The original, but quite shaky and hard to view, footage has been re-done in beautiful HD.
You have got to watch this:
The LA Times writes:
You may have seen video of Curiosity’s descent before, but you haven’t seen it like this — with the craters on Mars rendered in high definition, the contrast amped up, and the whole thing set to a string score by Kevin Macleod that helps heighten the grandeur, and also the loneliness, of the rover’s descent to the red planet.
(Never underestimate the importance of a soundtrack!)
Consider it the Mars Curiosity descent post-production video. It’s like the original, but better.
The video was put together by Dominic Muller, known on Reddit as Godd2, reports iO9.
On the video’s YouTubepage Muller explains that he used an editing technique called frame interpolation, which allowed him to take the original choppy video released by NASA and smooth it out. He writes that it took him four straight days to put it together.
You can find a thorough and technical explanation of how Muller made this video on Reddit.
Or you can just watch this over and over again and think about how awesome Mars looks.
As one commenter wrote, “It’s weird that we’re looking at another world.”
An Air Force Colonel has come forward to state there were in fact, 2 seperate crashes in Roswell, N.M.
As if the controversy and speculation around that fateful day in Roswell, New Mexico, retired Air Force Colonel Richard French is stirring things up a bit by saying that there were 2 seperate ufos recovered.
Huffington Post writes:
The 1947 UFO controversy of Roswell, N.M. is like a bad penny: It keeps turning up.
The legend, rehashed by conspiracy theorists in countless documentaries, revolves around allegations that an unusual object fell from the sky — an object so bizarre that the U.S. Air Force issued a press release that a flying saucer had crashed.
That story was quickly recanted, creating what would become one of the greatest urban legends in American history.
Until now, most debunkers doubted that there was even one crash. Now, in an exclusive interview, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Richard French told The Huffington Post that there were actually two crashes.
This revelation is especially remarkable considering that French was known in the past to debunk UFO stories.
“There were actually two crashes at Roswell, which most people don’t know,” French told HuffPost. “The first one was shot down by an experimental U.S. airplane that was flying out of White Sands, N.M., and it shot what was effectively an electronic pulse-type weapon that disabled and took away all the controls of the UFO, and that’s why it crashed.”
French — an Air Force pilot who was in Alamagordo, N.M., in 1947, being tested in an altitude chamber, an annual requirement for rated officers — was very specific in how the military allegedly brought down what he believes was a spacecraft from another world.
“When they hit it with that electromagnetic pulse — bingo! — there goes all their electronics and, consequently, the UFO was uncontrollable,” said French, who flew hundreds of combat missions in Korea and Southeast Asia, and who held several positions working for Military Intelligence.
Another retired officer doubts French’s story.
“No chance! Zero chance!” said Army Col. John Alexander, whose own top-secret clearance gave him access in the 1980s to official documents and UFO accounts. He created a top-level group of government officials and scientists who determined that, while UFOs are real, they couldn’t find evidence of an official cover-up.
The Elephant Man suffered from an unknown disease that scientist are now trying to name.
Joseph Merrick didn’t exactly have the most peaceful life, having been the now, and then, famous Elephant Man of London but, even in death he shall not rest peacefully for scientists plan on investigating his bones to determine just what caused his problems.
The Independent writes:
He was the thing of children’s nightmares, outcast by a Victorian society unable to comprehend his grotesque deformities, but was later immortalised in films and plays. Joseph Merrick, better known as the Elephant Man, is one of medical history’s enigmas: 122 years after his death, no one knows exactly what caused his extreme disfigurement. But scientists will attempt to solve the puzzle next month by extracting DNA from his bones for analysis.
Merrick came to the attention of the medical profession in the 1880s. Ever since, scientists have struggled to explain the huge growths that caused him to be first shunned and finally celebrated by society – by the end of his life his courage and humility had, at last, been recognised. Merrick became a folk hero for speaking up for others who were similarly afflicted.
It was initially thought that he suffered from Elephantiasis, a parasitic infection characterised by the thickening and enlargement of skin and tissue, hence his nickname.
Then, in 2001, some scientists suggested that Merrick had suffered from a rare disease called Proteus syndrome – a congenital disorder that causes skin overgrowth and abnormal bone development. But other experts questioned the diagnosis, saying that the way his disease manifested was not typical of that condition. It is hoped this latest research will finally prove conclusive.
Scientists will extract DNA from Merrick’s skeleton, which has been kept at the Royal London Hospital at Whitechapel, east London, since his death, aged 27, in 1890. Tests will then be carried out to see if it is possible to sequence Merrick’s genome thereby identifying any gene alteration. The already complex technique has been made harder by the fact that Merrick’s skeleton has been poorly preserved, and years of bleaching to keep it clean have degraded the remains.
Researchers hope that, by finally diagnosing his condition, they will be able to treat other sufferers.
