Prehistoric Whale Ate Other Whales For Breakfast

"And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good." -- Genesis 1:21

"This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders." -- Herman Melville, author, Moby Dick, 1851

Nature: Call me Leviathan melvillei.

A Peruvian desert has turned out to be the final resting place of an ancient sperm whale with teeth much bigger than those of the largest of today's sperm whales.

The fossil, dated at 12–13 million years old, belongs to a new, but extinct, genus and species described in Nature today1. Named Leviathan melvillei, it probably hunted baleen whales.

A team of researchers recovered 75% of the animal's skull, complete with large fragments of both jaws and several teeth. On the basis of its skull length of 3 metres, they estimate that Leviathan was probably 13.5–17.5 metres long, within the range of extant adult male sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus).

Its largest teeth, however, are more than 36 centimetres long — nearly 10 centimetres longer than the largest recorded Physeter tooth.

Modern sperm whales lack functional teeth in their upper jaw and feed by suction, diving deep to hunt squid. Conversely, Leviathan had massive teeth in both its upper and lower jaws, and a skull that supported large jaw muscles. It may have hunted like raptorial killer whales, which use their teeth to tear off flesh.

Co-author Klaas Post of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam in the Netherlands stumbled across the fossil in November 2008 during the final day of a field trip to Cerro Colorado in the Pisco-Ica Desert on the southern coast of Peru — an area that is now above sea level owing to Andean tectonic activities. The fossils were prepared in Lima, where they will remain.

Ancient Egyptian Telescopes

"STREPSIADES: Have you ever seen a beautiful, transparent stone at the druggists', with which you may kindle fire?

SOCRATES: You mean a crystal lens.

STREPSIADES: That's right. Well, now if I placed myself with this stone in the sun and a long way off from the clerk, while he was writing out the conviction, I could make all the wax, upon which the words were written, melt." -- Aristophanes, playwright, The Clouds, 419 B.C.

"I have discovered [sic] an avalanche of evidence proving the existence of a very remarkable ancient technology, one which is well and truly forbidden because it indicates that our ancestors were not idiots, and as we all know very well, if we ever admitted that, the illusion of progress would be seriously imperiled. The technology I have discovered [sic] is optical." -- Robert G. K. Temple, author, Forbidden Technology, 2009

"I call it consensus blindness. People agree not to see what they are convinced cannot exist. 'Everyone knows' that there was no optical technology in antiquity, so consequently when you come across it, staring you in the face, you go blind. End of conflict." -- Robert G. K. Temple, author, Forbidden Technology, 2009

This is a follow up post to my earlier post on Democritus and the Ancient Telescopes of Babylon.

Science Show (2000): "Ancient Egyptian Telescopes".

Robert Temple: It started as I was having lunch one day with the science fiction writer, Arthur C Clarke. I told Arthur that I'd seen a very strange life-sized crystal skull, and he liked it so much he later made a film about it. And then in fact he used that as his logo for all his many TV films about mysterious things. And his friend said he knew a strange crystal object too. It wasn't a skull, but it was apparently an ancient lens, and I thought that was kind of strange because I didn't think there were ancient lenses. He said it was in the British Museum and he hadn't seen it, but he knew it was there, and he hoped to study it one day.

Well he died unfortunately, so I thought I'd better step into the breach and I studied it. And now it's resulted in this gigantic book.

Robyn Williams: The gigantic book is called The Crystal Sun, published here in June. Robert Temple became convinced that there must have been a telescope, and that the ancients knew how to use it. He's with Wendy Barnaby in London.

Robert Temple: Well we now know that it was used in this way because I found over 450 ancient lenses by the time I was through, and I'm still not through. These lenses were used for magnification and we know that that was going on at least by 3300BC. That's a long time ago. And they were used for starting fires by focusing the rays of the sun. They were also used for medical purposes. That is focusing the rays of the sun to cauterise wounds, and they were used for telescopes, rudimentary telescopes. Not only used for studying the moon and the stars, but for surveying. Optical surveying makes it possible to achieve great accuracy. And I think it's now pretty clear that this was the means by which the alignments of the pyramids Giza were achieved - by optical surveying techniques using these telescopes - the lenses of which I've found.

Wendy Barnaby: You've found lenses in statues, Egyptian statues. They have lenses for eyes. What sort of effect does that give?

Robert Temple: The forth and fifth dynasty statues of old kingdom Egypt which date from about 2500BC are really incredible. They're some of the finest cut and ground and polished crystal convex lenses you could ever find. The statues were made by painting a black dot at the back behind the eye, which served as the pupil. And the crystal lens then magnifies this in a way that slightly changes as you move around, so that the statue appears to be alive as it looks at you through its crystal eyes. Most alarming. There are many of these statues to be seen on display in the Cairo Museum in Egypt, and there's one very fine one in the Louvre in Paris. But I don't think any exist in Australia.

Wendy Barnaby: And nobody here actually looked at these statues and thought, ooh I wonder why that effect is with the eyes?

Robert Temple: It's amazing how people can look at things and not think anything at all. It seems to be quite common.

Wendy Barnaby: That's a very polite way of putting what you've been saying about archaeologists and people who haven't recognised what you've been finding.

Robert Temple: Well I hate to be rude about archaeologists because I have friends who are archaeologists and a lot of them are very fine folk, but they do tend to be a little bit narrow. They want to be left alone. They want to be allowed to dig - a bit like dogs who have favourite bones they're going after. And they want, if they're Egyptologists to be allowed to read their tests in peace please - no phone calls, no callers. And really they don't want to have to put larger pictures together, and they certainly don't want to have to learn anything new like astronomy or mathematics or optics. They really want to be left alone please.

Wendy Barnaby: So they think that there were no lenses really till AD?

Robert Temple: Well the conventional way of looking at this is to say that spectacles appeared in the 13th century, and the telescope appeared in the 17th century. If you were to go up to an archeologist and say did they have magnifying glasses in ancient times, or telescopes god forbid, he would probably feel inclined to faint or to scream or to look supercilious or something. But he would certainly say no. And the fact that I found over 450 ancient lenses is slightly embarrassing to this point of view, because it's kind of hard to ignore - 450 lenses - although it was successfully done until now.

Wendy Barnaby: And these lenses are just lying around in museums, are they?

Robert Temple: Yes, yes a lot of them are on public display, anybody can see them. And on the cover of my book Crystal Sun, there is a photo I took of a fragment of a Greek pot from the 5th century BC, which was excavated near the Acropolis in Athens; showing a Greek looking through a telescope. Well now this has been on public display for about 20 years in the Acropolis Museum in Athens. Millions of people have filed past it. Nobody has paid the slightest attention to it, and yet it's obviously a Greek looking through a telescope. What else can it be?

Wendy Barnaby: You've found light used in extraordinary ways in Egyptian temples, light offerings. Can you tell me about that?

Robert Temple: Yes I did. As a matter of fact when I was at Karnak in upper Egypt, my wife Olivia who's far more observant than I am because she's a painter, among her many other fine attributes, she spotted this because we were in the Shrine of Ramses III which has a roof on it. So it's an interior space which is a very fine thing indeed. And we noticed that the Pharoah was standing there making offering to the God Amon, holding an empty tray. And that on to this empty tray for only three minutes a day was projected a light offering, and I took a photograph of this and it's in the book.

