World's Aenigma

Dropa Stones. Their Unbelievable Story

2010-11-25T03:47:00.000-08:00

Dropa Stones, China, c. 12,000 years old

In 1938 in the Baian-Kara-Ula mountains on the border that divides China and Tibet an archaeological expedition led by Chi Pu Tei, has found some caves that had obviously been occupied by a primitive people long ago. The caves could have been artificially carved, and were a complex system of tunnels and underground storerooms. The walls were squared as if cut into the mountain with a source of extreme heat.

Inside the caves were several ancient burial sites, and in them the skeletal remains of a strange people. The skeletons, measuring a little more than four feet tall, were frail and having large skulls.

On the walls were carved pictograms of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the Earth with lines of dots connecting them. Half-buried in the floor of the cave was a stone disk having approximately nine inches in diameter and three-quarters of an inch thickness. In the center of the disk was a perfectly round, 3/4″ hole, and etched in its face was a fine groove spiraling out from the center to the rim. This plate was dated to be between 10,000 and 12,000 years old – older by far than the great pyramids of Egypt. In all, 716 such plates were found. And each held an incredible secret. The groove was in fact a continuous line of strange carved hieroglyphis – writing.

The almost microscopic hieroglyphis were in a unknown language.

In 1962 another Chinese scientist, Dr. Tsum Um Nui, was able to decode the message of the stone plates – a message so incredible and earth-shattering that the Prehistory Department of the Beijing Academy prohibited its translation to be published. Eventually, the message was published, and what is says is trully amazing.

Dr. Tsum Um Nuipublisged the book “The Grooved Script Concerning Spaceships Which, as Recorded on the Discs, Landed on Earth 12,000 Years Ago.”

The Dropa disks tell the story of a space probe from a distant planet that crash-landed in the Baian-Kara-Ula mountains of the Himalayas. The occupants of the spacecraft – the Dropa – found refuge in the caves of the mountains. Despite their peaceful intentions, the Dropa were misunderstood by members of the Ham tribe who were occupying neighboring caves and who hunted down the aliens and even killed some of them. A translation of one of the passages says: “The Dropa came down from the clouds in their aircraft. Our men, women, and children hid in the caves ten times before sunrise. When at last they understood the sign language of the Dropa, they realized that the newcomers had peaceful intentions….”

The stones go on to say how the Dropa were unable to repair their disabled spacecraft and could not return to their home planet, and so were stranded on Earth.

In 1968, W. Saitsew, a Russian scientist who republished the findings of Tsum Um Nui conducted a few tests on the Dropa disks that revealed some very peculiar properties. The granite stones contained high concentrations of cobalt and other metals – a very hard stone indeed that would have made it difficult for the primitive people to carve the lettering, especially with such small characters. When testing a disk with an oscillograph, a surprising oscillation rhythm was recorded as if, the scientists said, they had once been electrically charged or had functioned as electrical conductors.

UFO In Prehistoric Art

2010-11-22T04:32:00.000-08:00

Wondjina gods, Australian Aborigines, 6000 B.C.

Since the dawn of humanity there has been evidence of sightings and contacts with visitors from outer space.

Prehistoric man left us carved in stone simbols and drawings of what we now try to interpret and maybe our first impression is the right one: "Yes, it looks like an UFO or alien to me, too!"

Sego Canyon, Utah, USA, 7500 BC


Tassili, Algeria, 8000 BC

Lascaux, France, Paleolithic

Val Comonica, Italy, 7-10.000 BC

Flat bone statuettes with copper ornaments, Gumelnita Culture, Romania, Neolithic

Madhya Pradesh, India

Dogu Statue, Japan, 10.000 BC

Other Dogu Statues, Japan

Lolladoff Plate, Nepal, 3.000 BC

Querataro, Mexico, 7.000 years old

Nazca Lines, The Astronaut, Peru, 600 BC

Cucuteni Statue, Romania, Neolithic

Tanzania, 29.000 years old

Cuenca, Ecuador, Astronaut Statues

Peche Merle Cave, France, paintings, 17.000-15.000 BC

Peche Merle Cave, closer look

Rock art panel near Kilmartin, Argyll , Scotland, Neolithic

Dropa Stones, China, 12000 BC (also read http://aenigmaunveiled.blogspot.com/2010/11/dropa-stones-their-unbelievable-story.html)

Mayan Sport

2010-11-18T05:03:00.000-08:00

Great Ball Court of Chicen Itza

The Mayans practiced sport and build huge ballcourts to play games. The Great Ballcourt of Chichen Itza is the most impressive measuring 166 by 68 meters (545 by 232 feet). It has no vault, no discontinuity between the 12 meters high walls and is open to the blue sky. In the center, high up on each of the long walls, are stone rings carved with intertwining serpents.

At the base of the high interior walls are benches with sculpted panels of teams of ball players. In one panel, one of the players has been decapitated and from the wound emits seven streams of blood; six become wriggling serpents and the center becomes a winding plant.

Built into the east wall are the Temples of the Jaguar. The Upper Temple of the Jaguar overlooks the ball court and has an entrance guarded by two, large columns carved in the familiar feathered serpent motif. Inside there is a large mural, much destroyed, which depicts a battle scene.

The winning team was the one who managed to launch the ball throughout this stone ring

      In the entrance to the Lower Temple of the Jaguar, which opens behind the ball court, is another jaguar throne, similar to the one in the inner temple of El Castillo, except that it is well worn and missing paint or other decoration. The outer columns and the walls inside the temple are covered with elaborate bas-relief carvings.
          A whisper from end can be heard clearly enough at the other end 500 feet far away and through the length and breath of the court.
The sound waves are unaffected by wind direction or time of day and also night. Archaeologists engaged in the reconstruction noted that the sound transmission became more and more strong and clear as they proceeded.
          In 1931 Leopold Stokowski spent 4 days at this site to determine the acoustic principals that could be applied to theater for an open-air concert he was designing. Stokowski failed to learn the secret.
          Today it has not been explained.
          It is easy to imagine a Mayan King sitting here presiding over the games. Legends say that the winning Capitan would present his own head to the losing Capitan, who then decapitates him. While this may seem very strange reward, the Mayans believed that this to be the ultimate honor.
         The winning Capitan getting a direct ticket for heaven instead of going through the 13 high steps that the Mayan's believed they had to go through in order to reach peaceful heaven..

Faster-than-light travel

2010-11-18T05:00:00.001-08:00

       The warp drive, one of Star Trek's hallmark inventions, could someday become science instead of science fiction.
Some physicists say the faster-than-light travel technology may one day enable humans to jet between stars for weekend getaways, but it won't be an easy task. The science is complex and also not impossible, according to some researchers studying how to make it happen.
       The trick seems to be to find some other means of propulsion besides rockets, which would never be able to accelerate a ship to velocities faster than that of light, the fundamental speed limit set by Einstein's General Relativity. This speed limit only applies within space-time (the continuum of three dimensions of space plus one of time that we live in). While any given object can't travel faster than light speed within space-time, theory holds, perhaps space-time itself could travel.
       "The idea is that you take a chunk of space-time and move it," said Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. "The vehicle inside that bubble thinks that it's not moving at all. It's the space-time that's moving."
Already happened? One reason this idea seems credible is that scientists think it may already have happened. Some models suggest that space-time expanded at a rate faster than light speed during a period of rapid inflation shortly after the Big Bang.
       "If it could do it for the Big Bang, why not for our space drives?" Millis said.
       To make the technique feasible, scientists will have to think of some creative new means of propulsion to move space-time rather than a spaceship.
       According to General Relativity, any concentration of mass or energy warps space-time around it (by this reasoning, gravity is simply the curvature of space-time that causes smaller masses to fall inward toward larger masses).
       So perhaps some unique geometry of mass or exotic form of energy can manipulate a bubble of space-time so that it moves faster than light-speed, and carries any objects within it along for the ride.
       "If we find some way to alter the properties of space-time in an imbalanced fashion, so behind the spacecraft it's doing one thing and in front of it it's doing something else, will then space-time push on the craft and move it?" Millis said. This idea was first proposed in 1994 by physicist Miguel Alcubierre.
       Already some studies have claimed to find possible signatures of moving space-time. For example, scientists rotated super-cold rings in a lab. They found that still gyroscopes placed above the rings seem to think they themselves are rotating simply because of the presence of the spinning rings beneath. The researchers postulated that the ultra-cold rings were somehow dragging space-time, and the gyroscope was detecting the effect.
       Other studies found that the region between two parallel uncharged metal plates seems to have less energy than the surrounding space. Scientists have termed this a kind of "negative energy," which might be just the thing needed to move space-time.
       The catch is that massive amounts of this negative energy would probably be required to warp space-time enough to transport a bubble faster than light speed. Huge breakthroughs will be needed not just in propulsion but in energy. Some experts think harnessing the mysterious force called dark energy — thought to power the acceleration of the universe's expansion — could provide the key.
       Even though it's a far cry between these preliminary lab results and actual warp drives, some physicists are optimistic.
       "We still don't even know if those things are possible or impossible, but at least we've progressed far enough to where there are things that we can actually research to chip away at the unknowns," Millis said. "Even if they turn out to be impossible, by asking these questions, we're likely to discover things that otherwise we might overlook."

Parallel Universes

2010-11-18T04:59:00.002-08:00

       Here are some arguments pro and con. The question that scientist are asking is not if there are parallel universes, but whether there are 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 levels of multiverses. Cosmology observations support Level I by pointing to a at infinite space with ergodic matter distribution, and Level I plus inflation elegantly eliminates the initial condition problem. Level II is supported by the success of inflation theory in explaining cosmological observations, and it can explain apparent ne-tuning of physical parameters. Level III is supported by both experimental and theoretical evidence for unitarity, and explains the apparent quantum randomness that bothered Einstein so much without abandoning causality from the bird perspective. Level IV explains Wigner's unreasonable e ectiveness of mathematics for describing physics and answers the question "why these equations, not others?".
       The principal arguments against parallel universes are that they are wasteful and weird. The first argument is that multiverse theories are vulnerable to Ockham's razor, since they postulate the existence of other worlds that we can never observe. Why should nature be so ontologically wasteful and indulge in such opulence as to contain an infinity of different worlds? But this argument can actually argue for a multiverse. When we feel that nature is wasteful, what precisely are we disturbed about her wasting? Certainly not "space", since the standard at universe model with its in nite volume draws no such objections. Certainly not "mass" or "atoms" either, for the same reason once you have wasted an in nite amount of something, who cares if you waste some more?
       Rather, it is probably the apparent reduction in simplicity that appears disturbing, the quantity of information necessary to specify all these unseen worlds. However, as is discussed in more detail in Tegmark (1996), an entire ensemble is often much simpler than one of its members. For instance, the algorithmic information content of a generic integer n is of order log2 n (Chaitin 1987), the number of bits required to write it out in binary. Nonetheless, the set of all integers 1; 2; 3; ... can be generated by quite a trivial computer program, so the algorithmic complexity of the whole set is smaller than that of a generic member. Similarly, the set of all perfect fluid solutions to the Einstein eld equations has a smaller algorithmic complexity than a generic particular solution, since the former is speci ed simply by giving a few equations and the latter requires the speci cation of vast amounts of initial data on some hypersurface. The apparent information content rises when people restrict their attention to one particular element in an ensemble, thus losing the symmetry and simplicity that was inherent in the totality of all elements taken together. In this sense, the higher level multiverses have less algorithmic complexity.
       Going from our universe to the Level I multiverse eliminates the need to specify initial conditions, upgrading to Level II eliminates the need to specify physical constants and the Level IV multiverse of all mathematical structures has essentially no algorithmic complexity at all. Since it is merely in the frog perspective, in the subjective perceptions of observers, that this opulence of information and complexity is really there, a multiverse theory is arguably more economical than one endowing only a single ensemble element with physical existence (Tegmark 1996).
       The second common complaint about multiverses is that they are weird. This objection is aesthetic rather than scientific, and really only makes sense in the Aristotelian world view. In the Platonic paradigm, one might expect observers to complain that the correct TOE was weird if the bird perspective was sufficiently different from the frog perspective, and there is every indication that this is the case for us. The perceived weirdness is hardly surprising, since evolution provided us with intuition only for the everyday physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors.
       Thanks to clever inventions, humans have glimpsed slightly more than the frog perspective of their normal inside view, and sure enough, they have encountered bizarre phenomena whenever departing from human scales in any way: at high speeds (time slows down), on small scales (quantum particles can be at several places at once), on large scales (black holes), at low temperatures (liquid Helium can ow upward), at high temperatures (colliding particles can change identity), and large already accepted that the frog and bird perspectivesare very different, a prevalent modern view of quantum eld theory is that the standard model is merely an effective theory, a low-energy limit of a yet to be discovered theory that is even more removed from our cozy classical concepts (involving strings in 10 dimensions, for example).

