“The footprints were about 20 centimetres (eight inches) long and looked like a human’s,” Yoshiteru Takahashi, the leader of the Yeti Project Japan, told AFP in Kathmandu on Monday.

Takahashi was speaking after he returned with his seven-member team from their third attempt to track down the half-man-half-ape, tales of which have gripped the imaginations of Western adventurers and mountaineers for decades.

Despite spending 42 days on Dhaulagiri IV — a 7,661-metre (25,135-foot) peak where they say they have seen traces of yetis in the past — the team failed in their prime objective of capturing one on film…

Please visit the following links for the detailed news:

• Sky News
• Google News

Picture of Footprints:

• Yeti Footprints

Gary McKinnon – accused of breaking into military and Nasa computers in what he claims was a search for UFOs, allegedly causing nearly US$1 million in damage – has lost his appeal against extradition to the United States.

McKinnon, 42, an unemployed computer administrator, allegedly broke into 97 computers belonging to the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Department of Defence from a bedroom in a north London home.

His attacks between 2001 and 2002 allegedly shut down the US Army district responsible for protecting Washington and cleared logs from computers at Naval Weapons Station Earle in New Jersey, a site responsible for tracking the location and battle-readiness of Navy ships.

Nasa and privately owned computers also were damaged, prosecutors said, putting the total cost of his online activities at US$900,000. At the time of his indictment, US prosecutor Paul McNulty said McKinnon pulled off “the biggest hack of military computers ever – at least ever detected.”

In his defence, McKinnon, known online as SOLO, said he was trying to expose security weaknesses and uncover evidence of UFOs. “I was a man obsessed,” McKinnon wrote on The Guardian newspaper’s website ast year, describing a year spent trying to break into US military systems: eight hours a day at a computer in his girlfriend’s aunt’s house while unkempt, drinking beer and smoking marijuana. In interviews, he claimed that his hacking uncovered photographic proof of alien spacecraft and the names and ranks of “non-terrestrial officers.”

Prosecutors accuse him of deliberately trying to intimidate the US government by tearing through their networks. They pointed to a note written by McKinnon – and left on an Army computer – attacking US foreign policy as “akin to government-sponsored terrorism.” “It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year,” he wrote. “I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels.”

McKinnon was caught in 2002 after some of the software used in the attacks was traced back to his girlfriend’s email account. The US sought his extradition, a move his lawyer Claire Anderson claimed was motivated by the government’s desire to “make an example” of a man who humbled officials in Washington by hacking into their systems using off-the-shelf office software and a dial-up modem.

Aspects of American cyber-security had been shown up as “really shameful,” with some computers not even password-protected, said Graham Cluley, a security consultant with Sophos PLC.

He said the United States appeared to be pursuing McKinnon in an effort to flex its legal muscle before the hacking community, which has watched the case with interest.

“The overriding message is: You shouldn’t mess with American government and military computers, particularly right after Sept. 11,” Cluley said. McKinnon’s lawyers had hoped to hold any trial in Britain, saying he could be dragged before a military tribunal or even end up at the Guantanamo Bay military prison camp in Cuba. In their appeals, they said McKinnon was warned by US officials that he would not be allowed to serve any part of his sentence in Britain unless he agreed to cooperate with his extradition. That, they argued, amounted to an unlawful threat and abuse of process. Not so, Britain’s House of Lords said yesterday. Lord Brown, writing for Britain’s highest court, said U.S.-style plea bargaining could only be called an abuse of process “in a wholly extreme case.”

“This is far from being such a case,” he said. While the decision exhausts McKinnon’s legal options in Britain, Anderson said she would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. She said authorities had agreed to keep McKinnon in Britain for at least two weeks to allow his lawyers to prepare their application. “If that fails, then it’s off to jail in America for 60 years,” McKinnon told the BBC. “Rapists and murderers and real terrorists get less.”

A 60-year sentence is “extraordinarily unlikely,” according to Scott Christie, who was the lead prosecutor in the case in New Jersey before going into private practice. McKinnon is charged in New Jersey and Virginia with eight counts of computer fraud. While each count potentially carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and US$250,000 in fines, Christie said US sentencing guidelines would likely recommend a much lighter penalty.

“His general exposure would be in the range of between three and five years,” he said.

Many people treat UFOs or extraterrestrial (ET) life as ‘ridiculous nonsense.’ It is a case of an endless expanse of wide open skies and––narrow closed minds. It is common knowledge that ‘space’ is full of other suns, galaxies and planets with potential in nurturing life. The Hubble Telescope confirms the scientific idea that space is boundless––immeasurable. Hence it is reasonable to assume that apart from us there is a strong possibility of the existence of other forms of life ‘out there’. The mounting evidence of UFOs and extraterrestrial beings through individual sightings, group sightings and photographs of UFOs and less frequently, encounters with aliens confirmed as genuine, lend credence to this idea. However, despite the subject being covered by newspapers UFO magazines and as recently as 2004 by CNN, Fox Video, up to now––even to the broad-minded, UFOs and aliens remain a subject––deep, sinister and as mysterious as ever.