The light offering showed the feather of Maat, as it's called in ancient Egyptian. And for those who don't know ancient Egyptian I'd better hasten to translate that it means cosmic order or truth or justice. And the feather of cosmic order which is what the Pharoah was meant to uphold in his job is being offered on this tray to the god. I thought that was pretty clever. And then we began to realise that the Egyptians must have been up to these tricks a lot, and we found about half a dozen examples of this kind of thing. We found the face of the god Horus illuminated once a year for 2 minutes at the winter solstice. Then there's a shaft of light that comes streaking into the chapel of Ptah at Karnak which for only 1 minute a day illuminates a carved eye

But the most important findings which I made is something so big that I don't know how anybody failed to notice it for 3500 years, which is the minimum period of time it's been there; is the winter solstice shadow that's on the great pyramid. Nobody saw it. Why? I took a photo of that, and it's very important because the second pyramid is placed in just such a way, and is just such a size that at sunset on the winter solstice it casts a shadow on the south side of the great pyramid which has exactly the same slope as the passages on the inside of the great pyramid.

We all think about building such a thing. How do you do it? And how do you get it aligned so precisely that it's accurate to one part in 7½ thousand. Obviously you can only do it with optical surveying instruments, so I was able to solve that little problem.

Also see my post on Democritus and the ancient telescopes of Babylon.

Egyptian Origins of the Chaldaeans

Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History, 1st century B.C.

Now the Egyptians say that also after these events a great number of colonies were spread from Egypt over all the inhabited world. To Babylon, for instance, colonists were led by Belus, who was held to be the son of Poseidon and Libya; and after establishing himself on the Euphrates river he appointed priests, called Chaldaeans by the Babylonians, who were exempt from taxation and free from every kind of service to the state, as are the priests of Egypt; and they also make observations of the stars, following the example of the Egyptian priests, physicists, and astrologers. They say also that those who set forth with Danaus, likewise from Egypt, settled what is practically the oldest city in Greece, Argos, and that the nation of the Colchi in Pontus and that of the Jews, which lies between Arabia and Syria, were founded as colonies by certain emigrants from their country; and this is the reason why it is a long-established institution among these two peoples to circumcise their male children, the custom having been brought over from Egypt. Even the Athenians, they say, are colonists from Saïs in Egypt, and they undertake to offer proofs of such a relationship ....

... to us it seems not inappropriate to speak briefly of the Chaldaeans of Babylon and of their antiquity, that we may omit nothing which is worthy of record. Now the Chaldaeans, belonging as they do to the most ancient inhabitants of Babylonia, have about the same position among the divisions of the state as that occupied by the priests of Egypt; for being assigned to the service of the gods they spend their entire life in study, their greatest renown being in the field of astrology.

Drusilla D. Houston

On Extreme Human Antiquity and Destroyed Worlds

"Indisputable proofs of the extreme antiquity of Chaldea have been unearthed. These evidences show that under the oldest cities lie the successive foundations of still older cities, seemingly stretching back in time to the antediluvian world." -- Drusilla D. Houston, historian, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, Chapter XI: The Strange Races of Chaldea, 1926

On Geomythology

"The history of Babylonia like that of most nations begins with a myth; but we are beginning to realize that a deep significance lies beneath old myths." -- Drusilla D. Houston, historian, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, Chapter XI: The Strange Races of Chaldea, 1926

"Men once claimed that ancient Troy was a myth and that the Labyrinth of Minos was fiction; but archaeologists have unearthed the Troy of Greek legends and the Labyrinth of Crete." -- Drusilla D. Houston, historian, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, Chapter XI: The Strange Races of Chaldea, 1926

On the Great Deluge of All

"It is certain that we must credit Babylonians with possessing recorded knowledge of the creation and remembrance of epochs in the antediluvian world." -- -- Drusilla D. Houston, historian, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, Chapter XIII: The Civilization of Babylonia, 1926

"The Babylonian account of the deluge is older than the Biblical story. It does not take away from it but rather corroborates its truth." -- Drusilla D. Houston, historian, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, Chapter XIII: The Civilization of Babylonia, 1926

On Astrolatry

"The Babylonians were planet worshippers." -- Drusilla D. Houston, historian, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, Chapter XIII: The Civilization of Babylonia, 1926

On Ancient Telescopes

"The Chaldeans must have understood the manufacture of the telescope, for [Austen H.] Layard reported the discovery of a lens of power in the ruins of Babylon. Nero the emperor of Rome had optical glasses from the east." -- Drusilla D. Houston, historian, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, Chapter XIII: The Civilization of Babylonia, 1926

Scientists Confirm Halton Arp's Observations Again

"... it seems likely that redshift may not be due to an expanding Universe, and much of the speculations on the structure of the universe may require re-examination." -- Edwin P. Hubble, astronomer, 1947

"The present observations are used inductively to conclude that the compact objects [quasars] originate in the nuclei of large galaxies where the physical conditions approach singular values and that their excess redshifts are related to their young age as measured from this event." -- Halton C. Arp, astronomer, 1972

"There is nevertheless a nagging suspicion among some astronomers, that all may not be right with the deduction, from the redshift of galaxies via the Doppler effect, that the universe is expanding. The astronomer Halton Arp has found enigmatic and disturbing cases where a galaxy and a quasar, or a pair of galaxies, that are in apparent physical association have very different redshifts...." -- Carl E. Sagan, professor, 1985

"There's a large body of work going on, observational work, theoretical work, which is based on the assumption that quasars are at their cosmological distances. If it turns out seriously that we're right, then all that work is in vain. We don't know anything like as much as we think we do by saying that quasars are far away, and that's another huge problem for people to face up to." -- Geoffrey Burbidge, astrophysicist, 2000

Science Daily: Galaxy Encounter Fires Up Quasar.

ScienceDaily (June 25, 2010) — Using two of the world's largest telescopes, an international team of astronomers have found evidence of a collision between galaxies driving intense activity in a highly luminous quasar. The scientists, led by Montserrat Villar Martin of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucía-CSIC in Spain, used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) on La Palma in the Canary Islands, to study activity from the quasar SDSS J0123+00.

They publish their work in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Several types of galaxies, known as active galaxies, emit enormous amounts of energy from their central region or nucleus, with the most luminous objects known as quasars.

South Africa: 60,000 B.C.

"Although man knows that he has lived on this planet for millions of years, he finds a recorded history of only a few thousand years. And even these few thousand years are not sufficiently well known." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, polymath, Worlds In Collision, April 1950

"As we shall see again and again, we have such a limited knowledge and practically no understanding of the worlds before our own." -- Brad Steiger, author, Worlds Before Our Own, October 1978

"If we're looking at human history, we can't see very far...." -- Isaac Asimov, author, 1988

"Going back 30,000 years requires you to speculate because we really don't have much an idea what was going on." -- David Morrison, archaeologist, February 26th 2010

New Scientist (March 2010): Oldest 'writing' found on 60,000-year-old eggshells.

COULD these lines etched into 60,000-year-old ostrich eggshells (see photo) be the earliest signs of humans using graphic art to communicate?

Until recently, the first consistent evidence of symbolic communication came from the geometric shapes that appear alongside rock art all over the world, which date to 40,000 years ago (New Scientist, 20 February, p 30). Older finds, like the 75,000-year-old engraved ochre chunks from the Blombos cave in South Africa, have mostly been one-offs and difficult to tell apart from meaningless doodles.

The engraved ostrich eggshells may change that. Since 1999, Pierre-Jean Texier of the University of Bordeaux, France, and his colleagues have uncovered 270 fragments of shell at the Diepkloof Rock Shelter in the Western Cape, South Africa.

They show the same symbols are used over and over again, and the team say there are signs that the symbols evolved over 5000 years.

China: 6,500 B.C.

"There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after." -- Ecclesiastes 1:11

BBC (April 2003): 'Earliest writing' found in China.

Signs carved into 8,600-year-old tortoise shells found in China may be the earliest written words, say archaeologists.

