CT scans reveal mummies' long-lost secrets

A long line of hospital staff wraps around the corridor outside a small conference room in New York to catch a glimpse of the precious cargo.

Inside are the three frail bodies in open wooden crates causing all the commotion. Another body -- a prince no less -- is a few rooms down in a computer tomography scanner.

The bodies are part of the Brooklyn Museum's collection of 11 Egyptian mummies, transported to the North Shore University Hospital to be scanned. The goal: Find out who they are, how they might have died and establish a chronology of advances in ancient Egypt's mummification techniques.

The process is not necessarily new. Egyptian mummies have been exposed to radiographic study since 1896 and CT scans, which conducts imaging by sections, for more than two decades.

Perhaps the most famous of them, King Tutankhamun (c. 1355-346 B.C.), was scanned in 2005 right outside the vault that holds his sarcophagus. The scan resulted in more than 17,000 images that were analyzed by an international team of radiologists, pathologists and anatomists, led by the world-renowned Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The scope and ability of CT scan technology are proving invaluable in learning more about the funeral rituals of ancient Egyptians and the mummies themselves. Whereas conventional X-rays cannot clearly distinguish soft tissue from bone and can see only two planes, CT scanning can differentiate among the various types of bone and soft tissue, and reconstruct three-dimensional images that "show fine detail inside coronary arteries down to 0.6 millimeters" said Amgad Makaryus, director of cardiac CT and magnetic resonance imaging at North Shore, providing a better chance at diagnosis and differentiation among diseases.

"CT has proved to be exceptionally well-suited for studying the fragile, wrapped figures of Egyptian mummies, especially those still contained within their decorated plasterlike shells, or cartonnages," according to an article by a team of eight researchers, led by Derek N.H. Notman, published in the American Journal of Roentgenology.

Read complete story at http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/06/25/mummy.scans/index.html

UFO's of the 19th Century

Article by Cristina Aguilar

For decades, these UFO sightings have been explained away as meteors or other things. But what is interesting that before the Wright brothers launched an airplane, flying crafts were already visible in the skies. None of these crafts could really be explained away as weather balloons or meteorites, to witnesses of the 1800s the crafts were not from this earth.

The Wright Brothers may have been the first to put an machine into the sky, but people had been looking up at flying aircraft for decades before the brothers launched the first airplane.

Reports of UFOs were recorded in newspapers of the 19th century, among the most famous was written in the St. Louis Democrat, Oct. 19, 1865. That article appeared two weeks later in The Cincinnati Commercial, bringing more public awareness to UFOs. The account was of an old Montana fir trapper by the name of James Lumley who saw a UFO fly over him and crash into the forest, exploding like a rocket. The story picked up by the Missouri Democrat and other newspapers, which contributed to national attention or awareness of alien spacecraft.

Most fur trappers may tell tales of Indians, or bears, or mountain lions, but Lumley's account of a flying saucer that crashed into Cadotte Pass was among the most explicit and remains a mystery to this day. It is said that debris from the crash may still be up there, but few there has been no findings since. Nevertheless the story has remained one of the most mysterious of the 1800s.

Lumley was about 175 miles above the Upper Missouri in Great Falls Montana. He was on his way back to his camp site when he saw a "bright luminous body in the heavens." It went rapidly into an eastern direction and was plainly visible for about five seconds. As it flew Lumley saw it burst into an explosion in the sky and he later heard an explosion. It was shortly followed by a strong wind through the forest like a tornado, and the event left the air smelling like sulfur.

The next day, after walking two miles, he saw a path "several rods wide" made through the forest. He followed the path and discovered an object or rather a stone on the side of the mountain. What was unusual about this stone is that it had strange hieroglyphics and glass in it. Lumley felt the fragment he had found had come from an immense body and that the hieroglyphics must have been used for some purpose and made by human hands.

Read complete article at http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977715311

Ukraine: UFO lands in village, multiple wintesses

Michael Cohen

Reports of a UFO landing in a small rural village are filtering out from the Ukraine. Residents of the village of Brailov are insisting that they were woken up to an intensely bright white light in the middle of the night, earlier this month.

The residents, mostly farmers, are also claiming that electrical surges and a strange feeling of electrical currents passing through their bodies accompanied the light.

