Arslan Tash Ivory Hoard (Centauroids From Alpha Centauri Part II)

Extraterrestrial Centauri sphinx or "angel" (from Alpha Centauri 4 lightyears away).

Via Biblical Archaeology Review, Volume 35, Numbers 4/5, 2009:

... it is widely agreed that this cherub and the rest of Borowski's unprovenanced ivories belong to the Arslan Tash ivory hoard (dated to 850-800 B.C.), which was excavated in 1928 by a French expedition to Arslan Tash in northern Syria.

Arslan Tash Centauri Sphinx Aliens/Angels.

Ezekial 1:

1Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.

2In the fifth day of the month, which was the fifth year of king Jehoiachin's captivity,

3The word of the LORD came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the LORD was there upon him.

4And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.

5Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man.

6And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings.

7And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot: and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass.

8And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings.

9Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went every one straight forward.

10As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.

11Thus were their faces: and their wings were stretched upward; two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies.

12And they went every one straight forward: whither the spirit was to go, they went; and they turned not when they went.

13As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps: it went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning.

14And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning.

15Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces.

16The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.

17When they went, they went upon their four sides: and they turned not when they went.

18As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four.

19And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.

20Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.

21When those went, these went; and when those stood, these stood; and when those were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.

22And the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creature was as the colour of the terrible crystal, stretched forth over their heads above.

23And under the firmament were their wings straight, the one toward the other: every one had two, which covered on this side, and every one had two, which covered on that side, their bodies.

24And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host: when they stood, they let down their wings.

25And there was a voice from the firmament that was over their heads, when they stood, and had let down their wings.

26And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.

27And I saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about.

28As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake.

Ezekial 10:

Then I looked, and, behold, in the firmament that was above the head of the cherubims there appeared over them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne.

2And he spake unto the man clothed with linen, and said, Go in between the wheels, even under the cherub, and fill thine hand with coals of fire from between the cherubims, and scatter them over the city. And he went in in my sight.

3Now the cherubims stood on the right side of the house, when the man went in; and the cloud filled the inner court.

4Then the glory of the LORD went up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the LORD's glory.

5And the sound of the cherubims' wings was heard even to the outer court, as the voice of the Almighty God when he speaketh.

6And it came to pass, that when he had commanded the man clothed with linen, saying, Take fire from between the wheels, from between the cherubims; then he went in, and stood beside the wheels.

7And one cherub stretched forth his hand from between the cherubims unto the fire that was between the cherubims, and took thereof, and put it into the hands of him that was clothed with linen: who took it, and went out.

8And there appeared in the cherubims the form of a man's hand under their wings.

9And when I looked, behold the four wheels by the cherubims, one wheel by one cherub, and another wheel by another cherub: and the appearance of the wheels was as the colour of a beryl stone.

10And as for their appearances, they four had one likeness, as if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel.

11When they went, they went upon their four sides; they turned not as they went, but to the place whither the head looked they followed it; they turned not as they went.

12And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that they four had.

13As for the wheels, it was cried unto them in my hearing, O wheel.

14And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of a cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.

15And the cherubims were lifted up. This is the living creature that I saw by the river of Chebar.

16And when the cherubims went, the wheels went by them: and when the cherubims lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the same wheels also turned not from beside them.

17When they stood, these stood; and when they were lifted up, these lifted up themselves also: for the spirit of the living creature was in them.

18Then the glory of the LORD departed from off the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubims.

19And the cherubims lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight: when they went out, the wheels also were beside them, and every one stood at the door of the east gate of the LORD's house; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above.

20This is the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel by the river of Chebar; and I knew that they were the cherubims.

21Every one had four faces apiece, and every one four wings; and the likeness of the hands of a man was under their wings.

22And the likeness of their faces was the same faces which I saw by the river of Chebar, their appearances and themselves: they went every one straight forward.

Jesus On Alien Worlds and Extraterrestrials

One of my best friends was killed this week in a motorbike accident on the Williamsburg Bridge so that's why I haven't been posting. I left New York to go sailing and I learned some interesting things at a Sunday school on the Rappahanock River in Virginia.

On extraterrestrial life:

"And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold ...." -- Jesus Christ, John 10:16

On extraterrestrial worlds:

"In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you." -- Jesus Christ, John 14:2

More Worlds In Collision

Huffington Post: Suicidal Planet Seems On Death Spiral Into Star.

WASHINGTON — Astronomers have found what appears to be a gigantic suicidal planet.