The symbols were laid down in the late Stone Age, or Neolithic Age.

They predate the earliest recorded writings from Mesopotamia - in what is now Iraq - by more than 2,000 years.

The archaeologists say they bear similarities to written characters used thousands of years later during the Shang dynasty, which lasted from 1700-1100 BC.

But the discovery has already generated controversy, with one leading researcher in the field branding it "an anomaly".

The archaeologists have identified 11 separate symbols inscribed on the tortoise shells.

The shells were found buried with human remains in 24 Neolithic graves unearthed at Jiahu in Henan province, western China.

The site has been radiocarbon dated to between 6,600 and 6,200 BC.

The research was carried out by Dr Garman Harbottle, of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, US, and a team of archaeologists at the University of Science and Technology of China, in Anhui province.

"What [the markings] appear to show are meaningful signs that have a correspondence with ancient Chinese writing," said Dr Harbottle.

The Neolithic markings include symbols that resemble the characters for "eye" and "window" and the numerals eight and 20 in the Shang script.

"If you pick up a bottle with a skull and crossbones on it, you know instantly that it's poison without the word being spelt out. We're used to signs that convey concepts and I wouldn't be surprised if that's what we're seeing here," Dr Harbottle told BBC News Online. ... The research is published in the journal Antiquity.

Understandably, mainstream Darwinist fundamentalist pseudoscientists feel threatened by actual physical evidence and responded predictably and emotionally: Archaeologists Rewrite History.

The researchers have won support from some archaeologists but been challenged by others, who call their hypothesis "nonsense."

"There is nothing new here," Robert Murowchick, a Boston University archaeologist told Science magazine. He reportedly dismissed the notion "simple geometric signs" can be linked to early writing.

I agree with Sophist Murowchick that "there is nothing new here."

"... there is no new thing under the sun." -- Ecclesiastes 1:9

In fact there is something quite old here.

"Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us." -- Ecclesiastes 1:10

Element 114 On Brink of Recognition

" ... if one must believe Poseidonius, the ancient dogma about atoms originated with Mochus, a Sidonian, born before the Trojan times. However, let us dismiss things ancient." -- Strabo, geographer, 7

New Scientist: Element 114 on the brink of recognition.

The periodic table is set to get bigger, now that three labs have independently made atoms of element 114. There's still one big uncertainty though – should it be classified as a metal or as a noble gas?

In February, an element with 112 protons in its atomic nucleus was recognised and named copernicium by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). A similar honour should shortly be on the way for element 114.

In 1999, researchers at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, claimed to have made atoms of element 114, but no confirmation was available. Now teams at two other laboratories say they have produced it.

One team was led by Heino Nitsche and Ken Gregorich at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. The other was led by Christoph Düllmann at the Centre for Heavy Ion Research (GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany.

Like the Dubna group, both sets of researchers fired calcium atoms containing 20 protons each at a target of plutonium atoms, which contain 94 protons each. A calcium nucleus occasionally fused with a nucleus of plutonium to create an atom with 114 protons, the teams say in papers published in Physical Review Letters in September 2009 and June 2010 respectively.

The US lab detected two atoms of element 114, while the German lab made 13. Most of the atoms decayed into lighter atoms in just a few tenths of a second, though one lasted 3.6 seconds before breaking down. The chain of decay products provides a distinctive signature, confirming that atoms of element 114 really have been produced. "The data as they were published from Dubna have been confirmed," Düllmann says. "There are no questions left [about] whether these decay chains are real or not."

Maglev: Expanding Applications

"Upon quitting the marbles to pass on to the other more remarkable stones, who can for a moment doubt that the magnet will be the first to suggest itself? For what, in fact, is there endowed with more marvellous properties than this?" -- Pliny the Elder, historian, 77

Science Daily: Analyzing Food and Beverages With Magnetic Levitation.

ScienceDaily (June 24, 2010) — Scientists are reporting development of a new use for magnetic levitation, or "maglev," the futuristic technology best known for enabling high-speed passenger trains to float above the tracks. In ACS' bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, they describe putting maglev to use in an inexpensive sensor for analyzing food, water, and other beverages.

Democritus and the Ancient Telescopes of Babylon

"Anaxagoras, Democritus, and their schools say that the milky way is the light of certain stars." -- Aristotle, philosopher, Meteorology, Book I, 350 B.C.

"Of the Galaxy or the Milky Way: It is a cloudy circle, which continually appears in the air, and by reason of the whiteness of its colors is called the galaxy, or the milky way. Some of the Pythagoreans say that, when Phaeton set the world on fire, a star falling from its own place in its circular passage through the region caused an inflammation. ... Democritus [said], that it is the splendor which ariseth from the coalition of many small bodies, which, being firmly united amongst themselves, do mutually enlighten one another." -- Plutarch, historian, On the Opinions of the Philosophers, Book III, 1st century

"He [Democritus] said that the ordered worlds are boundless and differ in size, and that in some there is neither sun nor moon, but that in others, both are greater than with us, and yet with others more in number. And that the intervals between the ordered worlds are unequal, here more and there less, and that some increase, others flourish and others decay, and here they come into being and there they are eclipsed. But that they are destroyed by colliding with one another. And that some ordered worlds are bare of animals and plants and all water." -- Hippolytus, priest, The Refutation of All Heresies, 2nd century

"He [Democritus] was a pupil of some of the Magi and Chaldaeans, whom Xerxes had left with his father as teachers, when he had been hospitably received by him, as Herodotus [Metrodorus] informs us; and from these men he, while still a boy, learned the principles of astronomy and theology." -- Diogenes Laertius, historian, Life of Democritus, 3rd century

"... sight is made precise by the compass, rule, and telescope." -- Iamblichus, philosopher, Life of Pythagoras, 3rd century

"It is reported that Democritus the Abderite was wise, besides other things, in desiring to live unknown, and that he wholly endeavoured it. In pursuit whereof he travelled to many Countries; he went to the Chaldæans, and to Babylon, and to the Magi, and to the Indian Sophists. When the estate of his Father Damasippus was to be divided into three parts amongst the three Brothers, he took onely so much as might serve for his travel, and left the rest to his Brethren. For this Theophrastus commends him, that by travelling he had gained better things than Menelaus and Ulysses." -- Aelian, historian, Various History, Book IV, Chapter XX, 3rd century

"Greater things than these may be performed by refracted vision. For it is easy to see by the canons above mentioned that the greatest objects may appear exceedingly small, and the contrary, also that the most remote objects may appear just at hand, and the converse; for we can give such figures to transparent bodies, and dispose them in such order with respect to the eye and the objects, that the rays shall be refracted and bent towards any place we please, so that we shall see the object near at hand or at any distance under any angle we please. And thus from an incredible distance we may read the smallest letters, and may number the smallest particles of dust and sand, by reason of the greatness of the angle under which we see them. ... Thus also the sun, moon, and stars may be made to descend hither in appearance, and to be visible over the heads of our enemies, and many things of the like sort, which persons unacquainted with such things would refuse to believe." -- Roger Bacon, natural philosopher, Opus Majus, 1267

"[Roger Bacon] did perfectly understand all kinds of optic glasses, and knew likewise the method of combining them so as to compose some such instrument as our telescope." -- William Molyneux, natural philosopher, Dioptrica Nova, 1692

"If this steel mirror [the Pharos of Alexandria] did really exist we cannot refuse to the ancients the glory of the first invention [of the telescope], for this mirror can be only effected by as much as the light reflected by its surface was collected by another concave mirror placed at its focus, and in this consists the essence of the telescope and the merit of its construction." -- Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, historian, Natural History, 1749–88

