museum of the weird – Page 18 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on August 2, 2012 by MOTW Admin

ANCIENT RAINFOREST DISCOVERED IN ANARCTICA

About 52 million years ago there wasn't any ice on Antarctica, for the temperatures were about 68 degrees Farenhiet

An ancient rain forest has been discovered under the very thick ice of Anartctica.

While drilling to gather core samples of the ice, researchers and scientist found a large section of pollen that indicates a once large and vast tropical-style rain forest that once covered the entire continent and, if things keep going the way of global-warming, it might just happen again… soon!

Discovery News writes:

Drilling of the seabed off Antarctica has revealed that rainforest grew on the frozen continent 52 million years ago, scientists said Thursday, warning it could be ice-free again within decades.

The study of sediment cores drilled from the ocean floor off Antarctica’s east coast revealed fossil pollens that had come from a “near-tropical” forest covering the continent in the Eocene period, 34-56 million years ago.

Kevin Welsh, an Australian scientist who traveled on the 2010 expedition, said analysis of temperature-sensitive molecules in the cores had showed it was “very warm” 52 million years ago, measuring about 20 degrees Celsius (68 F).

“There were forests existing on the land, there wouldn’t have been any ice, it would have been very warm,” Welsh told AFP of the study, published in the journal Nature.

“It’s quite surprising, because obviously our image of Antarctica is that it’s very cold and full of ice.”

Welsh said higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were thought to be the major driver of the heat and ice-free conditions on Antarctica, with CO2 estimates of anywhere between 990 to “a couple of thousand” parts per million.

CO2 is presently estimated at about 395ppm, and Welsh said the most extreme predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would see ice again receding on Antarctica “by the end of the century”.

“It’s difficult to say, because that’s really controlled by people’s and governments’ actions,” said Welsh, a paleoclimatologist from the University of Queensland. “It really depends on how emissions go in the future.”

Welsh described the findings as “very significant” in understanding future climate change, particularly given how important Antarctica and the “very large” volume of water stored on its surface would be for the entire planet.

“It shows that if we go through periods of higher CO2 in the atmosphere it’s very likely that there will be dramatic changes on these very important areas of the globe where ice currently exists,” he said.

“If we were to lose a lot of ice from Antarctica then we’re going to see a dramatic change in sea level all around the planet.”

Even a few meters of sea level rise would inundate “large portions of the habitable land around coasts of many major countries and low-lying regions”, he added.

The ice on east Antarctica is 3-4 kilometers (1.9-25 miles) thick, and is thought to have formed about 34 million years ago.

Posted on August 1, 2012 by MOTW Admin

UFO VISITS EARTH TO WATCH THE LONDON OLYMPICS?

Is this the UFO visiting the London Olympics as predicted by Nick Pope?

We posted a story a few months back about a man named Nick Pope, claiming to have an expert-level of UFO knowledge predicting that a UFO would visit a large event, like the current 2012 London Olympics, and as it currently seems, he may have been right!

The Huffington Post writes:

Want proof that Danny Boyle and the gang put on the greatest show in the galaxy for the London 2012 Opening Ceremony? Well, even mysterious beings from other planets showed up to catch a glimpse. Possibly.

Yes, it seems a UFO appeared over the Olympic Park in London just as the firework display erupted into full force, reports Examiner.com.

Don’t believe us? Just look at this video, and you’ll clearly – well, sort of clearly – see how a mysterious disc-shaped object makes its first appearance in the top left-hand corner then travels across the sky above the stadium as if hoping to get a better look.

Explanations? Well, it could have been a satellite, we suppose. Or another world monarch preparing to parachute from a blimp. But maybe – just maybe – it was a spaceship full of Mike Oldfield fans from Mars who’d heard their hero was in the area. Yes, the more we think about it, the more we’re convinced that last option is the most likely scenario.

WHO’S UP TO VISIT “THE DOOR TO HELL”?