The odd, fiery planet is so close to its star and so large that it is triggering tremendous plasma tides on the star. Those powerful tides are in turn warping the planet's zippy less-than-a-day orbit around its star.

The result: an ever-closer tango of death, with the planet eventually spiraling into the star.

It's a slow death. The planet WASP-18b has maybe a million years to live, said planet discoverer Coel Hellier, a professor of astrophysics at the Keele University in England. Hellier's report on the suicidal planet is in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

Alleged Fastest Evolving Animal Is Biggest Evolutionary Loser

"In history and in evolution, progress is always a futile Sisyphean struggle...." -- Matt Ridley, zoologist, 1993

Descended from the Patagonian order Sphenodontia therefore falsifying plate tectonics, New Zealand's tuatara is alleged to be the fastest evolving animal. It is also alleged to be the biggest evolutionary loser. In other words, the faster an animal evolves the faster it loses. So much for survival of the fittest.

Science Daily: Naming Evolution's Winners And Losers.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 24, 2009) — Mammals and many species of birds and fish are among evolution's "winners," while crocodiles, alligators and a reptile cousin of snakes known as the tuatara are among the losers, according to new research by UCLA scientists and colleagues.

Plasma Petroglyphs On Easter Island

Via Louis Hissink's Crazy World: UPDATE.

Anthony Peratt and co-workers (Yao et al) have published (Scroll down for latest abstracts) the latest results of their petroglyph surveys on Easter Island – seems the new orientation at this location can be linked into the recently discovered magnetic flux tube entry point by the THEMIS mission.

W. F. Yao, A. L. Peratt, P. Bustamante, and R. Tuki, A complete survey of the rock art on Easter Island as solar-earth MHD instabilities recorded by mankind in antiquity, San Diego, May 31 - June 5, 2009.

Atlantean Sloths Set Carribean Civ Back To 8,000 B.C.

Science Daily: Stone Tools, Rare Animal Bones: Clues To Caribbean's Earliest Inhabitants Discovered.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2009) — A prehistoric water-filled cave in the Dominican Republic has become a "treasure trove" with the announcement by Indiana University archaeologists of the discovery of stone tools, a small primate skull in remarkable condition, and the claws, jawbone and other bones of several species of sloths.

The discoveries extend by thousands of years the scope of investigations led Charles Beeker, director of Academic Diving and Underwater Science Programs at IU Bloomington's School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, and his interdisciplinary team of collaborators. The researchers' focus has been on the era a mere 500 years ago when the Old World and New World first met after Christopher Columbus stepped ashore in the Caribbean -- and on scintillating pirate lore. This rare find is expected to give insights into the earliest inhabitants of the Greater Antilles and the animals they encountered.

"To be honest, I couldn't believe my eyes as I viewed each of these astonishing discoveries underwater," Beeker said. "The virtually intact extinct faunal skeletons really amazed me, but what may prove to be a fire pit from the first human occupation of the island just seems too good to be true. But now that the lithics (stone tools) are authenticated, I can't wait to direct another underwater expedition into what may prove to become one of the most important prehistoric sites in all the Caribbean."

Beeker and researchers Jessica Keller and Harley McDonald found the tools and bones in fresh water 28- to 34-feet deep in a cave called Padre Nuestro. Nearby, and also underwater in the same cave, were found more recent Taino artifacts. The Taino were the first Native American peoples to encounter Europeans. Beeker and his colleagues have been diving in this particular cave, which sits beneath a limestone bluff and is only accessible after submerging into a small pool, since 1996 as they studied its use as a Taino water-gathering site.

Geoffrey Conrad, director of the Mathers Museum of World Culture at IU Bloomington and professor of anthropology, said the tools are estimated to be 4,000 to 6,500 years old. The bones might range in age from 4,000 and 10,000 years old. While sloth bones are not uncommon, he knows of only a handful of other primate skulls found in the Caribbean.

"I know of no place that has sloths, primates and humanly made stone tools together in a nice, tight association around the same time," said Conrad, also associate vice provost for research at IU Bloomington. "Right now it looks like a potential treasure trove of data to help us sort out the relationship in time between humans and extinct animals in the Greater Antilles. This site definitely is worthy of a large-scale investigation."

Cometary Glycine Supports Panspermia

Science Daily: First Discovery Of Life's Building Block In Comet.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 18, 2009) — NASA scientists have discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by NASA's Stardust spacecraft.

"Glycine is an amino acid used by living organisms to make proteins, and this is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet," said Dr. Jamie Elsila of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts."

Cave Complex Under The Giza Pyramids

"And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth." -- Isaiah, 2:19

Discovery News: Cave Complex Allegedly Found Under Giza Pyramids.

