Russia Is Making Flying Saucers
- Russia’s latest endeavor to produce commercial grade lighter-than-air aircraft seems a little strange. The “aerostatic thermoballasted vehicle” from Locomo Sky looks like something straight out of a 1950s UFO movie. The flying saucer shape isn’t just for show though, it helps the aerostat travel through the air with a minimum loss of energy to air resistance. According to their press release, Locomo Sky has started building a construction facility in the Ulyanovsk region of Russia to create a fleet of the aircraft. These airships, more commonly called Locomoskayners, are already used in geographical surveys. That version of the craft has a 1000kg (2200 lbs) carrying capacity with a crew of 2-8. Locomo Sky is hoping to build a huge version of the Locomoskayner that would have a 600 metric ton capacity or even carry 11,000 people. The company presented this idea recently to President Dmitry Medvedev, reportedly with good results. With millions already invested, it seems possible that Russian skies may be filled with flying saucers hauling cargo very soon. It sounds too wacky to be true, but it is.
It was an experiment that didn’t set out to demonstrate how mind control techniques used by cult groups can work effectively in practice. But that’s one of the results from a behavioral study done to test whether elderly people isolated together could so completely convince themselves they were young again that their bodies actually would begin to morph ‘backward’ in resonance .
What Harvard University psychologist Ellen Langer wanted to know was whether the body clock of a group of men in their 70s and 80s could be re-set to 1959 by their collective mindset.
After just a week, those in this experimental group (compared with a control group of similar aged men) measured significant physical and mental changes in a range of areas:
—They had less arthritis;
—More joint flexibility;
—Improved posture and gait;
—Better hearing and eyesight;
—Sharper minds and better performance on mental tasks;
—Elevated spirits and optimism about life.
Unexplained Mysteries - Roopkund The Mysterious Skeleton Lake
- Roopkund is better off known as “The skeleton lake” due to the presence of an enormous grave that holds about 300 to 600 skeletons. This discovery has revolutionized the world of ancient history ever since 1942, when a park ranger came across this mass deposition of bones. It probably is an in-accessible frozen lake that requires about four day travel to reach from the nearest locality. Recently, it has become an important spot for the visitors as they learn and conjecture this advent of science….
- Coming back to the Skeleton Lake riddle, probably the skeletons were those of the devotees participating in such a mass procession centuries ago. The folklores say that a certain king had participated in this religious ‘yatra’ with his company of female dancers. This had offended the Goddess Nanda and she vented her rage by bringing down the snowstorm at the hapless revelers.
Antarctic Glacier Has Five-story Blood-red Waterfall of Primordial Ooze
There is a five-story, blood-red waterfall pouring slowly from the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valley. Its back story, at Atlas Obscura, is simply remarkable:
Roughly 2 million years ago, the Taylor Glacier sealed beneath it a small body of water which contained an ancient community of microbes. Trapped below a thick layer of ice, they have remained there ever since, isolated inside a natural time capsule. Evolving independently of the rest of the living world, these microbes exist without heat, light, or oxygen, and are essentially the definition of “primordial ooze.” The trapped lake has very high salinity and is rich in iron, which gives the waterfall its red color. A fissure in the glacier allows the subglacial lake to flow out, forming the falls without contaminating the ecosystem within.
two new re-released papers from the great Vallee:
- on the probabiliity of extraterrestrials
- the dynamics of long term growth
Like Joe Stack and Amy Bishop, J.Patrick Bedell’s story goes deep into the weird. After Coleman’s mention of Bedell’s reading habits and interests he goes on to make the very important note of the ridiculous politicizing and right wing co-option of the shootings:
- Wikipedia appears to have already taken down Bedell’s self-authored page; however Bedell’s web footprints are being gathered by some rightwing bloggers who are trying to tie Bedell’s actions to a bizarre brand, in their thoughts, of “liberal” mindset (e.g. here, here, and here).
- Exorcism of Anneliese Michel
- The Reincarnation of Baya Pathak
- The Time Traveler John Titor
- The Abduction of Travis Walton
- The Vampire Belfazaar Ashanitson
We live in a rational world with rational laws. Tales of the paranormal and supernatural have no place in real life… Or do they? Here are five strange cases that will give the average skeptic, including this writer, some food for thought…or at least some entertaining stories to tell after watching horror movies with a group of friends…
Different Life Forms in Front of Us: Scientists Predict the Possibility of a Shadow Biosphere
The possibility of strange forms of alien life seems to have just got a whole lot closer to home. Astrobiologists from Arizona State University, Florida, UC Boulder, NASA, Harvard and Australia have recently theorized about a “shadow biosphere” – a biosphere within a biosphere where alternative biochemistry may be thriving in a way that we haven’t yet thought to examine. Such “weird life” may have had, for hundreds of millions of years, their own ecologies right here in our own backyard. Indeed, like Dark Energy and neutrinos, “weird life” may be all around us even now, only in a non-obvious way. Some astrobiologists are now suggesting that “weird life” is just as likely to be found here on Earth as it is in the Martian regolith, the seas of Europa , or certainly the complex bio-hadronistry on the surface of a neutron star.
I have included a link to their full article here: Davies_etal_Astrobio2009.pdf
Now, while I think that shadow organisms and shadow biospheres are certainly cool enough to blog about, please allow me to take the logical next step by citing yet another intriguing astrobiology paper that came out of the Santa Fe Institute. Published nearly a decade ago in an astrobiology related Nature commentary article titled, “Where are the dolphins?” scientists Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart realizedblackbodySETI for example) we will likely mistake it for being just a regular old hot rock! (and showed mathematically that it’s already happening here on Earth) that as a civilization advances they begin to use the available electromagnetic spectrum for communication more fully and efficiently until ultimately their radiative emissions are indistinguishable from radiation. In other words, when we look out into space with telescopes to search for signs of alien life ( So either three things must be true to find life through a telescope: 1. The civilization is at a very precise moment in its development,2. The civilization wants to be found and so sets aside some broadcast space for a message, 3. We know their decompression algorithm and what frequency band to apply it to.
It’s this last possibility that relates to the shadow biosphere in a philosophical sense. Unless we know how to interpret the signs of such life, we may not be able to distinguish it from the natural background.
