New Age News for July 2004

Stephen Hawking says he has cracked the enigma of his Black Hole paradox - and it means a reversal of one of his main hypotheses.
For the third time in eight months, classified disks have been reported missing at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Someone building a nuke at home?
The concepts behind I, Robot.
Trials begin on police gadget which disables cars by firing radiowaves at their computer systems.
The fractal origins of Earth's complex life.
Tsk tsk...Nature should have pulled out their Oxford Dictionary, as the term astrobiology has just been added. Keep that in mind next time you play Scrabble...it's gotta be worth a few points.
Ammonia on Mars could mean life (Jim but not as we know it).
X-43A - full speed ahead for Mach 10 (that's over 3 kilometres/second).
Tales of psychic children. All students proficient at psychokinesis, please raise my hand.
Forget about your mouse - volunteers move cursor using power of thought.
Entering the world of the shaman, simply by plugging in.
Babies' use of sign language shows their innate sensitivity to communication.
Cloud-seeding row erupts in China.
The all-seeing eye, and how it enthralled the White House.
Abydos, the last resting place of the first kings of Egypt.
Woman survives 12-storey plunge.
It's raining fish, hallelujah it's raining fish.

Quote of the Day:

I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, “Do not weep for me, This is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country — I now go back there, I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn.

Walt Whitman

Antiquity Magazine has a report and pics on the world's greatest single collection of cave art.
The Southwest of England reasserts its claim to King Arthur..
The man who found the US' biggest ever space rock .
Diggers find houses and big rocks at prehistoric village excavation.
Ancient curse has genetic origin.
The latest US export to the UK: :pollution.
Beliefs about science split by gender , says poll
Exploring the limits of human perception .
The scary story of Ukraine's missing missiles.
Early humans made love not war.
Todays New York Press offers a de-bunking of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. What, this book is new to New Yorkers?
Ethnic-specific viruses, designer soldiers and more: the other face of new biology .
An older article but a goodie: Freeman Dyson on science and the paranormal .

Quote of the Day:

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one he must more approve of the homage of Reason than of blindfolded fear.

Thomas Jefferson

Where have all the pelicans gone?
MI5 for the US? Were The Professionals MI5? Surely the US could do better than Bodie and Doyle?
Sustainable oil?
Sistine Chapel of the Ice Age. A little bit of an exaggeration.
The WHO vaccine conspiracy.
Arthur's round table gets around.
Quest for the truth about Arthur and Scotland.
Will store tags tag you?
Pi and Phi Have Been in the Spotlight. What about e?
Can space travel or climbing Everest help doctors keep intensive care patients alive?
Climate warning from the deep.
Bacteria tested in Mars simulator.
Will compasses point south?
Did cosmic rays cause ice ages? Having ruled out the obvious they go for something as spurious as ice ages.
Nuclear siren song beguiles Blair.
New Beatles songs found.
Ancient skeleton collection yields cancer clues.
Neutrinos topple matter theory.
Mission to deflect an asteroid.
Melting ice: the threat to London's future.
New study suggests that even men who aren't color blind may see the world differently than women do.
Robert Bauval tells us about France's followers of Isis.
Scientists reopen the Romanov mystery after DNA results are challenged.
Descendants relive 200-year-old duel to the death. Except this time they went for beers afterward.
Ghost-hunting night at the local pub raises money for charity.
A night at a pub sounds better than this charity-driven world-record attempt at firewalking - where 28 people were treated for burns. Leave it to the yogis folks.
Forget about the water witches - this dude is a corpse witch.
Educate yourself about our latest poll subject: Terraforming Mars - the Noble Experiment?
Mobile TV coming of age. How about they channel funds into making TV watchable first.
Researchers warn AIDS vaccine still years away.
Major study finds no evidence for Gulf-war syndrome.
Fertility expert Lord Winston accuses Prince Charles of scientific scare-mongering.
Terahertz wand to unmask terrorists. Gotta get me some terahertz glasses...
Hi-fi failure helps to make beer better. These are a few of my favourite things...
Europe plans to build bunker...er, I mean lab, beneath the Alps.
Indonesia's man-eating lizards invade London. Okay, so they're at London Zoo...just thought I'd try my hand at a little sensationalism.

Quote of the Day:

The after-death state is very much like the dream-state, and its dreams are the children of the mentality of the dreamer.