Aug. 13, 2009 -- An enormous system of caves, chambers and tunnels lies hidden beneath the Pyramids of Giza, according to a British explorer who claims to have found the lost underworld of the pharaohs.

Populated by bats and venomous spiders, the underground complex was found in the limestone bedrock beneath the pyramid field at Giza.

"There is untouched archaeology down there, as well as a delicate ecosystem that includes colonies of bats and a species of spider which we have tentatively identified as the white widow," British explorer Andrew Collins said.

Collins, who will detail his findings in the book "Beneath the Pyramids" to be published in September, tracked down the entrance to the mysterious underworld after reading the forgotten memoirs of a 19th century diplomat and explorer.

"In his memoirs, British consul general Henry Salt recounts how he investigated an underground system of 'catacombs' at Giza in 1817 in the company of Italian explorer Giovanni Caviglia," Collins said.

The document records that the two explored the caves for a distance of "several hundred yards," coming upon four large chambers from which stretched further cave passageways.

With the help of British Egyptologist Nigel Skinner-Simpson, Collins reconstructed Salt's exploration on the plateau, eventually locating the entrance to the lost catacombs in an apparently unrecorded tomb west of the Great Pyramid.

Indeed, the tomb featured a crack in the rock, which led into a massive natural cave.

"We explored the caves before the air became too thin to continue. They are highly dangerous, with unseen pits and hollows, colonies of bats and venomous spiders," said Collins.

According to Collins, the caves -- which are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years old -- may have both inspired the development of the pyramid field and the ancient Egyptian's belief in an underworld.

"Ancient funerary texts clearly allude to the existence of a subterranean world in the vicinity of the Giza pyramids," Collins told Discovery News.

Indeed, Giza was known anciently as Rostau, meaning the "mouth of the passages."

This is the same name as a region of the ancient Egyptian underworld known as the Duat.

"The 'mouth of the passages' is unquestionably a reference to the entrance to a subterranean cave world, one long rumored to exist beneath the plateau," Collins told Discovery News.

Collins' claim is expected to cause a stir in the Egyptological world.

Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, has dismissed the discovery.

"There are no new discoveries to be made at Giza. We know everything about the plateau," he stated.

But Collins remarks that after extensive research, he found no mention of the caves in modern times.

"To the best of our knowledge nothing has ever been written or recorded about these caves since Salt's explorations. If Hawass does have any report related to these caves, we have yet to see it," Collins said.

Is Sirius a Triple Star?

Benest, D., and Duvent, J.L., Is Sirius a Triple Star?, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 299, Page 621, July 1995

Sirius has been discovered as double more than 130 years ago. From the beginning of our century up to now, observational as well as physical and dynamical indications lead to the hypothesis of the existence of a third body in the system. In this paper, we present recent orbital analysis of the binary Sirius A-B which, helped by numerical simulation of triple systems, strengthens the idea for the triplicity of Sirius: a tiny star could revolve in about 6 years around Sirius A. Finally, we discuss the possibility of direct detection for this suspected Sirius C.

If there is indeed a Sirius C it would support Dogon and Egyptian cosmology. Mermen, called the Nommo, such as the Athenian King Cecrops I are said to have come from the Sirius system. The Acropolis in Athens is named after Cecrops I.



The white main sequence star Sirius A and it's white dwarf companion Sirius B are 8.58 light years from the Earth.

Centauroids From Alpha Centauri

"Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds; and his friends asking him if any accident had befallen him, he returns this answer: 'Do you not think it a matter worthy of lamentation that when there is such a vast multitude of them, we have not yet conquered one?'" -- Plutarch, historian, 1st century

"... there are more worlds, and on them more creatures of beauty to be found." -- Immanuel Kant, natural philosopher, 1764

"... there are inhabitants in other worlds." -- Immanuel Kant, natural philosopher, 1781



Lamassu or Shedu are centauroids. Centauroids were (are?) from Alpha Centauri.

The yellow main sequence star Alpha Centauri is 4.365 light years from the Earth.



Nearest Star System Might Harbor Earth Twin.

University of California, Santa Cruz graduate student Javiera Guedes used computer simulations of planet formation to show that terrestrial planets are likely to have formed around one of the stars in the Alpha Centauri star system, our closest stellar neighbors.

Guedes' model showed planets forming around the star Alpha Centauri B (its sister star, Proxima Centauri, is actually our nearest neighbor) in what is called the "habitable zone," or the region around a star where liquid water can exist on a planet's surface.