Alien Trapped

2010-11-18T04:59:00.000-08:00

The news were given by Television Station of Mexico. Apparently, they found a trap for animals with an alive “baby alien”. And that’s not all, an UFO expert said: “I dare to say that these photos are authentic.”

Jaime Maussan, host star and UFOs expert, exhibited the pictures portraying the discovered baby alien on his TV program and confirmed it was all true.

The report goes on: “Farm workers were terrified and drowned the baby alien in the water. The creature struggled, his body shaked and it screamed for help. The peasants made 3 attempts and forced it in the water for several hours. Finally, the alien baby drowned.

But the story does not end here, it was recently known that the farmer who found and drowned the baby alien in Mexico, known there as “The Being of Metepec”, Marao Lopez, was found dead. And of course his death seems to be mysterious …

Lopez appeared burnt inside his car, parked alongside a road. His body was completely charred. He says the car took fire at temperatures higher than normal.

“This would not be the first case. There are reports and eyewitness of aliens and UFOs that shortly after died,” said German UFO expert Hartwig Hausdorf.

“The deep grief in those baby’s parents would have filled them with revenge. If even animals react like that in a dangerous situation … it’s even more likely in beings who may excel us technologically. “

His widow assures Lopez “was killed by aliens …”

Sumer, Anunnaki, planet Nibiru and the Origin of Man

2010-11-18T04:57:00.000-08:00

Ancient Sumerian seal depicting Annunaki

Information about Sumerian history is found on the Sumerian King List as well as Sumerian clay tablets and cylinder seals. In the Sumerian King Lists are mentioned all the rulers of Earth 400,000 years back. This huge period of time of thousands of years has caused most historians to reject its accuracy. However all the early rulers were allegedly gods - demi-gods or immortals.

         The Anunnaki (Sumerian: “those who came down from the heavens”; Old testament Hebrew, Anakeim, Nefilim, Elohim; Egyptian: Neter), an advanced civilization from the tenth planet in our solar system, landed in the Persian gulf area around 432,000 years ago, colonized the planet, with the purpose of obtaining large quantities of gold.
         The documents discovered tell that 250,000 years ago their lower echelon miners rebelled against the conditions in the mines and the Anunnaki directorate decided to create a creature to take their place.
         An interpretation of that documents is that Enki, their chief scientist and Ninhursag their chief medical officer, after getting no satisfactory results splicing animal and Homo Erectus genes, merged their Anunnaki genes with that of Homo Erectus and produced us, Homo Sapiens, a genetically bicameral species, for their purposes as slaves. Because we were a hybrid, we could not procreate. The demand for us as workers became greater and we were genetically manipulated to reproduce. Humans became so numerous that some of us were expelled from the Anunnaki city centers, gradually spreading over the planet.
         Having become a stable genetic stock and developing more intelligence the Anunnaki had anticipated, the Anunnaki began to be attracted to humans as sexual partners and children were born of these unions. This was unacceptable to the majority of the Anunnaki high council and it was decided to wipe out the human population through a flood that was predictable when Nibiru, the tenth in our solar system and the Anunnaki home planet, came through the inner solar system again (around 12,500 years ago) on one of its periodic 3600 year returns.
         Some humans were saved by the action of the Anunnaki official, Enki, who was sympathetic to the humans he had originally genetically created. For thousands of years, we were their slaves, their workers, their servants, and their soldiers in their political battles among themselves.
         The Anunnaki used us in the construction of their palaces (we retroproject the religious notion of temple on these now), their cities, their mining and refining complexes and their astronomical installations on all the continents. They expanded from Mesopotamia to Egypt to India to South and Central America and the stamp of their presence can be found in the farthest reaches of the planet. Around 6000 years ago, the Anunnaki left humans to become independent.
         Sumer, a human civilization, amazing in its “sudden”, mature, and highly advanced character was set up under their tutelage in Mesopotamia. Human kings were inaugurated as go-betweens, foremen of the human populations answering to the Anunnaki. A strain of humans, genetically enhanced with more Anunnaki genes, a bloodline of rulers in a tradition of “servants of the people” was initiated. These chosen humans were taught technology, mathematics, astronomy, advanced crafts and the ways of advanced civilized society.

Recently, a "new" planet was discovered. It is belived to be the tenth planet in our solar system. But summerians wrote about it, they've studied its orbit as they belived it to be the home planet of the Anunnaki. This planet - named by the summerian Nibiru - has the size, orbit, and characteristics described in the Enuma Elish.

Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930. Christie, of the U.S. Naval Observatory, discovered Charon, Pluto’s moon, in 1978. The characteristics of Pluto derivable from the nature of Charon demonstrated that there must still be a large planet undiscovered because Pluto could not be the cause of the residuals, the “wobbles” in the orbital paths of Uranus and Neptune clearly identifiable.
The IRAS (Infrared Astronomical Satellite), during ’83 -’84, produced observations of a tenth planet so robust that one of the astronomers on the project said that “all that remains is to name it” -- from which point the information has become curiously guarded. In 1992 Harrington and Van Flandern of the Naval Observatory, working with all the information they had at hand, published their findings and opinion that there is, indeed, a tenth planet, even calling it an “intruder” planet. The search was narrowed to the southern skies, below the ecliptic.

         The recovered Enuma Elish document, a history of the formation of our solar system and more, says that, at the time when Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and Saturn were in place, there was a Uranus sized planet, called Tiamat, in orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Earth was not in place yet.
         A large wandering planet, called Nibiru, was captured into the system gravitationally. As it passed by the outer planets it caused the anomalies of their moons, the tilting of Uranus on its side, the dislodging of Pluto from its being a moon of Saturn to its own planetary orbit. Its path bent by the gravitational pull of the large planets, first its satellites collided with the large planet Tiamat and, on a second orbit through, Nibiru collided with Tiamat, driving the larger part of it into what is now Earth’s orbit to recongeal as Earth, dragging its moon with it to become our Moon with all its anomalies. The shattered debris of Tiamat’s smaller part became the asteroid belt, comets, and meteorites. The gouge of our Pacific basin is awesome testimony to the collisional event.
         Nibiru settled into a 3600 year elliptical retrograde (opposite direction to all the other planets) orbit around our sun, coming in through the asteroid belt region between Mars and Jupiter at perigee and swinging far out past Pluto at apogee. Harrington acknowledged that his information agreed with all these details and the maps they each had drawn of the orbits were almost indistinguishable. The current probable location of Nibiru (Planet X, our tenth) estimated by both was the same.

The ancient records tell us that the passage of the tenth planet, Nibiru, once every 3600 years, through the inner solar system effects the Earth, sometimes in catastrophic ways. But could it be the cause of pole shifts, catastrophic bombardment by asteroid size space debris that it may drag along with it? Since it passes through the asteroid belt area between Mars and Jupiter and its orbital path may vary depending on the position of the other planets when it comes though, it may have been responsible for the devastation of Mars.

         Ooparts is the term used to describe the purportedly out of place in time artifacts, toys, tools, technical devices, depictions and documents which have come to light through archaeological excavation or discovery. Almost everyone is familiar, through published works or documentaries, with the clay pot batteries still containing the electrodes from the Iraqi desert dated at 2500 B.C., the flyable model airplane from a pyramid tomb, the sophisticated machining of stone requiring the most advanced techniques we know today, the 1000 ton precision cut blocks of stone in a temple foundation that we could not even handle, an ancient relief frieze from an Abydos temple depicting rockets, airplanes and even a helicopter, etc.
         The most recent and quite amazing oopart is the rediscovery of monoatomic gold by David Hudson (Monoatomics are superconductors at room temperature, have anti-gravitic properties and are only now being investigated by the advanced physics community).
         Hudson’s discovery, correlated with the bringing to light of the suppressed discovery of the Anunnaki gold processing plant on Mt. Horeb by Sir Flinders Petrie in 1889 demonstrates that the monoatomics were already known at least 3000 years ago. These ooparts coupled with evidence from many disciplines and the historical records indicate that an advanced civilization existed in those times possessing a high technology and that that civilization was indeed the Anunnaki.

In the early 1800’s, the excavation of the ancient sites of Mesopotamia brought to light the advanced civilization of Sumer and thousands of clay tablets containing not only records of commerce, marriages, military actions and advanced astronomical calculation systems but of the history of the Anunnaki themselves.
It is clear from those records that the Sumerians knew these creatures to be real. The library of the ruler, Ashurbanipal, at Nineveh was discovered to have burnt down and the clay tablets held there were fired, preserving them for our reading. One of the most impressive finds, in very recent time, has been a sealed, nine foot by six foot room in Sippar holding, neatly arranged on shelves, a set of some 400 elaborate clay tablets containing an unbroken record of the history of those ancient times, a sort of time capsule.

The recovered records place the location of the Anunnaki "laboratory" where the first humans were literally produced in east central Africa just above their gold mines. This falls precisely on the map where the mitochondrial DNA “search for Eve” places the first woman Homo Sapiens and in the same period. (The gold mining engineers of Africa have found 100,000-year-old gold mines in that area.) The evidence for, and description of advanced genetic engineering is all there in the ancient documents.
Our rapid progress from inception to going to Mars soon, after only 250,000 years, does not correspond to the million year periodicities of slow evolutionary development of other species such as Homo Erectus before us. As so many thinkers have pointed out, we are radically and anomalously different.

Cuciulat Cave

2010-11-18T04:56:00.000-08:00

Cuciulat - a cave in central Transylvania (Romania), has prehistoric wall paintings that are considered the oldest discovered in Central and Eastern Europe. The drawings (between 10,000 and 25,000 years old) representing animals have been discovered 31 years ago in the village of Letca from Salaj County (Northern Transylvania). The Cuciulat cave entrance is now blocked by landslides from a nearby limestone quarry. In 1978, a team of amateur speologists from Bucharest first discoverd a cave painting representing a red horse. Then was conducted the first and the last study of that unique cave. On the cave's walls which form a labirint are represented animals and hunting objects, but sadly no one is focusing on making this amazing paintings known for humanity. They represent a treasure just like the ones very famous from the caves: Altamira (Spain), Lascaux (France), Laas Gaa'l (Somalia), Apollo 11(Namibia), Niah (Malaysia) and many others.

