WEEKLY WEIRD NEWS – Page 62 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on March 6, 2011 by Steve Busti

NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life

I remember hearing about a similar scenario back in the mid-90’s, when some scientists also announced evidence of fossilized bacteria in a meteorite. How did the scientific community react to their claims then, and how will they react to this one now?

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Aliens exist, and we have proof.

That astonishingly awesome claim comes from Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, who says he has found conclusive evidence of alien life — fossils of bacteria found in an extremely rare class of meteorite called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites. (There are only nine such meteorites on planet Earth.) Hoover’s findings were published late Friday night in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

“I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet earth,” Hoover, who has spent more than 10 years studying meteorites around the world, told FoxNews.com in an interview. “This field of study has just barely been touched — because quite frankly, a great many scientist would say that this is impossible.”

Hoover discovered the fossils by breaking apart the CI1 meteorite, and analyzing the exposed rock with a scanning-electron microscope and a field emission electron-scanning microscope, which allowed him to detect any fossil remains. What he found were fossils of micro-organisms (pictured below), many of which he says are strikingly similar to those found on our own planet (pictured above).

“The exciting thing is that they are in many cases recognizable and can be associated very closely with the generic species here on earth,” said Hoover. Some of the fossils, however, are quite odd. “There are some that are just very strange and don’t look like anything that I’ve been able to identify, and I’ve shown them to many other experts that have also come up stumped.”

In order to satisfy the inevitable hoard of buzz-killing skeptics, Hoover’s study and evidence were made available to his peers in the scientific community in advance of the study’s publications, giving them a chance to thoroughly dissect his findings. Comments from those who decided to sift through the evidence will be published online, alongside the study.

“Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis,” writes Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics scientist Dr. Rudy Schild, who serves as the Journal of Cosmology’s editor-in-chief. “No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough vetting, and never before in the history of science has the scientific community been given the opportunity to critically analyze an important research paper before it is published.”

Needless to say, if Hoover’s conclusions are found to be accurate, the implications for human life will be staggering. Here’s hoping that he’s right.

Read the rest of this story (and it’s predictable update) here:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/nasascientistfindsevidenceofalienlife

Posted on March 5, 2011 by Steve Busti

Has Amelia Earhart’s plane finally been found in Papua New Guinea?

The long-lost remains of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Elektra found in the south seas of the Pacific!… A giant snake guarding the plane wreckage!… And a secret cache of gold bullion! Sounds like the makings of a great action-adventure movie, if you ask me.

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There are claims that one of the world’s great aviation mysteries – the disappearance of 1930s airwoman Amelia Earhart – has been solved in Papua New Guinea.

Locals believe a plane wreck could be the final resting place of Earhart who disappeared somewhere over the Pacific in 1937.

Even more incredibly they say there is gold bullion on board and that a giant snake is guarding the wreck.

An expert on Earhart’s disappearance, however, says the claim is “silly beyond description”.

The rumour mill, or coconut wireless as it is known, is always running hot on Bougainville. Many of the tall tales that fly around the island involve gold.

One of them was given prominence by the Post Courier newspaper this week with the front-page headline “Plane wreck believed to be Earhart”.

It said there are “strong indications” a wreck found off the coast of Bougainville was the plane flown by Earhart, who famously disappeared while attempting to become the first pilot to circle the globe close to the equator.

If that was not amazing enough, the report said there was bullion on board and a six-metre snake was guarding the wreck.

The man at the centre of the claim is local businessman Cletus Harepa, who is paying for divers to inspect the wreck.

“Somebody saw it when they were diving for fish and they saw the plane but they don’t know that that plane was Amelia’s plane,” he said.

He says a diver found two skulls in the cockpit and three boxes of gold bullion, but the bars were too heavy to carry to the surface.

Mr Harepa says he plans to use the potential spoils to help improve services on the island.

“The government can have some. I will have some. But what I want to do is improve the island. Get a good hospital, rich school, good water supply and maybe a small boat,” he said.

While Mr Harepa dismisses the story about the giant snake as rubbish, he remains confident the wreck will prove to be Earhart’s Lockheed Electra.

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Steve Busti

5-year old boy snaps ghostly photo

This spooky series of photos was posted on Lon Strickland’s Phantoms & Monsters blog. Whether they show a real apparition or not, they certainly do send chills up your spine.

Here’s the story as it was submitted by a reader from West Sussex, UK:

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A couple of years ago a neighbour and I were discussing ghosts and the paranormal. She said she had something to show me. On her cell phone were 3 pictures taken by her 5 year old son at 5am in the morning. His mother had gone downstairs to get a baby bottle heated up for her 8 month old son. You can see the edge of the bed and her husbands bulky legs under the quilt. The cot with her 8 month old son is in the left hand corner.

The eldest 5 year old son, who had hopped into her bed snapped the pictures as he usually likes playing with her cellphone. It’s a common occurrence with him. She came across the photos when clearing out her phone of clutter some months later. The time stamps on the photos were removed when I transferred them over to my computer and then an external hard drive. However, I did witness the time stamps, dates and the pictures showed they were taken within 3 -7 seconds of each other.

The picture shows a woman that looks nothing like my neighbour, the head shape is all wrong and it appears she is wearing a suit and skirt. When you enhance the picture certain features look terrifying. My neighbour stated she had been in her dressing gown and pj’s.

