Guest Blogger – Page 6 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on May 28, 2012 by Guest Blogger

NEW FRUIT TO BE SOLD IN MARKETS SOON

A new, weird kind of fruit is set to hit the shelves of local markets in New Zealand after being developed by researchers that were combining the European and Asian pear varieties.

It looks like an apple but, tastes like a pear, how strange.

Oliver Thring over at The Guardian gave this new fruit a taste test, read below to see what he has to say.

The Guardian writes:

M&S are launching the so-called “papple” this week – a species of pear that looks a bit like an apple. Keen followers of fruit industry PR stunts might glimpse in it a memory of the “pineberry“, the polka-dotted German strawberry of a couple of years ago which supposedly tasted of pineapple.

The fruit was developed in New Zealand, where it has officially been known as PremP109 – a more clinical but rather less emetic name than “papple”, if you ask me. In fact, the papple has no immediate apple ancestry at all: it’s a hybrid of two European and Asian pear varieties. It is an almost fluorescent pinkish-red, and its skin is weirdly, plagueishly mottled. Eating it is thus a strange experience.

Since you expect the taste and texture of apple, you bite rather harder than is necessary. The flesh is much less tart than an apple; its sweetness is almost overpowering. It’s also far juicier, so you end up having to glamorously chomp and suck your way through it as though it were a particularly wet burrito. For all that, it’s a tasty, refreshing fruit.

FIRST MAN TO EVER LAND A SKYDIVE W/OUT A PARACHUTE!

This man leapt 2,400ft from a helicopter with no parachute, only a specially made "wing suit".

This man has more guts than anyone I’ve heard of in quite some time!

Shown above is Gary Connery, 42, just before he jumped from a helicopter flying well above the Earth at almost 3,000ft in the air, wearing nothing but a “wing-suit” and landed successfully in a specifically made landing strip of cardboard boxes, becoming the first man in history to land a skydive without a parachute. How crazy?!

Sky News writes:

A stuntman has entered the history books to become the first skydiver to land safely without using a parachute.

Gary Connery, 42, leapt 2,400ft from a helicopter while wearing a specially made “wing suit” and swooped towards a “runway” of 18,600 cardboard boxes in an Oxfordshire field.

Five seconds before he hit the target he flared his suit to decrease his descent and glide angle before plunging into the boxes to break his fall.

“It was so comfortable, so soft,” Mr Connery told Sky News immediately afterwards. “My calculations obviously worked out and I’m glad they did.”

His flight lasted approximately 50 seconds, during which he was cheered on by hundreds of supporters, including his son Cali, 14, and wife Vivian, who said she was “relieved it’s all over”.

The jump, which was recorded by dozens of journalists and camera crews, is expected to be watched all over the world.

A SLEEP MASK THAT LETS YOU CONTROL YOUR DREAMS

The Remee sleep mask is equipped with red LEDs to wake up your mind, not your body. Photo courtesy of Bitbanger Labs.

If you’ve ever heard of lucid dreaming, then you know it’s not exactly the easiest thing to achieve.

To explain lucid dreaming to those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s basically being able to consciously wake up inside of, then be able to control, your very own dream. You could fly through the sky, dive through the sea, and even give yourself super-powers like a person straight out of the comic books!

Lucid dreaming is difficult to achieve and, involves practice, meditation, and a good diet as well as learning to “trigger” yourself awake while dreaming, without waking up you body.

The guys over at Bitbanger Labs believe they’ve come up with the perfect way for anyone to have this amazing experience, check it out.

Daily Mail writes:

In a twist straight out of the movie Inception, a duo of developers from Brooklyn, New York, have built a sleeping mask designed to allow people to have lucid dreams that they can control.

While it may look like a standard sleeping mask, Remee has been billed as a special REM (Rapid Eye Movement) enhancing device that is supposed to help steer the sleeper into lucid dreaming by making the brain aware that it is dreaming.

The goal of the product is to allow people to have the dreams of their choice, from driving a race car to flying to having lunch with Abraham Lincoln.

SCIENTISTS TO TEST RECENT BIGFOOT DNA EVIDENCE

A team of scientists will use DNA testing to investigate the remains claimed to be from a yeti, or bigfoot.

Hopefully, some exciting news is heading our way from a set of UK and Swiss scientists that plan on doing some serious testing of as much ‘evidence’ of the bigfoot, or yeti, as they possibly can.

