weird news – Page 16 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on July 27, 2012 by MOTW Admin — 1 Comment

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.

WHAT IS THIS ‘GOAT MAN’ DOING?

Why is this man dressed as a goat hanging out on the side of a mountain?

If this doesn’t qualify as weird news, then I don’t know what does.

A man was seen on the side of Ben Lomond peak in the northern mountains of Utah hanging out with a grazing heard of mountain goats, while dressed as one.

Photographer Coty Creighton thought he was just getting some great shots of the natural wildlife above Ogden, Utah, just north of Salt Lake City, until he realized one of the goats wasn’t so natural.

Yahoo News writes:

A man spotted dressed in a goat suit among a herd of wild goats in the mountains of northern Utah haswildlife officials worried he could be in danger as hunting season approaches.

Phil Douglass of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources said Friday the person is doing nothing illegal, but he worries the so-called “goat man” is unaware of the dangers.

“My very first concern is the person doesn’t understand the risks,”Douglass said. “Who’s to say what could happen.”

Douglass said a man hiking Sunday along Ben Lomond peak in the mountains above Ogden, about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City, spotted the person dressed like a goat among a herd of real goats. The person provided some blurry photographs to Douglass, who said they did not appear to have been altered.

Wildlife officials now just want to talk to the man so that he is aware of the dangers. There’s no telling what his intentions are, Douglass said, but it is believed he could just be an extreme wildlife enthusiast.

“People do some pretty out there things in the name of enjoying wildlife. But I’ve never had a report like this,” Douglass said. “There’s a saying we have among biologists — You don’t go far enough, you don’t get the data. You go too far, you don’t go home. The same is true with some wildlife enthusiasts.”

Douglass said 60 permits will be issued for goat hunting season in that area, which begins in September. He worries the goat man might be accidentally shot or could be attacked by a real goat.

“They may get agitated. They’re territorial. They are, after all, wild animals,” he said. “This person puts on a goat suit, he changes the game. But as long as he accepts responsibility, it’s not illegal.”

UNIVERSITY IN SCOTLAND OFFERS AN ONLINE DEGREE IN ALIENS!

Getting another degree never hurts, so why NOT get one in aliens?

In today’s tough job market, it always helps to have a solid education to rely upon, some people even spend quite a bit of time in school to have an extra few degrees to help them land that perfect job. The Edinburgh University of Scotland is looking to help you out with finding that great way to spend your day that you’ve always wanted by offering a few free classes online… in aliens!

The Huffington Post writes

Now you can be a professional alien hunter too.

Edinburgh University is about to make it possible for the average Joe to search for extraterrestrials.

The university, one of the most prestigious in the world and located in Scotland’s capital city of Edinburgh, is offering a series of free online courses, including “Astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life,” reportsnews.scotsman.com.

The course will explore the possible ways to discover life on Earth-like planets and the implications if and when ultimate contact with another civilization occurs.

The whole concept of Earth-like planets in orbit around other suns — planets that may have all the important conditions to harbor life as we know it — has skyrocketed with the amazing success of NASA’s Kepler space observatory, launched in 2009 to search for them. According to the Kepler website, 1,790 host stars with a total of 2,321 planet candidates have been detected by the telescope, with 74 planets confirmed.

Starting in the fall, Edinburgh University’s five-week course that will include:

Week 1: The definitions of life and how it originated on Earth.

Week 2: Early Earth environments when life first emerged and the various evolutionary transitions of life on Earth.

Week 3: The prospects for life elsewhere in our solar system and the required conditions for a planet to be habitable.

Week 4: How to search for Earth-like planets orbiting distant suns and how to detect possible life there.

Week 5: How earthlings would be impacted by the discovery of an extraterrestrial intelligence.

This very special ET course will be led by Edinburgh astrobiology professor Charles Cockell and director of the UK Centre for Astrobiology.

“This course is an introduction to astrobiology,” Cockell explains on the university’s information page. “It explores the origin and evolution of life on the Earth and its potential to exist elsewhere.

“Astrobiology addresses compelling questions of wide interest, such as: How did life originate on Earth? Is this an inevitable process and is life common across the universe?”