MOTW-030411-Ghost_Photo_5 — Enhanced photo showing details

My neighbour has had lots of paranormal activity in her house over the years and has witnessed on one occasion a red-eyed being staring through her dining room window at night. Her husband has also witnessed the same strange going’s on. I have no reason to disbelieve my neighbour as she is one of the most honest and open people I know.

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Steve Busti — 15 Comments

MULTIPLE THUNDERBIRD SIGHTING IN SOUTH TEXAS

Posted by Steve Busti

I had spoken with this gentleman on a previous occasion, and asked him if he could give me a detailed account of his eye-witness sighting of what he believes was a flock of gigantic birds, possibly the fabled Thunderbird of Native American lore. Here’s his story:

On Saturday July 5th 2008, I witnessed, along with others, what can only be described as an extraordinary event in the Rio Grande Valley. I was in South Texas, visiting from Missouri and staying with my brother in McAllen. It was around 6:15 PM and my brother and I had just finished watching the Yankees-Red Sox game and the post-game show to see if the Cardinals had played yet. We went out on the patio for a cold beverage and a smoke.

We had visited for a few minutes when I noticed two large indiscriminate black objects in the distance, and I asked out loud “What the hell are those?”. I pointed them out to my brother, who acknowledged he saw them… but he couldn’t identify what he was seeing. As I stood up and took a few steps on the patio towards the back yard, I was thinking to myself… UFOs?… hang gliders?… neither fit with what I was looking at.

Just then, a commercial airliner that was apparently coming in for a landing (or possibly a departure) at McAllen Int’l Airport had swung around in an arc behind the objects…and for a long moment I could see the two indiscriminate black objects superimposed upon the body of the airliner, and I immediately blurted out excitedly, “It’s those G** D*** Big Birds from the History Channel… Holy S***!” (and then a few other words… expletives)… I told my brother to get his wife so she could see what we were seeing.

As I walked all the way out into the yard from underneath the patio, I glanced back to the southeast in the direction the birds had come from. Much to my surprise, there was an entire line of giant birds that stretched a good half mile to three quarters of a mile in the sky- in a straight line. As the birds moved from the SE to the NW, you could clearly make out that there were thousands of smaller birds swarming around the big birds in the center of the convoy… cause that’s what it looked like… a military convoy.

There were the original 2 birds that we saw, then a considerable distance – as much as a quarter mile or better… between the first two and the next group, which was either 4 or 5 birds… I can’t remember for sure. But each of those 4 or 5 birds had a swarm of smaller birds around them… then there was a considerable distance that I would again judge to be a quarter mile or better – and then two solitary birds bringing up the rear. The birds flew “single file” through the sky. We were viewing the birds from the same side as their left wingtips.

My brother’s wife arrived in the backyard as the middle group of large birds passed with the swarms of smaller birds – thousands of them. She exclaimed “Oh my god… it’s their babies!” Also, it was easy to see with the naked eye that some of the Big Birds were bigger than others. Even my brother, who is blind as a bat, could see that the Big Birds were different sizes… I specifically asked him this as we watched this odd procession cross the sky.

I then recalled one specific detail from the History Channel documentary as the last two birds in the procession passed by. As the last two birds passed by our sight line, the final bird in the procession spread it’s wings out and it looked like a nearly perfect rectangle. I turned to my brother’s wife and asked her, “What shape is that?” She looked at me oddly and said “a rectangle”. This rectangular shaped wing, which I’ve never seen on a bird before, was one of the unique characteristics of the Big Bird as reported by eyewitnesses in Texas and other states on the History Channel program.

Of course, no one had a camera – I even went next door to see if the neighbors were home to see if they had one. Nobody home. Took me a good 5 minutes to find my car keys and get out the door and by that time the birds were out of visible sight. I drove in the general direction the birds were heading, but I never saw them again.

I called the McAllen Police Dept to file a report. They sent an officer out from animal control to take the information. He tried to tell me we probably saw migrating white cranes. I called the airport to see if there would be possibly radar tracts or returns that would show something, or if any pilots had reported seeing anything unusual. No luck. I called and spoke with the editor of The Monitor (McAllen’s major newspaper)… who my brother knew personally because the editor’s daughter was a friend of my niece. He was intrigued but showed no interest in following up on the story. I even emailed a cryptozoologist about the encounter, but I never heard back.

Just a few months ago I spoke with Dr. Patrick Redding from the University of Minnesota Raptor Center about the incident. He was one of the experts who appeared on the History Channel program.  I shared all of the details about the sighting as well as my hypothesis on where the birds may have originated from and where they were heading that day.

Seventeen days after the sighting, Hurricane Dolly made landfall in the region. It is my belief that the Big Birds moved their flock/pod purposefully to avoid the obvious weather conditions coming ashore. In addition, if you backtrack the vector the birds were traveling in the sky, a couple of different possible points of origin make themselves evident… as well as a couple of possible destinations. I have my own theories about that specifically – but who wants to go down to Mexico these days?

I swear to God and on my grandmother’s grave that these are the facts as truthfully, honestly, and accurately as I remember them. If I was asked to take a lie detector test about the information that I have shared from this encounter, I would readily agree. I have nothing to hide nor gain from sharing this encounter with those that would be interested. I have no doubt these Thunderbirds exist. I saw them… just as many others have. As far as I know, my brother, his wife, and I are the only ones to ever report an encounter with a group of the creatures and their possible offspring or symbiotic companions.

Sincerely,
Christopher Scott Miesner

Anyone who would like to speak with Scott about his sighting is welcome to contact me at steve@museumoftheweird.com and I will forward him your info.