Category: Science & Technology

Posted on by

BIGFOOT FILES PROMISES “UNEQUIVOCAL, EXTRAORDINARY AND TOTALLY UNEXPECTED” RESULTS

Former heavyweight boxing champion-turned-Bigfoot hunter Nikolai Valuev joins host Mark Evans as they investigate the Almasty.
Former heavyweight boxing champion-turned-Bigfoot hunter Nikolai Valuev joins host Mark Evans as they investigate the Almasty.

 

For those of you who have not had the chance to watch the first episode of the excellent show Bigfoot Files, you can watch it in its entirety here:

 

 

The show is well-worth watching, and is an example of the type of programming cryptozoology needs more of. Bigfoot Files takes a scientific approach to the search for answers to the mystery of Bigfoot, following genetics professor Bryan Sykes in his analysis of DNA extracted from hair samples provided to the Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project (OLCHP).

The first episode had some pretty amazing (in my opinion) results on some supposed Yeti hairs. And while the description for Bigfoot Files: Episode 2 sounds less than enthusiastic…

…Professor Sykes reveals the results of his DNA tests on the hair samples he’s collected. Will the results confirm the Bigfootologists’ stories or will it be bad news?

…Episode 3, the finale of the three-part series, sounds much more promising. From the British Channel 4 description for Episode 3 of Bigfoot Files:

The ‘Almasty’ is Russia’s very own Bigfoot. It has been written about for over 300 years, and Russia’s Almasty hunters claim there have been over 10,000 encounters over the years.

The big theory in Russia is that it’s a surviving hominid, possibly even a Neanderthal.

Mark Evans travels to Russia and investigates one of the highest profile Bigfoot stories in the world: the tale of Zana, the so-called Wildwoman: a living Almasty said to have been found in the remote Caucasus in the 1870s.

She was alleged to have had four children by her captors over the years. Almasty hunters have tracked down her descendants and Bryan Sykes uses cutting edge tests to analyse their DNA and test the Neanderthal theory about Zana.

Mark also meets a giant among Almasty hunters, seven foot tall former heavyweight boxing champion of the world Nikolai Valuev, who is now Duma Deputy (the equivalent of an MP) for Kemerovo in Siberia.

Mark joins him as he checks out the latest hot Almasty sighting and meets the three kids who claim to have captured one on camera near a frozen lake.

Finally, in Moscow, Professor Sykes reveals the results of his DNA tests on Zana’s relatives. The results are unequivocal, extraordinary and totally unexpected (emphasis mine).

 

I for one, am waiting with baited breath on Professor Bryan Sykes’ announcement of what he has found in the DNA of the relatives of Zana. If we look at the description, it sounds like 1.) his results will leave no doubt as to their veracity;  2.) we know that it is not something mundane, e.g. they’re not just normal humans; and 3.) it’s not what we would expect. I would expect the results to come back either purely homo sapiens OR neandertal-human hybrid. But could it be something other?

Will Zana’s relatives be something more than either human or neandertal?

And while I think a human-bear hybrid would be totally unexpected… I don’t think that’s the case here. 😉  I guess we will just have to wait.

Posted on by

FIRST FULLY BIONIC MAN CREATED

"The Incredible Bionic Man" makes his debut at the Washington Air and Space Museum.
“The Incredible Bionic Man” makes his debut at the Washington Air and Space Museum.

A first-ever walking, talking “bionic man” built entirely out of synthetic body parts made his Washington debut on Thursday.

The robot with a human face unveiled at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum was built by London’s Shadow Robot Co to showcase medical breakthroughs in bionic body parts and artificial organs.

“This is not a gimmick. This is a real science development,” museum director John Dailey said.

I’ve always wondered when and how someone would do this: take all of the existing bionic technology we have today… artificial organs, limbs, etc… and combine it into a single walking, talking being. However, there’s one element that’s missing… the human soul.

Which is why I suspect in this video below Bertolt Meyer, the man who contributed his facial features to the robot, has such intense feelings towards the android upon first seeing it… it is essentially wearing his face.  Meyers is experiencing the creepiness of “the Uncanny Valley,” that is, the point where something is close to being human but not quite there yet, which often elicits feelings of fear and repulsion.

