Paranormal Magazine

THE Home Secretary yesterday rejected a last-ditch bid to block the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the US on computer hacking charges.

Alan Johnson said the move would not breach McKinnon’s human rights.

He said in a statement: “As the courts have affirmed, I have no general discretion.

“If his human rights would be breached, I must stop the extradition.

If they would not be breached, the extradition must go ahead.”

It came after the High Court refused McKinnon permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.

McKinnon, 43, of Wood Green, North London, who has a form of autism, is accused of hacking into the Pentagon’s computers but said he was investigating UFOs.

His mum Janis Sharp called it a “cruel and miserable decision”.

She added: “To force a peaceful, vulnerable, misguided UFO fanatic like Gary thousands of miles from his much-needed support network is barbaric.”

[via: thesun.co.uk]

Spaceships powered by black holes or dark matter may be the future of stellar exploration.

The radical proposals, put forward by physicists in two American universities, are hoped to make visits to other stars in our galaxy plausible.

At the moment, the fastest-moving spacecraft mankind has made is Voyager 1, which is just leaving the solar system at an impressive 17km (10.6 miles) a second. However, even at that dizzying – to us – speed, it would take it another 74,000 years to reach even our nearest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri, 4.2 light years away.

Chemical rockets are not suitable for travelling these sort of distances, as they only convert 0.000000001 per cent of their mass into energy. They would require billions of tons of fuel to get up to the required speed. Even nuclear fusion reactors would be less than 1 per cent efficient.

Other suggestions have included using vast sails to collect light energy, either from stars or from laser beams, or using antimatter reactions. But both of these have practicality problems: sails need a nearby power source, while antimatter is hugely difficult to make and equally difficult to store.

But a New York University physicist, Jia Liu, has suggested using a dark matter “jet engine” to power spacecraft, while two mathematicians at Kansas State University, Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland, have claimed that using an artificial black hole as a power source is feasible.

Surprisingly, there seems to be nothing in the present understanding of physics that would rule these proposals out, according to New Scientist.

The black hole proposal would involve building a spaceship with a large parabolic reflector behind it, and then putting a small (at a mere million tons) black hole in its focus. The “Hawking radiation” given off by the black hole as it slowly converts its mass into energy (or “evaporates”) would push the spacecraft to near light speed within a few decades, bringing Proxima Centauri into a more reasonable reach.

More than that, at the relativistic near-light-speed velocities, the travellers’ experience of time would slow down, making them age slower than those left on Earth. At very high speeds, says Mr Crane, “it might be possible to reach the Andromeda galaxy 2.5 million light years away within a human lifetime.”

Mr Liu’s idea is more speculative, relying on one possible theory of what dark matter really is. He suggests building a spacecraft with a large intake at the front which would scoop up dark matter particles. If, as is theorised, those particles are “neutralinos”, which annihilate each other on contact, they could be forced into a box at the back of the craft which would fire the energy rearwards like a jet engine.

The faster the spacecraft travelled, the more neutralinos it would pick up, and the faster it would accelerate. If his calculations are correct, Mr Liu suggests that the ship could reach near-light speed in just days.

However, even if dark matter does consist of neutralinos, there are other problems. First, to work well, it would need densely concentrated dark matter, and as far as we know the nearest dense area is 26,000 light years away in the centre of the Milky Way. Second, neutralinos barely interact with ordinary matter. To make a “box” to keep it in would require some new, unknown material. As Mr Crane says, “this is the idea’s Achilles heel.”

[via: telegraph.co.uk - Tom Chivers]

Victoria’s Country Fire Authority says a call out to a suspected gas leak in Central Victoria on Tuesday night was not what they were expecting.

Fifteen firefighters and two CFA tankers attended a property in Axedale near Bendigo following reports of a strong smell of gas.

But when they arrived they discovered the source of the gassy smell was a flatulent 120-kilogram sow.

Axedale fire captain Peter Harkins says the pig’s owner had alerted authorities.

“He was a little bit embarrassed to say the least. It took us a little while to compose ourselves, to speak to him,” he said.

“When we got there, as we drove up the driveway, there was this huge sow, about a 120-odd kilo sow, and it was very obvious where the gas was coming from.