In the morning after the UFO event three unusual imprints consisting of 'wheels with wheels' arranged in triangular formation were seen on the ground of one of the resident's yards.

The witnesses included 82 year grandmother old Helena Ganzyuk, her daughter 56 year old Nadezhda Ganzyuk and 24 year old Helena Petrovskaya. After the event a number of residents, including some witnesses, became ill.

Symptoms of their illnesses included vomiting and high temperature. Emergency services were called in from Kiev and radioactivity was measured. Radioactiviy levels were high but not extreme. Metal traces were identified and dirt samples removed for analysis.

The residents believe a UFO of extraterrestrial origin might have been responsible for the incident.

Read original story at http://www.allnewsweb.com/page6946949.php

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UFO-spotting Turkish night-watchman regards aliens as 'the world's policemen'

WITH HIS neatly clipped moustache and checked shirt buttoned up to his neck, 51-year-old Yalcin Yalman doesn’t look like a typical trendsetter.

But the images he has filmed since 2007 from the suburban Istanbul holiday village where he works as a night-watchman have helped turn UFO-spotting, once the object of scorn, into a popular pastime among educated Turks.

“For me it’s just a hobby, a way of passing the night,” Yalman shrugged outside an Istanbul conference centre where more than 1,000 people had paid 35 lira (€16), a handsome sum by local standards, to listen to him and ufologists from around the world reveal their latest findings.

Holding cups of watery coffee selling at an extortionate three lira, elegantly dressed Turkish ladies with word-perfect English peppered speakers from as far afield as Mexico with questions about 2012 and the end of the Mayan calendar.

Former head of the UK defence ministry’s UFO desk and a well-known ufologist, Nick Pope, one of the speakers at the conference, confessed himself amazed at the turnout.

“Ufology has a bit of an image problem back home – computer nerds, trainspotters, you know,” he said. “But that is not the sense I get here at all. And there seems to be an equal balance between men and women.”

Haktan Akdogan, the organiser of last weekend’s International UFO and New Age Congress, the fourth of its kind in Turkey, put growing domestic interest in UFO sightings down to the increasingly receptive Turkish media, “more sympathetic than the media in the West”.

Read complete story at http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0622/1224249263841.html

Mammoths Roasted in Prehistoric Kitchen Pit

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

June 3, 2009 -- Central Europe's prehistoric people would likely have been amused by today's hand-sized hamburgers and hot dogs, since archaeologists have just uncovered a 29,000 B.C. well-equipped kitchen where roasted gigantic mammoth was one of the last meals served.

The site, called Pavlov VI in the Czech Republic near the Austrian and Slovak Republic borders, provides a homespun look at the rich culture of some of Europe's first anatomically modern humans.

View a slide show of the prehistoric grill site here.

While contemporaneous populations near this region seemed to prefer reindeer meat, the Gravettian residents of this living complex, described in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity, appeared to seek out more super-sized fare.

"It seems that, in contrast to other Upper Paleolithic societies in Moravia, these people depended heavily on mammoths," project leader Jiri Svoboda told Discovery News.

Svoboda, a professor at the University of Brno and director of its Institute of Archaeology, and colleagues recently excavated Pavlov VI, where they found the remains of a female mammoth and one mammoth calf near a 4-foot-wide roasting pit. Arctic fox, wolverine, bear and hare remains were also found, along with a few horse and reindeer bones.

The meats were cooked luau-style underground. Svoboda said, "We found the heating stones still within the pit and around."

Boiling pits existed near the middle roaster. He thinks "the whole situation -- central roasting pit and the circle of boiling pits -- was sheltered by a teepee or yurt-like structure."

It's unclear if seafood was added to create a surf-and-turf meal, but multiple decorated shells were unearthed. Many showed signs of cut marks, along with red and black coloration. The scientists additionally found numerous stone tools, such as spatulas, blades and saws, which they suggest were good for carving mammoths.

Read more at http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/06/03/prehistoric-bbq.html

Six Top-Secret Aircraft Mistaken for UFOs

Spy and stealth planes — some with bizarre, bat-shaped wings, others with triangular silhouettes that imply otherworldly designs — have long generated UFO sightings and lore. And official denials feed rumors that the government isn't telling us about alien ships.

The CIA estimates that over half of the UFOs reported from the 1950s through the 1960s were U-2 and SR-71 spy planes.