Pictures of the Cuciulat paintings are very rare and hard to find. Bellow are two of them:

Antiochus Tibertus

2010-11-18T04:53:00.000-08:00

Antiochus Tibertus was an astrologer and chiromancer who lived in Romagna, in the fifteenth century. At that time nearly all the petty sovereigns of Italy retained such men in their service; Tibertus, having studied the mathematics with great success at Paris, and delivered many predictions, was taken into the household of Pandolfo di Malatesta, the sovereign of Rimini. His reputation was so great, that his study was continually thronged either with visitors who were persons of distinction, or with clients who came to him for advice; and in a short time he acquired a considerable fortune. Notwithstanding all these advantages, he passed his life miserably, and ended it on the scaffold. The following story afterwards got into circulation, and has been often triumphantly cited by succeeding astrologers as an irrefragable proof of the truth of their science. It was said, that long before he died he uttered three remarkable prophecies—one relating to himself, another to his friend, and the third to his patron, Pandolfo di Malatesta. The first delivered was that relating to his friend Guido di Bogni, one of the greatest captains of the time. Guido was exceedingly desirous to know his fortune, and so importuned Tibertus, that the latter consulted the stars and the lines on his palm to satisfy him. He afterwards told him with a sorrowful face, that, according to all the rules of astrology and palmistry, he should be falsely suspected by his best friend, and should lose his life in consequence. Guido then asked the astrologer if he could foretell his own fate; upon which Tibertus again consulted the stars, and found that it was decreed from all eternity that he should end his days on the scaffold. Malatesta, when he heard these predictions, so unlikely, to all present appearance, to prove true, desired his astrologer to predict his fate also, and to hide nothing from him, however unfavourable it might be. Tibertus complied, and told his patron, at that time one of the most flourishing and powerful princes of Italy, that he should suffer great want, and die at last like a beggar in the common hospital of Bologna. And so it happened in all three cases. Guido di Bogni was accused by his own father-in-law, the Count di Bentivoglio, of a treasonable design to deliver up the city of Rimini to the papal forces, and was assassinated afterwards, by order of the tyrant Malatesta, as he sat at the supper-table, to which he had been invited in all apparent friendship. The astrologer was at the same time thrown into prison, as being concerned in the treason of his friend. He attempted to escape, and had succeeded in letting himself down from his dungeon-window into a moat, when he was discovered by the sentinels. This being reported to Malatesta, he gave orders for his execution on the following morning. Malatesta had, at this time, no remembrance of the prophecy; and his own fate gave him no uneasiness: but events were silently working its fulfilment. A conspiracy had been formed, though Guido di Bogni was innocent of it, to deliver up Rimini to the pope; and all the necessary measures having been taken, the city was seized by the Count de Valentinois. In the confusion, Malatesta had barely time to escape from his palace in disguise. He was pursued from place to place by his enemies, abandoned by all his former friends, and, finally, by his own children. He at last fell ill of a languishing disease, at Bologna; and, nobody caring to afford him shelter, he was carried to the hospital, where he died.

2012

2010-11-18T04:50:00.000-08:00

The Mayan civilization of Central America was and is the most advanced in relation to time-science knowledge. Their main calendar is the most accurate on the planet. It has never erred. The Mayan fifth world finished in 1987. The sixth world starts in 2012. So we are currently "between worlds". The Mayan civilization actually have 22 calendars in total, covering the many timing cycles in the Universe and Solar System. Some of these calendars are yet to be revealed.

Humanity and Planet Earth are currently going through a huge change or shift in consciousness and reality perception.

The Mayan sixth world is actually blank. This means it is up to us, as co-creators, to start creating the new world and civilization we want now.

The Mayans also say that by 2012:

we will have gone beyond technology as we know it
we will have gone beyond time and money
we will have entered the fifth dimension after passing through the fourth dimension
Planet Earth and the Solar System will come into galactic synchronization with the rest of the Universe.

In 2012 the plane of our Solar System will line up exactly with the plane of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. This cycle has taken 26,000 years to complete. Two other galaxies will line up with ours at the same time.

Time is speeding up (or collapsing). For thousands of years the Schumann Resonance or pulse (heartbeat) of Earth has been 7.83 cycles per second, The military have used this as a very reliable reference. However, since 1980 this resonance has been slowly rising. It is now over 12 cycles per second! This means there is the equivalent of less than 16 hours per day instead of the old 24 hours.

During the time "between worlds" many people will be going through many personal changes. The changes will be many and varied. It is all part of what we came here to learn or experience. Examples of change could be- relationships coming to an end, change of residence or location, change of job or work, shift in attitude or thinking etc.

This grand cycle of evolution will culminate winter solstice, December 21, 2012.

Many peoples spoke of these last days of the Great Cycle, including the: Maya, Hopi, Egyptians, Kabbalists, Essenes, Qero elders of Peru, Navajo, Cherokee, Apache, Iroquois confederacy, Dogon Tribe, and Aborigines.

Mayan Prophecies and Calendar

The Gregorian calendar is not in harmony with the forces of nature. The original Egyptian calendar was. But the Egyptian calendar was later modified by the Greeks/Spartan and then the Romans etc. 30 yrs after the birth of Christ, the calendar was off by 12 days. They had a council to bring it back (Julian). In 1582 it was again out of line and Pope Gregory brought in the best astronomers to align it once again. It still suffer changes. The Russian Orthodox did not accept this calendar until much later.

The Mayan calendar will need to be adjusted by one day in 380,000 years.

The Aztecs use different glyphs and is basically the same as the Mayan only slightly less evolved. Their glyphs are better in their representations of the energies though.

The Earth changes will continue until 2012. The Elders say that the process can be easy and aligned or can be catastrophic. Human energy will decide this.

Time and the calendar begin on the equinox of 3/21.

There had been a cycle of darkness that lasted 468 years (9 x52) and ended on 3/30/1993.

We are now in a transition period called the "Cycle of the merge of the dark and the light". During this time humanity is going through great transition.

The cycle of light will come in full force on 12/21/2012.

This is considered the cycle of 13 lights and 13 heavens.

Many cycles begin on that same date.

Mother Earth as a living entity will transcend to another level or frequency or consciousness and a new and special era will begin.

When Time Stops (Schumann Resonance)

2010-11-18T04:48:00.000-08:00

Between the nearly perfectly conducting terrestrial surface and ionosphere, a resonating cavity is formed. Broadband electromagnetic impulses, like those from lightning flashes, fill this cavity, and create globally the so-called Schumann resonances at frequencies 5 – 50 Hz (Schumann, 1952; Bliokh et al., 1980; Sentman, 1987).

ELF is used by the US Navy to communicate with submerged submarines. The extremely high electrical conductivity of seawater shields submarines from most electromagnetic communications.

Signals in the ELF frequency range, however, can penetrate much more deeply.

The low transmission rate of most ELF communications limits their use as communications channels; generally an ELF signal serves to request that a submarine surface and initiate some other form of contact.

One of the difficulties posed when broadcasting in the ELF frequency range is antenna size. In order to transmit internationally using ELF frequencies, an extremely large antenna is required.

The US maintains two sites, in Wisconsin and Michigan. Both sites use long power lines as antennae, in multiple strands ranging from 14 to 28 miles long. Considerable amounts of power are generated and emitted by ELF, and there have been some concerns over the possible ecological impact of such signals

The electromagnetic field (EMF) is composed of two related vectorial fields, the electric field and the magnetic field. This means that the vectors (E and B) that characterize the field each have a value defined at each point of space and time. If only E, the electric field, is nonzero and is constant in time, the field is said to be an electrostatic field.

The electromagnetic field generates a force F on a charged particle, given by the Lorentz equation where q is the charge of the particle, and v is its current velocity (expressed as a vector.) The behavior of electromagnetic fields can be described with Maxwell’s equations, and their quantum basis by quantum electrodynamics.

Scientists believe that the Schumann resonance is due to the space between the surface of the Earth and the ionosphere acting as a resonant cavity that is then excited by energy from lightning strikes.

A resonant cavity is a cavity in which standing waves can be built up. It is used in lasers. The lowest-frequency (and highest-intensity) mode of the Schumann resonance is at a frequency of approximately 7.8 Hz.

The phenomenon is named after W. O. Schumann, who predicted this phenomenon in the 1950s, and helped detect its existence.

The ionosphere is the part of the atmosphere that is ionized by solar radiation, and too tenuous to be cooled by contact with other air.

It forms the inner edge of the magnetosphere and has practical importance because it reflects radio waves to distant places on Earth.

The ionosphere is generally recognized to have three, sometimes four layers.

The D layer is the innermost layer, and mostly absorbs radio waves.

The E layer is the middle layer.

The F layer combines into one layer at night, but in sunlight divides into two layers, the F1 and F2.

The F layers are responsible for most skywave propagation of radio, and are thickest and most reflective of radio on the side of the Earth facing the sun.

Scientists explore the structure of the ionosphere by bouncing radio waves of different frequencies from it, and using special receivers to detect how the reflected waves have changed from the transmitted waves.

Schumann Resonance & Zero Point

Changes are occurring on the physical, emotions, mental, and spiritual levels.

Ancient prophecies predicted it. Indigenous traditions honor it. Changes within the Earth are affecting your sleep patterns, relationships, the ability to regulate your immune system and your perception of time.

You are living a process of initiation that was demonstrated over 2,000 years ago, preparing you to accept tremendous change within your body. That change is happening now.

Migraine headaches, tiredness, electrical sensations in the limbs, and cramps in the muscles networks Flu like symptoms intense dreams.

These could all be caused by the changes taking place on Earth now.

The human body will become more sensitive as a result of the new vibrations. The resonance of Earth (Schumann Resonance) has been 7.8Hz for thousands of years.

Since 1980 it has risen to over 12Hz.

This means that 16 hours now equate to a 24 hour day.

Time appears to be speeding up!

Gregg Braden tells of the scientific proof of the Earth passing through the Photon Belt and the slowing of the Earth’s rotation.

At the same time there is an increase in the resonant frequency of the Earth (Schumann Resonance).

When the Earth stops its rotation and the resonance frequency reaches 13 cycles we will be at a zero point magnetic field.

The Earth could be stopped, and in 2 or 3 days it will start turning again in the opposite direction.

This will produce a reversal in the magnetic fields around the earth and so forth.

Geophysical Condition no.1:

Earth’s Rising Base Frequency:

Earth’s background base frequency, or “heartbeat” , called Schumann Resonance, or SR – is rising dramatically.

Though it varies among geographical regions, for decades the overall measurement was 7.8 cycles per second.

This was once thought to be a constant; global military communications developed on this frequency.

Recent reports set the rate at over 11 cycles,and climbing. Science doesn’t know why, or what to make of it.

Gregg Braden found data collected by Norwegian and Russian researchers on this; it’s not widely reported in the U.S. (The only reference to SR to be found in the Seattle Library reference section, is tied to the weather.

Science acknowledges SR as a sensitive indicator of temperature variations and worldwide weather conditions. Braden believes the fluctuating SR may be a factor in the severe storms, floods, and weather of recent years).

Geophysical Condition no.2: Earth’s Diminishing Magnetic Field

While earth’s “pulse” rate is rising, her magnetic field strength, on the other hand, is declining.

According to Professor Bannerjee of the University of New Mexico, the field has lost up to half its intensity in the last 4,000 years.

Because a forerunner of magnetic polar reversals is this field strength, scientists believe that another reversal is due. They also believe that because these cyclical shifts are associated with reversals, Earth’s geological record indicating magnetic reversals also marks previous shifts in history.

Within the enormous time scale represented, there were quite a few of them.

Schumann Resonance

The Earth behaves like an enormous electric circuit. The atmosphere is actually a weak conductor and if there were no sources of charge, its existing electric charge would diffuse away in about 10 minutes.

There is a ‘cavity ‘defined by the surface of the Earth and the inner edge of the ionosphere 55 kilometers up.

At any moment, the total charge residing in this cavity is 500,000 Coulombs. There is a vertical current flow between the ground and the ionosphere of 1 – 3 x 10^-12 Amperes per square meter.

The resistance of the atmosphere is 200 Ohms. The voltage potential is 200,000 Volts. There are about 1000 lightning storms at any given moment worldwide.

Each produces .5 to 1 Ampere and these collectively account for the measured current flow in the Earth’s ‘electromagnetic’ cavity.

The Schumann Resonances are quasi standing wave electromagnetic waves that exist in this cavity. Like waves on a spring, they are not present all the time, but have to be ‘excited’ to be observed. They are not caused by anything internal to the Earth, its crust or its core.