"Some modern writers deny the fact that a great mirror was placed in the light-house of the Alexandrian port for the purpose of discovering vessels at a distance at sea. But the renowned [French historian] Buffon believed in it; for he honestly confesses that 'If the mirror really existed, as I firmly believe it did, to the ancients belong the honor of the invention of the telescope.'" -- Helena P. Blavatsky, theosophist, Isis Unveiled, 1877

"The credit of the discovery of the telescope has been a fruitful subject of discussion. Thus, because Democritus announced that the Milky Way is composed of vast multitudes of stars, it has been maintained that he could only have been led to form such an opinion from actual examination of the heavens with a telescope. Other passages from the Greek and Latin authors have similarly been cited to prove that the telescope was known to the ancients." -- Encyclopaedia Britannica 1888, 1893, & 1911

"The Chaldeans must have understood the manufacture of the telescope, for [Austen H.] Layard reported the discovery of a lens of power in the ruins of Babylon. Nero the emperor of Rome had optical glasses from the east." -- Drusilla D. Houston, historian, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, Chapter XIII: The Civilization of Babylonia, 1926

"Thomas Wright marveled in 1750 that Democritus had believed the Milky Way to be composed mainly of unresolved stars: 'long before astronomy reaped any benefit from the improved sciences of optics; [he] saw, as we may say, through the eye of reason, full as far into infinity as the most able astronomers in more advantageous times have done since.'" -- Carl Sagan, professor, Cosmos, 1980

"Galileo always insisted that the ancients had telescopes." -- Ivan Van Sertima, historian, Blacks In Science: Ancient and Modern, The Lost Sciences of Africa: An Overview, 1983

"It is a short and simple step to place one lens in front of another to make a telescope, and the chances are it could have happened and many times." -- Hunter H. Adams III, archaeoastronomer, African Observers of the Universe: The Sirius Question, 1983

"The ancients apparently used the telescope long before Pythagoras's time." -- Larry B. Radka, historian, Telescopes and the Ancients, 2010

George Rawlinson: The Seven Great Monarchies of the Eastern World, Volume 4: Babylon, 1862-67

There is said to be distinct evidence that they [Babylonians] observed the four satellites of Jupiter, and strong reason to believe that they were acquainted likewise with the seven satellites of Saturn.

... strange as it may seem to us ... the Babylonians possessed optical instruments of the nature of telescopes, since it is impossible, even in the clear and vapor-less sky of Chaldaea, to discern the faint moons of that distant planet [Saturn] without lenses. A lens, it must be remembered, with a fair magnifying power, has been discovered amongst the Mesopotamian ruins.

Last year I got into a big argument with Paul Cartledge and one of his stooges James Warren over the issue of Democritus's unbelievably precise cosmology. Professor i.e. Sophist Paul Cartledge wrote to me in a personal email, "D's views- all his views - were purely theoretical and in no way empirically based or tested." To which I gave an Abderite LOL. According to them, Democritus was unable to observe because he lived before 1608 and therefore the greatest lucky guesser who ever walked the face of the Earth. Absurd and absolutely ridiculous. And they fancy themselves scholars. Pity.

Galileo's Rediscoveries

"During the past three or four hundred years science has been rediscovered rather than discovered." -- Andrew Tomas, author, We Are Not The First, 1971

"Our science has only rediscovered and perfected old ideas." -- Andrew Tomas, author, We Are Not The First, 1971

"Sunspots were known to the ancient Greeks, but this knowledge was lost in the West and the spottiness of the Sun only rediscovered by Galileo in the early seventeenth century." -- John R. Gribbin, astrophysicist, The Death of the Sun, 1980

"If you look at practically any of the writings of ancient civilizations, the ancient Sanskrit writings of India are the ones I'm most familiar with, speak of spaceships, of weapons resembling our modern weapons, they had, apparently, the ability to look inside the human embryo and see what was going on, so, it appears, yes, ancient peoples did have quite a bit of knowledge that perhaps, some of it that we're rediscovering." -- Michael A. Cremo, author, August 2006

Jonathan Henry: Galileo's Rediscoveries

The history of astronomy is littered with forgotten discoveries which, when later discovered again, were heralded as brand new knowledge. ...

Knowledge is often lost or forgotten, and many "new" discoveries may be only the regaining of old knowledge. The "discoveries" of Galileo illustrate this concept. ...

Galileo thought, or at least claimed, that he had discovered the mountains of the moon. But he had simply rediscovered ancient knowledge that was lost. ...

... many modern discoveries are, in fact, rediscoveries of ancient knowledge. ...

How much past knowledge has humanity forgotten?

The Music of the Sun

"He [Pythagoras] declared ... that the nature of the cosmos is according to musical harmony, wherefore the sun makes his journey rhythmically." -- Hippolytus, priest, 2nd century

"He [Pythagoras] himself could hear the harmony of the Universe, and understood the universal music of the spheres, and of the stars which move in concert with them, and which we cannot hear because of the limitations of our weak nature. This is testified to by ... Empedocles." -- Porphyry, philosopher, 3rd century

"... to what Agent did the Ancients attribute the gravity of their atoms and what did they mean by calling God an harmony and comparing him & matter (the corporeal part of the Universe) to the God Pan and his Pipe?" -- Isaac Newton, mathematician, 169-

In 1955 radio noises from Jupiter were detected. This was followed by radio noises from Saturn. Now we have radio noises from the Sun: Music of the sun recorded by scientists.

The sun has been the inspiration for hundreds of songs, but now scientists have discovered [sic] that the star at the centre of our solar system produces its own music.

Astronomers at the University of Sheffield have managed to record for the first time [???] the eerie musical harmonies produced by the magnetic field in the outer atmosphere of the sun.

They found that huge magnetic loops that have been observed coiling away from the outer layer of the sun's atmosphere, known as coronal loops, vibrate like strings on a musical instrument.

Looking For Alien DNA

"And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us [extraterrestrials], to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken." -- Genesis 3:22-23

"Well, it [Intelligent Design] could come about in the folowing way, it could be that at some earlier time somewhere in the universe a civilisation ... [came] to a very high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet. Now that is a possibility, an intriguing possibility, and I suppose it's possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemistry and molecular biology you might find a signature of some sort of designer. And that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe." -- Richard Dawkins, atheist preacher, 2008

MSNBC: Looking for alien DNA.

Zecharia Sitchin says he's willing to stake everything he's written about alien astronauts on DNA tests that could be performed on the 4,500-year-old remains of a high-ranking Sumerian woman. ...

Puabi's remains were unearthed from a tomb in present-day Iraq during the 1920s and 1930s, roughly the same time frame as the discovery and study of Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt. Forensic experts at London's Natural History Museum determined that Puabi was about 40 years old when she died, and probably reigned as queen in her own right during the First Dynasty of Ur. Sitchin contends she was something more than a queen - specifically, that she was a "nin," a Sumerian term which he takes to mean "goddess."

He suggests that Puabi was an ancient demigod, genetically related to the visitors from Nibiru. What if these aliens tinkered with our DNA to enhance our intelligence - the biblical tree of knowledge of good and evil - but held back the genetic fruit from the tree of eternal life? Does the story of Adam and Eve actually refer to the aliens' tinkering? The way Sitchin sees it, the ancient myths suggest that "whoever created us deliberately held back from us a certain thing - fruit, genes, DNA, whatever - not to give us health, longevity, and the immortality that they had. So what was it?"

Sitchin wants scientists to test the DNA from Puabi's remains, just in case it holds the answer. "Maybe by comparing her genome with ours, we would find out what are those missing genes that they deliberately did not give us," he told me.