But, among those who have seen UFOs or who have had extraordinary, frequently petrifying contacts with aliens and experiences of abductions by aliens there is a tendency towards tight lips––to avoid ridicule and embarrassing official probes. Such people live with their ordeals as they believe in what they witnessed or endured.

The birth of UFOlogy

‘UFOlogy’ attained age, when on 24th June 1947, an American pilot, Kenneth Arnold, spotted nine objects flying in formation. In Arnold’s estimate, these objects were racing across the sky at speeds in excess of 1000 miles per hour! Arnold reported, “They flew like a saucer would, if you skipped it across the water.” Arnold’s sighting was never confirmed as there were no other witnesses. But the name ‘Flying Saucer’ stuck. In the years that followed, there were hundreds of reports of ‘Flying Saucers’ which defied identification and proper explanation––hence the term ‘Unidentified Flying Objects’––UFOs.

The Roswell Incident

The subject of UFOs and ETs commanded more public attention after the famous ‘Roswell Incident,’ only eight days after Arnold’s sighting. A rancher found a large area strewn with wreckage he could not recognize in the desert in Roswell, a small town in New Mexico. The crashed object suspected to be a flying ‘saucer’ was about 30 feet in diameter and contained four dead humanoid creatures, the size of children. They had out sized heads and small eyes and had no hair and wore some type of clothing of a one piece type without buttons, belts, or zippers. No one would have or even could have believed the rancher if not for a team of archaeological students of the University of Pennsylvania who were carrying out a dig in that area who were also witnesses to the find. Later an Army Detachment removed the mysterious debris and the dead bodies to Fort Worth in Texas.

The next day the papers were full of the incident involving the crashed UFO. However, a strange thing which took place concurrently was an official announcement made by the army that the debris found was not of a UFO, but that of a weather balloon! This was certainly not the recollection of those who found the crash.

After the crash, a local undertaker received an order for four child-sized coffins. There were also reports of autopsies having been conducted on the alien bodies and of photographers who had filmed the surgical procedure.  But the government staunchly maintained their denials and subsequently a wall of silence fell not only on the Roswell incident, but also over the other occasions when reliable witnesses––police officers, pilots, scientists and well-known politicians reported spotting UFOs.

( The ‘Roswell Incident’ has been made into a documentary film.)

The history of UFOs and

extra-terrestrial visits

As narrated in historical writings, UFOs have made their appearances centuries ago––long before Roswell. Consequently, UFOs and alien beings are not a new concern. Lord Buddha, taught that there are 31 planes of existence in the universe and that other ‘beings’ lived in other countless worlds. The Book of Ezekiel in the Bible relates detailed visits to Earth in the seventh century B.C., by what sounds like spacecraft and spacemen (extraterrestrials).  Ezekiel also says that he himself was a passenger in one of these spaceships which supports the narration that Elijah, travelled to the heavens in a ‘fiery chariot’ never to return. The Mahabharata, of India, supposed to have been written over 3500 years ago, refers to events which took place thousands of years before that. “Two storeyed sky chariots with many windows ejecting red flame that race up to the sky until they look like comets.”

In 329 B.C. Alexander the Great, likened UFO’s to ‘great shinning silvery shields’ which had interfered with the passage of the Greek army to India. Aristotle, in 384 B.C.  described the objects he saw in the sky as ‘heavenly discs’. The Pharos of Egypt ordered special prayers to their deities whenever UFO’s were sighted in that era of history. Ancient history is full of such descriptions which have extended to modern times as well.

On 13th March 1997, over Phoenix, Arizona, over 10,000 people saw a UFO which was one mile across in size. ‘The Phoenix Lights’ are seen in the night skies even today

(The movie, ‘Night Lights’ was based on this mass sighting.)

In 1980, in Canada, many people in their homes got an urge to go outside to look at the night sky. And 12,000 people saw a massive pink spiral several miles high in the sky, which the Government attempted to explain away as a Chinese rocket!

Hundreds of sightings of UFOs and other ‘close encounters’ continue unabated without apparent explanation––all over the world. Governments are better informed, but keep the information they have gathered under close wraps through what appears to be an ‘International Collective Agreement’.

History, archeological findings, religious writings, the more recent study of the universe and science indicate that we are not alone in this universe. The establishment of special departments by governments such as ‘Project Blue Book’ of America, ‘The UFO desk’ of England and similar institutions in other countries to examine the UFO phenomenon confirm the disquiet over the UFO phenomenon. (The Chinese Government spent 20 million dollars in 2005 on UFO research.)