'The Door to Hell' has been burning for over 40 years!

When I think of taking a vacation, I think of beautiful sandy beaches and crystal clear waters in a country far, far away. There’s one place that’s just a little hotter than your usual vacation spot and there’s a bit less water too!

Daily Mail writes:

At first glance, it could be a dramatic scene from a science-fiction movie.

But this giant hole of fire in the heart of the Karakum Desert is not the aftermath of an attack on Earth, launched from outer space.

It is a crater made by geologists more than 40 years ago, and the flames within have been burning ever since.

Welcome to Derweze in Turkmenistan – or, as the locals have called it, ‘The Door to Hell’.

Soviet geologists were drilling at the site in 1971 and tapped into a cavern filled with natural gas.

But the ground beneath the drilling rig collapsed, leaving a hole with a diameter of 70 metres.

Fearing that the hole would lead to the release of poisonous gases, the team decided to burn it off.

It was hoped that the fire would use all the fuel within days, but the gas is still burning today.

The flames generate a golden glow which can be seen for miles around Derweze, a village with a population of about 350.

The site is about 260 kilometres north of Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan.

In April 2010 the country’s president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, visited the site and ordered that the hole should be closed but this is yet to happen.

CHICKEN NUGGETS COST AUSTRALIAN MAN $15,000

One man lost $15,000 when his wife wanted to make some chicken nuggets in the oven.

Here’s some rather unfortunate news coming out of Sydney, Australia that gives new meaning to the phrase “burning through your money”.

Yahoo News writes:

One man probably has learned a costly lesson about where he hides his cash.

The unidentified father from Sydney, Australia, sold his car last weekend. The $15,000 (approximately $15,652 in U.S. dollars) in proceeds was earmarked for his mortgage payment and other bills, according to Australian media. Opting not to squirrel away the loot in a mattress or bury it in his backyard, he decided to hide it his oven, which rarely gets used.

Bad move: Turns out, his wife decided to use the oven that day, preheating it for chicken nuggets for their two children and, yes, cooked the cash.

“It was everything I had,” he told the news station. “I’ve got nothing to my name. That money was supposed to go towards my mortgage.”

His wife was equally distraught and, reportedly, could not stop crying when telling her husband after she discovered what happened: The cash was baked into a colorful burnt mess.

The man reached out to his lender and the Reserve Bank of Australia for help.

The Reserve Bank advises people to take damaged currency to a bank. According to the Reserve Bank policy, “if several pieces of the same banknote are presented, the Reserve Bank’s policy is for each piece to be worth a share of the value in proportion to its size… The combined value paid should be the face value of the original banknote.”

MEET AFFETO, THE WORLD’S CREEPIEST ROBO-BABY

This little robotic infant will be used to study how human cognitive functions develop.

Great strides are being made in the scientific world of robotics everyday but, you could say the researchers at the Osaka University in Japan are making baby-steps.

Meet “Affeto”, arguably the world’s creepiest baby robot and despite being so “young”, this little guy is quite advanced for his age.

Watch the creepy little guy in action here:

And here:

Future of tech on NBCNews.com writes:

A robot baby being built as part of a neuroscience research program in Japan has just gotten a torso, including arms that flop around like an infant’s sans swaddle.

Affeto, the robo-baby, is creepy in its realism, which is what the team from Osaka University aims to accomplish as they use robotics to study “how humans’ higher cognitive functions develop,” according to a project description.

Ultimately, the robot will be used in behavioral experiments. For now, the researchers are trying to “build a realistic child robot with a muscle-skeletal system.”

The torso’s flexibility comes from 22 pneumatic actuators in its body.

In the video below you can see that Affeto’s torso is approaching the realistic stage.The robot’s face has the thousand-mile stare of a well satiated or exhausted infant, but that may be because the team has yet to pair the torso with the robotic head, which was demonstrated in Feb. 2011.

WHAT WASHED UP UNDERNEATH THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE?