As Infinite Abiotic Oil Spews In Gulf, BP CEO Goes Yachting

New York Post: As oil spews in Gulf, BP's CEO at UK yacht race.

CEO Tony Hayward took time off Saturday to attend a glitzy yacht race around England’s Isle of Wight.

This is clearly a deliberately orchestrated and human engineered "disaster." The blatant plan is to cause an abiotic oil spill so bad that politicians restrict future exploration in order to cause an infinite commodity to become a limited resource.

Bipartisan Solutions: Golf and Prayer

While President Barack Obama proposed another 9 rounds of golf as his solution to the oil spill, Louisiana lawmakers took a more rational and scientific approach: Louisiana lawmakers propose prayer to stop oil disaster.

(CNN) -- While cleanup crews and technical teams continue efforts to stop crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana lawmakers are proposing a different approach: prayer.

State senators designated Sunday as a day for citizens to ask for God's help dealing with the oil disaster.

"Thus far efforts made by mortals to try to solve the crisis have been to no avail," state Sen. Robert Adley said in a statement released after last week's unanimous vote for the day of prayer. "It is clearly time for a miracle for us."

The resolution names Sunday as a statewide day of prayer in Louisiana and calls on people of all religions throughout the Gulf Coast "to pray for an end to this environmental emergency, sparing us all from the destruction of both culture and livelihood."

Infinite Hydrocarbon Blowout

"Hydrocarbons can be re-defined as a 'renewable resource, rather than a finite one' (Gurney 1997)" -- Peter R. Odell, economist/geologist, 2004

Monica Davis: Oil Blowout Fumes Sickening People In Atlanta--Geologists Says. (Hat tip: Rebecca Tillero)

Chris Landau has made a living as an engineer for decades. South African by birth, American citizen by naturalization and choice, Landau is at odds with many mainstream geologists. He is a proponent of the inorganic oil creation process. This process differs from what we were all taught in school. It poses that oil is the byproduct of natural deep earth processes and that oil doesn't come "from decayed plant matter."

As a product from earth processes, the stuff we call oil contains a variety of toxic, deadly chemicals. Landau says the Gulf catastrophe is caused by an oil well blow out. This is where gas pressure builds up and blows the well head. In this particular case, not only has the well head been blown, but the massive pressure inside the well, driven by a pool of gas that is thousands of miles deep and 20 miles across, have fractured the sea bottom. This has created additional splits in the earth, which allow more oil to bleed out of the earth, like black blood spewing from the earth's arteries.

Landau says this is not a "spill." A spill is finite.

Illuminating Dark Matter Theories

"... the lamp of history ... destroyeth the darkness of ignorance, the whole mansion of nature is properly and completely illuminated." -- Ugrasrava Sauti, Mahabharata, 8th century B.C.

Steve Smith: Illuminating Dark Matter Theories.

More doubts are surfacing about the existence of this undetectable phantasm.

In previous Picture of the Day articles about the existence of “dark matter” we noted that it is primarily an add-on to "Big Bang Cosmology.” The Big Bang is supposed to be what brought all matter and energy, including gravity, into existence. All modern cosmologists, with few exceptions, accept the theory without question.

NASA launched the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) on June 30, 2001. The instruments onboard the satellite were designed to measure temperature fluctuations theorized to exist in lower mass density regions of the Universe. Since the Big Bang theory does not account for such regions—matter and energy should be evenly distributed—WMAP was sent to confirm their existence.

According to conventional physics, dark matter is a necessary addition to their models since there is not enough gravity in the Universe to account for galaxy formation, or those galaxies assembling themselves into clusters. Galaxy clusters should have slowed down considerably over the last few billion years and not maintained such wild recessional velocities, some of which are said to approach the speed of light.

Astronomers came up with a dark (or undetectable) form of matter when they noticed stars on the edge of a spiral galaxy orbiting its nucleus with the same angular speed as stars closer to its center. As Newtonian mechanics insists, stars farther away from the center should be moving more slowly, so astronomers assumed dark matter was imparting extra velocity to them.Investigators have also tried for years to reconcile the amount of mass in the Universe with how fast it is expanding. Their only recourse has been to invent the existence of another undetectable force, “dark energy.”

As long ago as 2007, for example, serious reconsideration of dark matter theory was already published. Consensus astronomy presupposes dark matter organizing galactic structure. Dark matter (as well as dark energy) are thought to be necessary mathematical constructs in the astronomical community, because in their minds gravity is the sine qua non of all forces that govern galactic motion.

Astronomical Darkness

Steve Smith: Dark Mode Galaxies.

Dark matter is an excuse for the failure of gravitational theories.

Helios Awakens

"There is a story, which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens around the earth, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth, which recurs after long intervals." -- Sonchis of Sais, priest, 6th century B.C.

"And since they [Chaldeans] have observed the stars over a long period of time and have noted both the movements and the influences of each of them with greater precision than any other men, they foretell to mankind many things that will take place in the future. But above all importance, they say, is the study of the influence of the five stars known as planets, which they call 'Interpreters' when speaking of them as a group, but if referring to them singly, the one named Cronus [Saturn] by the Greeks, which is the most conspicuous and presages more events and such as are of greater importance than the others, they call the star of Helius, whereas the other four they designate as the stars of Ares [Mars], Aphrodite [Venus], Hermes [Mercury], and Zeus [Jupiter], as do our astrologers." -- Diodorus Siculus, historian, Library of History, Book II, 1st century B.C.

"On leaving the market-place along the road to Lechaeum you come to a gateway, on which are two gilded chariots, one carrying Phaethon the son of Helius, the other Helius himself." -- Pausanius, geographer, Description of Greece: Argolis, 2nd century

"... the midmost gate opposite the Dawn he dedicated to fiery Helios, since he is in the middle of the planets." -- Nonnus, poet, Dionysiaca, Book V, 5th century

"Helios and Kronos were one and the same god." -- Franz Boll, philologist, 1916

Steve Smith: Helios Awakens.

The Sun is beginning to rouse itself from a long period of quiescence.

What a difference a year can make, not only in our personal lives, but also in the life of the Sun. It was in June of 2009 that heliophysicists were reporting a period of low sunspot activity that had not been seen in 100 years or more. There were almost 800 days of inactivity between sunspot cycles 23 and 24.

However, according to a June 13, 2010 report from Spaceweather.com, sunspot number 1081 is "crackling" with C-class and M-class solar flares. Solar flares are categorized as A, B, C, M, or X: light, medium, or powerful, with a numerical intensity from 1 through 9 attached. The labels are primarily used to illustrate the potential effects that they might have on our planet. Thus, an X-17 flare is considered extremely intense, while a C-4 event will have little effect on satellites in Earth orbit or on electric power grids.

As standard theories state, solar flares, or coronal mass ejections (CME), occur when magnetic loops in the Sun's atmosphere known as "prominences" connect with each other, causing a short circuit. The sudden release of "magnetic energy" is often described as millions of hydrogen bombs simultaneously detonating inside a confined space. Although no one knows what so-called "magnetic reconnection" is, it is the only explanation offered in science journals for why those gigantic solar explosions appear.

CMEs eject solar plasma in the billions of tons. A hallmark of CME ejections is an increase in auroral brightness and frequency, since the flares are composed of charged particles. Although the majority of researchers identify the stream of ions pouring out of the Sun as a "wind" and that the particles "rain down" on Earth's magnetic field, the fact that they are attracted to and follow the polar cusps indicates their electrical nature.