In the present day, reports of UFO sightings, encounters with aliens, alien abductions from all parts of the world continue unabated. (It is claimed that 3.7 million Americans have been victims of alien abductions.) In Sri Lanka a few years ago, there was a report of a UFO and aliens having landed in a playing field at Anuradhapura. More recently, unidentified and unexplained lights were reported from Kalutara and Horana. There was also a report of a sighting of ‘beings’ thought to be children on their way to school. Though the incidents were given media coverage, many ridiculed the reports. A few weeks ago, there was a report of a UFO attacking a helicopter over Cardiff in England.

UFOs and their passengers

UFOs have been described as saucer shaped, oval shaped, diamond shaped, rectangular, triangular, single tiered, two tiered etc. They also come in various sizes. Some craft are said to be as large as several football pitches while others are smaller. According to reports, UFOs are bright and ‘fly’ silently. In addition, people have seen alien beings also of various sizes and shapes. Some have been described as small––about four feet in height ( like the ‘Greys’ encountered in the Roswell Incident.) others have been in ‘space gear,’ still others were described as tall, grotesque, frightening but human-like. Female aliens, who look like humans have been described as being very beautiful.

‘Area 51’

While the public is wondering what UFOs are and what they and their alien occupants signify, certain governments, notably the USA, are surreptitiously researching into UFOs. It is claimed that the most secret and controversial of such research takes place at the in-famous ‘Area 51’ hidden away somewhere in the Nevada desert in America. ‘Area 51’ is said to be hiding crashed UFOs and also extra-terrestrials––both alive and dead. It is also claimed that the US Government is experimenting with ‘Reverse Engineering’ of UFOs which are powered by unknown sources of energy and that the manufacture of the B-2 ‘Stealth Bomber’ and other super fast aircraft of the US Air Force is based on UFO technology. Sometime ago, in the USA, George Bush Snr. as a presidential candidate promised to reveal the truth of UFOs and aliens after his election as President. But after he was elected, he refrained from revealing the truth on the grounds of ‘national security.’ Later however, in response to public pressure, some reports on UFOs were released by the US Government but many others were not. Why were some reports held back from publicity? Consequently, it only worsened the aura of mystery, secrecy and the questions surrounding the subject.

We are helpless

The popular belief among UFOlogists is that extraterrestrials are far more intelligent and technologically thousands of years old and if the age of the universe is considered, they may even be millions of years ahead of us. Extraterrestrials in their spcecraft are still visiting Earth AS AND WHEN THEY PLEASE and there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING we, as humans, can do about such violations of our skies of our home, Earth, and the infringement of the freedom we enjoy as a right. This is the most terrifying part. How do we counter such a scenario?

UFOs are said to be super fast and their manoeuverability is astonishing. They can fly at high speeds and come to a dead stop and remain silent, invisible at times and motionless in the sky. They are also capable of avoiding detection by radar. Our fastest planes cannot get anywhere near  a UFO in the event of a confrontation or chase. Extra terrestrials are also said to have telepathic capacities to influence human minds, ‘weapons’ against which man has no answer, and other capabilities that make ‘man’ a puppet in their hands. Consequently, if the people yell, “Tell us the truth about UFOs and aliens. This is a free country, a Democracy. We deserve to know the truth,” or words to that effect, what is the government (of any country) expected to tell the plainly vulnerable people?

“Yes, UFOs and aliens are real. UFOs are faster than any of our planes. They also carry various armaments which we do not understand and cannot match in a war situation. They are manned by intelligent extra-terrestrial beings who are far superior to us in every way.  They appear to be benign, but they could be hostile. If they attack us, we will be helpless and that may well be the end of mankind. We are in the process of formulating defence plans in case of an attack. And God save us all?”

In fact, confronted with millions of credible reports of UFO sightings by Americans and a demand for an explanation, Congress, in 1950 commissioned the ‘Brookings Institution’ which reported: “If the existence of UFOs were to be revealed to the American population, they would not be able to handle it. They would defy the authority of the church, the police, military and governmental authority. They will refuse to go to work and would want to talk to these ‘alien ‘beings.’ The Government won’t have a chance.”

We may be on the doorstep to the

reality of UFOs and Extraterrestrials

Why is it that UFOs and their occupants do not come out openly and tell us, “Here we are, you fellows, come and meet us for a chat,” sort of thing? A popular explanation is that man is not yet ready to accept the existence of UFOs and Extraterrestrial beings from other worlds. Perhaps, in their eyes we are yet kindergarten kids to be nursed––implying that we are juniors lying at the bottom of a universal scale of knowledge, technological development, social and moral behaviour. They may have also considered us as biological specimens in a ‘Cosmic Zoo’ for experimentation.