This scary looking guy was found washed ashore underneath the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. *Photo credit to Denise Ginley

Well, if New York wasn’t a scary enough place as it is, with having to worry about giant rats, gators in the sewers, the teenage mutant ninja turtles and not to mention the creepy “Montauk Monster“, now we have this thing, whatever it may be, to worry about as well. Awesome.

Here are some images captured the day it washed ashore:

Now, that's a face only a mother could love. *Photo credit to Denise Ginley

Some cried pig, until they say its claws. *Photo credit to Denise Ginley

9 News writes:

Photos of a bloated, hairless animal washed up on by a New York river have sparked debate over what the creature could be and whether it is related to the “Montauk Monster”.

The creature was spotted under the Brooklyn Bridge by Denise Ginley, who sent photos of it to New York-based news website Gothamist on July 22.

Ms Ginley said the animal was about 60cm long from head to tail and asked: “Is this another incarnation of the Montauk Monster, or just the biggest rat in the city?”

Photos of the carcass, which Ms Ginley dubbed the “East River Monster”, quickly spread throughout US media, with people suggesting it was a washed up rat until the New York City Parks Department claimed it was a pig.

But this was quickly disputed, with people pointing out the photos showed the creature had claws and not trotters like a pig.

Ms Ginley told ninemsn she was walking to a farmers’ market with her boyfriend when she first spotted the carcass and she returned later that day with her camera to photograph it.

“Several other people were looking and taking photos, and everyone had a different opinion about what it was (suggestions included giant rat, dog, pig, monster, and seal),” Ms Ginley said.

“Obviously I thought it was gross, but it was just so strange looking I wanted to get closer … strangely enough, it did not smell, maybe because it had been in the water so long.”

The carcass has still not been identified, and Gawker jokingly reported that the New York City Parks Department was “still being cagey” about the animal.

Another unidentifiable animal, the Montauk Monster made headlines in July 2008 when it washed up on a beach in Montauk, northeast of New York.

At the time people suggested the creature was a raccoon, a small dog, a rat and even a bloated turtle without its shell.

CAN YOU SURVIVE 30 MINUTES IN THE WORLD’S QUIETEST ROOM?

No one has lasted more than 45 minutes alone in the anechoic chamber, ever.

Ever have that moment after you’ve woken up in the middle of the night, where you try to lay back down for a peaceful nights sleep but start to hear all the little sounds of the room come to life? So much so that it gets to the point where the silence of the room is just too loud and you have to turn on a fan, or maybe the tv? Well, what if I told you there is a room so intensely quiet you can hear your own inner organs moving and pulsating? A room where the movement of your own ears and eyeballs are so loud its deafening?A place where you’ll even begin to hallucinate after just 30 minutes alone? Seems pretty creepy right?

It sounds like a some kind of weird torture room in a futuristic horror movie set on a spaceship, but it’s actually just a room that is able to completely eliminate background noise to allow researchers to test and accurately measure the true amount of sound electronic devices give off, used by film makers to record voice overs, and even used for vocals and musical instrumentation on songs. Just don’t go in alone…’cause then it gets weird.

Oddity Central writes:

The mad and hectic pace of life, sometimes makes us all crave some peace and quiet. But then, as they say, too much of a good thing can actually be bad for you. That applies to silence, as it turns out people can’t stand to be in the world’s quietest place for too long. The longest a person has lasted in there is 45 minutes.

The place I’m talking about is a room at Orfield Laboratories in South Minneapolis. The room, also known as the ‘anechoic chamber’, is 99.99% sound absorbent. The double-insulated walls are made of steel and foot-thick concrete. Along the walls are also 3.3-foot thick fiberglass acoustic wedges that contribute to the ultra-quietness. The room holds the current Guinness World Record for being the quietest place on Earth. While it does seem like a dream come true, especially for those who live with kids or have stressful jobs, it’s actually not all that great. The room gets so silent that you can actually hear your internal organs at work. And after a while, the hallucinations begin.