 

The 6-foot-tall (1.83 meter), 170-pound (77-kg) robot is the subject of a one-hour Smithsonian Channel documentary, “The Incredible Bionic Man,” airing on Sunday.

A “bionic man” was the material of science fiction in the 1970s when the television show “The Six Million Dollar Man” showed the adventures of a character named Steve Austin, a former astronaut whose body was rebuilt using synthetic parts after he nearly died.

The robot on display at the museum cost $1 million and was made from 28 artificial body parts on loan from biomedical innovators. They include a pancreas, lungs, spleen and circulatory system, with most of the parts early prototypes.

“The whole idea of the project is to get together all of the spare parts that already exist for the human body today – one piece. If you did that, what would it look like?” said Bertolt Meyer, a social psychologist from the University of Zurich in Switzerland and host of the documentary.

The robot was modelled after Meyer, who was born without a hand and relies on an artificial limb. He showed off the bionic man by having it take a few clumsy steps and by running artificial blood through its see-through circulatory system.

READ MORE:  http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/21/oukoe-uk-usa-bionicman-idUKBRE99G13P20131021

Posted on by

BIGFOOT DNA PRESS CONFERENCE OFFERS EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE

This morning a group of Sasquatch researchers have announced their findings after a five year study into the phenomenon of Bigfoot.

 

 

New photos and videos filled with never before seen images were released Tuesday by a group known as the Sasquatch Genome Project. They were in Dallas Tuesday to unveil its findings.

Dr. Melba Ketchum, a genetics scientist led the project. “We want people to understand this is a serious study,” said Ketchum.

The five-year study costs more than $500,000. It was funded by businessman Adrian Erickson.

Erikson says he has had numerous encounters with Sasquatch creatures–and says he has the images and science to back their existence. But he says he also understands the stigma and disbelief that comes with BigFoot.

“People have chosen not to believe it. They can’t find it in their minds to think these things exist.”

So the group of researchers and scientists set out to track what they call the furry people.

The group says it followed a mother and daughter in Kentucky collecting thermal imagery, daytime and nighttime video, along with, photos of massive hand and footprints.

The group says there are thousands of these creatures in the United States including right here in North Texas.

But the strongest evidence the group says its has is DNA evidence. They say it is like nothing that has been seen before in mammals or humans.

 

READ MORE:   Sasquatch Genome Project Reveals Bigfoot Photos In Dallas

 

 

Posted on by

ATTEND THE UFO CONFERENCE IN GREENSBORO, NC THIS WEEKEND!

If anyone in the area of Greensboro has any interest in UFOs, I urge you to go attend this man’s UFO conference this weekend.

Kent Senter is a man racing against time.

The 59-year-old resident of Burlington, N.C., has terminal multiple myeloma, a cancer that attacks bone marrow. Despite that, this weekend, he’ll be focused on the number one item at the top of his bucket list: to organize, sponsor and host an international UFO conference.

It’s no easy task. Adding to the daily challenges of his illness, Senter has quickly pulled together an intriguing symposium over the past few months in a competitive climate where, between now and the end of the year, another dozen UFO-related conferences are scheduled around the U.S.

On June 29 and 30, 12 speakers — with backgrounds in science, military, academia, sociology, investigative journalism, including government officials of Chile and France — will come together for Senter’s 2013 Symposium On Official And Scientific Investigations Of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, at the Greensboro War Memorial Auditorium in Greensboro, NC.

Help make this man’s dream come true!  Share this news with your friends, especially anyone in North Carolina.  And get out to the conference today or tomorrow. I wish I could be there, but I’d love to hear how it goes!

Kent and Patty Senter
Kent and Patty Senter. Kent has terminal cancer, and the UFO conference he has organized and is putting on this weekend is his dream come true. Go support him!

READ MORE:  Kent Senter, Fighting Terminal Cancer, Hosts UFO Conference

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/28/kent-senters-terminal-cancer-ufo-conference_n_3511010.html?ref=topbar

 

Posted on by

RATS ON MARS

No, it’s not the concept of a bad B-movie. The folks over at Space.com have spied what looks to be Pareidolia rats. In one of the many images captured by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity it appears that a large rodent of some sort is scampering across the Red Planet’s surface. Considering Mars has an extremely thin atmosphere unable to support life, the existence of R.O.U.S’es darting around around the craters and extinct volcanoes seems a little more than far fetched.