“We could not only smell it, but we heard it and it was quite funny.

“It was fairly obvious what it was. I think we dealt with it fairly professionally and had a bit of a giggle when we got back to the station.”

[via: abc.net.au]

Turkish video footage is claimed to be the “most important images of a UFO ever filmed” – and is said to even depict ALIENS.

The shots were captured by night guard Yalcin Yalman in a compound in Turkey earlier this year.

The 42-year-old and a number of residents claim the UFOs were spotted over a four month period between May and September near the compound in Istanbul.

He said: “I don’t know what these things are. We filmed them several times and they are totally unknown to us. I was very excited when I saw them and I want the world to know that UFOs do exist”.

Almost two-and-a-half hours of footage was filmed featuring a variety of objects ranging from incredible flying saucer-type ‘craft’ to clustering orb-like lights hovering in the night sky.

The clips were handed to the Sirius UFO Space Science Research Centre in Turkey who interviewed witnesses and painstakingly combed through the footage frame by frame.

International UFO researcher Haktan Akdogan said: “In this amazing video footage, physical forms of UFOs and their metallic structures are clearly noticeable.

“What is more important is that in the close-up of some footages of the objects, entities in them can be distinctly made out.”

He continues: “We have spoken with all of the witnesses and had detailed analysis conducted on all two-and-a-half hours of footage.

“After conducting all of the analysis we came to the conclusion that this video footage is 100 per cent genuine.

“The objects filmed are structured objects and are not the result of misidentification or natural phenomena, aircraft or astronomical objects.

“They are not the results either of any kind of computer animation. Now is it a time for world governments to acknowledge the reality of UFOs.”

He added: “The images captured on film are expected to have a tremendous impact throughout the world and they are the most important UFO images ever caught on camera.”

The footage will be revealed at the UFO Data Magazine annual conference in Pontefract, West Yorks, on October 25.

And it has earned the seal of approval from British experts.

UFO Data Magazine editor Russell Callaghan said: “This video footage from Turkey, if authentic, represents a serious challenge to science. I can honestly say that this footage is truly unique.”

To view the video go to our  videos page HERE.

[via: thesun.co.uk - Sebastian Lander]

THIS strange pink light in the sky led members of the public to wonder whether they had spotted a UFO.

The Met office said they received a number of phone calls after the mysterious glow appeared over Mayfair, London.

But they dismissed the idea that it might have been a UFO or any other paranormal activity.

A spokesman said: “There was a lot of low cloud around yesterday evening and evidently a pink spotlight was being shone into the sky, which produces this effect when it hits the cloud.

“This can happen quite often in a major city.”

He said the cloud – spotted on Monday evening – was as low as 600ft at the time.

[via: thesun.co.uk - Vince Soodin]

The scoop: Conspiracy theorists are convinced a rogue planet will destroy the Earth in 2012, and just as we are about to see the release of a Hollywood movie on the topic, the hype is set to increase. David Morrison, a NASA astrobiologist and expert scientist for NASA’s Ask an Astrobiologist website, calls for a reality check and in 2008 he contributed this article to Discovery News.

Unbeknown to most of us, a small but vocal group of conspiracy theorists is convinced that a rogue planet is about to enter the inner solar system and doom the Earth.

They say that this threatening planet on a 3600-year orbit was discovered by the ancient Mesopotamians, who named it Nibiru, and it was known also to the Mayans, who associated it with the end of their calendar “long count” in December 2012. In Web sites, blogs, and radio talk shows, they insist that NASA is tracking Nibiru – but that this information is being kept from the public as part of a worldwide conspiracy.

They say the official silence can’t be maintained for much longer, however, because by 2009 Nibiru will be visible to the naked eye from the southern hemisphere. They also say Earth’s axis is already tilting and the length of the day is changing under its influence. As one believer recently wrote to me, “Why are you lying. It’s coming, and everyone knows it.”

I began to receive questions about this bizarre story in December 2007 through NASA’s “Ask an Astrobiologist” site. Normally I receive up to a dozen questions per week from the public, dealing mostly with life in the universe – but in the past 6 months the Nibiru traffic alone has grown to 20-25 messages a week, ranging from the anguished “I can’t sleep,” “I am really scared” or “I don’t want to die” to the abusive “you are putting my family at risk” and “if NASA denies it then it must be true.”