The founder and president of Orfield Labs, Steven Orfield says that people are challenged to sit in the chamber with all the lights out. There was this one reporter who managed to stay in there for 45 minutes. Mr. Orfield himself can do it for 30 minutes, in spite of his mechanical heart valve that becomes very loud inside the room. “When it’s quiet, ears will adapt,” he says. “The quieter the room, the more things you hear. You’ll hear your heart beating; sometimes you can hear your lungs, hear your stomach gurgling loudly. In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.”

MAN CLAIMS TO HAVE AN ALLERGIC REACTION TO TECHNOLOGY

A man in England has diagnosed himself with a rather rare allergy, technology.

Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity, apparently, is a real thing. This disorder has even plagued some rather notable people in the past but, whether or not this man, Phil Inkly, truely has the extreme reactions of nosebleeds and migraines to wifi signals and cell phone use that he claims to have, is still up for debate.

CNET News writes:

Imagine if you were a food critic and suddenly developed a wheat/dairy/corn/carb/fat allergy.

Or what if you were a car mechanic and the smell of gas brought you out in itchy purple hives and then made you have convulsions?

This is the fate of computer technician Phil Inkly. Or, rather, former computer technician.

Inkly, you see, claims to be allergic to pretty much everything to do with, well, technology.

You name it and it affects him. If it’s some kind of gadget, if it’s even a battery, it might give him nosebleeds, burning headaches, sleep problems, or even blackouts.

These symptoms have caused him to move into the woods, as far away from technology as he can be.

And yet, as the Daily Mail reports, no doctor has diagnosed his condition. Instead, Inkly himself diagnosed it as Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity.

He lives in a small caravan in rural England and says his life has been completely destroyed. He has no friends, no love, and he doesn’t even know how seriously ill he might be.

“I’m always ill and can only handle being in remote areas with little radiation so because of this, money is tight,” he told the Mail.

Inkly was not some reluctant techie.

He told the Mail: “I’ve been passionate about technology from childhood, previously working as a sound engineer and tutor of music technology. I frequently repaired computers for family and friends — all was fine until things started going wireless.”

He says he began to notice that things weren’t quite right when he was around computers and cell phones.

Then he moved near to a former Army base. Since then, the symptoms have become only controllable by fleeing to the wilderness.

“Now I suffer from extreme pain on the side of my brain that I used to hold my phone to, and when I get nosebleeds it comes from the nostril on that side of my head too so I believe it’s linked,” he told the Mail.

Even when he moved into the woods, he felt pain that he says was caused by a nearby office that used phones. So he bought them phones that turn off the radiation when they’re not being used.

It’s not as if he’s avoided doctors. The problem is that the doctors can’t use modern technology to examine him.

SMART YOUNG GORILLAS DESTROY TRAPS LEFT BY POACHERS

Wild gorillas under surveillance are seen disarming a snare.

Here’s some fascinating news from the animal kingdom, young gorillas in a remote part of Rwanda are going through the jungle and dismantling traps left behind by poachers aiming for antelope, not the gorillas that happen to get caught in them though, those are just left to die.

So, the mountain gorillas, after having one of their very own die from said traps and not wanting that to happen again, have seemed to wise-up to the dangerous snares hidden all over and are actively disarming and destroying them! Now, we know gorillas are quite smart but, that takes a bit more intelligence than I think we’ve given the gorillas up to this point, for this type of behavior has never been seen before and isn’t just a random act, they’re systematically going through and clearing these snares out!

National Geographic News writes:

Just days after a poacher’s snare had killed one of their own, two young mountain gorillas worked together Tuesday to find and destroy traps in theirRwandan forest home, according to conservationists on the scene.

“This is absolutely the first time that we’ve seen juveniles doing that … I don’t know of any other reports in the world of juveniles destroying snares,” said Veronica Vecellio, gorilla program coordinator at the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund‘s Karisoke Research Center, located in the reserve where the event took place.