The apparent benevolence of Extraterrestrials may be genuine, or a ploy to gain our confidence before some drastic strategy is put into motion. Simply put––they could mean well or cunningly calculating. We simply do not know. However, optimistic UFOlogists opine that the time for aliens to announce their existence in their numbers is just a minute away from mid-night. If and when this happens, we on Earth will finally be in a position to accept that UFOs and Extraterrestrials are real. We will also realise with understandable trepidation, that we are not alone after all.

Yesterday, aliens popped up in the news again as NASA sought to distance itself from former Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell who claimed extra-terrestrials have been coming to visit for decades.

Dr Mitchell, 77, said governments have been covering it up for 60 years.

“I’ve been in military and intelligence circles, who know that beneath the surface of what has been public knowledge, yes – we have been visited. Reading the papers recently, it’s been happening quite a bit,” he said.

Dr Mitchell’s former bosses were quick to distance themselves from the renewed buzz: “NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe,” the agency said.

But the Australian Skeptics were not impressed by what Dr Mitchell – or anyone else – thought they saw.  Skeptic spokesman Barry Williams said today the truth is closer to home: it’s all in your head, and you’re wrong.

“We love mysteries and we love solving them, just look at how popular crime fiction and crime TV shows are,” Mr Williams said.  “The brain needs to find answers, it can’t stand not knowing, so it comes to an explanation and quite often it’s wrong.”

Pictures of UFOs

Mr Williams said the UFO explanation is “ready made” after decades of articles, books and movies about alien life.  “Two hundred years ago, when nothing of human construction had ever flown, people thought things in the sky were angels or demons.

The sightings

British tabloid The Sun has been leading the UFO charge in the UK, with almost daily sightings being reported. One story includes a photograph of an object in the sky near a mini tornado, while on June 20, a police helicopter apparently chased a UFO in the sky above Cardiff.

The Daily Telegraph reports that a few weeks ago, a UFO spotter at Nowra on the New South Wales south coast reported seeing a military helicopter following a “rounded triangle shape, about the size of a helicopter without tail or rotor blades” across a golf course.

Around the same time, residents of a small town in the Northern Territory reported being terrified by four unidentified flying objects, while in early June an elderly couple on an NT highway said their car was “dive-bombed” by a UFO.

In March, police in Queensland received several reports of an object glowing orange that streaked across the sky. Whatever it was, it was never found and nor was there any evidence that it hit the ground.

Sydney Observatory astronomy educator Mel Hulbert said it was probably a type of meteor known as a bolide and that a rock falls to Earth every two hours, but volunteers at UFO Research Queensland reckon aliens like visiting the sunshine state because of its natural wonders, like the Great Barrier Reef.

The answers

Mr Williams said the more likely explanation was that people were seeing our planetary neighbours, not inter-stellar visitors.

He said Venus is the most common object mistaken for alien aircraft, followed by Jupiter and Saturn which “can look very bright in the sky at different times.”

“Most of us live in cities or in towns and don’t look at the sky very often,” he said. “A flock of birds flying in formation and all turning at once can be mistaken for a UFO. In the right light and from the right angle it can look like a flash of metal.”

Mr Williams said the problem is that despite all the UFO sightings around the world, no one has produced any concrete evidence that aliens are visiting Earth.

“We live in a vast, vast universe, which the human mind not capable of comprehending. The thought that this one planet in the whole galaxy is the only one to produce life is a fairly daunting thought,” said Mr Williams.

“It’s fairly reasonable to speculate about life, but the huge chain of evidence between that and aliens coming to visit just isn’t there.”

Groom Lake is not a conventional airbase, and frontline units are not normally deployed there. It appears, rather, to be used during the development, test, and training phases for new aircraft. Once those aircraft have been accepted by the United States Air Force, operation of that aircraft is generally shifted to a normal air force base. Groom is reported, however, to be the permanent home for a small number of aircraft of Soviet design (obtained by various means). These are reportedly analyzed and used for training purposes.

Soviet spy satellites obtained photographs of the Groom Lake area during the height of the Cold War, but these support only modest conclusions about the base. They depict a nondescript base, airstrip, hangars, and so forth, but nothing that supports some of the wilder claims about underground facilities. Later, commercial satellite images show that the base has grown, but remains superficially unexceptional.

Structure-

There are the 4 main sturctures:

1) Hanger 18 –

This hanger could be used anything. Nobody knows what it’s really used for, but here are the rumors…

· The hanger is really a huge elevator which transports the secret plane Aurora, the Black Manta, and others they are testing to an elaborate underground place.

· It houses the Aurora and the Black Manta(but does not transport them anywhere).

· It could be a regular hanger.