They seem to be related to electrical activity in the atmosphere, particularly during times of intense lightning activity. They occur at several frequencies between 6 and 50 cycles per second; specifically 7.8, 14, 20, 26, 33, 39 and 45 Hertz, with a daily variation of about +/- 0 .5 Hertz. So long as the properties of Earth’s electromagnetic cavity remains about the same, these frequencies remain the same.

Presumably there is somechange due to the solar sunspot cycle as the Earth’s ionosphere changes in response to the 11-year cycle of solar activity.

Schumann resonances are most easily seen between 2000 and 2200 UT.

Given that the earth’s atmosphere carries a charge, a current and a voltage, it is not surprising to find such electromagnetic waves.

The resonant properties of this terrestrial cavity were first predicted by the German physicist W. O. Schumann between 1952 and 1957, and first detected by Schumann and Konig in 1954.

The first spectral representation of this phenomenon was prepared by Balser and Wagner in 1960.

Much of the research in the last 20 years has been conducted by the Department of the Navy who investigate Extremely Low Frequency communication with submarines.

Time will appear to speed up as we approach Zero Point. A 24 hour day will seem to about 16 hours or less.

Remember the Schumann Resonance (or “heart beat” of Mother Earth) has been 7.8 cycles for thousands of years, but has been rising since 1980.

It is at about 12 cycles at present. It stops at 13 cycles.

Zero Point or the Shift of the Ages has been predicted by ancient peoples for thousands of years. There have been many shifts including the one that always occurs every 13,000 years at each half ofthe 26,000 year, Procession of the Equinox.

Zero Point or a flip of the magnetic poles could happen.

It is said that after Zero Point the Sun will rise in the west (see also the signs of the end of time in Islam): and set in the east. Past occurances of this change have been found in ancient records.

Painting by Salvador Dali - "The Disintegration Of The Persistance of Memory"

Out Of Body Experience

2010-11-18T04:43:00.000-08:00

Hereward Carrington, Ph.D. (born Hubert Lavington) (17 October 1880 – 26 December 1958) was a well-known British investigator of psychic phenomena and author. His subjects included several of the most high-profile cases of apparent psychic ability of his times, and he wrote over 100 books on subjects including the paranormal and psychical research, conjuring and stage magic, and alternative health issues.

" By the mid 1920s Hereward Carrington had written many books about psychical research and had mentioned more than once the phenomenon of astral projection, but he mainly condensed the work of others and gave little information that would be of interest to someone who had a spontaneous OBE. In November 1927 he received a letter from a young American called Sylvan Muldoon, telling him what he thought of his book. Muldoon wrote, ''What puzzles me most is that you make the remark that M. Lancelin has told practically all that is known on the subject. Why, Mr Carrington, I have never read Lancelin's work, but if you have given the gist of it in your book, then I can write a book on the things that Lancelin does not know!'' Muldoon went on to sketch a wealth of details about the astral world, the silver cord, and the formation and movement of the phantom. Then Carrington's curiosity was attracted. He contacted Muldoon, and together they wrote two books. The first was The Projection of the Astral Body and was mainly an account of Muldoon's own experiences. The second The Phenomena of Astral Projection contained a collection of cases.

Muldoon's first conscious projection occurred when he was 12 years old. He awoke in the middle of the night to find himself conscious, but not knowing where he was, and apparently unable to move, a condition he later called astral catalepsy. Gradually the sensation of floating took over, and then a rapid up-and-down vibration and a tremendous pressure in the back of his head. Out of this nightmare of sensations the boy's hearing gradually began to return and then his sight, by which he could see that he was floating in the room above his bed. Some force took hold of him and pulled him from horizontal to vertical. He saw his double lying quietly asleep on the bed, and between the two of them stretched an elastic-like cable which joined the back of the head of his conscious self, to a spot between the eyes of the body in bed, six feet of so away. Swaying and pulling against the cord Muldoon tried to walk to another room to wake someone, but found that he passed right through the door, and through the bodies of other sleepers too, when he tried to shake or clutch them. Frightened, he roamed around the house for what seemed like fifteen minutes, and then slowly the pull of the cord increased and he found himself being pulled back to his body. Everything went in reverse. He tipped back to horizontal, again became cataleptic, felt the same vibrations and then, with a jerk, dropped back into the body. He was awake and alive again.

Muldoon experienced hundreds more projections but he was not fully conscious in all of them from beginning to end as he was in the first one. This one is especially interesting because it included so many of the features which were to form a part of his later writings. First, there is the astral catalepsy. At the beginning of a projection the catalepsy lasts until the phantom has assumed a vertical position, whereupon it becomes free to move again. The appearance and effect of the cord, or cable, varies greatly according to Muldoon. When the astral is close to the physical the cord is about the diameter of a silver dollar, although its surrounding aura makes it look larger. When it is thick like this it exerts a powerful 'magnetic pull' and one is then in what Muldoon calls ''cord activity range''. In his experiments in projection he found that this range varies from about 8 feet to 15 feet, and this depends on physical vitality. When the physical body is healthy the cord exerts the most effect and over the greatest range. Indeed, in many cases it makes projection impossible. When the body is weakened in some way the activity of the cord is correspondingly weaker and projection is easier and the cord activity range less. This is why illness or physical weakness, as well as fasting, are conducive to projection, leading up to that final projection - death. It is therefore significant that both Fox and Muldoon were often ill. When the astral body manages to pull away from the physical and out of cord activity range it becomes free to move at will, and the cord is then stretched to its thinnest, about the thickness of sewing thread.

Once away from the physical the astral is supposed to have three moving speeds. At its slowest it simply walks, or moves as a physical body would. At the intermediate speed the projector feels still and everything passes backwards. Streaks of light thrown off by the astral body trail behind. Finally at supernormal speed the phantom can cover great distances without being aware of them, faster than the mind can imagine.
Covering such distances one might think that astral body could get lost, but Muldoon categorically denies this. While the cord is intact it can always pull the projector back.

       It is Muldoon's contention that projection, at least partial projection, is commoner than most of us think.
       When we receive a shock or physical blow the astral may temporarily separate, and under anaesthesia it projects, although we usually do not recall the excursion. He even suggests that if the physical body is stopped suddenly, for example in a car, then the astral may continue for a moment, so leading to feeling of sickness.
       All kind of odd feeling, fainting, breath-taking sensations, and jerks before falling asleep, are attributed to partial separation of the double. Most important, though, is projection during sleep. In natural sleep, claims Muldoon, the astral separates slightly to be replenished with ''cosmic energy''.
       Most of us do not realize this and remain unconscious throughout; but in falling, flying, and other special dreams we can experience just part of the astral body's night-time travels.

In his experiments Muldoon discovered many other features. Like Fox he found that emotional involvement in anything would terminate the projection. Sexual desire he found a negative factor, but some kinds of stress could help in inducing projection. When the body is immobilized in sleep, for example, if there is a strong desire for something the astral may try to leave to get it. Similarly the breaking of a long-established habit can lead to projection. Muldoon related this to hauntings in which, he claims, the phantom may continue with accustomed routines.

Some of Muldoon's most interesting experiment are those in which he tries, in his astral body, to affect material objects. This is not easy. The reason, he explains, is that the astral body has a higher rate of vibration when it is far away from the physical, and the higher the rate of vibration, the less it can interact with objects of a low vibration rate. This is necessarily so, he claims, because if the astral body were not at this higher state of vibration it could never pass through material objects, and if it were always at the highest rate then other astral entities would not be able to pass through it on their travels, which clearly they can. This leads to the conclusion that the astral body gains higher vibrations as it moves further from the physical, and consequently it becomes less able to affect material objects.

In addition Muldoon argues that the conscious will cannot move object in the astral, but only the subconscious, or crypto-conscious, mind. On one occasion when he was very ill he tried to call out to his mother but failed to wake her. Getting out of bed he crawled across the floor, but fainted, and only his astral body ascended the stairs. His consciousness then faded; but next he knew, he found his mother and small brother discussing excitedly how the mattress had lifted up and nearly thrown them out of bed. Although other explanations can be suggested, Muldoon attributes the effect to the crypto-conscious will.
On another occasion he produced raps which were heard by others when he was dreaming of producing them; but on many occasions he failed to touch or move physical objects when projected.

One of the facts Muldoon stresses is the importance of thought in the astral. Thought holds up the astral body, for when it walks upon an upper floor, it is not the floor which holds it up (it could easily pass through that); it is habits of thought. In fact thought is everything in the astral world. Critics, he realized, would be worried by the clothes of the phantom. Why should the astral body wear earthly suits, pyjamas and dresses, as so many have reported? The answer, he explained, is that ''thought creates in the astral, and one appears to others as he is in mind. In fact, the whole astral world is governed by thought.''

Many readers will find Muldoon's descriptions difficult to understand. He does not give simple descriptive accounts as Fox did. Instead every account is steeped in the theory which he so laboriously developed. Some of his findings, such as the power of thought in the astral world, and the methods of moving, are familiar from other accounts; but his detailed description of the cord and its activity range is quite idiosyncratic, as are his method and position of projecting.

Muldoon constantly adjures reader to try for themselves, perhaps the only way to learn many things about astral projection. But I am sure that most people who try it will find that only some of Muldoon's elaborate details fit their own experience. Above all we are beginning to see just how variable the OBE can be. Perhaps the most important discovery so far is that ''thought creates in the astral''. As one person's thought differs from another's, so we may expect his OBE to differ. In the next chapter we shall learn that three habitual travellers have described experiences that are different again."

From the article "Sylvan Muldoon" by Susan Blackmore

Phaistos Disc

2010-11-18T04:42:00.000-08:00

The disc of Phaistos is the most important example of hieroglyphic inscription from Crete and was discovered in 1903 in a small room near the depositories of the "archive chamber", in the north - east apartments of the Phaistos palace, together with a tablet and pottery dated to the beginning of the Neo-palatial period (1700- 1600 B.C.).

       According to mythology, the city of Phaistos was the residence of king Radamanthis, brother of king Minos.
       Excavations by archaeologists have unearthed ruins of the Neolithic times (3.000 B.C.).
       During the Minoan times, Phaistos was a very important city-state. Its dominion, at its peak, stretched from Lithinon to Psychion and included the Paximadia islands. The city participated to the Trojan war and later became one of the most important cities-states of the Dorian period.
       Phaistos continued to flourish during Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic times. It was destroyed by the Gortynians during the 3rd century B.C. But Phaistos continued to exist during the Roman period.

Both surfaces of this clay disc are covered with hieroglyphs arranged in a spiral zone, impressed on the clay when it was damp. The signs make up groups divided from each other by vertical lines, and each of these groups should represent a word.

Forty five different types of signs have been distinguished, of which a few can be identified with the hieroglyphs in use in the Proto- palatial period. Some hieroglyphic sequences recur like refrains, suggesting a religious hymn, and Pernier regards the content of the text as ritual. Others have suggested that the text is a list of soldiers, and lately Davis has interpreted it as a document in the Hittic language in which a king discusses the erection of the Palace of Phaistos.

In a century which has seen the cracking of other ancient languages, Ugaritic, and other orthographic systems, the Phaistos Disk has eluded decipherment. The disk is thought to date from around 1700 BC. It is a roundish disk of clay, with symbols stamped into it. The text consists of 61 words, 16 of which are accompanied by a mysterious "slash" mark.

Rediscovering what was already found

2010-11-18T04:40:00.000-08:00

For 400 years the Topkapi Palace had been the Ottoman Empire's sultan main residence. In 1929, the Turks decided to transform the palace into a museum, bringing to light artefacts hidden in the dark chambers and cellars. Then was discovered a map drawn in 1513 by the admiral and cartographer Piri Reis.
The map showed the western side of Europe, the western side of Africa, South America and surprisingly the Antarctica. Reis had drawn with precision the way the borders of Africa and South America fitted together before they were separated in time and also Antarctica - a frozen land first seen (as we all thought) in 1820 by Mikhail Lazarev and Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen.

This map became more mysterious because Reis had drawn also a reference to Columbus, reminding of an ancient map that Columbus had used during his expeditions on sea. Columbus map became an "El Dorado" for treasure hunters, bu no one has yet found it.