The Russian research team made contact with the lake 12,366 feet (3,769 meters) below the ice on Sunday, 05/02/12.
What this looks like to me is the opening scene of a sci-fi horror movie, where the scientists out in the ice deserts of Antarctica break through ancient ice to an underground lake of freshwater that’s been cutoff from the outside world for 20 million years except, nothing scary happened when these guys actually did just that. Bummer?
Msnbc.msn.com writes:
MOSCOW — Opening a scientific frontier miles under the Antarctic ice, Russian experts drilled down and finally reached the surface of a gigantic freshwater lake, an achievement the mission chief likened to placing a man on the moon.
Lake Vostok could hold living organisms that have been locked in icy darkness for some 20 million years, as well as clues to the search for life elsewhere in the solar system.
Touching the surface of the lake, the largest of nearly 400 subglacial lakes in Antarctica, came after more than two decades of drilling. It was a major achievement avidly anticipated by scientists around the world.
“In the simplest sense, it can transform the way we think about life,” NASA’s chief scientist, Waleed Abdalati, told The Associated Press in an email Wednesday.
The Russian team made contact with the lake water Sunday at a depth of 12,366 feet (3,769 meters), about 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) east of the South Pole in the central part of the continent.
Scientists hope the lake might allow a glimpse into microbial life forms that existed before the Ice Age and are not visible to the naked eye. Scientists believe that microbial life may exist in the dark depths of the lake despite its high pressure and constant cold — conditions similar to those believed to be found under the ice crust on Mars, Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
Akin to the space race Valery Lukin, the head of Russia’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, said reaching the lake was akin to the Americans winning the space race in 1969.
“I think it’s fair to compare this project to flying to the moon,” said Lukin, who oversaw the mission and announced its success.
American and British teams are drilling to reach their own subglacial Antarctic lakes, but Columbia University glaciologist Robin Bell said those are smaller and younger than Vostok, which is the big scientific prize.
“It’s like exploring another planet, except this one is ours,” she said.
PASADENA, Calif. – The first images from Curiosity’s color Mast Camera, or Mastcam, have been received by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The 130 low-resolution thumbnails, which were received Thursday morning, provide scientists and engineers of NASA’s newest Mars rover their first color, horizon-to-horizon glimpse of Gale Crater.
“After a year in cold storage, where it endured the rigors of launch, the deep space cruise to Mars and everything that went on during landing, it is great to see our camera is working as planned,” said Mike Malin, principal investigator of the Mastcam instrument from Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego. “As engaging as this color panorama is, it is important to note this is only one-eighth the potential resolution of images from this camera.”
The Curiosity team also continued to downlink high-resolution black-and-white images from its Navigation Camera, or Navcam. These individual images have been stitched together to provide a high-resolution Navcam panorama, including a glimpse of the rover’s deck. Evident on some portions of the deck are some small Martian pebbles.
“The latest Navcam images show us that the rocket engines on our descent stage kicked up some material from the surface of Mars, several pieces which ended up on our rover’s deck,” said Mike Watkins, mission manager for Curiosity from JPL. “These small pebbles we currently see are up to about 1 centimeter [0.4 inch] in size and should pose no problems for mission operations. It will be interesting to see how long our hitchhikers stick around.”
Are these geographical anomalies actual ancient egyptian pyramids?
Certainly you hadn’t thought we found all of Earth’s hidden wonders and ruins of ancient civilizations. In the Amazon Rainforest alone there are at least 60 that we know of and can’t get to, and assuredly hundreds more we haven’t even found yet.
Scouring the extensive imagery available via Google Earth has led to quite few discoveries about our own planet. The most recent being this set of what could possibly be ancient egyptian pyramids.
I09 writes:
Satellite archaeologist Angela Micol believes she may have stumbled upon two previously unidentified pyramid structures by using Google Earth. Located in Egypt, the sites contain distinct features and orientations that definitely suggest the potential presence of pyramids — a prospect that has local archaeologists eager to check it out. The Archaeology News Networkreports:
“One of the complex sites contains a distinct, four-sided, truncated, pyramidal shape that is approximately 140 feet in width. This site contains three smaller mounds in a very clear formation, similar to the diagonal alignment of the Giza Plateau pyramids.
The second possible site contains four mounds with a larger, triangular-shaped plateau. The two larger mounds at this site are approximately 250 feet in width, with two smaller mounds approximately 100 feet in width. This site complex is arranged in a very clear formation with the large plateau, or butte, nearby in a triangular shape with a width of approximately 600 feet.”
According to Egyptologist and pyramid expert Nabil Selim, these structures have never been identified — and he notes that one of the proposed sites is similar in size to 13th Dynasty Egyptian pyramids. It’s anticipated that archaeologists will visit the site to conduct what’s called “ground truthing.”
Micol, who is based in Maiden, North Carolina, has been conducting satellite archaeological research for over a decade — and she has made Google Earth her primary tool. The program has helped her document a number of potential archaeological sites, including a potential underwater city off the Yucatan Peninsula.