At the time, the Air Force misled the public and the media to protect these Cold War programs; it's possible the government's responses to current sightings of classified craft — whether manned or remotely operated — are equally evasive.

The result is an ongoing source of UFO reports and conspiracy theories.

Here are the Earth-built craft that likely have lit up 911 switchboards over the years.

1. RQ-3 Darkstar

Manufacturer: Lockheed Martin/Boeing
First Test Flight: 1996
Deployment: None (it was canceled in 1999)
Declassified: 1995
Size: 15 ft long; 69-ft wingspan
Performance: 288 mph (cruising speed); 45,000+ ft (max. alt.)

UFO Link: The official life span of this unmanned spy plane was brief and disappointing, with a crash and a program cancellation after just three years. But in 2003, Aviation Week reported that a similar stealth UAV was being used in Iraq — fueling speculation that the government scrapped the craft publicly only to secretly resurrect it for clandestine missions.

2. U-2

Manufacturer: Lockheed Martin
First Test Flight: 1955
Deployment: 1957 to present
Declassified: 1960
Size: 49 ft long; 80-ft wingspan
Performance: 410 mph (max. speed); 85,000 ft (max. alt.)

Read more at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,524997,00.html

Did President Kennedy meet extraterrestrials?

According to claims in a rare video, George Adamski met with President Kennedy at the White House in late 1961 and passed on a letter to him from human looking extraterrestrials. In addition to giving advice on the Cuban missile crisis, the alleged letter also contained an invitation for Kennedy to meet with the extraterrestrials. If Kennedy did attend such a meeting, it may explain why he was certain about human looking extraterrestrial life; made undisclosed trips to Air Force bases to deal with the UFO issue; and why he instructed NASA to cooperate with the USSR on joint space and lunar missions, and to release classified UFO files.

Lou Zinstag, Carl Jung’s niece describes what she was told by Adamski concerning Kennedy’s alleged meeting with extraterrestrials:

I still remember his [Adamski’s] White House story. He told me that he had been entrusted with a written invitation for President Kennedy to visit one of the space people’s huge mother ships at a secret airbase in Desert Hot Springs, California, for few days. In order to keep this visit absolutely secret, Adamski was to take the invitation directly to the White House through a side door. Still glowing with excitement and smiling happily, he explained how the row of cars in which his taxi was traveling had to stop because of a red light just in front of this particular door where a man he knew - a spaceman, he said - was standing ready to let him in. Adamski later learned that Kennedy had spent several hours at the airbase after having canceled an important trip to New York, and that he had a long talk with the ships crew, but that he had not been invited for a flight."

Read complete story at http://www.examiner.com/x-2383-Honolulu-Exopolitics-Examiner~y2009m5d22-Did-President-Kennedy-meet-extraterrestrials

Low flying UFO approaches and hovers over remote Oklahoma ranch

An Oklahoma witness feeding horses near Buffalo first noticed very low and slow moving lights approaching. The witness noticed distinct detail to the lights, but could not make out a shape of the object - and then it appeared that the craft was slowing down completely - reaching a nearby dirt road and crossing over some power lines.

The witness ran from this coral area to a nearby pick-up truck - and looking back at the lights - estimated that they were about 150 feet away and had stopped completely and were hovering. The object looked like a single craft and was somewhere between 25 and 50 feet across.

The panicked witness realized that the roadway toward Buffalo would take the truck close to the lights, so the only other option was to drive south. About a quarter of a mile down the road, the witness looked back and the lights were gone.

Read complete story at http://www.examiner.com/x-2363-UFO-Examiner~y2009m5d25-Low-flying-UFO-approaches-and-hovers-over-remote-Oklahoma-ranch

Unsolved Mysteries of The Dover Demon

The Dover Demon was allegedly sighted on three separate occasions in the town of Dover, Massachusetts on April 21 and April 22, 1977. It has remained a subject of interest for cryptozoologists ever since then. Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman was the initial investigator, the first to interview the eyewitnesses within a week of the sightings, and the individual who named the creature the Dover Demon; it was disseminated by the press, and the name stuck.