They’re even asking for anyone to submit anything they think might be helpful! So, if you didn’t know what to do with all those bigfoot parts you have laying around, send ’em on in!

BBC News writes:

A UK-Swiss team will use DNA testing to investigate the origins of remains claimed to be from yeti and bigfoot.

The project will examine hair, bone and other material from a collection amassed by a Swiss biologist – and will invite submissions from elsewhere.

Many cultures relate legends of hairy, humanoid creatures that lurk in the wilds, rarely seen.

But material claimed to be from such creatures have never been subjected to modern scientific techniques.

“It’s an area that any serious academic ventures into with a deal of trepidation… It’s full of eccentric and downright misleading reports,” said Prof Bryan Sykes, from Oxford University.

The researchers will apply a systematic approach and employ the latest advances in genetic testing, aiming to publish in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

SPACEX LAUNCHES US INTO A ‘NEW FUTURE’ ON THEIR FIRST MISSION

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon capsule. Image courtesy of SpaceX.

“That’s one small step for [a] man, and one giant leap for mankind.” -Neil Armstrong

Those words spoken years ago marked a big change in the world, not only did we put man into space, we put a man on the moon. Well, here’s another giant leap in the form of the first entirely privately funded company to reach space with the intention of docking a capsule of supplies, experiments, and one day astronauts with the ISS(International Space Station). Before this, only large governments were able to pool the funds together to begin exploring space, but interests have waned, as we’ve seen with NASA ending it’s shuttle program. This marks the first of hopefully many successful ventures from private organizations to explore, study, and experiment in space.

See the video below for some beautiful footage of the rocket launch on May 22, 2012.

NASA writes:

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket thundered into space and delivered a Dragon cargo capsule into orbit on May 22, 2012. The launch began an ambitious mission to show that the company is ready to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.

“We’re now back on the brink of a new future, a future that embraces the innovation the private sector brings to the table,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “The significance of this day cannot be overstated. While there is a lot of work ahead to successfully complete this mission, we are off to a good start.”

Working with an instantaneous launch window, SpaceX, short for Space Exploration Technologies of Hawthorne, Calif., proceeded through a flawless countdown. Liftoff from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida came at 3:44 a.m. EDT, just as the station was crossing 249 miles above the North Atlantic.

“Every bit of adrenaline in my body released at that moment,” said Elon Musk about the moment the rocket lifted off the pad. Musk is the founder, CEO and chief designer of SpaceX. “People were really giving it their all. For us, it was like winning the Super Bowl.”

SCIENTISTS GENERATE ELECTRICITY FROM A VIRUS

Scientists can now generate electricity from viruses!

The world of nano-technology is growing exponentially fast and with it, come a slew of amazing breakthroughs. This one for example, is pretty fascinating.

Scientists have used the principle called “piezoelectricity” or, the use of pressure and vibrations to generate energy, to create enough electricity to power a small lcd screen from a small virus similar to the one found in our bodies when we have the common cold.

Mother Nature Network writes:

When people get a cold or the flu, they tend to experience a lack of energy. But what if viruses could actually generate energy — not to power your body, but to charge your electronic devices?

That’s the idea behind a new electric generator developed by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The scientists coated a postage-stamp-sized electrode with specially engineered, harmless viruses that, when tapped, generated enough electricity to power a small LCD display. Their research was published online May 13 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

THE FAMOUS ‘EASTER ISLAND HEADS’ HAVE BODIES

Who knew the Heads of Easter Island had entire bodies? On second thought, how did they not know?

Ever heard the phrase “dig a little deeper”?

Well apparently, throughout the hundreds of people that have visited, investigated, done research at, and along with the thousands of whom saw pictures of the famous ‘Heads of Easter Island’, no one thought about that little old phrase, until now.

Fox News writes:

New photographs reveal what lies beneath the surface of Easter Island, one of the most remote places in the world — the carved bodies of the island’s 887 famous guardians.

Most people think of the 63-square-mile Pacific island’s silent stone sentinels as simple heads. But the heads all have bodies — and a backstory that’s only now being pieced together, explained Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project.

“Those statues which are the most photographed are standing in the quarry. They’re buried up to mid-torso level. So it’s understandable that the general public didn’t have a clue that those statues had bodies,” she told FoxNews.com.