The model also showed that if such planets do in fact exist, we should be able to see them with a dedicated telescope.

"If they exist, we can observe them," Guedes said.

Guedes' study has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.

A likely candidate

Astronomers have for some time pinned the Alpha Centauri system as one that was likely to form planets, said study co-author Gregory Laughlin, a UCSC professor.

"I think that there's been a good line of evidence over the past decade or so," Laughlin told SPACE.com.

Several factors mark the system, particularly Alpha Centauri B as friendly to planet formation, Laughlin said. The metallicity of Alpha Centauri B (or how much of its matter is made up of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium) is higher than our Sun's, so there would be plenty of heavier-mass material for planets to form from, he said.

Also, because the planet iwould form in a triple star system, the processes that form large Jupiter-mass gas giants, which account for most of the extrasolar planets found so far, would be suppressed. So it would be more likely for the system to produce terrestrial planets.

Laughlin also noted that a number of factors make Alpha Centauri B a good candidate for astronomers to actually detect an Earth-sized terrestrial planet.

Hydrocarbons Are Inorganic and Infinite

"Do these fuels result always and necessarily in one way from the decomposition of a pre-existing organic substance? Is it thus with the hydrocarbons so frequently observed in volcanic eruptions and emanations, and to which M. Ch. Sainte-Claire Deville has called attention in recent years? Finally, must one assign a parralel origin to carbonaceous matter and to hydrocarbons contained in certain meteorites, and which appear to have an origin foreign to our planet? These are questions on which the opinion of many distinguished geologists does not as yet appear to be fixed." -- Marcellin Berthelot, chemist, 1866

"One can, then, conceive the production, by purely mineral means, of all natural hydrocarbons. The intervention of heat, of water, and of alkaline metals -- lastly, the tendency of hydrocarbons to unite together to form the more condensed material -- suffice to account for the formation of these curious compounds. Moreover, this formation will be continuous because the reactions which started it are renewed incessantly." -- Marcellin Berthelot, chemist, 1866



"All giant oil fields are most logically explained by inorganic theory." -- Vladimir B. Porfir'yev, geologist, 1974

"I don't think anybody has ever doubted that there is an inorganic source of hydrocarbons." -- Michael D. Lewan, geologist, 2002

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

"The ICP-MS method begin a new stage in oil inorganic geochemistry study." -- Kirill S. Ivanov, et al., geochemist, 2007

Amy Callaghan: Can oil form without organic matter? If you're reading this you probably know what the correct answer to that question is.

SYDNEY: New research reveals that the hydrocarbon elements of oil and gas may be able to form deep in the Earth's crust without the need for fossilised organic matter.

A team led by researchers at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, in Washington DC, have studied the chemical reactions of methane at high temperatures and pressures and under oxidising conditions. They say that this shows that – theoretically at least – oil can form deep in the Earth's crust without the need for decomposing plants or animal material.

Most of the crude oil and gas we use was formed hundreds of millions of years ago when vast forests decomposed under great heat and pressure below sediment in the Earth's crust.

20,000 times atmospheric pressure

But experts have also wondered if some of these hydrocarbons might form chemically in the upper mantle and are then transported through faults and fissures to shallower regions, contributing to petroleum reserves.

Methane is the simplest hydrocarbon and is abundant in the atmosphere. The new study, detailed in the journal Nature Geoscience used a diamond anvil cell (a device which puts samples under immense pressures) and a laser heat source, to subject methane to conditions which mimic those found deep inside the Earth.

Pressures there can exceed 20 thousand times that at sea level, while temperatures can exceed 1,200°C.

"We demonstrated the chemical transformation of methane to heavier saturated hydrocarbons such as ethane, butane and propane and its reversibility under the conditions of the upper Earth's mantle," said the Carnegie Institution's Alexander Goncharov.

Improved techniques

The results suggest that heavier hydrocarbons than methane could exist deep down within the crust, he said, and this process may even have contributed to our oil and gas reserves today.

Although previous experiments have reported formation of heavier hydrocarbons from methane under high pressures and temperatures, according to Goncharov, the molecules could not be identified and the process was not proven. "We overcame this problem with our improved laser-heating technique where we could cook larger volumes more uniformly," he said.

Study co-author, Vladimir Kutcherov said this theory backs up research which suggests that hydrocarbons formed in this was seep up through deep faults in the Earth's crust, where they form larger deposits. "So, our planet may have enormous, inexhaustible resources of hydrocarbons," he said.

Don Putin Loses A Payload

This is too interesting a story not to post about.

The Artic Sea is a $50 million vessel with an unknown payload.