2) The Long Runway –

You can see the runway in the photo above. It runs through the whole picture. Some people say it’s 12 miles long, some say it’s 10, but I say it’s 6. Of course, in this picture, it looks like it’s 24 miles long, and maybe it is. The runway is rumored to be the longest in the world. It’s even longer, some people say, than the length required to accomodate the landing of the space shuttle. What could such a long runway be used for? Nobody knows. Again, the rumors:

· The Aurora, (or what I think, the scramjet) has a very high touchdown speed and requires a long runway, so the plane doesn’t become a heap of trash after it lands.

· Alien spaceships, because they are not flying saucers also need a long runway.

· What we think is a runway is really a road(even though we photographed planes on it and know that this rumor is false.

· The Area 51 guys made a big runway ahead of time, just in case that they might get some advanced technology, and so they would have the space to use it right away.

3) The Guard Shack–

Every secret military base has to have a gaurd shack. If you were expecting tall steel walls, tall towers with machine-gun cannons on top, security cameras, helicopters, radar dishes, lots of security gaurds parading around with high-tech gear, you’re wrong. This gaurd shack looks like something a hermit might live in. It doesn’t do much either, except be a place where the cammo dudes can hang out. You can go up to the gaurd shack, but then you would be fined $600. This picture was probably taken by someone who ignored the warning signs and drove up to it.

4) The Large Radar Antennas –

Every military base has to have radar antennas to see attacks coming. Area 51 has 2 large radar antennas, some small radar antennas, and other sensors. All those sensors are at the Northern side of the base. It’s rumored that the Northern-most radar antenna is the biggest movable antenna in the world. It opperates at a very high power output. The large one almost always points up, but moves once in a while. Why is this important? It isn’t. I just put it here to tell you about it.

Area 51 commuters

Defense contractor EG&G maintains a private terminal at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. A number of unmarked aircraft operate daily shuttle services from McCarran to sites operated by EG&G in the extensive federally controlled lands in southern Nevada. These aircraft reportedly use JANET radio call signs (e.g., “JANET 6″), said to be an acronym for “Joint Air Network for Employee Transportation” or (perhaps as a joke) “Just Another Non-Existent Terminal”. EG&G advertises in the Las Vegas press for experienced airline pilots, saying applicants must be eligible for government security clearance and that successful applicants can expect to always stay overnight at Las Vegas. These aircraft, painted white with red trim (the livery of now defunct Western Airlines), include six Boeing 737s and several smaller turboprops. Their tail numbers are registered to the U.S. Air Force.

The Government’s position on Area 51

The U.S. government does not explicitly acknowledge the existence of the Groom Lake facility, nor does it deny it. Unlike much of the Nellis range, the area surrounding the lake is permanently off-limits both to civilians and normal military air traffic.

The area is protected by radar stations, and uninvited guests are met by helicopters and armed guards. Even military pilots training in the NAFR are reportedly interrogated extensively by military intelligence agents when they accidentally stray into the exclusionary “box” surrounding Groom’s airspace.

Security

These are the strange and anonymous security guards at Area 51. They are called cammo dudes, because of the camouflage that they wear. Anyway, the dudes patrol the border with their Jeep Cherokees in two teams. Wherever you go, you will see a Cherokee, although you can rarely come this close. The cammo dudes are probably not military guys, and no one knows who hired them. Perhaps they enjoy doing this. The rumors are as follows:
The Cammo Dudes are employed by:

• Wackenhut Security Incorporated, the contractor that provides the security for the Nevada Test Site
• EG&G Corporation under military contract
• A company called Sandia.

The cammo dudes also seem to have an affiliation with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department. The cammo dudes call the sheriff, and the sheriff will take care of you. The cammo dudes themselves are very shy, maybe (but probably not) because they are the people that came out of one of Area 51′s failed experiments, and they don’t want anyone to see their face. It’s probably because they don’t want anyone to try to assassinate them, or hurt them while they are in their home.

The cammo dudes have helicopters. You can see one of them on the left. They use the helicopters mainly for security purposes, but there have been a number of occasions when the helicopter would harass viewers at the border. It would fly a few feet above the viewers throwing up dust and other debris. This, of course, is not legal, even for a bunch of weird, anonymous, social outcasts that guard government military bases.

This is a magnetic sensor. It’s in a plastic capsule about six inches long and are buried beside the road. This capsule contains the batteries. A bucket-shaped container contains the transmitter. The wires running off to either side lead to sensors that are buried a few feet apart on the roadside. These sensors transmit signals as someone passes.

This makes it impossible to break into Area 51. It could lead to immediate arrest, immediate death, and/or an immediate fine of $600 or more. (If they kill you, they take your wallet).

