporadically for about two months, though most of it fell in the first 10 days, Louis and Kumar wrote. The “striking red coloration” turned out to come from microscopic, mixed-in red particles, they added, which had “no similarity with usual desert dust.”

At least 50,000 kg (55 tons) of the particles have fallen in all, they estimated. “An analysis of this strange phenomenon further shows that the conventional atmospheric transport processes like dust storms etc. cannot explain” it.

“The red particles were uniformly dispersed in the rainwater,” they wrote. “When the red rainwater was collected and kept for several hours in a vessel, the suspended particles have a tendency to settle to the bottom.”

“The red rain occurred in many places during a continuing normal rain,” the paper continued. “It was reported from a few places that people on the streets found their cloths stained by red raindrops. In a few places the concentration of particles were so great that the rainwater appeared almost like blood.”

The precipitation, the researchers added, had a “highly localized appearance. It usually occur[ed] over an area of less than a square kilometer to a few square kilometers. Many times it had a sharp boundary, which means while it was raining strongly red at a place a few meters away there were no red rain.” A typical red rain lasted from a few minutes to less than about 20 minutes, they added.

The scientists compiled charts of where and when the showers occurred based on local newspaper reports.

The particles look like one-celled organisms and are about 4 to 10 thousandths of a millimeter wide, the researchers wrote, somewhat larger than typical bacteria.

“Under low magnification the particles look like smooth, red colored glass beads. Under high magnifications (1000x) their differences in size and shape can be seen,” they wrote.

“Shapes vary from spherical to ellipsoid and slightly elongated… These cell-like particles have a thick and colored cell envelope, which can be well identified under the microscope.” A few had broken cell envelopes, they added.

The particles seem to lack a nucleus, the core DNA-containing compartment that animal and plant cells have, the researchers wrote. Chemical tests indicated they also lacked DNA, the gene-carrying molecule that most types of cells contain.

Nonetheless, Louis and Kumar wrote that the particles show “fine-structured membranes” under magnification, like normal cells.

The outer envelope seems to contain an “inner capsule,” they added, which in some places “appears to be detached from the outer wall to form an empty region inside the cell. Further, there appears to be a faintly visible mucus layer present on the outer side of the cell.”

“One characteristic feature is the inward depression of the spherical surface to form cup like structures giving a squeezed appearance,” which varies among particles, they added.

“The major constituents of the red particles are carbon and oxygen,” they wrote. Carbon is the key component of life on Earth. “Silicon is most prominent among the minor constituents” of the particles, Louis and Kumar added; other elements found were iron, sodium, aluminum and chlorine.

“The red rain started in the State during a period of normal rain, which indicate that the red particles are not something which accumulated in the atmosphere during a dry period and washed down on a first rain,” the pair wrote.

“Vessels kept in open space also collected red rain. Thus it is not something that is washed out from rooftops or tree leaves. Considering the huge quantity of red particles fallen over a wide geographic area, it is impossible to imagine that these are some pollen or fungal spores which have originated from trees,” they added.

“The nature of the red particles rules out the possibility that these are dust particles from a distant desert source,” they wrote, and such particles “are not found in Kerala or nearby place.”

One easy assumption is that they “got airlifted from a distant source on Earth by some wind system,” they added, but this leaves several puzzles.

“One characteristic of each red rain case is its highly localized appearance. If particles originate from distant desert source then why [was] there were no mixing and thinning out of the particle collection during transport” ? they wrote.

“It is possible to explain this by assuming the meteoric origin of the red particles. The red rain phenomenon first started in Kerala after a meteor airburst event, which occurred on 25th July 2001 near Changanacherry in [the] Kottayam district. This meteor airburst is evidenced by the sonic boom experienced by several people during early morning of that day.

“The first case of red rain occurred in this area few hours after the airburst... This points to a possible link between the meteor and red rain. If particle clouds are created in the atmosphere by the fragmentation and disintegration of a special kind of fragile cometary meteor that presumably contain[s] a dense collection of red particles, then clouds of such particles can mix with the rain clouds to cause red rain,” they wrote.

The pair proposed that while approaching Earth at low angle, the meteor traveled southeast above Kerala with a final airburst above the Kottayam district. “During its travel in the atmosphere it must have released several small fragments, which caused the deposition of cell clusters in the atmosphere.”

Alive or dead, the particles have some staying power, if the paper is correct. “Even after storage in the original rainwater at room temperature without any preservative for about four years, no decay or discoloration of the particles could be found.”

SOURCE: http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/060104_specksfrm1.htm
 


BIO-ELECTROMAGNETIC WEAPONS

Electromagnetic weapons operate at the speed of light; they can kill, torture and enslave; but the public is largely unaware that they exist, because these weapons operate by stealth and leave no physical evidence. Electromagnetic weapons have been tested on human beings since 1976. By widely dispersing the involuntary human test-subjects, and vehemently attacking their credibility, it has been possible for the United States to proceed with these human experiments unhindered by discussions or criticisms, let alone opposition. This ultimate weapon system is currently being deployed in Iraq. The US Air Force and the Marine Corps refer to it as “active denial technology” , as if it were used purely for defense, but it is not....

SOURCE: Article continues at The Institute of Science in Society
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BW.php
 


CHINA TO BUILD 'ARTIFICIAL SUN' ENERGY DEVICE
Angola Press 1-23-6

HEFEI - A full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, which aims to generate infinite, clean nuclear-fusion-based energy, will be built in March or April in Hefei, capital city of east China's Anhui Province.

Experiments with the advanced new device will start in July or August. If the experiments prove successful, China will become the first country in the world to build a full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, nicknamed “artificial sun” , experts here said.

The project, dubbed EAST (experimental advanced superconducting Tokamak), is being undertaken by the Hefei-based Institute of Plasma Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It will require a total investment of nearly 300 million yuan (37 million U.S. dollars), only one fifteenth to one twentieth the cost of similar devices being developed in the other parts of the world.

Full story at http://rense.com/general69/enn.htm
 


CHINA OVERTAKES CANADA IN OUTER SPACE SEARCH FOR ALIENS
By Judi McLeod
January 2, 2006

The Peoples Republic of China will give “life-on-other-planet” Canadians a run for their money on pushing the UFO agenda in 2006.

Canada already has a welcoming committee at the ready to establish diplomacy with “ethical Off-Planet cultures now visiting earth.”

Since 1964, Canada has been home to the world’s first UFO landing pad in St. Paul, Al