Coleman quickly assembled and brought into the inquiry three other investigators: Joseph Nyman, Ed Fogg, and Walter Webb. All were well-known ufological researchers in eastern Massachusetts, with Webb being the assistant director of the Hayden Planetarium at Boston's Science Museum. Coleman did not feel he was necessarily dealing with a ufological phenomenon, but he wanted to have seasoned investigators with good interviewing skills to do a comprehensive examination of the eyewitnesses and their families, as well as law enforcement, educational, and community members.

History

The Dover Demon was first sighted at night by three seventeen-year-olds who were driving through the Dover area when the car's headlights illuminated it. Bill Bartlett, the driver, reported that he saw what he thought at first was a dog or a cat, but upon closer inspection realized that it was a bizarre, unearthly-looking creature crawling along a stone wall on Farm Street.

Bartlett continued to watch the creature, and he reported it to have a disproportionately large, watermelon-shaped head and illuminated orange eyes, like glass marbles. It had long, thin arms and legs with slender fingers, which it used to grasp onto the pavement. It was hairless and had rough, flesh-toned skin, described as tan and sandpaper-like. The creature's appearance was very plain, with no nose or ears, and no mouth was seen. The witness drawings portray its head as having a skull shape, forming the contour of a circle on top with a more elliptical ending projecting down to include where the nose and mouth would be.

Read complete story at http://theunexplainedmysteries.com/dover-demon.html

Dinosaur blood extracted from bone

Scientists insist fossil is 80 million years old

Collagen, hemoglobin, elastin, laminin and cell-like structures resembling blood and bone cells have been found in a dinosaur bone scientists still claim is 80 million years old, according to a report in Science magazine today.

Paleontologist Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University first claimed to have isolated soft tissues and collagen from a Tyrannosaurus rex leg bone several years ago.

But because the leg was broken during excavation, the evidence was damaged and could never be independently confirmed.

Schweitzer then examined a more pristine leg of a plant-eating hadrosaur excavated from sandstone and found even better samples of soft tissue, according to the report.

Read complete story at http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=96681

Russia: Amazing UFO filmed near Moscow, video

A UFO was allegedly seen by a number of witnesses hovering above a shopping mall in a satellite town of Moscow in Russia early last month. One lucky witness managed to film the craft with astonishing results. The footage below shows the very clear outline of a disc shaped craft that suddenly vanishes towards the end of the clip.

The sighting took place in the town of Kashira, on the outskirts of Russia's capital city Moscow. The UFO was spotted above the well-known Kisharsky Shopping Mall, leading some local UFO researchers to speculate that it may have been tapping into the Mall's substantial energy system.

UFO sightings and footage have never been more frequent in Russia and many local ufologists believe that aliens will soon be openly revealing their presence on our planet.

Ghostly 'white lady' sparks hunts by spirit hunters

Claims of a ghostly woman haunting a remote spot in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, has prompted hundreds of spirit hunters to descend on the area.

By Caroline Gammell

Cars have been lined up nose to tail every night for the past three weeks as news of the vision on the Mullaghmoyle Road, near Coalisland, has spread.

Armed with video recorders and digital cameras, ghost-hunters have queued up to get a glimpse of the "white lady", who is described as elderly with a sad expression.

Some have come as far as Belfast and Enniskillen in the hope of seeing the ghost.

Although some have dismissed the sighting as a trick of nature, the phenomenon has roused the interest of paranormal groups.

Raymond Bell, who owns a pub nearby in Brackaville, said his 17-year-old son Ryan had not believed in ghosts until he saw the "woman" several times.

"My son says he has seen the shadowy figure on numerous occasions and others have seen it too - it is the face of an elderly lady wearing a long white dress with a long white cape," he said.

"People are still coming in their droves to see her. They come when it gets dark at about 4.30pm and they stay until after 1am.

"It is only about 400 yards away and I have tried to get down there but there are just too many cars. It is all that anyone is talking about."

Sinn Féin Councillor Desmond Donnelly said there was a line of 60 cars queued up at one stage: "I wouldn't be one for ghosts, but you know how this type of thing spreads.

"If you ask me, it's more likely to be a reflection of the moon on the river that flows through the area. Although the talk is that what was seen was in the shape of a person."

Among those interested in the sightings is Warren Coates of the Northern Ireland Paranormal Research Association (NIPRA).

He said he planned to go to the area with a spirit medium: "It may sound far-fetched, but we will try to pick up names of people who may not be able to move on from this life.