It's either drugs or worse because Putin and his stooge Medvedev have sent the Russian military and the FSB to get it back.

Associated Press: Missing ship: a foggy saga of rumors, few clues.

The ship, which its owners say is carrying an Algeria-bound load of timber, set sail from Finland on July 23. The next day, the crew reported, about a dozen men boarded the ship near the Swedish island of Gotland, tied up the crew, beat them, said they were looking for drugs and then sped off in an inflatable craft.

The motive for the alleged attack is unknown and the report itself has raised doubts. Such an attack would have been unusual in European waters, and Swedish police said they started investigating only after hearing about it several days later from the ship's owners.

The Guardian: Secret cargo theory as hunt for missing vessel Arctic Sea goes on.

But Mikhail Voitenko, the editor of Russia's Sovfracht maritime bulletin, said the ship, originally thought to be carrying £1m-worth of timber from Finland to Algeria, may have been targeted because it was carrying an unknown cargo.

"The only sensible answer is that the vessel was loaded secretly with something we don't know anything about," he told the Russia Today news channel. "We have to remember that before loading in Finland the vessel stayed for two weeks in a shipyard in Kaliningrad [formerly Königsberg]. I'm sure it cannot be drugs or illegal criminal cargo. I think it is something much more expensive and dangerous."

Daily Mail: Nuclear riddle of missing ship as pirates demand a £1m ransom.

The ransom demand came as The Mail on Sunday established radiation tests were carried out at the port of Pietarsaari in western Finland, where the Maltese-flagged ship Arctic Sea started its voyage. ...

The fact that nuclear tests were conducted will fuel speculation that the ship did have a hidden cargo.

Enquiries by this newspaper have established that no checks were carried out on what was being transported in the hold prior to its departure from Finland on July 23.

And the FSB, the Russian security service, as well as MI5 have been involved in the investigation into the hijacked vessel. ...

The Arctic Sea began its voyage after a summer refit in the Russian port of Kaliningrad, which is infamous for smuggling.

Huffington Post: The Arctic Sea: Russian Navy Searches Atlantic For Missing Ship.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered that "all necessary measures" be taken to find the missing ship, and the Russian navy turned all of its vessels in the Atlantic - including three landing ships, a frigate and two nuclear-powered submarines - to search. The Defense Ministry said Thursday it was also using satellites.

Was Sirius B a Red Giant?

Rens Van Der Sluijs: Siriusly Red.

As has often been pointed out, by definition the uniformitarian creed precludes the very real possibility of rare and radical changes in nature.

Since the late 19th century, most geologists have fondly embraced the adage of the British lawyer and geologist, Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875): ‘The present is the key to the past.’ Its naïve implication is that all phenomena that ever happened in nature still occur today and can be observed. Historical evidence is valuable precisely because it offers an even better key to the past than present-day analogues: eye-witness accounts.

A prime application of the historical method concerns the colour of Sirius A or α Canis Majoris, the brightest star in the night sky. Sirius appears bright white today, but – as the English amateur astronomer, Thomas Barker (1722-1809), first pointed out in 1760 – was emphatically qualified as red in many classical texts. Poetical passages aside, Seneca commented that Sirius was of a deeper red than Mars, while Ptolemy labeled the star “reddish” and grouped it with five other stars, all of which are indeed of red or orange aspect.

Even as late as the 6th century CE, the Gallo-Roman chronicler, Gregory of Tours, could label the Dog Star rubeola or ‘reddish’. It is claimed that the earliest unambiguous reference to Sirius as a white star is found in the pages of the Persian astronomer, ‘Abd al-Raḥman al-Sufī (903-986 CE).

What to make of all this? The paradox has sparked a prolonged and fairly intense debate, which has led to a fair number of publications, including Noah Brosch’s recent book Sirius Matters (2008). The evasive explanation that Sirius’s red traced to a simple textual error is easily refuted by the eminent authority of Ptolemy and Seneca as well as the observation that the same attribution is attested in a number of other cultures. For example, the Pawnee, of the North American Plains, associated each of the four intercardinal points with a colour, a type of weather, an animal, a tree, and a star.

The southeastern corner was the domain of red, the “Red Star” – which might be the planet Mars – and the wolf, explicitly linked to Sirius. Another suggestion, that an optical illusion accounts for the confusion, seems merely a red herring. It may be so that the star, to the unaided eye, often appears to be flashing with red, white and blue hues when near the horizon, but such scintillations would not have deluded such a skilled observer as Ptolemy. The belief in a red Sirius was clearly genuine. But how can it be reconciled with the white hue seen today?