UFO and other conspiracy theories

Its secretive nature and undoubted connection to classified aircraft research, together with reports of unusual phenomena, have led Area 51 to become a centerpiece of modern UFO and conspiracy theory. Some of the unconventional activities claimed to be underway at Area 51 include:

• The storage, examination, and reverse engineering of crashed alien spacecraft (including material supposedly recovered at Roswell), the study of their occupants (living and dead), and the manufacture of aircraft based on alien technology.
• Meetings or joint undertakings with extraterrestrials.
• The development of exotic energy weapons (for SDI applications or otherwise) or means of weather control.
• The development of time travel technology.
• Activities related to a supposed shadowy one world government.

Many of the theories concern underground facilities at Groom or at nearby Papoose Lake, and include claims of a transcontinental underground railroad system, a disappearing airstrip (nicknamed the “Cheshire Airstrip”, after Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire cat) which briefly appears when water is sprayed onto its camouflaged asphalt ^[10], and engineering based on alien technology. In 1989, Bob Lazar claimed that he had worked at a facility at Papoose Lake (which he called S-4) on such a U.S. Government flying saucer.

One major theory is that Area 51 is a place which simulates the environment of the moon. In 2000-2001, Fox Television broadcast a show about Apollo moon landing hoax accusations, in which it was suggested that the whole moon landing in 1969 was a hoax and was filmed in parts of Area 51.

Frank Jones, 59, was obliged 12 years ago to have his home in Windsor Avenue, Thornton, exorcised after a malevolent spirit dubbed “The Thing”, which had already driven one terrified family from the house, turned its attentions on him and his wife and kids.

In 1971, previous residents the Ross family told the Gazette how The Thing had “pulled at their bed covers while they were asleep” and that they “sensed a vile smell and felt something breathing in their ears”.

Jones moved in 20 years ago, solidly sceptical about the legendary presence, but “soon changed his mind”. He recounted: “I just thought they were imagining it. But there was a lot of banging and an earthy smell in the house. Then one night I was lying in bed and a mist came across the room. I wanted to shout out at it, but I couldn’t get my words out. My face seemed to be paralysed. It all got too much for me when that happened.”

Jones’s daughter, Maureen, 30, confirmed that The Thing had turned on taps and “ransacked” the house. She said: “You think people are exaggerating until you experience it. I was home alone one evening and suddenly heard these footsteps coming up the stairs. They went into my dad’s bedroom and then I heard all the cupboards banging open. It sounded like burglars.”

Cue an exorcist from Fleetwood Spiritualist Church, who “cleansed” the property of the spirit “trapped between two worlds”.

Peace then reigned in Windsor Avenue until five years ago, when Jones suffered a double tragedy – the death of his son Steven, 32, from a brain tumour and wife Sadie, 69, three months later from a heart attack.

Jones explained: “Just after Sadie died I came home and I felt like I didn’t want to go in the house. I got a missed call on my mobile, but it didn’t ring. The call was from my own home number, but there was nobody in the house. Then when I went inside there was a smell like cigarettes which Sadie used to smoke and the smell of her perfume.”

Jones says his family has since received strange SMS messages which they believe to be from Sadie. He concluded: “She always had a mobile with her. We buried her with her phone. There have been messages with words Sadie would say but there’s no number.”

Original Post: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/03/lancs_sms_mystery/

One of the pair, known as GRA 06128, whose origin is unknown

A pair of meteorites discovered in Antarctica are in a class all of their own, a major space conference has been told. Studies of the extra-terrestrial rocks have revealed qualities that set them apart from any meteorites previously known to science.

Researchers are pondering where in our Solar System the meteorites could have originated.

An origin on Planet Venus has been discussed, but now looks unlikely.

The notion of a meteorite hailing from this hothouse world is highly contentious. As yet, nobody has found one, probably because it is very difficult for rocks to escape Venus’ thick atmosphere and strong gravity.

Several scientists propose that the Antarctic meteorites broke away from a previously unrecognised reservoir of asteroids before falling to Earth.

The space rocks are much older than the majority of Venus’ surface – appearing to rule the planet out as the source.

The results have been discussed here at the 39th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Origins unknown

The paired meteorites, known as GRA 06128 and GRA 06129, were discovered in the Graves-Nunataks region of Antarctica in 2006.

The rusty, slab-shaped rocks have defied classification, not fitting into any of the existing groupings drawn up for meteorites.

The pair’s distinctiveness has been revealed by analyses of their mineral make-up and of the ratios of different forms – or isotopes – of oxygen present in them.

Dr Ryan Zeigler, from Washington University in St Louis, US, has been studying samples from GRA 06128. He told BBC News: “It’s unique – it’s the only meteorite that has this much plagioclase (a form of feldspar) of this composition.

“There are other meteorites that have minerals of the same composition but not in anything approaching the same proportions.”

Chip Shearer, from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, US, raised the possibility of a Venusian origin in the title to his conference talk. But at the meeting, he acknowledged the reference was intended to be “provocative”.

Dr Shearer agreed the 4.5-billion-year ages of the meteorites indicated the likely source was an asteroid.