“We are the largest database and observer of wild gorillas … so I would be very surprised if somebody else has seen that,” Vecellio added. Bush-meat hunters set thousands of rope-and-branch snares in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, where the mountain gorillas live. The traps are intended for antelope and other species but sometimes capture the apes. Adults are generally strong enough to free themselves. Youngsters aren’t always so lucky.

Just last week an ensnared infant named Ngwino, found too late by workers from Karisoke, died of snare-related wounds. Her shoulder had been dislocated during escape attempts, and gangrene had set in after the ropes cut deep into her leg. The hunters, Vecellio said, seem to have no interest in the gorillas. Even small apes, which would be relatively easy to carry away for sale, are left to die.

On Tuesday tracker John Ndayambaje spotted a trap very close to the Kuryama gorilla clan. He moved in to deactivate the snare, but a silverback named Vubu grunted, cautioning Ndayambaje to stay away, Vecellio said. Suddenly two juveniles—Rwema, a male; and Dukore, a female; both about four years old—ran toward the trap. As Ndayambaje and a few tourists watched, Rwema jumped on the bent tree branch and broke it, while Dukore freed the noose.

The pair then spied another snare nearby—one the tracker himself had missed—and raced for it. Joined by a third gorilla, a teenager named Tetero, Rwema and Dukore destroyed that trap as well. The speed with which everything happened makes Vecellio, the gorilla program coordinator, think this wasn’t the first time the young gorillas had outsmarted trappers. “They were very confident,” she said. “They saw what they had to do, they did it, and then they left.”

Silverbacks in the Kuryama group have occasionally been caught in the snares, so Vecellio thinks the juveniles would have known the traps are dangerous.

“That’s why they destroyed them,” Vecellio said.

Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com

Posted on July 24, 2012 by MOTW Admin

‘FRANKEN-JELLY’ THE JELLYFISH MADE FROM THE HEART CELLS OF A RAT

This 'jellyfish' was created using the heart cells of a rat.

This is just incredible.

Scientists and researchers are creating new things all the time to help us better understand the way our world works but two guys in-particular, bioengineers John Dabiri and Kevin Kit Parker, have made something pretty unique using only the heart cells from a rat, some silicon and, with just a dash of electricity, have birthed a creation they’ve dubbed “Franken-jelly”.

Watch it in action below:

Wired Science writes:

Now Frankenstein can have a pet jellyfish. A team of scientists has taken the heart cells of a rat, arranged them on a piece of rubbery silicon, added a jolt of electricity, and created a “Franken-jelly.” Just like a real jellyfish, the artificial jelly swims around by pumping water in and out of its bell-shaped body. Researchers hope the advance can someday help engineers design better artificial hearts and other muscular organs.

Young moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita), which are usually between 10 and 12 cm wide, swim rhythmically. First, they flex their muscles quickly and all at once, expelling water as they take on a dome shape. Then, slowly, their body relaxes and flattens, triggering another round of muscle contractions. Researchers knew which cells helped jellyfish move, and how they work together to push and pull water. What they wanted to find out was how best to recreate this behavior using materials available in the lab.

Bioengineers John Dabiri from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and Kevin Kit Parker from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University adopted a motto: Copy nature, but not too much. “Some engineers build things out of concrete, copper and steel—we build things out of cells,” says Parker.

The duo and their colleagues stenciled out the ideal jellyfish shape on silicon, a material that would be sturdy but flexible, much like the jellyfish itself. They then coached rat muscle cells to grow in parallel bands on the silicon and encased the cells with a stretchy material called elastomer. To get their artificial jellyfish, or medusoid, swimming, the researchers submerged it in a salty solution and ran an electric current through the water, jump-starting the rat cells. The mimic propelled itself rapidly in the water,swimming as effectively as a real jellyfish, the researchers report online today in Nature Biotechnology.