However, there are several conspiracy theory camps that believe we are being fed incorrect, color-altered images of Mars that do not reflect the supposed vast forests and oceans there. If this were case, though, I think Curiosity would be catching more than rats in its sites. As with the previous post from yesterday with the Misfits-tagged rocks being a “fossilized creature”, me thinks this too is just an optical illusion. To paraphrase Freud: Sometimes a rock, is just a rock. But I could be wrong—it’s been known to happen on occasion.

What do you see in the image below?

dnews-mars-rat

Posted on by

MORATORIUM ON KILLER ROBOTS

Terminator-salvati_1403870cThe UN Human Rights Council will be discussing the morality of “killer robots” at their next meeting in Geneva. A moratorium has been requested on their use until a decision has been made by the Council—this is not a complete ban as some groups would like to see, but it will allow enough time to put to rest the more philosophical dilemmas. The robots in question, which are currently under development in the US, UK, and Israel, are called “lethal autonomous robots” and are designed to be pre-programmed to kill people or take out specified targets in war. However, these robots are also equipped with the ability to think freely for themselves in order to make adjustments when necessary.

Supporters of these machines believe that they will save countless lives in the long run by reducing the number of soldiers utilized in battle. Human rights groups believe that the distancing of the human element from war raises serious moral questions about our approach to combat. They have serious concerns on the robots’ ability to distinguish between targets and civilians, and if civilian casualties occur, who would be held responsible.

“The traditional approach is that there is a warrior, and there is a weapon,” said Christof Heyns, the UN expert examining the use of the robots in an article on the BBC News, “but what we now see is that the weapon becomes the warrior, the weapon takes the decision itself.”

Posted on by

MASSIVE HURRICANE ON SATURN

Thanks to NASA’s Cassini spacecraft scientists have caught the first glimpse of a hurricane 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide within an ambiguous six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon. The eye alone is twenty times larger than any storm ever recorded on Earth with wind speeds reaching 330mph (150 meters per second), swirling around Saturn’s north pole. Scientists will be studying the storm closely in an effort to find a deeper understanding of Earth’s own hurricanes. While there is no actual body of water near to this particular storm the study will be based on the way in which Saturn’s atmosphere uses the water vapor contained within it.

Last week on the NASA website, Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena stated, “We did a double take when we saw this vortex because it looks so much like a hurricane on Earth. But there it is at Saturn, on a much larger scale, and it is somehow getting by on the small amounts of water vapor in Saturn’s hydrogen atmosphere.”

The intense similarities between Earth’s hurricanes and the storms on Saturn are striking, even given the vast difference in the atmospheric compositions of the two planets. Saturn’s atmosphere is primarily made of the simple molecules hydrogen and helium. There is also a large quantity of sulfur, which gives the planet its yellowish hue. The storm spied by Cassini on Saturn has been in rotation since at least 2004, when the spacecraft first arrived at the planet. The hurricane appears to be stuck at the north pole. Without a major change in the atmosphere of the planet, it is anyone’s guess just how long it will remain.

For more information about Cassini and its mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

744877main_pia14944-946

Posted on by

MINE-HUNTING HONEYBEES

honey-beeCroatian researchers are training honeybees to locate the 750 landmines along the country’s borders left over from the Balkan Wars. Professor Nikola Kezic of Zagreb University has discovered a way to utilize the honeybee’s powerful sense of smell in order to hone in on mines buried in the ground. By placing a mixture of sugar and TNT near various feeding points, the bees learn to associate food with the scent of explosives. Nearly 466 square miles are thought to still contain landmines—since 1991, over 2,500 people have been killed by landmines in Croatia.

“Our basic conclusion is that the bees can clearly detect this target, and we are very satisfied,” said Kezic. The main issue in the training of honeybees resides in the mastery of the entire colony as opposed to just a few lone bees.

Kezic is also one of the leaders of a larger multimillion-euro program called “Tiramisu,” to detect land mines. Once the reliability of trained honeybees is confirmed, they will be utilized to uncover the mines otherwise missed by de-miners in an area. In the past, dogs and rats have been used. However, their bodyweight would often detonate the mines. Bees, on the other hand, are light enough to not disturb the explosives and their movements can be tracked with heat-seeking cameras.