“The history of this rock involves partial melting on a fairly primitive body,” he explained.

Even if the rocks had been blown off Venus in an impact 4.5 billion years ago, they could not have drifted in space for such a vast length of time before landing in Antarctica recently, scientists said.

Narrowed down

The identity of the object that spawned the two meteorites may be elusive, but researchers have been able to draw up a basic profile.

They know, for instance, that the parent body had “differentiated” – that is, had been reprocessed into a layered object, usually with a core, a mantle and a crust. Stony meteorites which have undergone this reprocessing are known as achondrites.

“There has to be a finite number of differentiated parent bodies,” said Dr Zeigler, who also thinks an asteroid was the likely parent body.

“It’s got to be 200km across or so to make an achondrite – to differentiate into basalts and a core. We think we know where they all are, and – greater than 200km – there are about 25.

“Now, some could have been destroyed and so the number might be higher than that, but it’s not like there’s an infinite number of parent bodies in our Solar System where these could come from.”

So far, just one asteroid has been tied to a class of meteorites on Earth. Spectral observations of the object 4 Vesta suggest it has about the same composition as the so-called Howardite, Eucrite and Diogenite (HED) meteorites.

Dr Caroline Smith, meteorite curator at London’s Natural History Museum, who was not involved in the studies, commented: “The meteorite family tree is getting bigger and bigger.”

She told BBC News: “Like a family tree for humans, when the tree gets bigger, you begin to see the various relationships between them.”

The Graves-Nunataks space rocks do share some similarities with another rare class of meteorite known as the brachinites. But there are important differences which would preclude their easy inclusion in this category.

Sir Flinders Petrie
The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh

Southern face of the Great Pyramid.
The base originally measured about 230.33m square.
The original height was 146.59m.

Location

Location: 29� 59′ N 31� 09′ E

Satellite images of the Egyptian Pyramids:

Click to view larger image

* * *

This satellite image has been generated by

If you have Google Earth installed, use this GP Google Earth Placemark file (Save and Open) and it will fly you to a location*. If not, you will need to install Google Earth first (available at http://earth.google.com ).

*Image Placemark Location:
longitude: 31.13101332492434 N, latitude: 29.97697709832755 E

Google Earth streams the world over wired and wireless networks enabling users to virtually go anywhere on the planet and see places in photographic detail. This is not like any map you have ever seen. This is a 3D model of the real world, based on real satellite images combined with maps, guides to restaurants, hotels, entertainment, businesses and more. You can zoom from space to street level instantly and then pan or jump from place to place, city to city, even country to country.

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The Plate XX from an original 1877 copy of
Piazzi Smyth’s “Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid”.
Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900) was Astronomer Royal for Scotland
and a respected Scientist.

The north-south axis (31 degrees east of Greenwich) is the longest land meridian, and the east-west axis (30 degrees north) is the longest land parallel on the globe. There is obviously only one place that these longest land-lines of the terrestrial earth can cross, and it is at the Great Pyramid! This is incredible, one of the scores of features of this mighty structure which begs for a better explanation.

Post from:
http://www.world-mysteries.com/mpl_2.htm

Front view of the Starchild skull (on the left) and the human skull (on the right).
Compare striking differences between depth of eye sockets and shape of temporal
area just behind outer edges of eyes.

The starchild skull came into the possession of Lloyd Pye, a writer and lecturer in the field of alternative knowledge, in February 1999. According to Pye, the skull was found around 1930 in a mine tunnel about 100 miles (160 km) southwest of the Mexican city of Chihuahua, Chihuahua, buried alongside a normal human skeleton which was exposed and lying supine on the surface of the tunnel.

The skull is abnormal in several aspects. A dentist determined, based on examination of the upper right maxilla found with the skull, that it was a child’s skull, 4.5 to 5 years in age.However, the volume of the interior of the starchild skull is 1600 cubic centimeters, which is 200 cm³ larger than the average adult’s brain, and 400 cm³ larger than an adult of the same approximate size. The orbits are oval and shallow, with the optic nerve canal situated at the bottom of the orbit instead of at the back. There are no frontal sinuses.The back of the skull is flattened, but not by artificial means. The skull consists of calcium hydroxyapatite, the normal material of mammalian bone.

Carbon 14 dating was performed twice, the first on the normal human skull at the University of California at Riverside in 1999, and on the Starchild skull in 2004 at Beta Analytic in Miami, the largest radiocarbon dating laboratory in the world. Both independent tests gave a result of 900 years ± 40 years since death. DNA testing in 1999 at BOLD, a forensic DNA lab in Vancouver, British Columbia found standard X and Y chromosomes in two samples taken from the skull. BOLD was unable to extract any DNA from the maxilla.Further DNA testing at Trace Genetics, which unlike BOLD specializes in extracting DNA from ancient samples, in 2003 recovered mitochondrial DNA and determined that the child had a human mother, though it was not the child of the skull found with it. Its mother did belong to a known Native American haplogroup, haplogroup C. However, useful lengths of nuclear DNA for further testing could not be recovered. Later testing in 2004 at the Royal Holloway Institute at the University of London revealed unexplained “fibers” in the bone of the skull and a reddish residue in the cancellous bone, neither of which are known or recorded to exist prior to the discovery.