As a scientist, I’m both fascinated and astonished by the deluge of questions from people who are genuinely frightened and, apparently, unable to distinguish astronomical fact from fiction. They’re watching YouTube videos and visiting slick Web sites with nothing in their skeptical toolkit, or to quote Carl Sagan no “baloney detector.” Now a blockbuster disaster film called “2012″ is set for release in the summer of 2009, and the commercial enterprise is clearly trying to cash in on people’s concern (perhaps contributing to their fear as well).

My guess is that only a tiny fraction of people truly believes that Armageddon is coming in December 2012. But their uncritical acceptance of this story worries me as a warning of the dangers of our current scientific illiteracy.

We’re facing monumental problems with global warming and loss of habitat, yet a substantial minority of Americans thinks the world was formed less than 10,000 years ago and deny that evolution is possible. Many Americans seem to prefer coal-fired generators to nuclear power plants without realizing the toll in public health that coal imposes. Billions are spent, including tax-payer dollars, for so-called alternative medicine with no scientific evidence for its efficacy. And legislators often resist efforts to collect the data that could actually demonstrate which government programs are effective and which ones don’t work as intended.

In spite of my frustrations, I can always hope that Nibiru will turn into a teaching moment. Its proponents are convinced that it will be visible to the unaided eye this coming spring, and its effects on the rotation and orbit of the Earth will be obvious by summer (just in time for the release of the film “2012″). When none of this happens, I hope they’ll realize that they need better tools to distinguish fact from fiction.

[via: discovery.com]

A Spanish woman has thanked a stranger who saved her life after approaching her on a bus to tell her she was suffering from a rare disease.

Montse Ventura, 55, said a woman who sat opposite her on Barcelona’s number 64 bus nine months ago urged her to have tests for acromegaly, a disorder resulting from an excess of growth hormone due to a pituitary gland tumour.

She said she had never heard of the disorder but the woman handed her a piece of paper where she had written down the names of two clinical tests, the Guardian newspaper reported.

“She wrote something down and said ‘Have the analysis done as soon as possible because if you wait until you feel the need to consult your doctor, you may already be in a very bad state,’” Ventura said.

“A month later I went to my gynaecologist for my annual check-up. I handed over the piece of paper and asked for those tests to be added to the standard ones.”

She said that to her doctor’s surprise, the test results rang alarm bells. “Some hormonal measures were totally abnormal,” she said. “I had more tests done and they ended up operating on a tumour.” The operation to remove the tiny tumour from the pea-sized pituitary gland at the base of her brain was successful.

After the story was reported in newspapers across Spain a 60-year-old endocrinologist rang La Vanguardia newspaper on Tuesday to say she had been the “guardian angel”.

She told the newspaper she had made the diagnosis after seeing Ventura’s unusually shaped hands. “The hands gave me a lot of clues but I wasn’t sure whether to say anything but I am a very spontaneous person,” she explained.

“I’d rather put my foot in it than keep the worry to myself.”

Ventura said that she and her guardian angel had now spoken by phone and the two will meet when the media fuss in Spain dies down.

[via: telegraph.co.uk]

A suspected bank robber was caught on camera apparently eating his demands note shortly after police handcuffed him.

On Thursday a man entered a First Merit bank in Streetsboro, Ohio, and handed a worker a note that said he would shoot her if she did not give him money, police said.

Shortly after the robbery occurred, police arrested John H Ford, 35, who was driving on a motorway towards neighbouring Twinsburg.

Police handcuffed Mr Ford and were searching him for weapons when, according to images captured by a camera fixed to the dashboard of the car, the suspect gobbled up a piece of paper an officer had just removed from his pocket.

Police in Streetsboro, Ohio said the note was the same as that handed to a bank teller hours earlier demanding cash.

Police appear not to notice as Mr Ford tucked into the note as they were busy searching the suspect for weapons.

Daniel Biada, a Twinsburg police officer, said: “As we’re searching him, officers are removing items and throwing them on the cruiser hood.

“We’re searching him for weapons. We’re not looking at his head.”