Current belief is that the statues were carved between A.D.1100 up until the 1800s, when an influx of Westerners transformed the culture. Van Tilburg, a fellow with The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles, has only been coming to Easter Island (called Rapa Nui) to do research for twenty years, since 1992. But she first came more than thirty years ago — and stayed for one clear reason. “I fell in love with the statues,” she said simply.

“I came to Easter Island in 1981. I was impressed with the number of statues and that they seemed accessible to me, they were on the surface. I wanted to know what was below the surface.”

First Van Tilburg documented the island’s statues and those that have been removed to museums; there are 887 inventoried, though she says the number is closer to 1,000. Then she began the next phase of work to reveal what lay beneath the ground — covered up not intentionally by men, but through centuries of exposure to the environment.

That process has taken 12 years so far, and may take a lifetime of work.

UFO ALMOST CAUSES PLANE CRASH OVER DENVER

A UFO caused some trouble over the skies of the Denver airport the other day, when an airplane flying at 8,000 feet was buzzed by an unidentified aircraft flying in the opposite direction that looked like it had no pilot!

The pilot of the observing plane said it may have been remotely controlled, though it seems it was traveling far too fast for him to get any proper visual, and the darn thing didn’t even show up on radar for officials to investigate. How bizarre!

9 News of Denver writes:

DENVER – The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a mystery in the sky. A mysterious object flying over Denver nearly caused a mid-air collision Monday evening, 9Wants to Know has learned.

As far as investigators know, the mystery object did not show up on radar Monday.

Investigators believe this object, whatever it is, could pose a serious safety hazard to planes.

Radio transmissions from LiveATC.net confirm a nervous-sounding pilot reported a strange object at 5:17 p.m. Monday.

The pilot is heard telling air traffic control: “A remote controlled aircraft, or what? Something just went by the other way … About 20 to 30 seconds ago. It was like a large remote-controlled aircraft.”

The corporate jet, a Cessna Citation 525 CJ1, was flying at 8,000 feet above sea level over Cherry Creek when the mystery object came close enough to make any pilot nervous.

MAN IS VICTIM OF UNUSUAL ‘SECONDARY-DROWNING’

Man dies in a rare and unusual case of secondary drowning.

Tommy Molla of Yonkers, New York, thought he made it safely out of the water after almost drowning this past Saturday, but it would seem the water didn’t make it safely out of him.

ABC News writes:

A 60-year-old man fell into New York’s Long Island Sound, pulled himself out — and then died several hours later, apparently of drowning. Emergency doctors today called it a case of secondary drowning, something very unusual.

The man, Tommy Mollo of Yonkers, N.Y., fell off the back of a friend’s boat Saturday morning while helping move it between slips at a marina in nearby New Rochelle, WABC-TV reported. Mollo returned to his apartment and told his wife he felt ill. She called 911 and emergency workers took Mollo to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 12:05 p.m., the station reported.

An ER doctor told the station that water got into Mollo’s lungs when he fell overboard, which led to subsequent breathing difficulties that could have been exacerbated by medical issues he already had.

Mollo’s case represents a rare occurrence of a relatively rare phenomenon, beginning with his self-rescue, emergency room doctors said.

MYSTERY TRIBE LEAVES BEHIND BODY-FILLED JARS

Human remains nside a log coffin at Phnom Pel. Photograph courtesy Nancy Beavan

A research team has been uncovering burial sights of a mysterious tribe that vanished a long time ago, since 2003. Even though they found up to 10 such spots in the Cardamom Mountains of Cambodia, some with humans remains that date back almost 4,000 years, there’s still little information on the ones who left the creepy, bone-filled jars made from wood, behind.

National Geographic writes:

Perched in some cases on precarious cliff ledges, centuries-old log coffins—such as this one, pictured alongside researcher Nancy Beavan—and “body jars” are the only known traces of an unknown Cambodian tribe. Now new dating studies are beginning to assure the unnamed culture a place in history.

Ten such burial spots have been found in the Cardamom Mountains since 2003, and at least one is at least 160 feet high (50 meters)—the intention apparently being that “anyone trying to disturb the burials would break their neck,” said Beavan, who led the new study.

Beavan’s team has radiocarbon-dated wood, teeth, and bones from four of the sites to between A.D. 1395 and 1650, placing them smack-dab in the decline of the Khmer Empire, based in Angkor. However it’s unclear what, if any, influence the empire had on these mountain people, said Beavan, of the University of Otago’s Department of Anatomy in New Zealand. “Until now, experts had no idea when the sites had been established or how long they’d been in use.”

Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com