Tibetan Book of the Dead

The occult beginnings of our powered world: a review of Dark Light: Electricity and Anxiety from the Telegraph to the X-Ray (Amazon US and UK), by Professor Linda Simon.
The next space probe will be staying close to home, checking our atmosphere. Hope it doesn't fall in that big ozone hole.
Farms may be getting futuristic: have your own R2-D2 check your crop.
Last Halloween's solar storms were the most powerful ever measured, with the blast rushing past the Earth at 8 million kilometres/hour. Now, it's even reached the Voyager probes (11 billion kilometres away). And: solar storms may have torn away Mars water.
Scientists worry that Mars Express might be in trouble.
Smoke: bad for us lung-using critters. Not so for plants though..
More on the urban legends conference mentioned earlier last week.
Scientists discover pattern to whale beachings.
New discoveries reveal more of Karnak's secrets.
Dementia may have played a large part in recent history. That and just plain stupidity.
New type of AIDS drug offers hope.
On the 28th of July, 2003, Eric Williams blacked out while driving and crashed into Gordon White's living room. One year on, they meet again after Eric blacks out and drives into Gordon's living room...again.
The latest newsletter from James Randi, in case you require salvation from your own gullibility.
Stocked up on skepticism? The Philadelphia Experiment - new evidence surfaces.
Ghost-hunters hear sound of girl laughing.
Medici family's secret crypt unearthed.
Dino-gold. German scientists have unearthed the biggest collection of dinosaur fossils ever found in the country, including bones that could belong to previously unknown species.

Fossil findings and a fresh analysis of a prized set of human bones challenge the art/creativity theory.
An ancient African skull fills a gap, but fuels a debate.
An entire 2800-year-old Egyptian mummy has been explored in 3D stereo vision for the first time using imaging techniques better known to medicine.
Who circumnavigated the globe 87-years before Italian explorer Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) and 114-years before Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521)?
Lake Vostok, deep beneath the Antarctic ice, appears to be divided into two deep basins.
Bin Laden is guiding plots against U.S., hoping to influence the presidential vote.
Shhhh! Don't tell Greg, but weblog authors are calling it quits or scaling back their sites.
Find yourself a sanctified chicken for the Loa. It is estimated that 60-million people practice voodoo worldwide.
Keep your distance. Residents in Canberra have been warned not to bother starving kangaroos.
Edinburgh alligator sellers are stung by undercover cops. Yes, that Edinburgh. With an alligator.
Brain implants have been used to read the minds of monkeys. This makes me extremely uncomfortable.
The 'Weed from hell' has been found in Texas. Maybe the fire ants will like it.
Millions of people may have been injected with a tainted polio vaccine.
Researchers report the preferences for hourglass-figured women emerges around the age of puberty. Sounds like easy money on the reasearch grant scene.
Deep in the Congolese jungle, rebel groups unite in their desire to exterminate the pygmies.
Loud noise prompts women to eat. There's a punch-line in there somewhere but it eludes me.
Estonia was accused of amorality and gross historical insensitivity after they honored veterans of the Nazi Waffen-SS. Go figure.
The Pentagon envisions a fleet of blimps guarding the U.S. coastlines.
Researchers look to tiny spheres of glass storing hydrogen in future cars.
The General Electric Company announced the development of the world's best performing carbon nanotube diode.
A rather exotic crop formation appeared in Solano County, California. With pics.
The fourth 2004 crop formation in Poland has multiple parts. With pics.
The Spanish Fork, Utah crop formation and was accompanied by mysterious lights.
Residents report bright lights In sky over five US states. Great video from police dash camera.
Here's an interesting article, God Vs. UFOs by Angela V. Michaels.
Old galaxies shed a new light on a young universe.
SpaceShipOne, the world's first private space craft, is back on course and ready for the next trip.
The JPL is planning on extended missions for the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Maybe these robots need a union.
The Cassini space probe is sending back to earth ultraviolet photographs that tantalize astronomers. Expand the pics. More".
Let's take a peek at what the Advanced Concepts Team (ACT) at ESA’s European Space Technology Research Centre (ESTEC) sees for the future..
Better technology and robust funding fuel search for intelligent life beyond Earth.
Life is unlikely in our asteroid-ridden neighbor.
Titan reveals its mysterious surface.
SG-1, Season Eight, begins tonight on the Sci-Fi Channel with New Order in the US. 2-hours of my life down the tube.