Solar flares are sometimes observed to leave the Sun's surface with unbelievable acceleration. In the past, velocities more than 70,000 kilometers per second have been clocked. The critical factor in that measurement is that the solar matter continued to accelerate as it left the Sun. If shock waves were responsible for the initial impetus, then surely the blast would have begun to decelerate as it moved toward Earth. Since the opposite effect was seen, there must be another phenomenon at work other than the forces that might propel a cannonball, for instance.

In an Electric Universe populated by electric stars the explanation seems obvious: electric fields in space can accelerate charged particles and create coherent electric currents. According to conventional doctrine, the Sun accelerates electrons (and protons) away from its surface in the same way that sound waves are amplified. Energetic pulsations in the solar photosphere travel upward through "acoustical wave-guides," called magnetic flux tubes, that push “hot gas” outward. Giant formations called spicules rise thousands of kilometers above the photosphere and carry the hot gas with them.

The Electric Universe hypothesis is based on electrodynamic principles and not on kinetic behavior, or even electrostatic models. The basic premise of this alternative view is that celestial bodies are immersed in plasma and are connected by circuits. Since the Sun is also "plugged-in" to the galaxy and to its family of planets, it behaves like a charged object seeking equilibrium with its environment.

In his exhaustive work, The Physics of the Plasma Universe, Dr. Anthony Peratt describes field-aligned currents in this way: “...electric fields aligned along the magnetic field direction freely accelerate particles. Electrons and ions are accelerated in opposite directions, giving rise to a current along the magnetic field lines.”

Solar flares could be thought of as tremendous lightning bursts, discharging vast quantities of matter at near relativistic speeds. How those flares generate such highly energetic emissions is a continuing mystery to heliophysicists.

Early in the Twentieth century, Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén was contracted by the Swedish Power Company because some of the rectifiers used in their power transmission circuits had exploded for no apparent reason. When they shorted-out more energy was released than was contained by the plasma flow inside them. It was subsequently discovered that the power from an entire 900 kilometer long transmission line had instantly passed through the devices. The result was catastrophic failure and extensive damage. Alfvén identified the cause as unstable double layers within the plasma flow, otherwise known as plasma instabilities.

The circuit connecting the Sun is of unknown length, but probably extends for thousands of light-years. How much electrical energy might be contained in such magnetically confined “transmission lines”? No one knows, but astronomers are continually “surprised” by the incredible detonations that they observe from solar flares.

As the electric Sun theory relates, sunspots, flares, coronal heating, and all other solar activity most likely results from fluctuations in electrical input from our galaxy. Birkeland current filaments slowly rotate past the Solar System, supplying more or less power to the Sun as they go.

Fig Wasp Hasn't Evolved In 34 Million Years

Science Daily: World's Oldest Fig Wasp Fossil Proves That If It Works, Don't Change It.

ScienceDaily (June 15, 2010) — The world's oldest known example of a fig wasp has been found on the Isle of Wight. The fossil wasp is almost identical to the modern species, proving that this tiny but specialized insect has remained virtually unchanged for over 34 million years.

Kutcherov: Abiotic Oil Spill Could Last Forever

"... our planet may have enormous, inexhaustible resources of hydrocarbons." -- Vladimir A. Kutcherov, geologist, August 2009

"There is no doubt that our research proves that crude oil and natural gas are generated without the involvement of fossils. All types of bedrock can serve as reservoirs of oil." -- Vladimir A. Kutcherov, geologist, September 2009

F. William Engdahl: Gulf Oil Spill "Could Go on for Years and Years".

In a recent discussion, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill flooding the Gulf Coast shores of the United States “could go on for years and years … many years.” [1]

According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum, “What BP drilled into was what we call a ‘migration channel,’ a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.”[2] Ghawar, the world’s most prolific oilfield has been producing millions of barrels daily for almost 70 years with no end in sight. According to the abiotic science, Ghawar like all elephant and giant oil and gas deposits all over the world, is located on a migration channel similar to that in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.

As I wrote at the time of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake disaster,[3] Haiti had been identified as having potentially huge hydrocarbon reserves, as has neighboring Cuba. Kutcherov estimates that the entire Gulf of Mexico is one of the planet’s most abundant accessible locations to extract oil and gas, at least before the Deepwater Horizon event this April.

“In my view the heads of BP reacted with panic at the scale of the oil spewing out of the well,” Kutcherov adds. “What is inexplicable at this point is why they are trying one thing, failing, then trying a second, failing, then a third. Given the scale of the disaster they should try every conceivable option, even if it is ten, all at once in hope one works. Otherwise, this oil source could spew oil for years given the volumes coming to the surface already.” [4]

He stresses, “It is difficult to estimate how big this leakage is. There is no objective information available.” But taking into consideration information about the last BP ‘giant’ discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, the Tiber field, some six miles deep, Kutcherov agrees with Ira Leifer a researcher in the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara who says the oil may be gushing out at a rate of more than 100,000 barrels a day.[5]

What the enormity of the oil spill does is to also further discredit clearly the oil companies’ myth of “peak oil” which claims that the world is at or near the “peak” of economical oil extraction. That myth, which has been propagated in recent years by circles close to former oilman and Bush Vice President, Dick Cheney, has been effectively used by the giant oil majors to justify far higher oil prices than would be politically possible otherwise, by claiming a non-existent petroleum scarcity crisis.

...

Notes

[1] Vladimir Kutcherov, telephone discussion with the author, June 9, 2010.

[2] Ibid.

[3] F. William Engdahl, The Fateful Geological Prize Called Haiti, Global Research.ca, January 30, 2010, accessed in http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17287

[4] Vladimir Kutcherov, op. cit.

[5] Ira Leifer, Scientist: BP Well Could Be Leaking 100,000 Barrels of Oil a Day, June 9, 2010, accessed in http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/9/scientist_bp_well_could_be_leaking

Russian Church Calls For End To Darwinist Monopoly

"I think that if it was pointed out to him [Charles Darwin] that after 150 years, because he wrote his book Origin of Species 150 years ago, it was published in 1859, I think if he were able to come today and see after 150 years that so much fossil evidence has accumulated that contradicts his theory, I think that he might be willing to change it. But for many of his supporters today, his theory is not so much a scientific idea, but an ideology which cannot be questioned. And it's people like that, you know, his supporters today, who aren't willing to listen to evidence that contradicts their theories, who have now a government enforced monopoly so that their ideas only can be taught in the education systems in most countries in the world including the United States, who really object to what I'm saying. I don't think Darwin himself would object to what I'm saying. I think he'd listen. And, I think, he would be willing to change his ideas in the face of evidence. But many of his supporters today, they don't want to hear evidence that contradicts their theory, they try to suppress that evidence, they try to restrict those who want to speak about that evidence. " -- Michael A. Cremo, author, March 19th 2008

Reuters: Russia Church wants end to Darwin school "monopoly".

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Russian Orthodox Church called Wednesday for an end to the "monopoly of Darwinism" in Russian schools, saying religious explanations of creation should be taught alongside evolution.

Liberals said they would fight efforts to include religious teaching in schools. Russia's dominant church has experienced a revival in recent years, worrying rights groups who say its power is undermining the country's secular constitution.

"The time has come for the monopoly of Darwinism and the deceptive idea that science in general contradicts religion. These ideas should be left in the past," senior Russian Orthodox Archbishop Hilarion said at a lecture in Moscow.

"Darwin's theory remains a theory. This means it should be taught to children as one of several theories, but children should know of other theories too."

Ancient Ocean On Mars?

"And then the great Rishis, approaching the gods, spake unto them, 'Lo, in the middle of the night springeth a great heat striking terror into every heart, and destructive of the three worlds.'" -- Mahabharata, Book I: Adi Parva, Section XXIV, 8th century B.C.