Undeciphered language. Voynich manuscript

2010-11-18T04:39:00.000-08:00

The Voynich manuscript is a mysterious book thought to have been written in the 15th or 16th century and comprising about 240 vellum pages of handwritten text, the majority having illustrations.
The text of the manuscript has not yet been deciphered, and the author, script, and language remain unknown.

Since its recorded existence, the Voynich manuscript has been intensively studied by many cryptographers, including some top American and British codebreakers of World War II fame, but all of them failed to decrypt at least a part of the text.
The Voynich manuscript has become a famous subject of historical cryptology, but it has also given weight to the theory that the book is simply a well conceived hoax having a meaningless sequence of arbitrary symbols.

The book is named after the Polish-American book dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich, who acquired it in 1912. Currently the Voynich manuscript is stored in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University as item "MS 408". The first facsimile edition was published in 2005.

The book originally had 272 pages in 17 quires of 16 pages each. About 240 vellum pages remain today, and gaps in the page numbering (which seems to be later than the text) indicate that several pages were already missing when Voynich acquired it. A quill pen was used for the text and figure outlines, and colored paint was applied (somewhat crudely) to the figures, possibly at a later date. There is strong evidence that at one point in time, the pages of the book were arranged in a different order.

The text was clearly written from left to right, with a slightly ragged right margin. Longer sections are broken into paragraphs, sometimes with "bullets" in the left margin. There is no obvious punctuation. The ductus flows smoothly, suggesting that the scribe understood the words as he wrote. The manuscript therefore gives the impression that the symbols were not enciphered, otherwise the individual characters would have had to be calculated before being written. However, it is possible to write somewhat fluently in other codes.

The text consists of over 170,000 discrete glyphs, usually separated from each other by narrow gaps. Most of the glyphs are written with one or two simple pen strokes.
While there is some dispute as to whether certain glyphs are distinct or not, an alphabet with 20–30 glyphs would account for virtually all of the text; the exceptions are a few dozen rarer characters that occur only once or twice each.

Wider gaps divide the text into about 35,000 "words" of varying length. These seem to follow phonetic or orthographic laws of some sort; e.g. certain characters must appear in each word (like the vowels in English), some characters never follow others, and some may be doubled but others may not.

Statistical analysis of the text reveals patterns similar to those of natural languages. For instance, the word entropy (about 10 bits per word) is similar to that of English or Latin texts. Some words occur only in certain sections, or in only a few pages; others occur throughout the manuscript. There are very few repetitions among the thousand or so "labels" attached to the illustrations. In the herbal section, the first word on each page occurs only on that page and may be the name of the plant.

The Voynich manuscript's "language" is quite unlike European languages in several aspects. There are practically no words comprising more than ten glyphs, yet there are also few one- or two-letter words. The distribution of letters within words is also rather peculiar: some characters only occur at the beginning of a word, some only at the end, and some always in the middle section. While Semitic alphabets have many letters that are written differently depending on whether they occur at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a word, letters of the Latin, Cyrillic and Greek alphabets are generally written the same way regardless of their position within a word (the exception being the Greek letter Sigma).

The text seems to be more repetitive than typical European languages; there are instances where the same common word appears up to three times in a row. Words that differ only by one letter also repeat with unusual frequency.

There are only a few words in the manuscript written in a seemingly Latin script. On the last page, there are four lines of writing that are written in (rather distorted) Latin letters, except for two words in the main script. The lettering resembles European alphabets of the 15th century, but the words do not seem to make sense in any language.Also, a series of diagrams in the "astronomical" section has the names of ten of the months (from March to December) written in Latin script, with spelling suggestive of the medieval languages of France or the Iberian Peninsula. However, it is not known whether these bits of Latin script were part of the original text or were added later.

The illustrations of the manuscript shed little light on the precise nature of its text but imply that the book consists of six "sections", with different styles and subject matter. Except for the last section, which contains only text, almost every page contains at least one illustration. Following are the sections and their conventional names:

Herbal. Each page displays one plant (sometimes two) and a few paragraphs of text—a format typical of European herbals of the time. Some parts of these drawings are larger and cleaner copies of sketches seen in the "pharmaceutical" section (below). None of the plants depicted are unambiguously identifiable.
Astronomical. Contains circular diagrams, some of them with suns, moons, and stars, suggestive of astronomy or astrology. One series of 12 diagrams depicts conventional symbols for the zodiacal constellations (two fish for Pisces, a bull for Taurus, a hunter with crossbow for Sagittarius, etc.). Each of these has 30 women figures arranged in two or more concentric bands. Most of the females are at least partly naked, and each holds what appears to be a labeled star or is shown with the star attached by what could be a tether or cord of some kind to either arm. The last two pages of this section (Aquarius and Capricornus, roughly January and February) were lost, while Aries and Taurus are split into four paired diagrams with 15 women and 15 stars each. Some of these diagrams are on fold-out pages.

Biological. A dense continuous text interspersed with figures, mostly showing small naked women bathing in pools or tubs connected by an elaborate network of pipes, some of them clearly shaped like body organs. Some of the women wear crowns.
Cosmological. More circular diagrams, but of an obscure nature. This section also has foldouts; one of them spans six pages and contains a map or diagram, with nine "islands" connected by "causeways", castles, and what may be a volcano.
Pharmaceutical. Many labeled drawings of isolated plant parts (roots, leaves, etc.); objects resembling apothecary jars drawn along the margins; and a few text paragraphs.
Recipes. Many short paragraphs, each marked with a flower- or star-like "bullet".

The first impression given by the surviving leaves of the manuscript is that it was meant to serve as a pharmacopoeia or to address topics in medieval or early modern medicine. The puzzling details of illustrations have generated many theories about the book's origins, the contents of its text, and the purpose for which it was intended.

The first section of the book is almost certainly herbal, but attempts to identify the plants, either with actual specimens or with the stylized drawings of contemporary herbals, have largely failed. Only a couple of plants (including a wild pansy and the maidenhair fern) can be identified with some certainty. Those herbal pictures that match pharmacological sketches appear to be clean copies of these, except that missing parts were completed with improbable-looking details. In fact, many of the plant drawings in the herbal section seem to be composite: the roots of one species have been fastened to the leaves of another, with flowers from a third.

Brumbaugh believed that one illustration depicted a New World sunflower, which would help date the manuscript and open up intriguing possibilities for its origin. However, the resemblance is slight, especially when compared to the original wild species; and, since the scale of the drawing is not known, the plant could be many other members of the same family, which includes the common daisy, chamomile, and many other species from all over the world.

The basins and tubes in the "biological" section may seem to indicate a connection to alchemy, which would also be relevant if the book contained instructions on the preparation of medical compounds. However, alchemical books of the period share a common pictorial language, where processes and materials are represented by specific images (such as eagle, toad, man in tomb, couple in bed) or standard textual symbols (such as circle with cross); and none of these could be convincingly identified in the Voynich manuscript.

Astrological considerations frequently played a prominent role in herb gathering, blood-letting and other medical procedures common during the likeliest dates of the manuscript (see, for instance, Nicholas Culpeper's books). However, apart from the obvious Zodiac symbols, and one diagram possibly showing the classical planets, no one has been able to interpret the illustrations within known astrological traditions (European or otherwise).

A circular drawing in the "astronomical" section depicts an irregularly shaped object with four curved arms, which some have interpreted as a picture of a galaxy that could only be obtained with a telescope. Other drawings were interpreted as cells seen through a microscope. This would suggest an early modern, rather than a medieval, date for the manuscript's origin.

Manuscript's History

The history of the manuscript is full of gaps and full of mystery. Due to the fact that the manuscript's alphabet does not resemble any known script, and the text is still undeciphered, the only useful evidence as to the book's age and origin are the illustrations—especially the dress and hairstyles of the human figures and a couple of castles that are seen in the diagrams. They are all characteristically European, and based on that evidence, most experts assign the book to dates between 1450 and 1520. This estimate is supported by other secondary clues. In 2009 the material used to write the manuscript was carbon-dated to between 1404 and 1438.

The earliest confirmed owner of the Voynich manuscript was Georg Baresch, an obscure alchemist who lived in Prague in the early 17th century. Baresch apparently was just as puzzled as we are today about this manuscript. On learning that Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit scholar from the Collegio Romano, had published a Coptic (Ethiopic) dictionary and "deciphered" the Egyptian hieroglyphs, Baresch sent a sample copy of the script to Kircher in Rome (twice), asking for clues. His 1639 letter to Kircher, which was recently located by Rene Zandbergen, is the earliest mention of the manuscript that has been found so far.

It is not known whether Kircher answered the request, but apparently, he was interested enough to try to acquire the book, which Baresch apparently refused to yield. Upon Baresch's death, the manuscript passed to his friend Jan Marek Marci (Johannes Marcus Marci), then rector of Charles University in Prague, who a few years later sent the book to Kircher, his longtime friend and correspondent. Marci's cover letter (1665 or 1666) is still attached to the manuscript.

There are no records of the book for the next 200 years, but in all likelihood, it was kept, with the rest of Kircher's correspondence, in the library of the Collegio Romano (now the Pontifical Gregorian University). It probably remained there until the troops of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy captured the city in 1870 and annexed the Papal States. The new Italian government decided to confiscate many properties of the Church, including the library of the Collegio. According to investigations by Xavier Ceccaldi and others, just before this happened, many books of the University's library were hastily transferred to the personal libraries of its faculty, which were exempt from confiscation. Kircher's correspondence was among those books—and so apparently was the Voynich manuscript, as it still bears the ex libris of Petrus Beckx, head of the Jesuit order and the University's Rector at the time.

Beckx's "private" library was moved to the Villa Mondragone, Frascati, a large country palace near Rome that had been bought by the Society of Jesus in 1866 and housed the headquarters of the Jesuits' Ghislieri College.

Around 1912, the Collegio Romano was apparently short of money and decided to sell (very discreetly) some of its holdings. Wilfrid Voynich acquired 30 manuscripts, among them the manuscript that now bears his name. In 1930, after his death, the manuscript was inherited by his widow, Ethel Lilian Voynich (known as the author of the novel The Gadfly and daughter of famous mathematician George Boole). She died in 1960 and left the manuscript to her close friend, Miss Anne Nill. In 1961, Anne Nill sold the book to another antique book dealer, Hans P. Kraus. Unable to find a buyer, Kraus donated the manuscript to Yale University in 1969.

Researchers at the University of Arizona performed C14 dating on the manuscript and showed that the parchment on which the manuscript was written was made between 1404 and 1438, according to Walter Koehler. In addition, the McCrone Research Institute in Chicago found evidence that the ink was added to the parchment around the same time as the creation of the parchment itself, suggesting that it is an authentic document.

First Human Colonists on Mars

2010-11-18T04:37:00.000-08:00

        The first humans lived in caves. Now it seems very likely that the first humans on Mars will do the same. After being studied Martian geography allows us to look for the right kind of caves. "At least two regions, the Tharsis rise and the Elysium rise, contain volcanic features which may be suitable locations for caves," said Kaj Williams from NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
        The analysis showed that caves in these regions might contain a ready supply of water, in the form of ice. The caves formed in lava tubes are common in Mars and they can become home for the first human colonists. These caves were created when ancient lava flows solidified at the surface, while lava inside drained away.
        The existence of ice in these caves has been suggested before, but Williams and colleagues have taken the idea one step further by using a computer model to find out exactly how ice might build up inside them. They also looked at how long it might last.
        The team represented their cave as a box 10 metres square by 8 metres high, with a single small opening to the atmosphere in the roof. They found that during the Martian day, warm, buoyant air would not enter the cool cave, saving the ice from melting. At night, as the outside air cooled, it would sink into the cave and bring in water vapour that condensed as frost onto the already icy walls.
        The model showed that the ice would be stable, lasting for up to 100,000 years. Ice formed on the walls of Martian caves would be stable, lasting for up to 100,000 years and could prove a source of water for habitation and fuel, and could also provide shelter from dangerous solar radiation. Astronauts would find the caves excellent homes, says co-author Brian Toon of the University of Colorado, Boulder. "Perhaps we could call them 'cavenauts'."