Two Canadian archaeoastronomers, David Kelley and Eugene Milone, followed a rather more promising direction: “We conclude that the bulk of the evidence supports a literal red Sirius interpretation … Thus, the discovery that the bright star, Sirius, was once described as red, when it is now clearly white, may light up formerly obscure paths of stellar evolution.” The trouble is that, on the current astronomical model of stellar evolution, no shift from red to white is possible over such a short time.

Gravitation Is Imaginary

Stephen J. Crothers: Einstein's Elusive Gravitational Waves.

It is claimed that the LIGO and LISA projects will detect Einstein's gravitational waves. The existence of these waves is entirely theoretical. Over the past forty years or so no Einstein gravitational waves have been detected. How long must the search go on, at great expense to the public purse, before the astrophysical scientists admit that their search is fruitless and a waste of vast sums of public money? The fact is, from day one, the search for these elusive waves has been destined to detect nothing.

Owned.

Atlantean Pyramids In Our Lifetime?

"Just because you see pictures of glaciers falling into the ocean doesn't mean anything bad is happening. This is something that happens all the time. It's part of the natural cycle of things. We know from measurements that glaciers have been melting for 200 years at least. So it's certainly long before human activities could have caused it. What we also know, going back 4,000 years, is that the glaciers were actually a lot smaller. They actually grew in the meantime. So it seems to be some sort of cyclical process. They grow and shrink and there's no particular reason for being worried just because they're shrinking at the moment." -- Freeman Dyson, physicist, September 2007

Science Daily: Antarctic Glacier Thinning At Alarming Rate

ScienceDaily (Aug. 15, 2009) — The thinning of a gigantic glacier in Antarctica is accelerating, scientists report. The Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica, which is around twice the size of Scotland, is losing ice four times as fast as it was a decade years ago.

I hope the whole continent melts.

And global warming has been refuted once again. If global warming were taking place (don't worry it's not) the tundra treeline would advance. That's not happening, therefore there is no global warming: Unexpected Relationship Between Climate Warming And Advancing Treelines.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 14, 2009) — A new study reveals that treelines are not responding to climate warming as expected.

Carbon dioxide, the life-giving chemical compound that plants require for photosynthesis, is less than 00.038% of the Earth's atmosphere. Even if you doubled, tripled, or quadrupled (good luck with that) the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (total carbon dioxide not anthropogenic) the net effect on global temperature would be zero.

72,000 Year Old Pyrotechnology

Science Daily: Early Modern Humans Used Fire To Engineer Tools From Stone; Complex Cognition Older Than 72,000 Years?.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 14, 2009) — Evidence that early modern humans living on the coast of the far southern tip of Africa 72,000 years ago employed pyrotechnology – the controlled use of fire – to increase the quality and efficiency of their stone tool manufacturing process, is being reported in the Aug. 14 issue of the journal Science.

An international team of researchers, including three from the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, deduce that "this technology required a novel association between fire, its heat, and a structural change in stone with consequent flaking benefits." Further, their findings ignite the notion of complex cognition in these early engineers.

"Our illumination of the heat treatment process shows that these early modern humans commanded fire in a nuanced and sophisticated manner," says lead author Kyle Brown, a doctoral candidate at the University of Cape Town, and field and lab director in Mossel Bay, South Africa, for ASU's Institute of Human Origins.

"We show that early modern humans at 72,000 years ago, and perhaps as early as 164,000 years ago in coastal South Africa, were using carefully controlled hearths in a complex process to heat stone and change its properties, the process known as heat treatment," explains Brown.

Mars and Methane

Science Daily: Mars, Methane And Mysteries: Red Planet May Not Be As Dormant As Once Thought.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 13, 2009) — Mars may not be as dormant as scientists once thought.

Stupid scientists always having to change their minds because their prejudices are always wrong.

The 2004 discovery of methane means that either there is life on Mars, or that volcanic activity continues to generate heat below the martian surface. ESA plans to find out which it is. Either outcome is big news for a planet once thought to be biologically and geologically inactive.

Scientists suspect biology so I'm guessing it's volcanic.

Too bad all that methane and carbon dioxide can't cause global warming on Mars.

Archaeological Evidence Confirms Veracity of The Bible

Note Tiglath's expensive wrist watch!

Science Daily: Archaeologists Find Cache Of Tablets In 2,700-year Old Turkish Temple.