Paranormal Interest

Despite criticism from established science, the skull has gathered great interest within the study of UFOs and alien life forms. Some contend that it is the skull of a non-human, or a human/non-human hybrid, based on the shape of the skull bearing similarities to the common grey representation of aliens.

Lloyd Pye believes that the starchild skull is the result of genetic engineering by aliens, creating a human-alien hybrid. Other explanations have included the use of cradle boarding on a hydrocephalic child or Crouzon syndrome.

The last reversal happened 740,000 years ago. Some researchers think our planet is overdue for another one, but nobody knows exactly when the next reversal might occur. Although solar and terrestrial magnetic fields behave differently, they do have something in common: their shape. During solar minimum the Sun’s field, like Earth’s, resembles that of an iron bar magnet, with great closed loops near the equator and open field lines near the poles. Scientists call such a field a “dipole.” The Sun’s dipolar field is about as strong as a refrigerator magnet, or 50 gauss (a unit of magnetic intensity). Earth’s magnetic field is 100 times weaker. When solar maximum arrives and sunspots pepper the face of the Sun, our star’s magnetic field begins to change. Sunspots are places where intense magnetic loops — hundreds of times stronger than the ambient dipole field — poke through the photosphere. “Meridional flows on the Sun’s surface carry magnetic fields from mid-latitude sunspots to the Sun’s poles,” explains Hathaway. “The poles end up flipping because these flows transport south-pointing magnetic flux to the north magnetic pole, and north-pointing flux to the south magnetic pole.” The dipole field steadily weakens as oppositely-directed flux accumulates at the Sun’s poles until, at the height of solar maximum, the magnetic poles change polarity and begin to grow in a new direction. Hathaway noticed the latest polar reversal in a “magnetic butterfly diagram.” Using data collected by astronomers at the U.S. National Solar Observatory on Kitt Peak, he plotted the Sun’s average magnetic field, day by day, as a function of solar latitude and time from 1975 through the present. The result is a sort of strip chart recording that reveals evolving magnetic patterns on the Sun’s surface. “We call it a butterfly diagram,” he says, “because sunspots make a pattern in this plot that looks like the wings of a butterfly.” In the butterfly diagram, pictured below, the Sun’s polar fields appear as strips of uniform color near 90 degrees latitude. When the colors change (in this case from blue to yellow or vice versa) it means the polar fields have switched signs. The ongoing changes are not confined to the space immediately around our star, Hathaway added. The Sun’s magnetic field envelops the entire solar system in a bubble that scientists call the “heliosphere.”

The heliosphere extends 50 to 100 astronomical units (AU) beyond the orbit of Pluto. Inside it is the solar system — outside is interstellar space. “Changes in the Sun’s magnetic field are carried outward through the heliosphere by the solar wind,” explains Steve Suess, another solar physicist at the Marshall Space Flight Center. “It takes about a year for disturbances to propagate all the way from the Sun to the outer bounds of the heliosphere.” Because the Sun rotates (once every 27 days) solar magnetic fields corkscrew outwards in the shape of an Archimedian spiral. Far above the poles the magnetic fields twist around like a child’s Slinky toy. Because of all the twists and turns, “the impact of the field reversal on the heliosphere is complicated,” says Hathaway. Sunspots are sources of intense magnetic knots that spiral outwards even as the dipole field vanishes. The heliosphere doesn’t simply wink out of existence when the poles flip — there are plenty of complex magnetic structures to fill the void. Or so the theory goes…. Researchers have never seen the magnetic flip happen from the best possible point of view — that is, from the top down. But now, the unique Ulysses spacecraft may give scientists a reality check. Ulysses, an international joint venture of the European Space Agency and NASA, was launched in 1990 to observe the solar system from very high solar latitudes. Every six years the spacecraft flies 2.2 AU over the Sun’s poles. No other probe travels so far above the orbital plane of the planets. “Ulysses just passed under the Sun’s south pole,” says Suess, a mission co-Investigator. “Now it will loop back and fly over the north pole in the fall.” “This is the most important part of our mission,” he says. Ulysses last flew over the Sun’s poles in 1994 and 1996, during solar minimum, and the craft made several important discoveries about cosmic rays, the solar wind, and more. “Now we get to see the Sun’s poles during the other extreme: Solar Max. Our data will cover a complete solar cycle.”