Read complete article at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4176249/Ghostly-white-lady-sparks-hunts-by-spirit-hunters.html

Ghost photographed in haunted hotel

A hotel in Romania has become a local attraction after a photograph of a ghost was published by newspapers and television.

The ghost of a tall woman in a long white dress reportedly watches the hallways and staircases of the Decebal hotel, in the Baile Herculane mountain spa.

The 150-year-old hotel is believed to hide ancient Roman treasure under its foundations and the ghost is said by locals to keep treasure hunters away.

The hotel has been closed for renovations for five years but people who have ventured inside claim to have seen - and photographed - the ghost.

Victoria Iovan, 33, from Baile Herculane, said: "I photographed my boyfriend in the hotel. Back home I was shocked to see another woman's shadow in the picture. She looked like a priestess in long white clothes."

Another witness, a high school student called Alexandra, said he and six classmates went into the hotel late one evening for fun.

"All of a sudden we felt a cold air and we saw a white silhouette close to us. We couldn't find our way out because we ran so fast," he said.

Local authorities have warned people not to go into the hotel because they say it is unsafe because of the building work.

New Bigfoot activity noted in Siberia

More evidence of the abominable snowman (more politely known as a Yeti or Bigfoot) has been uncovered in Russia’s Kemerovo Region in southwestern Siberia, the Moscow newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reports.

Vladimir Makut, a local administrator in the Tashtagol district of Kemerovo Region, noted in an interview with the newspaper that sightings of unusual large creatures in the area date far back into Soviet times, when the area contained several prison colonies. The creatures inspired such dread that the prisoners sometimes refused to go out to work. The local native people, the Shors, also have numerous legends about wild “dark people.” Specialists note, however, that, historically, more yeti activity has been recorded in neighboring regions. The Soviet Academy of Sciences even set up a commission to investigate those reports in 1958. It concluded that Altai, which Tashtagol borders on, is a breeding ground for the creature. There the yetis have been sighted in pairs and yeti children have been seen.

Dozens of sightings near Azas Cave have been recorded, all during the winter months. The area is accessible only with local guides and the right equipment, but it is visited by campers and personnel from the coal mining industry. The latest series of reports began last November. Igor Burtsev, director of the International Center for Hominology, noted that the situation is unusual in that reports have come from locals. Local inhabitants rarely report such sightings, even when they are aware of the presence of the mysterious creatures. There were no actually encounters with the yetis, but numerous tracks were found. They were described as similar to bear tracks, but with distinct toes.

Read complete article at http://mosnews.com/features/2009/04/07/bigfoot/

More Trade Secrets: The Essential Ghost Hunters's Toolbox

By Calvin Waters

The advice on how to use real Ghost Hunting equipment can only be be answered by real researchers with years of experience in the ghost hunting field. Many would be Ghost Hunters only shop Paranormal Detection Equipment, Electronic Ghost Hunting Detectors because they think it is cool and want to try their hand at it. Usually without any prior training or other interest then doing what they think is cool.

Paranormal investigators make use of over a dozen different tools and electronic devices to help track down and locate possible evidence of paranormal. But are they in your ghost Hunters toolbox?

I can remember the day when individuals went into a very haunted house armed only with a Camera: 35mm camera with black and white film and/or infrared film. It took no more then that to make many into true believers. Today it is all about full documentation with no errors, and sworn testimony to the level that it makes us all look suspect. that is if we don't have or do what they do on TV.

A Ghost Hunter from JACKSON, MS. she wrote me telling me in her long email that she had been ghost hunting professionally for over 5 years. And that she was an upstanding Member of the TAPS Family.

Her request was for me to explain how to use the EMF detector she owned for 4.5 years and never quite got the hang of. In truth I discovered she actually used it because the clients who she investigated for expected it. But she had no clue to what the readings actually meant.

My advice is: Determine which ghost hunting methods you'll feel most comfortable working with: sensory or scientific. Sensory includes the use of dowsing rods, wind chimes and even psychics, sensitive's or mediums.

Scientific employs gadgets such as video cameras, thermal imaging scopes and electromagnetic field (EMF) detectors. Some ghost hunters use a combination of both.

Read complete article at http://www.hauntedamericatours.com/ghosthunting/Ghosttool.php