IS IMMORTALITY RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER?

When one speaks of immortality, nothing but evil villains with a horrible master plan come to mind but, what if it were possilble for the people of today to begin living forever?

Many questions come to mind. Are we ready? Can we handle it? How would we react? What would people do if they knew they could indeed live forever? Would we come together to create a peaceful world with no need to fight over resources and control of land or, would we fight and turn the Earth into a world of chaos and misery? The hollywood movies we watch certainly don’t paint a pretty picture, and if you watch the news, things aren’t looking much better now.

Looks like we may have our chance to find out with researchers all over the world rushing to use the latest sciences to bring us into an entire new world with immortality being the norm.

Daily mail writes:

A Russian entrepreneur who heads a hi-tech research project called ‘Avatar’ has contacted billionaires to offer them immortality.

Itskov claims he will personally oversee their immortality process, in exchange for an undisclosed fee.

Itskov, a media entrepreneur, claims to have hired 30 scientists to reach this goal – and aims to transplant a human brain into a robot body within 10 years.

‘You have the ability to finance the extension of your own life up to immortality. Our civilization has come very close to the creation of such technologies: it’s not a science fiction fantasy. It is in your power to make sure that this goal will be achieved in your lifetime,’ says Itskov in a letter delivered to billionaires listed in Forbes magazine.

You can read more of that story over at dailymail.com but also, check out this story at SFGate.com featuring Ray Kurzweil, famous for his theories of the ‘Singularity’ or, the act of humans merging with technology to form one super intelligent, strong, disease resistant being that can live forever.

SFGate writes:

Ray Kurzweil, a world-renowned scientist and author of The Singularity is Near, thinks the world as we know it will be unrecognizable in 20 years.

One of the changes he thinks are possible: Scientists may finally crack immortality.

“I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies’ stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, aging,” hewrites in The Sun. “Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever. Ultimately, nanobots will replace blood cells and do their work thousands of times more effectively.”

Kurzweil, whose fans include Bill Gates adn Bill Clinton, makes a number of other substantial claims, such as humans being able to replace all failing organs with artificial ones. He says we’ll be able to scuba dive for hours without oxygen, and write entire books within minutes thanks to advanced nanotechnology.

Oh, virtual sex will also be commonplace in the not-so-distant future.

Kurzweil’s absurd-sounding proclamations stem from the fact that technological progress is growing at an exponential rate.

“Computer technology and our understanding of genes — our body’s software programs — are accelerating at an incredible rate,” he writes. His theory of the Law of Accelerating Returns, suggests there will be another “billion-fold” increase in technology over the next quarter century.

You can read more of that story at sfgate.com/technology

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Guest Blogger

GIGANTIC OWL FOUND IN TEXAS REBIRTHS LEGEND OF LECHUZA

A giant owl found in Carrizo Springs, Tx

This thing is HUGE!

So huge in fact, many people doubt the authenticity of this photo but, for the believers, this confirms the Legend of Lechuza, a story that has been told in the Carrizo Springs area of South-West Texas for centuries.

Pro *8 News writes:

The legend of the “Lechuza” has been told in this area for years.
Now, a recent picture has sparked a discussion about whether the picture is real.
The picture believed to have been taken in Carrizo Springs shows two men holding a white owl with a very large wing span.
Our Lauren Kendrick has more in our top story.
The picture has definitely got people interested whether or not they believe in the myth.
We spoke to one of the owners of Petland who tells us this picture has her baffled when it comes to classifying the type of owl.
“I think people would like to believe it’s real just like they’d like to believe big foot’s real and the loch ness monster and all the other creatures.”
Owner of Petland Laredo, Laura Hatton, gives us her take on the picture that’s been circulating social networking sites for the past few days.
The picture was taken in Carrizo Springs.
Many people are calling the big white bird “Lechuza” from the urban legend commonly told in the Mexican heritage where the spirit of a woman or a witch turns into an owl.
“Those wives tales are there for a reason. They are a legend. Perhaps there at one time was a much larger species of an owl that was here.”
Hatton says it looks like a barn owl but is way too large. She says it’s really hard to determine the exact species by the undercarriage. By looking at the picture, she says it’s hard to tell if it is indeed real or fake.