2,000-year-old skeletons unearthed in China confirmed to be European.
A National Public Radio feature on the crumbling Fortress of Masada.
Winged creatures cause panic among Chilean peasants. I thought all the peasants died out in the Middle Ages?
Iowa farm family baffled by crop circle.
Conversely, this farmer isn't baffled at all.
Encounters with tiny humanoids. The Gentry live on...
Did a UFO crash to Earth in New Mexico in 1948? The mystery of the Aztec UFO Affair, by Nick Redfern. Was New Mexico a popular UFO tourist destination in the 1940s or what?
What inspired the prophetic priestesses of Delphi?
Talking about tricksters and the paranormal - an interview withi George P. Hansen. Relevant to our recent crop circle discussion?
Keyless entry systems go haywire, officials blame military or government transmissions.
'Dartmoor Beast' fever returns after couple spot Puma-like animal.
Sun more active now than at any time in the last 1,000 years. Tick, tick, tick...
A diary of Mars exploration. And: Rovers missions may be extended.
China aims for the Moon in 2007, and also to build their own space station. Do I hear the footsteps of another space race sneaking up on us?
The man who taught a generation to love the sky.
Scandal reignites over polio vaccine infected with monkey cancer. Part of the latest print edition of New Scientist.
Drinking milk may protect against bowel cancer.
Whale death question reignites controversy over harpooning.
Scientists find peat bogs are releasing carbon dioxide at an alarming rate, contributing to global warming. Bulldoze them all in !
Are Coca-Cola's GPS cans spyware?
Folklorists gather to dissect urban myths. Can we believe them?
Lightning strikes 20 miles apart destroy two homes owned by the same couple.

Is Cassini doomed or has it been saved by the new rotation period?
Cult push for living sacrifices.
A giant in biology has evolved to 100. He helped modernize Darwinism.
Love really is blind.
Scientists have discovered a type of mint leaf that can destroy cancer cells.
Ancient European remains discovered in Qinghai.
Croatian skeletons reveal changing status of cancer in Europe across the centuries.
Framing Arabs.
The pentagon, modern propaganda and movie censorship.
Sunspots reaching 1000 year high.
Doom ad gloom by 2100.
Archaeologists find names of hundreds of masons who built Taj Mahal.
Ether and the theory of relativity.
Late Neolithic megalithic structures at Nabta Playa.

Brits develop a magic ink that attracts metal and opens the way for RFID tags. They'll know what you bought and what you did with it.
Psychic claims she was haunted by the ghost of James Dean for 40 years. Cool.
Riddle of the 'horse rippers'. Or as they might be called in the scientific terminology, 'sadistic assholes who I wouldn't mind cornering in a dark alley'.
Whales acting strange in Hawaiian bay. They probably think that of us on a perpetual basis.
Ginseng found to interfere with blood-clotting drug.
GM bacteria boosts cancer therapy. Bacteria sounds spooky enough, but GM bacteria?
'Mood' enzyme linked to teen suicide.
If you're feeling a little ill, what could be better for your constitution then a good whiff of radioactive gas.
Catapult makers were the celebrity scientists of their day. Or should that be the 'rock' stars of their day?
Arctic island yields evidence of 500-year-old gold swindle.
Wreck of mysterious polar ship to become state preserve. It's all happening in the Arctic regions, who's going to be TDG's roving reporter up there?
Computer to show Scottish landscape as it was 15,000 years ago.
Broad leaves may have evolved as carbon dioxide levels dropped.
Astrobiology interviews Steve Squires, principal investigator for the Mars rover mission.
More on Cassini probing Titan's mysteries.
Naked white dwarf shows scientists its dead stellar engine. Those voyeuristic scientists...
South Africans relax. Physics professor explains away UFO as Venus sighting. I know I mistake Venus for a metallic flying craft every night, why can't it be true for everyone else.
Scientists attempt to perfect the moving robot.
Attempt by 100-year-old to break the 100 metre record foiled by malfunctioning clock.