The whereabouts of the note demanding money came into question after the suspect was taken into custody on Thurdsay and investigators asked whether officers had found the piece of paper.

Police only discovered that Mr Ford had eaten it when they reviewed the images captured on camera.

[via: telegraph.co.uk]

In the oceans of a moon hundreds of millions of miles from the sun, something fishy may be alive—right now.

Below its icy crust Jupiter’s moon Europa is believed to host a global ocean up to a hundred miles (160 kilometers) deep, with no land to speak of at the surface. (See “Jupiter Moon Has Violent, Hidden Oceans, Study Suggests.”)

And the extraterrestrial ocean is currently being fed more than a hundred times more oxygen than previous models had suggested, according to provocative new research.

That amount of oxygen would be enough to support more than just microscopic life-forms: At least three million tons of fish-like creatures could theoretically live and breathe on Europa, said study author Richard Greenberg of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

“There’s nothing saying there is life there now,” said Greenberg, who presented his work last month at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences. “But we do know there are the physical conditions to support it.”

In fact, based on what we know about the Jovian moon, parts of Europa’s seafloor should greatly resemble the environments aroundEarth’s deep-ocean hydrothermal vents, said deep-sea molecular ecologist Timothy Shank.

“I’d be shocked if no life existed on Europa,” said Shank, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who was not involved in the new study.

Despite the promising new estimates, it’s too early to do more than speculate about how Europan life might have evolved. A closer look—perhaps by a NASA orbiter now in development—will be needed to tell exactly how chemicals are distributed on Europa and how the moon’s geologic history might have contributed to life’s chances.

Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei discovered Europa in 1610. But it wasn’t until Galileo, the NASA spacecraft, reached the Jupiter system in 1995 that scientists were able to study the moon in detail.

[For more Click Here - via: nationalgeographic.com]

A rural Australian claims to have in his possession absolute and scientifically verifiable proof of UFO type entities in Earth’s atmosphere.

Mr Jim Strong of the town of Greta in New South Wales, Australia has been using high-tech night-time video recording technology to monitor multiple UFOs or aerial objects in the sky above his property. He is willing to submit his proof to any reputable scientific body for examination.

Fascinatingly Mr Strong believes that the objects observed might not be alien spacecraft but rather exotic unknown life-forms existing within earth’s atmosphere based on a completely different set of principles to life as we know it.

Jim writes:

“For the past seven months I have had sightings of UFOs over my property in Greta NSW and have archived videos of many of these craft and entities declared unidentified by these Australian departments I have submitted inquiries to:

-Department of Defence, Williamstown, Canberra.

-Department of transport and Infrastructure, Canberra. (Also via. – Air Services Australia)

-CASA

-Investigation to five (5) local airfields for confirmation if any flights had come from their fields during sightings periods of at least three sightings nights. All with negative air traffic reported.

“These entities are videoed in the night sky with night vision capable camera with telephoto lens as well as seen with the naked eye.

“Sightings have been from as close as 50 feet (infrared entities), 500 meters to above 10,000 meters in our atmosphere.

“Some earlier sightings were reported and archived with AUFORN and the National Library of Australia. The raw AVCHD video recording was original and unaltered.

“Any archived AVCHD file is available to any reputable research organisation for confirmation as to its genuineness.

“Nearly all of my videos are in super night shot (infrared illuminated) and therefore green / black, so computer rendering is done for clarity and some colour for interest. No shapes are altered or added to during this process and can be compared with original frames.

“Not to confuse these facts, is the research I am currently conducting into the near infrared light spectrum as videoing aerial phenomena traversing the sky over my region, with laser illumination up to 3km (3,000 meters) in the night sky with infrared light, then recording them on video. Then the results are computer processed to show the composition of these phenomena / objects. This research is concurrently presented to Newcastle University for assessment and interest.

“These experiments have already discovered many entities and considered unknown life-forms in my opinion.

“At present over 30,000 images and videos are archived as proof of my claims.

“What might these entities be? Perhaps they are Alien craft, holograms or messages?

“Alternatively they might be: Angels, Spirit beings, Ghosts or exotic energy based life forms?”

Jim hopes we might have the answer soon.

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