"Between the celestials [angels] and the Asuras [fallen angels], there happened, of yore, frequent encounters for the sovereignty of the three worlds with everything in them." -- Mahabharata, Book I: Adi Parva, Section LXXVI, 8th century B.C.

"And thus between those mighty warriors there came about an encounter of celestial weapons of great force, at which the three worlds with their mobile and immobile creatures were sorely distressed." -- Markandeya, rishi, Mahabharata, Book III: Vana Parva, Section CCLXXXIII, 8th century B.C.

"It is said, O Matali, that when the end of the world cometh, mighty fire burst forth from within it, and spreading consumeth the three worlds with all their mobile and immobile objects." -- Narada, Mahabharata, Book V: Udyoga Parva, Section XCIX, 8th century B.C.

"If thou fliest beyond the limits of the three worlds...." -- Mahabharata, Book V: Udyoga Parva, Section CLXIII, 8th century B.C.

Science Daily: Ancient Ocean May Have Covered Third of Mars.

ScienceDaily (June 13, 2010) — A vast ocean likely covered one-third of the surface of Mars some 3.5 billion years ago, according to a new study conducted by University of Colorado at Boulder scientists.

The CU-Boulder study is the first to combine the analysis of water-related features including scores of delta deposits and thousands of river valleys to test for the occurrence of an ocean sustained by a global hydrosphere on early Mars. While the notion of a large, ancient ocean on Mars has been repeatedly proposed and challenged over the past two decades, the new study provides further support for the idea of a sustained sea on the Red Planet during the Noachian era more than 3 billion years ago, said CU-Boulder researcher Gaetano Di Achille, lead author on the study.

A paper on the subject authored by Di Achille and CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Brian Hynek of the geological sciences department appears in the June 13 issue of Nature Geoscience. Both Di Achille and Hynek are affiliated with CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

Astronomers In The Dark: Big Bang Debunked

"The chance that the [Big Bang] theory is right is now less than one in one hundred trillion." -- Eric J. Lerner, physicist, 1991

"If you want to find evidence refuting Big Bang Theory, just point a telescope at the sky!" -- Tom Van Flandern, astronomer, 1993

Science Daily: Astronomers' Doubts About the Dark Side: Errors in Big Bang Data Larger Than Thought?

ScienceDaily (June 11, 2010) — New research by astronomers in the Physics Department at Durham University suggests that the conventional wisdom about the content of the Universe may be wrong.

Graduate student Utane Sawangwit and Professor Tom Shanks looked at observations from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite to study the remnant heat from the Big Bang. The two scientists find evidence that the errors in its data may be much larger than previously thought, which in turn makes the standard model of the Universe open to question. The team publish their results in a letter to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

How Jupiter Falsifies the Big Bang

"There's no explanation at all of the cosmic microwave background in the Big Bang Theory. All you can say for the theory is that it permits you to put it in if you want to put it in. So you look and it's there so you put it in. That's it; it isn't an explanation." -- Fred Hoyle, cosmologist, 2000

New Scientist: Has Jupiter sent cosmology down a false trail?

It's supposed to be the "gold standard" of evidence supporting the standard model of cosmology – including dark matter, dark energy and the exponential expansion after the big bang known as inflation.

But could it be wrong? Might misleading measurements by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) have been leading us towards the wrong theory of cosmology? One astrophysicist thinks so, and he says the planet Jupiter is to blame

Old Shoe Found In Armenia

"... we could also consider the shoe print, you know, that was found near Antelope Springs Utah by William Meister. And he found that in the year 1968. He was a researcher, a collector of fossils, and he was breaking open pieces of slate rock at this place Antelope Springs and when he broke open one piece of rock he found a shoe print. You know, my coauthor Richard Thompson went to visit William Meister in Utah and he was able to see this specimen, he was able to take photographs of it, and we did a computer analysis, and we showed that the shape of this impression in the rock is exactly like that of a shoe print. And if you look at your shoe, at the bottom of your shoe, you can usually see where your heel is worn down in a certain place, so this print had that same feature in it and also crushed in the middle of the foot print was the fossil of a trilobyte. Now a trilobyte is a shellfish that existed about 500 million years ago in what's called the Cambrian Period." -- Michael A. Cremo, author, March 19th 2008

Science Daily: World's Oldest Leather Shoe Found in Armenia.

ScienceDaily (June 10, 2010) — A perfectly preserved shoe, 1,000 years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt and 400 years older than Stonehenge in the UK, has been found in a cave in Armenia.

The 5,500 year old shoe, the oldest leather shoe in the world, was discovered by a team of international archaeologists and their findings will publish on June 9th in the online scientific journal PLoS ONE.

The cow-hide shoe dates back to ~ 3,500 BC (the Chalcolithic period) and is in perfect condition. It was made of a single piece of leather and was shaped to fit the wearer's foot.

Oil Spill Not That Bad

New Scientist: Gulf leak: biggest spill may not be biggest disaster.

THE Deepwater Horizon blowout is the largest oil spill in US history, but its ecological impact need not be the worst. It all hinges on the amount and composition of the oil that reaches the Gulf of Mexico's most sensitive habitat: its coastal marshes. If they can be protected, the region could bounce back in just a few years.

As New Scientist went to press, estimates of the volume of crude so far ejected into the waters of the Gulf ranged from 90 to 195 million litres - dwarfing the Exxon Valdez's 40-million-litre spill in 1989. But the aftermath of previous spills shows that it is not the volume that matters most.

"Very large spills have had minimal impact and small spills have had a devastating impact," says Judy McDowell of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, one of the authors of a 2003 National Research Council report that reviewed lessons from previous incidents. ...

In 1979, the Ixtoc I well off Mexico's Gulf coast spewed 530 million litres of oil into shallow waters - three times the worst current estimates for Deepwater Horizon. Five years later, "we had to look hard to see any lasting effects", says Arne Jarnelöv of the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm, Sweden, who led a UN team sent to monitor the area.

Earth and Moon Formed Later Than Thought

"Capture of our Moon becomes the only option, it cannot have been created from the Earth." -- Wallace Thornhill, physicist, October 2000

Science Daily: Earth and Moon Formed Later Than Previously Thought, New Research Suggests.

"Our results show that metal core and rock are unable to emulsify in these collisions between planets that are greater than 10 kilometres in diameter and therefore that most of the Earth's iron core (80-99 %) did not remove tungsten from the rocky material in the mantle during formation," explains Dahl.

The result of the research means that Earth and the Moon must have been formed much later than previously thought -- that is to say not 30 million years after the formation of the solar system 4,567 million years ago but perhaps up to 150 million years after the formation of the solar system.

Drilling Into Atlantis

"For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia." -- Plato, philosopher, Timaeus, 360 B.C.

Science Daily: Drilling Into the Unknown: First Exploration of a Sub-Glacial Antarctic Lake Is a Major Step Closer.

In a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters this week, scientists from Northumbria University, the University of Edinburgh and the British Antarctic Survey have revealed the optimal drill site for exploring Lake Ellsworth -- a sub-glacial lake, comparable in size to England's Lake Windermere, that is covered by three kilometers of ice.

No one has yet drilled into an Antarctic sub-glacial lake.

Brown Algae: Clues To How Life Hasn't Evolved in 200 Million Years

Brown algae fossils have been dated to between 150 million and 200 million B.C. No evolution since then.

Science Daily: Brown Algal Genome Opens New Door to Understanding Multicellularity and Photosynthesis.

Brown algae were assumed to have arisen from the fusion of photosynthetically inactive colourless cells with a unicellular red alga. However, as discovered in a previous research project on single-celled diatoms, AWI researchers showed that brown algae also arose from the fusion of a green alga with a red alga and thus refuted a widespread theory among experts.