Earlier Paleonthologists?

2010-11-18T04:35:00.000-08:00

In 1944 Waldemar Julsrud found a few strange figurines while horseback riding in the mexican region of Acambaro. The small statuettes represented dinosaurs like creatures and humans from all around the world. Julsrud couldn't explore the site but he asked a local farmer to search for other figurines in that site. Surprisingly, the farmer found 32000 de statuettes well preserved. The artefacts were dated with carbon isotopes and was demonstrated that it wasn't a hoax. The statuettes are between 6,500 and 1,500 years old.

One question raises: Who made the statuettes knowing so well how a dinosaur looked like?

How well do we know our history?

2010-11-18T04:33:00.000-08:00

In 1974 a strange object was discovered on the riverside of Mures river, near the town of Aiud, Romania. The object similar to a hammer was brought to the Institute of Archaeology from Cluj-Napoca were it was thoroughly studied. Surprisingly, the object was made from alumimium, a metal first obtained in 1808 and produced in large scale after 1885. Aluminium is obtained from bauxite - aluminium oxide found in great quantities in Earth's crust. It has the advantage of resisting corosion. This is the reason the object found near Aiud was so well preserved, having approx. 10,000 years.

One question remains: When was aluminium actually discovered?

Extraterrestrial message?

2010-11-18T04:32:00.000-08:00

A strong narrowband radio signal was detected by Dr. Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977, while working on a SETI project at The Big Ear radio telescope of Ohio State University. The signal bore expected hallmarks of potential non-terrestrial and non-solar system origin. It lasted for 72 seconds, the full duration Big Ear observed it, but has not been detected again. This signal generated a huge controversy.

Amazed at how closely the signal matched the expected signature of an interstellar signal in the antenna used, Ehman circled the signal on the computer printout and wrote the comment "Wow!" on its side. And so the signal became known as The Wow! Signal.

The highest value of intensity of this signal was also the highest ever detected by the telescope. The intensity in this case is the unitless signal-to-noise ratio, where noise was averaged for that band over the previous few minutes.

The bandwidth of the signal is less than 10 kHz (each column on the printout corresponds to a 10 kHz-wide channel; the signal is only present in one column). Two different values for its frequency have been given: 1420.356 MHz (J. D. Kraus) and 1420.456 MHz (J. R. Ehman), both within 50 kHz of the frequency of the hydrogen line, which is at 1420.406 MHz.

Determining a precise location in the sky was complicated by the fact that the Big Ear telescope used two feed horns to search for signals, each pointing to a slightly different direction in the sky following Earth's rotation; the Wow! signal was detected in one of the horns but not in the other, although the data were processed in such a way that it is impossible to determine in which of the two horns the signal entered. This region of the sky lies in the constellation Sagittarius, roughly 2.5 degrees south of the fifth-magnitude star group Chi Sagittarii.

The Big Ear telescope was fixed and used the rotation of the Earth to scan the sky. At the speed of the Earth's rotation, and given the width of the Big Ear's observation "window", the Big Ear could observe any given point for just 72 seconds. A continuous extraterrestrial signal, therefore, would be expected to register for exactly 72 seconds, and the recorded intensity of that signal would show a gradual peaking for the first 36 seconds—until the signal reached the center of Big Ear's observation "window"— and then a gradual decrease.

Therefore, both the length of the Wow! signal, 72 seconds, and the shape of the intensity graph may correspond to a possible extraterrestrial origin.

The signal was expected to appear three minutes apart in each of the horns, but this did not happen. Ehman unsuccessfully looked for recurrences of the signal using Big Ear in the month after the detection.

Other researchers tried to capture other space signals similar to the Wow! Signal but did not detect anything like it.

Interstellar scintillation of a weaker continuous signal—similar, in effect, to atmospheric twinkling—could be a possible explanation, although this still would not exclude the possibility of the signal being artificial in its nature.

However, even by using the significantly more sensitive Very Large Array, such a signal could not be detected, and the probability that a signal below the Very Large Array level could be detected by the Big Ear radio telescope due to interstellar scintillation is low.

Other speculations include a rotating lighthouse-like source, a signal sweeping in frequency, or a one time burst. Some have also suggested it could have come from a moving space vehicle of extraterrestrial origin.

Mysterious Dark Object in The Sky

2010-11-18T04:27:00.001-08:00

For the first time, astronomers have directly observed the mysterious dark companion in a binary star system that has puzzled skywatchers since the 19th century.

Using an instrument developed at the University of Michigan, scientists have taken close-up pictures of Epsilon Aurigae during its eclipse, which happens every 27 years.

Epsilon Aurigae is the fifth brightest star in the northern constellation Auriga. For more than 175 years, astronomers have known it is dimmer than it should be, given its mass. They also noticed its brightness dip for more than a year every few decades. They surmised that it was a binary system in which one companion was invisible. Because astronomers hadn't observed much light from it, the prevailing theory labeled it a smaller star orbited edge-on by a thick disk of dust. The theory held that the disk's orbit must be in precisely the same plane as the dark object's orbit around the brighter star, and all of this had to be occurring in the same plane as Earth's vantage point. This would be an unlikely alignment, but it explained observations.

The new images show that this is indeed the case. A geometrically thin, dark, dense, but partially translucent cloud can be seen passing in front of Epsilon Aurigae.

"It kind of blows my mind that we could capture this. There's no other system like this known. On top of that, it seems to be in a rare phase of stellar life. And it happens to be so close to us. It's extremely fortuitous." said John Monnier, an associate professor in the University of Michigan, Department of Astronomy.

The disk appears much flatter than recent modeling from the Spitzer Space Telescope suggests, Monnier said. "It's really flat as a pancake," he said.

2 Million Years Old Fossil Skeletons Found in Africa

2010-11-18T04:26:00.000-08:00

An ancient relative of humans discovered in a cave in Africa is a scandidate for the immediate ancestor to the human lineage, an international team of scientists said Thursday, April 8, 2010.

The skeletons - a adolescent male and an adult female that lived nearly 2 million years ago - are well-preserved and were found near the surface in the remains of a deeply eroded limestone cave system.

It's possible they died after falling into the cave.

The hominids had longer arms than we do, and smaller brains. Their faces were human-like, and scientists say the discovery represents an important look into our pre-human past. Researchers stopped short of calling the new species, dubbed Australopithecus sediba, a missing link.

Australopithecus means 'southern ape.' Sediba means "natural spring, fountain or wellspring in Sotho, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa," said researcher Lee Berger, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. This was "deemed an appropriate name for a species that might be the point from which the genus Homo arises," Berger said.

The incomplete skeletons were found near Johannesburg at a site called Malapa, which means "homestead" in Sotho, in an area named the Cradle of Humankind.

"This is one of the richest fossil sites in Africa," said researcher Daniel Farber, an earth scientist at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Nearly a third of the entire evidence for human origins in Africa come from just a few sites in this region.

The sex of the fossils was determined from the shape of the jaws and hips, while analysis of the teeth suggest the juvenile male was about 12 years old and the adult female in her late 20s or early 30s. Since these specimens died at or about the same time as each other - from hours to weeks apart - the researchers suggest they would almost certainly have known each other in life and may very well have been related.

Both stood upright a little more than 4 feet high (1.2 meters). "The female probably weighed about 33 kilograms (72 lbs.) and the child about 27 kilograms (59 lbs.) at the time of his death," Berger said. The male was "right on the cusp of adulthood."

In many ways, the skeleton appears to be a mix of features, but also resembling members of the human family tree and others more like those of earlier ape-like hominids. (A hominid includes humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and their extinct ancestors, while hominins include those species after the human lineage split from that of chimpanzees.)

"The brain size of the juvenile was between 420 and 450 cubic centimeters, which is small when compared to the human brain of about 1,200 to 1,600 cubic centimeters," Berger said. "It would look almost like a pinhead."

But "the shape of the brain seems to be more advanced than that of australopithecines," Berger noted. Indeed, a number of skull features, such as certain wide, broad lines in the bone, "are ones you tend to attribute to early members of genus Homo," Berger said.

A number of facial and dental features resemble those of early human species, such as small teeth and a projecting nose. At the same time, "it had very long forearms - in fact, as long as an orangutans," Berger said, similar to other members of the genus Australopithecus. Its fingers were curved, ideal for climbing trees, yet relatively short, like in humans.

Its legs were relatively long and the ankles seem to be intermediate between modetn humans and earlier hominids. Still, its pelvis and hip were more advanced than other australopithecines, approaching the hip structure of the extinct human species Homo erectus. This indicates that Australopithecus sediba was able to walk upright in a striding manner.

Despite the differences in sex, the male and female skeletons physically resembled each other, something they seem to have had in common with the human family tree but not with more distant relatives, such as chimpanzees. This could mean that Australopithecus sediba leaned toward social behavior "where you don't necessarily have a dominant alpha male and you are lowering violence between males who are probably working more cooperatively in a group," Berger claimed.

A combination of dating techniques determined the rocks encasing the fossils are 1.95 million to 1.78 million years old.

"This fits in a critical moment in time," Berger explained. The human lineage is thought to have originated between 1.8 million to 2 million years ago, but the hominid fossils unearthed so far from that period have proven remarkably poor, giving scientists a great deal of room for speculation as to how the humanity tree evolved.

The researchers believe it is a convincing candidate for the immediate ancestor to the genus Homo due to Australopithecus sediba's age and physical traits. Based on its physique, they suggest its appearance signified the dawn of more energy-efficient forms of walking and running.

Many scientists believe the human genus Homo evolved from Australopithecus a little more than 2 million years ago, but that possibility has been widely debated, with other experts proposing an evolution from the genus Kenyanthropus. This new species might help clear up that controversy.

"These fossils give us an extraordinarily detailed look into a new chapter of human evolution, and provide a window into a critical period when hominids made the committed change from dependency on life in the trees to life on the ground," Berger said. "Australopithecus sediba appears to present a mosaic of features demonstrating an animal comfortable in both worlds."

Recent Intense Seismic Activity Of The Earth And The Pole Shifting

2010-11-18T04:24:00.001-08:00

Earth's magnetic field is in a state of change, say researchers who are beginning to understand how it behaves and why.

Right: The movement of Earth's north magnetic pole across the Canadian arctic, 1831-2001. (source: Geological Survey of Canada)

Scientists have long known that the magnetic pole moves. James Ross located the pole for the first time in 1831 after an exhausting arctic journey during which his ship got stuck in the ice for four years. No one returned until the next century. In 1904, Roald Amundsen found the pole again and discovered that it had moved-at least 50 km since the days of Ross.

The pole kept going during the 20th century, north at an average speed of 10 km per year, lately accelerating "to 40 km per year," says scientist Larry Newitt of the Geological Survey of Canada. At this rate it will exit North America and reach Siberia in a few decades.

Keeping track of the north magnetic pole is Newitt's job. "We usually go out and check its location once every few years," he says. "We'll have to make more trips now that it is moving so quickly."

Earth's magnetic field is changing in other ways, too: Compass needles in Africa, for instance, are drifting about 1 degree per decade. And globally the magnetic field has weakened 10% since the 19th century. When this was mentioned by researchers at a recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union, many newspapers carried the story. A typical headline: "Is Earth's magnetic field collapsing?"

As remarkable as these changes sound, "they're mild compared to what Earth's magnetic field has done in the past," says University of California professor Gary Glatzmaier.

Sometimes the north and the south poles swap places. Such reversals, recorded in the magnetism of ancient rocks, are unpredictable. They come at irregular intervals averaging about 300,000 years; the last one was 780,000 years ago.