“Tayinat was destroyed by the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III in 738 BCE, and then transformed into an Assyrian provincial capital, equipped with its own governor and imperial administration,” says Harrison. “Scholars have long speculated that the reference to Calneh in Isaiah’s oracle against Assyria alludes to Tiglath-pileser’s devastation of Kunulua – ie, Tayinat. The destruction of the Luwian monuments and conversion of the sacred precinct into an Assyrian religious complex may represent the physical manifestation of this historic event.”

The temple was later burned in an intense fire [a.k.a. conflagration] and found filled with heavily charred brick and wood which, ironically, contributed to the preservation of the finds recovered from its inner chambers.

Poetry and Literature of Horror and Terror

ON A SIDE STREET
by Charles Simic

If there are small shops
With illegible signs,
Don’t come near them
Or look in their windows.

Keep to where the sky can be seen
In its cloudless twilight splendor
Above the dark buildings,
Dark even on darkest nights.
If someone’s following you,
And he limps, and he’s got a watch
He puts to his ear smiling,
Run from him and his watch.

There’s a wide, well-lit avenue
Close by. Thousands have come out
Just to see you, though
They make believe you’re invisible
As you step into the light
Out of that dark side street,
With your face so pale
It seems powdered for a carnival.

(November 1992)

THE COLONEL
by Carolyn Forché

What you have heard is true. I was in his house.
His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His
daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the
night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol
on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on
its black cord over the house. On the television
was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles
were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his
hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings
like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of
lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes,
salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed
the country. There was a brief commercial in
Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk of how difficult it had become to govern.
The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel
told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the
table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to
bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on
the table. They were like dried peach halves. There
is no other way to say this. He took one of them in
his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a
water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of
fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone,
tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He
swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held
the last of his wine in the air. Something for your
poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor
caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on
the floor were pressed to the ground.

(May 1978)

PICTURE POSTCARDS
by Miklós Radnóti

I

The roar of cannon rolls from Bulgaria dense and broad,
resounds upon the mountain crest, then hesitates and ceases;
the maned sky runs above; but recoils the neighing road;
and men and beasts are tangled, and wagon, thought and load.
You’re deep and constant in me despite this turbulence
and glowing in my conscience, forever still, intense
and silent like an angel when wondering he sees
destruction, or like beetles entombed in dying trees.

II

Nine kilometres from here, look, the haystacks
and homes consumed in blaze,
the peasants smoke in silence by the meadow
and huddle in a daze.
But here, the shepherdess leaves in the water
light ripples in her wake
and gently dipping down, her curly flock drinks
the clouds up in the lake.

III

The oxen slaver red saliva, people
pass urine mixed with blood, my squadron stands
disorganized in filthy bunches. Death
blows overhead its cold, infernal breath.

IV

I tumble near his body. It turns over
already taut as string about to break.
Shot through the nape. You too will end up like that,
I mutter to myself. Lie calm. Be patient.
The flower of death unfolds in fear. I wait.
Blood mixed with dirt grows clotted on my ear.
I hear a soldier quip: He’ll get away yet.

(Oct. 31, 1944)

Prose: Edgar Allan Poe (Antarctica ftw), H.P. Lovecraft (Antarctica ftw), Paul Bowles.

Hundreds Of New Cryptids Found In Himalayas

Yesterday, scientists would've said that people who believe in flying frogs are pseudoscientists. Today, it's not so clear what they would say.

Science Daily: Hundreds Of New Species Discovered In Eastern Himalayas.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 11, 2009) — Over 350 new species including the world’s smallest deer, a “flying frog” and a 100 million-year old gecko have been discovered in the Eastern Himalayas, a biological treasure trove now threatened by climate change.

Climate change is an euphamism for catastrophism.

Scientists Confirm Democritus/Velikovsky

"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, 2nd century

2400 years after Democritus, mainstream scientists are finally catching up with 5th century (B.C.) thought.

Clara Moskowitz: Two Worlds Collide in Deep Space. (Hat tip: Jeffery Keown).

Two distant planets orbiting a young star apparently smashed into each other at high speeds thousands of years ago in a cosmic pileup of cataclysmic proportions, astronomers announced Monday.

Telltale plumes of vaporized rock and lava leftover from the collision revealed its existence to NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which picked up signatures from the impact in recent observations.

The two-planet pileup occurred within the last few thousand years or so - a relatively recent cosmic timeframe. The smaller of the two bodies - a planet about the size of Earth's moon, according to computer models - was apparently destroyed by the crash. The other was most likely a Mercury-sized-planet and survived, albeit severely dented.