Quantifying Hydrocarbons

In 1998, John Dreher, staff astronomer at the SETI Institute, estimated that there are 1.192 octadecillion (1.192^57) hydrogen atoms in our solar system. Good luck running out.

Mainstream Scientists Whine About Peer Review Process

"The tradition of 'peer review' of articles published in professional journals has degenerated into almost total censorship." -- Halton C. Arp, astronomer, 2000

"Of course that market today needs the Internet to loosen the shackles of scientific censorship and control through anonymous peer review." -- Wallace Thornhill, physicst, October 2006

The Leftists are whining because peer-review censorship is unable to suppress every thought.

New Scientist: We need to fix peer review now.

Yesterday the UK parliament heard that studies at the University of Texas have shown that homeopathic remedies kill cancer cells while leaving normal cells intact.

The revelation came from David Tredinnick, who continues to use his position as a public representative to argue for more NHS spending on complementary and alternative medicines.

To my mind, the fact that this study was mentioned in parliament, and the statement that homeopathy can kill cancer cells is now a matter of public record, is a spectacular failure. But it is not a failure of politics or politicians: it is a failure of science.

Islands Prove Earth Expansion and Declining Sea Levels

New Scientist: Shape-shifting islands defy sea-level rise.

For years, people have warned that the smallest nations on the planet - island states that barely rise out of the ocean - face being wiped off the map by rising sea levels. Now the first analysis of the data broadly suggests the opposite: most have remained stable over the last 60 years, while some have even grown.

Guy, R., The Mysterious Receding Seas and Isostatic Rebound, Ewire, Apr 12 2008

How Stars Are Born

Steve Smith: How Are Stars Born?

It is commonly assumed that stars are gravitationally compressed hot gas.

“Is it a fact—or have I dreamt it—that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?”
--- Nathaniel Hawthorne

What are the stars? The question might seem self-evident, since we are taught from an early age that they are intensely bright, burning balls of hydrogen gas. A star's great size, therefore its great gravitational attraction, is what holds the planets in their orbits. Its core of fusion fire sends energy on a million-year journey before the radiation is emitted from its surface, so dense is its interior.

How are stars formed and by what agency are they ignited? The answer, according to accepted astrophysical theories, is gravity. At some time, billions of years before any particular shining star was born, it started out as a wispy cloud a thousand times less dense than the most rarified mist. One of the questions that astronomers have been asking for many years about the process is what caused such insubstantial clouds to condense?

Star formation is initiated according to two main theories. First, the gaseous cloud might cool down from whatever high temperature it once possessed (although what event heated the cloud is not elucidated), thermal energy falls off, allowing gravity to assert itself on the individual particles and the cloud falls in on itself.

Second, the explosion of a supernova (or intense bursts of radiation from a nearby star) might generate shock waves that pass through the proto-stellar cloud, forcing the particles to collide and clump together. Gravity then takes up its familiar position, eventually pulling the cloud into a structure dense enough for fusion to take place.

According to a recent press release from the Marshall Space Flight Center and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, there is reason to believe that radiation from neighboring massive stars could be the most common method for pushing the nebular clouds into collapse.

The Cepheus B nebula is approximately 2400 light-years from Earth, and is composed primarily of hydrogen gas. As astronomers reckon age, there is supposed to be a large population of young stars bordering a region where a massive star's radiation impinges on the cloud. Infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope appears to show "protoplanetary disks" around many of the stars, indicating (according to theory) that they are young, since older stars would have already absorbed the dust and gas. Older stars would not exhibit the specific infrared frequencies that are supposed to indicate disks.

In this paper we will not take up stellar ages and the conventional viewpoints that determine them. Suffice to say here is that stellar diagrams that attempt to establish age according to color and temperature are missing important points. If other electrical factors are added, temperature and brightness become a matter of externally applied electric currents and not internally generated fusion energy. The differences in the two concepts are not trivial, especially when they are used to explain other observations. It is an entirely new paradigm.

Regardless of whether it is shock waves or "radiation pressure," the energy that drives the effects in conventional theories is kinetic and mechanically induced. In fact, lowering the thermal activity is how the first theory suggests stellar formation begins. The second theory requires a star 20 times more massive than the Sun to irradiate the cloud from close up for millions of years.

In the Electric Universe, gravity, density, compression, and mechanical phenomena give way to the effects of plasma. The stars are not hot, dense balls of hydrogen being crushed into helium and electromagnetic radiation by gravitational pressure. Rather, they are isodense balls of plasma—a form of slow-motion lightning—with all the fusion taking place on the surface. Since they are the same density throughout, with no superdense fusion cores, their mass estimates are most likely being seriously overstated by papers written from the consensus.

The Electric Universe definition of "plasma" is not the conventional one of "ionized gas." It is that confused apprehension of plasma that falls back on ideas about gas behavior and thermal ionization.

"Plasma," as theorist Mel Acheson wrote, "is an emergent (i.e., higher-level or statistical-level) orderliness of complex electrical forces: such properties as filamentation, long-range attraction and short-range repulsion, braiding, characteristic velocities, formation and decay of plasmoids, and identity of properties at different scales."

Electric stars aren't begotten in nebular clouds, their progenitor is charge separation. Everything we see in the Universe—99.99% to be more precise—is ionized to some degree, therefore it is plasma. Positive ions and negative electrons move within plasma in ways not governed by gravity, although gravity might cause some heavy positive ions to create a charge surplus in one volume of space over another. When that happens, a weak electric field develops.

An electric field, no matter how weak, will initiate an electric current that generates a magnetic field. Those fields interact with the magnetic fields generated by other currents. In images from space, as well as in high-speed photographs of plasma activity in the laboratory, those currents are seen to form twisted pairs of filaments, called Birkeland currents. Birkeland currents follow magnetic field lines and draw charged material from their surroundings with a force 39 orders of magnitude greater than gravity. Magnetic fields pinch the ultra-fine dust and plasma into heated blobs of matter called plasmoids.

As the effect, called a "z-pinch," increases, the electric field intensifies, further increasing the z-pinch. The compressed blobs form spinning electrical discharges. At first they glow as dim red dwarfs, then blazing yellow stars, and finally they might become brilliant ultraviolet arcs, driven by the electric currents that generated them.

Asteroid Strike Froze Atlantis

"For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia." -- Plato, philosopher, Timaeus, 360 B.C.

New Scientist: Asteroid strike may have frozen Antarctica.

According to ABC News, Glikson says the asteroid that created the dome was probably 5 to 10km wide.

Of course the problem with claiming that this happened 35 million years ago is that a temperate forest existed in Atlantis only 3 million years ago.

Neanderthals Lived In Britain 100,000 Years Ago

Science Daily: Neanderthals Walked Into Frozen Britain 40,000 Years Earlier Than First Thought, Evidence Shows.

ScienceDaily (June 1, 2010) — A University of Southampton archaeologist and Oxford Archaeology have found evidence that Neanderthals were living in Britain at the start of the last ice age, 40,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Commissioned by Oxford Archaeology, the University of Southampton's Dr Francis Wenban-Smith discovered two ancient flint hand tools at the M25 / A2 road junction at Dartford in Kent, during an excavation funded by the Highways Agency. The flints are waste flakes from the manufacture of unknown tools, which would almost certainly have mostly been used for cutting up dead animals. Tests on sediment burying the flints show they date from around 100,000 years ago, proving Neanderthals were living in Britain at this time. The country was previously assumed to have been uninhabited during this period.

"I couldn't believe my eyes when I received the test results.