Australia has released documents 30 years that describe many encounters with UFOs.
Here comes some interesting info out of the land down-under!
By law in Australia, any government documents 30 years old must be released to the public and there are a few folks scouring those documents for anything interesting, and boy have they found something good!
The Age over in Australia writes:
It is probably the closest Australia has come to scrambling fighter jets to intercept a UFO.
Documents that have just become available under the 30-year rule at the National Archives of Australia reveal how two RAAF Mirage jets were placed on the second highest level of alert to determine the cause of unidentified radar contacts seen on screens at Mascot.
The ”X Files” viewed in Canberra also give details of other unexplained sightings, some of which are supported by witness statements to police.
In the Sydney alert, the papers stamped ”restricted” tell how operation ”Close Encounter” was launched by No.3 Control and Reporting Unit at RAAF Base Williamtown near Newcastle on June 30, 1983, after the phenomenon was first noticed earlier in the month.
Senior air controllers at Mascot said the contacts were mostly located between 70 and 150 nautical miles north of Sydney at ”alleged speeds of 1100-6500 km/h that suggested high altitude”.
The papers state that no scramble was to occur in the round-the-clock operation unless confirmation of any reported tracks was made on the radar screens at RAAF Williamtown or any radar other than Sydney.
At the same time, three senior air defence controllers were dispatched to Sydney to investigate and plot every contact and ”control interceptors against these contacts if a reasonable chance of interception presented itself”. But then one of the defence controllers, a squadron leader, asked whether a comparison had been made of the contacts on the screens of Mascot’s Area Approach Radar Centre and those in a ”workshop across the corridor”. Soon after, tests showed that the ”unidentified objects reported by Sydney were generated entirely by radar interference known colloquially as ‘running rabbits’ ”.
Squadron leader K. Keenan, in his six-page report, said operation Close Encounter cost 66½ days of overtime, 1000 kilometres was travelled by a staff car and a C130 Hercules transport aircraft ”may have been diverted to Sydney airport” to deliver one of the defence controllers.
He wrote: ”The lines of communication, extending as they did across the width of an entire corridor, seem to have been insufficient for the purpose.”
He added rather dryly: ”Fortunately there was no temptation to launch aircraft and add to the fuel bill occasioned by use of the RAAF Datsun.” A cautiously worded statement was released as a result ”in a manner that would not embarrass departmental personnel” which blamed ”random atmospheric conditions”. Other reports in the X Files give details of an ”unidentified physical feature” of circles on Milo Station at Adavale, Queensland, in 1982. The file refers to photographs that apparently were taken, but they were not among the papers.
Constable Geoffrey Russell, from the local police station, visited the site and wrote a report for RAAF Base Amberley near Ipswich. The officer saw depressions in the ground and thought they were caused by a motorcyclist doing donuts but then dismissed the idea.
He wrote: ”I strongly feel this [is] no hoax even though I do not know the cause of this ‘feature’.”
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.
Dubbed 'The Ghost In The Tearoom' the apparition is shown circled in red.
Some pretty bold claims are being made about recent cctv footage released from a local teamroom, Curiositeaz Vintage,
in Perth. He’s called in some specialists of the Paranormal Investigation Scotland team to take a look at it and they are very excited by what they’ve seen. So excited that they’re saying that this mans footage may, in fact, be the best evidence of paranormal activity that we’ve seen in the past 10 years.
How incredible!
But, we’ve looked long and hard but can’t seem to find the footage anywhere online. Well, we look forward to the day he releases the video to the public, since… you know, that is the evidence.
Daily Record of Scotland writes:
A CAFE owner has called in the ghost-hunters after claiming to have seen a spirit on his security camera.
Chills went down Dan Clifford’s spine when he checked his CCTV and saw what he’s convinced was a ghostly apparition hovering over a table set for two.
He summoned a team of ghost specialists, who said the sighting – said to be a figure of a woman – was the most striking evidence they had come across in almost 10 years.
Dan, 35, said yesterday: “The first time I saw the shadow moving on the camera my heart went nuts. I thought there was an intruder in the shop.
“But when I looked closer I realised it couldn’t be a live human being – I could see right through it.”
The CCTV image was taken in the dead of night after something set off a motion sensor. And Dan claims it’s not the only evidence of ghostly goings-on at his Curiositeaz Vintage Tea Room in Perth.
He said: “Over the past few months, all the staff have experienced something.
“Some have heard voices. Others have witnessed chairs moving and one was pushed forwards and felt a chill right down their spine.
“We’ve also had a number of mediums stopping in because they felt something when they walked by.
“Some have told of feeling the presence of a woman, which fits with our newest image.
“I have always believed in the spirit world but I’d never experienced anything like this until we opened Curiositeaz less than a year ago. It’s all been very exciting.”