Above: Magnetic stripes around mid-ocean ridges reveal the history of Earth's magnetic field for millions of years. The study of Earth's past magnetism is called paleomagnetism. (Image source: USGS)

To understand what's happening, says Glatzmaier, we have to take a trip ... to the center of the Earth where the magnetic field is produced.

At the heart of our planet lies a solid iron ball, about as hot as the surface of the sun. Researchers call it "the inner core." It's really a world within a world. The inner core is 70% as wide as the moon. It spins at its own rate, as much as 0.2o of longitude per year faster than the Earth above it, and it has its own ocean: a very deep layer of liquid iron known as "the outer core."

Right: a schematic diagram of Earth's interior. The outer core is the source of the geomagnetic field.

Earth's magnetic field comes from this ocean of iron, which is an electrically conducting fluid in constant motion. Sitting atop the hot inner core, the liquid outer core seethes and roils like water in a pan on a hot stove. The outer core also has "hurricanes"-whirlpools powered by the Coriolis forces of Earth's rotation. These complex motions generate our planet's magnetism through a process called the dynamo effect.

What happens when the reversal occurs? Magnetic lines of force near Earth's surface become twisted and tangled, and magnetic poles pop up in unaccustomed places. A south magnetic pole might emerge over Africa, for instance, or a north pole over Tahiti. Weird. But it's still a planetary magnetic field, and it still protects us from space radiation and solar storms.

Above: Supercomputer models of Earth's magnetic field. On the left is a normal dipolar magnetic field, typical of the long years between polarity reversals. On the right is the sort of complicated magnetic field Earth has during the upheaval of a reversal.

The magnetic field has a major importance in the seismicity on Terra.

The basic concept embodied in plate tectonics was recognized several centuries ago by persons working with world maps who noted that the outline of the west oast of Africa is a good match for the east coast of South America and suggested that the two continents might at one time have been joined together. Although this fact was a matter of great curiosity, it was not until much later that a Frenchman, Antonio SniderPellegrini made the first attempt to develop the concept of substantial continental movement; in a book published in 1858 he hypothesized that the Atlantic Ocean had been formed by the tearing apart and separation of the two continents. The author supported this postulation of "continental drift."(as it came to be known)

A much more comprehensive argument for the concept of continental drift was made in 1915 by a German meteorologist, AlfredWegener, in his book, "On the Origin of Continents and Oceans", in which he claimed that essentially all the world's large land masses at one time had been joined in a single supercontinent.

In the following years numerous other scientists began to accept the idea of continental drift, but most geophysicists rejected it because they could not imagine how major continental units could be driven through the oceanic crust for any signicant distance.

The American geologist H. H. Hess (1962) conceived a general hypothesis for motions of the Earth's crust. This continual movement is thought to be driven by heating of the mantle due to radioactivity, which causes molten rock to well upwards along the ocean ridges. As this material reaches the surface and cools, it forms the crust at the surface of the lithosphere; the entire lithosphere floating on the plastic asthenosphere is caused to spread outwards in both directions by the continued upwelling of additional molten rock. This new crust then sinks beneath the surface of the sea as it cools and spreads outward, and the motion continues until eventually the lithosphere reaches a deep sea trench where it plunges downward into the asthenosphere in a process called subduction. This concept of sea floor spreading is supported by many types of physical evidence, including the presence of seamounts at great depths as was mentioned earlier, but the most striking proof of the theory is given by patterns of magnetic orientation as shown by the zebra stripe patterns that have been observed in maps of sea floor magnetism.

As the Eath's crust is first formed, it is magnetized in accordance with the polarity of the Earth's magnetic field at that time, and it maintains that polarity as it spreads outward from the ridge. However, when the earth's eld changes polarity, as has happened at intervals of one half to one million years during the present Cenozoic era (65 million years), the crust that has just developed on both sides of the ridge shows the newly reversed polarity The rate of sea floor spreading may be evaluated by relating the spacing of these polarity stripes to the chronology of the polarity changes.

A plausible explanation for the intense seismic activity in the recent years could be the change that is taking place in the Earth's magnetic field. This causes the tectonic plates to move, colide more often than they normaly would. See the great earthquakes from all around the world.

Prehistoric Nuclear War?

2010-11-18T04:23:00.000-08:00

       People ask themselves about their purpose in life and who are we as a species.
       Archaeologists, anthropologists, and various academicians who play the "origins of Man" game, reluctantly and only occasionally acknowledge instances where unique skeletal and cultural evidence from the prehistoric record suddenly appear long before they should - and in places where they should not. These irritating artifacts destroy the orderly evolutionary line that academia has for so long presented to the public. Consequently, such data have been largely left buried in site reports, forgotten storage rooms, and dusty archives where one suspects that there is a great deal of suppressed, ignored, and misplaced pre-historical cultural evidence that would alter the established interpretations of human origins and provide us with a much clearer definition of what it means to be human.
       There is now a basic academic consensus that the "homo" origins go back at least three million years, and that an ancestor of modern man evolved about one million years ago. Homo Sapiens, the "thinking man" -our own species - became the dominant planetary life form on a worldwide basis, about 40,000 years ago.
       It is difficult enough to explain the sudden appearance of Homo Sapiens at that time, but it is an even more complex question to ponder why Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man correspondingly disappeared. And scientists dispute whether or not Neanderthal and our ancestors were two separate species or whether they interbred.
       And just as scientists are adding to a growing body of evidence that humankind developed in Africa, a Hungarian excavation surrenders a Homo Sapiens skull fragment in a context more than 600,000 years out of alignment with the accepted calendar of man's migrations across the planet. Hominid fossils are unearthed in Dmanisi, Georgia, indicative of 1.77 million years old; and a homind tooth found in Niocene deposits near the Maritsa River in Bulgaria is dated at seven million years old.
       What happens to Darwinian evolution when there are such sites as the one in Australia, which yielded Homo Sapiens (modern man), Homo erectus (our million-year-old ancestor), and Neanderthal (our Stone Age cousin) in what appears to be a contemporaneous environment? Then there is the Tabun site where Homo Sapiens fragments were found in strata below (which means older than) classic Neanderthal bones. In August 2007, scientists dating fossils found in Kenya challenged the conventional view that Homo Habilis (1.44 million years) and Homo erectus (1.55 million years) evolved one after the other. Dating of new fossil evidence revealed that the two species lived side by side in Africa for almost half a million years.
       But just as we are trying our best to fit skeletal fragments together in a manner that will be found acceptable to what we believe we know about our origins, footprints are being found in stone, which, if they are what they appear to be, will contradict our suposed evolutionary calendar. In Pershing County, Nevada, a shoe print was found in Triassic limestone, strata indicative of 400 million years, in which the fossilized evidence clearly revealed finely wrought double-stitching in the seams.
       Early in 1975, Dr. Stanley Rhine of the University of New Mexico announced his discovery of human-like footprints in strata indicative of 40 million years old. A few months before, a similar find was made in Kenton, Oklahoma. At almost the same time, a discovery of a footprint in stone was revealed in north-central Wisconsin.
       In Death Valley, there is ample fossil and skeletal evidence to indicate that the desolate area was once a tropical Garden of Eden where a race of giants lived and fed themselves with palatable foods taken from the local lakes and forests.We already that the ancient civilisation of Sumer wrote about giants that lived on Earth, and also, much later, The Bible tells a story of giants that lived here.
       To speak of a race of prehistoric giants in what is now the desert sands of Death Valley is simultaneously to refute the doctrine which decrees that man is a relative newcomer to the North and South American continents. While on the one hand, new radiocarbon dates demonstrate that the Bering Land Bridge and Cordilleran Ice Corridor were not passable until 9000 years ago, an increasing amount of physical evidence indicates that man was surely in this hemisphere much earlier than that recent date.
       For one thing, corn, an American contribution to the dinner tables of the world, is said to be, at 9000 years, our oldest domesticated seed crop. Some agriculturist had to be in the Americas more than 9000 years ago in order to domesticate the seed. Ancient squash seeds, peanuts, and cotton balls dated at 8,500 years old found in Peru’s Nanchoc Valley constitute additional evidence that New World farming was well established.        Conclusive proof that such ancient farmers did exist in the Americas was offered when a Humble Oil Company drill brought up Mexican corn pollen that was more than 80,000 years old.
       The anomalous Indian blood seration and dentition, and the geographic distribution of the American Indian, demands an impossible genetic time scale in which to transform Asiatic immigrants to distinctive New World inhabitants.
       Even if we attempt to keep some kind of peace with the accepted theories of New World habitation, we must grant more evolution in 40,000 years in North America than that which took place in more than one million years in Europe, Africa, and Asia.
       Skulls found in California, which are clearly those of American Indians, have been dated at 50,000 years old. But we are left with another mystery. A 140,000 year old American Indian type skull (via metric analysis) has been found at an Iranian excavation site.
       What of the lost Amerindian civilization of Cahokia, complete with pyramids and a great wall? One site, near the present city of St. Louis, may have contained a metropolis of more than 250,000 North American Indians.
       And who constructed the mysterious seven-mile walls of the Berkeley and Oakland, California, hills?
       And which pre-Mayan peoples engineered an elaborate waterworks in Yucatan to irrigate crops over 2000 years ago?
       The Caracol Tower at Chichen Itza is a remarkable Mesoamerican observatory that seems to have correlated its findings with similar sites in North America, including Mesa Verde, Wichita, and Chaco Canyon.
       One of the most heretical theories that I suggest in Worlds Before Our Own is that the cradle of civilization might possibly have traveled from the so-called New World to the Old. In 2007, years after the ancient city of Caral (Peru) was discovered, scientists have accepted the carbon dating of 2,627 B.C.E., thereby establishing the civilization in South America to be much older than the Harappa Valley towns and the pyramids of Egypt. Caral must now be recognized as “the mother of all civilizations,” the missing link of archaeology, the Mother City.
       Scientific knowledge has seemingly been prized by the inhabitants of every culture, known and unknown. Rock engravings, which may be as old as 60 million years, depict in step-by-step illustrations an entire heart-transplant operation and a Cesarean section. The ancient Egyptians used the equivalent of contraceptive jelly and had urine pregnancy tests. The cement used in filling Mayan dental cavities still holds after 1500 years.
       No fabric is supposed to have been found until Egypt produced cloth material 5000 years ago. How, then, can we deal with the Russian site which provides spindle whorls and patterned fabric designs more than 80,000 years old?
       Not only did the ancient Babylonians appear to use sulphur matches, but they had a technology sophisticated enough to employ complex electrochemical battery cells with wiring. There is also evidence of electric batteries and electrolysis in ancient Egypt, India, and Swahililand.
       Remains of a metal-working factory of over 200 furnaces was found at what is now Medzamor in Russian Armenia. Although a temperature of over 1780 degrees is required to melt platinum, some pre-Incan peoples in Peru were making objects of the metal.        Even today the process of extracting aluminium from bauxite is a complicated procedure, but Chou Chu, famous general of the Tsin era (265-316 A.D.), was interred with aluminium belt fasteners on his burial costume.
       Carved bones, chalk, stones, together with what would appear to be greatly ornamented ''coins," have been brought up from great depths during well-drilling operations. A strange, imprinted slab was found in a coal mine. The artefact was decorated with diamond-shaped squares with the face of an old man in each ''box."        In another coal-mine discovery, miners found smooth, polished concrete blocks which formed a solid wall. According to one miner's testimony. he chipped one block open only to find the standard mixture of sand and cement that makes up most typical building blocks of today.
       A gold necklace was found embedded in a lump of coal. A metal spike was discovered in a silver mine in Peru. An iron implement was found in a Scottish coal-bed. Estimated to be millions of years older than man is believed to have existed. A metal, bell-shaped vessel, inlaid with a silver floral design was blasted out of solid rock near Dorchester, Massachusetts.
       Two hypotheses may explain the presence of these perplexing artifacts: 1) that they were manufactured by an advanced civilization on Earth which, due either to natural or technological catastrophe, was destroyed before our world's own genesis; 2) that they are vestiges of a highly technological civilization of extraterrestrial origin, which visited this planet millions of years ago, leaving behind various artifacts.
       Even if a highly advanced extraterrestrial race might have visited this planet in prehistoric times, it seems unlikely such common, everyday items as nails, necklaces, buckles and vases would have been carried aboard a spacecraft deposited in such widely separated areas; for such artifacts have been found in North and South America, Great Britain, the whole of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Mid-East.
       In spite of the general unpopularity of catastrophism, there does seem to be a number of recently discovered "proofs" of ancient cataclysmic changes in the Earth's crust which may account for the nearly total disappearance of these prehistoric worlds. Geological evidence indicates that these changes were both sudden and drastic might have completely overwhelmed and destroyed the early inhabitants and their cultures.
       Perhaps the most potentially mind-boggling evidence of an advanced prehistoric technology that might have blown its parent-culture away is to be found in those sites which ostensibly bear mute evidence of prehistoric nuclear warfare.
       Large areas of fused green glass and vitrified cities have been found deep in the strata of archaeological digs at Pierrelatte in Gabon, Africa; the Euphrates Valley; the Sahara Desert; the Gobi Desert; Iraq; the Mojave Desert; Scotland; the Old and Middle Kingdoms of Egypt; and south-central Turkey. In contemporary times, such material as fused green glass has only been known at nuclear testing sites (where the sand had melted to form the substance). It is quite unsettling to some to consider it possible that these sites provide evidence of a prehistoric nuclear war. At the same time, scientists have found a number of uranium deposits that appear to have been mined or depleted in antiquity.
       If it is possible that nuclear annihilation of a global civilization did occur in prehistoric times, it seems even more urgent to learn who we really are before we find ourselves doomed to repeat the lessons left to us, by a world before our own.