WANT TO GO SKYDIVING? WATCH THIS ‘SKYDIVING TRIP FROM HELL’ FIRST

Skydiving can be one of life's most exhilarating experiences, sometimes.

Just when you think jumping out of a plane at thousands of feet above the Earth was just about the safest thing you could do, a video comes out that may make you think twice about ever letting your feet leave the ground.

Watch below to see this woman’s excitement turn to terror, as she just about slips out of her harness as soon as she is forced out of the plane by the instructor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtb3N7eqejM&feature=player_embedded

ABC News writes:

A video of an elderly woman’s skydiving adventure gone horribly awry has gone viral, perhaps serving as a warning literally to look before you leap — or at least to mind your elders when it looks like they actually don’t want to jump out of the plane.

The video was created by The Parachute Center, a skydiving company in Acampo, Calif., as a memento for jumpers to take home after their airborne adventures.

But someone posted it on The Chive, a video site on which a counter said it has been viewed more than 170,000 times. It shows Laverne, an energetic woman who has just turned 80 and has rounded up a crew of female relatives to go skydiving with her. She tells the camera that she’s “real excited,” and that she has wanted to do this for “at least 10 years.”

Cut to the plane taking off to an upbeat rock tune by The Offspring. We see Laverne smiling, looking out the window, and putting on her safety goggles. A few jumpers dive from the open plane window and whoosh down toward the earth below. Looks like they’re all having fun.

But wait a second — something’s wrong. The Offspring song has been cranked up and it’s Laverne’s turn to jump with her towheaded tandem instructor, but it looks as if she’s having second thoughts. She’s no longer smiling and is instead clinging to the side of the open door. Then her legs buckle and she’s sitting down, refusing to move, and appears to mouth the word “No!”

Instead of letting the poor woman just sit it out — it’s not like they’re on an episode of “Fear Factor,” right? — the instructor scoops her up and they fall forward out of the plane.

The camera person has also jumped, so from his vantage point, we see that Laverne has evidently slipped out of her harness so that the straps are attaching her to her instructor from behind her knees. She’s also clinging to him with her arms. And her shirt has flown up, so we see part of Laverne’s torso. The instructor starts trying to pull her shirt down, which is the last thing we see before the camera cuts to the scenery thousands of feet below them.

SKELETON FOUND FROM ALMOST 2 MILLION YEARS AGO

The skeleton of an as-of-yet unknown hominid species. (Related to but, not quite, Human)

This skeleton found in South Africa is believed to be the most complete of an ancient ancestor of present-day humans and is almost 2 MILLION years old!

The scientists and researchers leading the investigation at the University of Witwatersrand in Southern Africa haven’t been able to decide whether it’s a direct ancestor of us modern humans or a close relative. But, with this new find of additional bones that belong to the same skeleton, they hope to narrow it down and see how far we’ve really come.

Discovery News writes:

South African scientists said Thursday they had uncovered the most complete skeleton yet of an ancient relative of man, hidden in a rock excavated from an archaeological site three years ago.

The remains of a juvenile hominid skeleton, of the Australopithecus (southern ape) sediba species, constitute the “most complete early human ancestor skeleton ever discovered,” according to University of Witwatersrand palaeontologist Lee Berger.

“We have discovered parts of a jaw and critical aspects of the body including what appear to be a complete femur (thigh bone), ribs, vertebrae and other important limb elements, some never before seen in such completeness in the human fossil record,” said Berger, a lead professor in the finding.

The latest discovery of what is thought to be around two million years old, was made in a three-foot (one meter) wide rock that lay unnoticed for years in a laboratory until a technician noticed a tooth sticking out of the black stone last month.

The technician, Justin Mukanka, said: “I was lifting the block up, I just realized that there is a tooth.”

It was then scanned to reveal significant parts of an A. sediba skeleton, dubbed Karabo, whose other other parts were first discovered in 2009. Parts of three other skeletons were discovered in 2008 in the world-famous Cradle of Humankind site north of Johannesburg.