"This collision had to be huge and incredibly high-speed for rock to have been vaporized and melted," said Carey Lisse of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, lead author of a paper describing the findings in the Aug. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

Researchers believe the planets were moving at about 22,400 mph (10 kilometers per second) before the crash. The violent wreck released amorphous silica rock, or melted glass, and hardened chunks of lava called tektites. Spitzer also spotted large clouds of orbiting silicon monoxide gas created when the rock was vaporized.

"This is a really rare and short-lived event, critical in the formation of Earth-like planets and moons," Lisse said. "We're lucky to have witnessed one not long after it happened."

If the universe is over 12 billion years old and there are more than 10 trillion planets, how rare can it be?

Baptism of Solitude

"The distant past returned -- what part of it, he could not decide." -- Paul Bowles, author, 1947

"Celestial vengeance is approaching." -- Paul Bowles, author, 1947

"It is a unique sensation, and it has nothing to do with loneliness, for loneliness presupposes memory. Here, in this wholly mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears; nothing is left but your own breathing and the sound of your heart beating." -- Paul Bowles, author, 1963

Dinosaur Infanticide

Science Daily: Chicken-hearted Tyrants: Predatory Dinosaurs As Baby Killers.

Dr. Oliver Rauhut, paleontologist at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, and his collegue Dr. David Hone surmise that giant carnivores like Tyrannosaurus preyed mainly on juvenile dinosaurs. "Unlike their adult and well-armed relatives these young animals hardly posed any risk to the predators," says Rauhut. "And their tender bones would have added important minerals to a theropod's diet. Now we hope for more fossils to be found that add new evidence to our hypothesis."

King of tyrants, Tyrannosaurus rex is by far the most famous dinosaur. Not even recent finds of slightly bigger – and maybe even more terrifying – species like Giganotosaurus could dent the aura of "T-Rex". But what would happen if the king turned out a baby killer instead of fearless hunter of much bigger prey? "Animals such as Tyrannosaurus are often seen as the perfect 'killing machines' with extremely powerful bites, which were able to bring down even the largest possible prey," says Rauhut of the Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie and LMU Munich. "But the very few fossils that reflect the hunt of predatory dinosaurs on large herbivores tell a tale of failure – the prey either got away, or both prey and predator were killed."

On the other hand, the also extremely sparse cases of direct evidence for the diet of predatory dinosaurs – stomach contents and coprolites – show that juveniles or much smaller prey species were ingested and the latter were swallowed whole. Rauhut and Hone, who is now at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, China, therefore propose as a hypothesis that large predatory dinosaurs only as an exception attacked other large dinosaurs, but mainly fed on juveniles. "Even modern predators prefer old and sick animals or unexperienced young individuals," states Hone. "These are an easy prey to bring down and the risk of injury for the predator is much lower. This strategy was probably the same in dinosaurs."

Intelligent Crows?

Science Daily: Crows Can Use 'Up To Three Tools' In Correct Sequence Without Training.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 6, 2009) — New experiments by Oxford University scientists reveal that New Caledonian crows can spontaneously use up to three tools in the correct sequence to achieve a goal, something never before observed in non-human animals without explicit training.

Sequential tool use has often been interpreted as evidence for advanced cognitive abilities, such as planning and analogical reasoning, but this has never been explicitly examined.

The researchers set out to investigate what the crows really understood about the tasks and their own actions with tools. A report of their research appears in the journal PLoS One.

How Old Is Egypt?

The customarily ignored history of planet Earth gives perhaps contradictory dates as to when the Land of Egypt was settled. Herodotus gives the date of ~11,770 B.C. while Plato gives the date of ~8,500 B.C.

"Thus the whole period is eleven thousand three hundred and forty years; in all of which time (they said) they had had no king who was a god in human form, nor had there been any such either before or after those years among the rest of the kings of Egypt. Four times in this period (so they told me) the sun rose contrary to experience; twice he came up where he now goes down, and twice went down where he now comes up." -- Herodotos, historian, Book II, ~440-420 B.C.

"She [Venus] founded your city [Athens] a thousand years before ours [Sais], receiving from the Earth and Hephaestus the seed of your race, and afterwards she founded ours, of which the constitution is recorded in our sacred registers to be eight thousand years old." -- Plato, philosopher, Timaeus, 350 B.C.

Betelgeuse Pregnant?

Science Daily: Sharpest Views Of Star Betelgeuse Reveal How Supergiant Stars Lose Mass.

the sharpest ever views of the supergiant star Betelgeuse. They show that the star has a vast plume of gas almost as large as our Solar System and a gigantic bubble boiling on its surface. These discoveries provide important clues to help explain how these mammoths shed material at such a tremendous rate.