Earth Didn't Create His Own Atmosphere

2010-11-18T04:19:00.000-08:00

Scientists found that Earth's atmosphere came from outer space . The gases which formed the Earth's atmosphere and probably its oceans did not come from inside the Earth but from outer space, according to a study by University of Manchester and University of Houston scientists. The report published in the journal Science means that textbook images of ancient Earth with huge volcanoes spewing gas into the atmosphere will have to be rethought.

According to the team, the age-old view that volcanoes were the source of the Earth's earliest atmosphere must be put to rest.

Using world-leading analytical techniques, the team of Dr Greg Holland, Dr Martin Cassidy and Professor Chris Ballentine tested volcanic gases to uncover the new evidence. The research was funded by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

"We found a clear meteorite signature in volcanic gases," said Dr Greg Holland the project's lead scientist. "From that we now know that the volcanic gases could not have contributed in any significant way to the Earth's atmosphere. "Therefore the atmosphere and oceans must have come from somewhere else, possibly from a late bombardment of gas and water rich materials similar to comets. "Until now, no one has had instruments capable of looking for these subtle signatures in samples from inside the Earth - but now we can do exactly that."

The techniques enabled the team to measure tiny quantities of the unreactive volcanic trace gases Krypton and Xenon, which revealed an isotopic 'fingerprint' matching that of meteorites which is different from that of 'solar' gases.

The study is also the first to establish the precise composition of the Krypton present in the Earth's mantle.

Project director Prof Chris Ballentine of The University of Manchester, said: "Many people have seen artist's impressions of the primordial Earth with huge volcanoes in the background spewing gas to form the atmosphere. "We will now have to redraw this picture."

The Ancient Civilisation of Angkor

2010-11-18T04:11:00.000-08:00

Spread out amongst the dense jungles of Cambodia hide the remains of an ancient and grand civilization. Once inhabited by a people known as the Khmer, today millions of tourists visit the temples at Angkor to get a glimpse of the majesty of this once proud city. While most visitors focus on the beauty of the city’s towering temples, another story lies in the intricate stone carvings adorning the buildings. These inscriptions tell of everyday life, grand military conquests and perhaps most intriguing of all, strange mythological creatures. But are all the fantastic animals depicted at Angkor purely myth, or are some of them based on real creatures that once lived?

The Khmer began to develop as a unique culture in Cambodia around 2000 years ago. Early contact with Indian traders had a tremendous influence on this developing society, bringing agricultural, mathematical and literary knowledge to the coastal regions of Cambodia. This contact also brought with it Hindu beliefs, in particular the worship of Vishnu and Shiva.

In later years, Mahayana Buddhism was introduced to the Khmer, followed by Theravada Buddhism in the thirteenth century.Even a casual perusal of the stone carvings at Angkor shows the importance that Hindu and Buddhist beliefs had to these ancient people.

The most common creatures represented at Angkor come from Hindu mythology. One of the most unique of these is the Garuda, a creature comprised of the head, wings and talons of an eagle with the body of a man. One of the three principle animal deities in Hindu mythology, the Garuda is the king of the birds and enemy of the serpent.

Some of the most impressive examples of the Garuda at Angkor can be found along the outside walls at Preah Khan. This impressive site also contains many wonderful examples of giant trees fused with the natural stonework of the site.

While the Garuda is most likely a purely mythological being based on a combination of two real creatures (the eagle and man), our next animal may share its mythological heritage with a living animal. The highlight of any trip to Angkor is usually a visit to the vast and towering temple complex known as Angkor Wat. Upon passing through the outer gates, a causeway flanked by seven-headed naga serpents leads to the central temple complex.

Known from Hindu and Buddhist mythology, the naga is a snake of gigantic proportions. A staple of Southeast Asian architecture, in Thailand the naga is depicted as a large crested serpent.
However at Angkor, the naga loses its crest in favor of a more ominous multi-headed appearance reminiscent of the Hydra from Greek mythology.

Many fantastic abilities are attributed to the naga of myth and legend, including the power to shape shift into human form and walk among man. Buddhist scriptures describe a variety of killing methods available to the naga, including a fatal poisonous bite, the strength to constrict its victims within its deadly coils, and the ability to spit a paralyzing venom. Most ominous of all, the naga is said to be able to kill simply by staring into the eyes of its victims. This same power was attributed to another mythological snake, the basilisk of mediaeval Europe whose powers were brought to a wide audience in the third Harry Potter book and movie.

But is the naga purely a creature of myth, or is its legend based on a real animal that once lived? Belief in the naga is strong among the inhabitants of Southeast Asia. Every year hundreds of thousands of locals and tourists gather along the shores of the Mekong River to take part in the Bang Fai Phaya Nark festival during which naga fireballs can be seen rising from the water along Thailand’s border with Laos.

The source of this strange luminous phenomenon is attributed to the naga, with some legends describing the balls of reddish light as the eggs of the serpent floating out of the water. In recent years, the appearance of the genuine phenomenon has been obscured by modern sound and light shows on the Thai side and Laotians who send up fireworks from the opposite side in an attempt to fool the Thais. Modern skeptics dismiss the naga fireballs as nothing more than Laotian fireworks witnessed by gullible Thais. However, the long history of the fireballs, dating back hundreds of years, argues that there may be something more to the show than just modern trickery.

Sightings of giant serpents continue to this day in Southeast Asia. In October of 2000, cryptozoologist Richard Freeman journeyed to Thailand with the Discovery Channel in search of the naga. The findings of this expedition were mixed.

While real evidence such as a reputed naga bone and a video of the creature both turned out to be misidentifications, Freeman found the eyewitnesses he spoke with to be sincere and credible. The results of their investigations led Freeman to conclude that a genuine giant serpent most likely does inhabit the tropical jungles of Southeast Asia.

Another Hindu deity commonly found around Angkor is the monkey god Hanuman. Particularly impressive depictions of him can be found at Banteay Samre. Monkeys certainly abound in the tropical forests of Cambodia, but another much more intriguing apelike creature is said to inhabit the region as well.

Known as the orang dalam to the indigenous people of Malaysia, legends of this mysterious creature in many ways seem to be almost identical to stories of Bigfoot in North America. Said to stand between six and eight feet tall and give off a pungent odor, encounters with this jungle inhabitant have occurred with some frequency over the last 200 years.

Intrigued by the stories of the orang dalam, author and explorer Harold Stephens mounted an expedition in search of the creature in the early 1970’s. He journeyed deep into a mostly unexplored part of the Malay jungle near to an area the orang dalam was said to inhabit.

Upon reaching their destination, the expedition discovered a game trail used by a variety of animals. Among the tracks they documented was a long series of enormous footprints 19 inches long and 10 inches wide. The native guides confidently identified the prints as those of the orang dalam.

Due to the credibility of the witness and the remote location in which these prints were found, fraud seems unlikely, but skeptics remain unconvinced. While the ape-man carvings at Banteay Samre are merely depictions of Hindu deities, when viewing them one can’t help but be reminded of the orang dalam, a very similar being with strong evidence in favor of its existence.

But not all of the mysterious creatures depicted at Angkor come from Hindu and Buddhist mythology. One of the last sites I visited was the jungle temple of Ta Prohm, said to contain an animal carving unique in the reqion. Ta Prohm is one of the most beautiful places to visit in the area with an incredible blending of ancient architecture and aggressive jungle growth.

Fig trees weave in and out of the crumbling stones both dismantling the fragile construction and yet holding it together. Archeologists involved with restoring Ta Prohm are left with a difficult decision. Cutting away the trees will prevent further destruction of the site. However, their removal will undoubtedly cause damage to both the stonework and perhaps just as importantly, to the atmosphere of this sacred site.

After wandering through the temple and marveling at the twisting fig trees for over an hour, I finally located the glyph I was searching for near the exit to the complex. Before me, enclosed in a round circle, was a clear depiction of what could only be a stegosaurus.

The creature had a small neck and four short legs with a long tail. Along its humped back, a series of plates were clearly carved. As I stared in a wonder, a guide leading two American tourists approached the spot and casually asked them if they believed dinosaurs lived 800 years ago? He then proudly showed them the stegosaurus carving to their utter amazement. Stylistically similar circular carvings can be found all over Ta Prohm, but none of them show this same creature. While to my knowledge reputed sightings of a living stegosaurus have not been made, other saurians have been glimpsed.

In 1999, Papua New Guinea’s The Independent newspaper reported that a “dinosaur-like reptile” was witnessed near Lake Murray. The creature was described as having a long neck and tail with a body nearly two meters wide and “as long as a dump truck.” It walked upright on thick hind legs and had two smaller forelegs. Most intriguing of all, the creature was said to have “largish triangular scoops on the back” very similar to a stegosaurus.

The dinosaur-like creature was witnessed by local villagers traveling in a canoe and was glimpsed the following day by a Seventh Day Adventist pastor and a church elder.Obviously the creature did not match any wildlife indigenous to the region and to this day the sighting remains unexplained.

The most famous of all living dinosaur legends comes from the Congo. Here it is said that a creature resembling a small brontosaurus lives to this very day. Known as the mokele-mbembe, the animal is described by locals as having a body similar in size to an elephant with four short legs. Unlike an elephant however, the creature is said to have a long serpententine neck with a small head and a matching tail.

Numerous expeditions have gone in search of the mokele-mbembe and have brought back tantalizing clues to its existence. In 1992, a Japanese film crew working on a documentary filmed a creature moving rapidly through Lake Tele, one of the places where the beast is said to live. The footage showed what appeared to be a creature with a long neck that yet again matched no known local wildlife.

A more mundane explanation for the carving found at Angkor is of course that the Khmer unearthed the fossilized remains of a stegosaurus 800 years ago and it was these fossils that prompted the carving. Unfortunately we will probably never know what the real motivation was for showcasing this fascinating monster.

From dinosaurs to ape-men to giant snakes, the plentiful stone carvings at Angkor offer much to ponder over. While most visitors gaze in wonder at the massive towers and grand architecture, the subtle details of the intricate stone imagery offer a much more intriguing puzzle. Whether the Khmer meant to incorporate depictions of fantastic animals they knew to exit locally or whether they were simply carving based on Hindu and Buddhist mythology, we may never know. But either way, the carvings at Angkor rank among the best of the ancient world and can be appreciated by all.