Researchers find that brain can be tricked into feeling pain in a fake limb. "You could argue that the bodily self is an illusion being constructed in the brain" - Dr Henrik Ehrsson.
Gene silencing prevents hereditary brain disease in mice. The way medical research is heading, soon mice will be immortal.
Embryonic stem cells surprise researcher. Boo!
Aviation seen as serious environmental risk to planet Earth.
Cassini sees Titan's methane clouds. Perhaps there are lots of sheep on Titan. Also, Cassini maps Titan.
Nothing can escape that little probe, as it picks up some mysterious oxygen in Saturn's rings.
The Tau Ceti system, once believed likely to harbour life, may in fact be doomed by an overload of asteroids.
Ming Dynasty porcelain treasure trove recovered from shipwreck.
Archaeologists travel to China to unravel one of archaeology's great mysteries: the three hares.
God, UFOs, the Elohim...be careful of believing what they tell you.
Sunday lunch with psychic medium James Van Praagh.
UK's National Trust opens doors to grand house for ghost-hunting squad.
South African inventor ready to mass produce his energy-busting magnetic motor.
Randi busts out his latest skeptical monologue (with a little help from his friends).
Man has trouble getting rid of his stash of a million pennies...all 3.6 tonnes of it.

A tiny pre-human who met a violent end more than 900,000-years ago may have been an experiment. Doesn't that make us experiments as well?
The fossilized bones of two ancient hippos open a new window that reveals the UK's warmer past.
The secret ruins are unveiled in a Utah canyon.
For what it's worth, political scientists who have honed the art of election forecasting by devising elaborate mathematical formulas, predict an easy win for President Bush.
Physicists reveal a flaw in the EU Constitution.
An initiative to engage and develop Iraq's science and technology community has been announced by the Arab Science and Technology Foundation.
Your quantum computer will arrive shortly. Physicists have succeeded in entangling five photons, the minimum number needed for universal error correction in quantum information processing.
Vanderbilt physicist Robert J. Scherrer has come up with a model that could cut the mystery of dark matter and dark energy in half by explaining them as two aspects of a single unknown force.
More than 10,000-patients a year may be dying because of a bad reaction to medication. In all fairness, doctors do say that they 'practice' medicine.
Purple carrots and low-carb potatoes are among the designer vegetables resulting from crossbreeding and genetic modification.
Sugarless sodas doom your diet.
Imagine that by altering the function of a single gene, you could live longer, be thinner and have lower cholesterol and fat levels in your blood. Do it, right?
'Get out of here and go throw rocks at your friends like we use to do!' Electronic game use is associated with childhood obesity.
Forget the oil - fungal infections are poised to trigger an international shortage of chocolate.
Why are fewer people left-handed than right-handed?
Humble bacteria are found to possess precision clocks.
It might be possible to measure the properties of dark energy in the laboratory according to physicists.
Cassini spacecraft on Thursday sent back unprecedented glimpses of Saturn's rings, revealing patterned waves that looked like ripples in a pond. With pics and video. More.
Hubble harvests 100-new planets.
A Canadian robot may save the Hubble telescope.
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has captured the image of a spiral galaxy called NGC 7331 - a virtual twin of our Milky Way. We wonder if they just captured our image.
Some believe that the Tinonee ghost is actually the Min Min light as described by Aborigines in central Queensland.
What follows death?
The magic power of American Indians, from Pravda.
How to see UFO's, even when you're sober. Try to avoid the abduction-thing with the anal probes, unless you're into that.
A UFO over Durban is captured on video. (Nope, no video.)
Disks And Triangles Sighted, all from the Filers Files #28 - 2004 Skywatch Investigations now residing on Rense.

Cassini begins its four-year orbit of Saturn today. Wonder if Spirit and Opportunity are feeling like cute child actors grown into pimply-faced teenagers?
However, communications concerns with Cassini during orbital insertion due to Canberra weather. Any place that calls 10 degrees Celsius 'fine' has seriously bad weather in my opinion.
Also: Cassini images Titan's true colours. And sneaking a peek at Titan's surface.
That sneaky speed of light may have changed 'recently'.
The skeptics rush in to ward off dangerous talk about Satan being implicated in the Sicilian fire mysteries. Phew, just stopped the rising tide of irrational thinking in time...I feel safer already.
And in Hong Kong, workers held a ghost-appeasing ceremony after a fire extinguisher sprung a leak, shot 12 storeys into the air, and took off a workers arm. That's one mean fire extinguisher.
More talk of big cats in Scotland.
UNESCO needs money to save the world's ancient monuments.
Nano-scale electronic wires developed by US chemists.
Glimpse into DNA of cloned embryos reveals serious problems.
Study finds the sneakiest primates have the biggest brains. Is that why kids have big heads?
Hypnosis can double a woman's chance of getting pregnant after IVF treatment.

Saturn rotation period changed since Voyager?
African drug boosts male fertility.
Fahrenheit 911: questions for Michael Moore.
Oldest Americans may prove even older.
Magic mushrooms have long been associated with legends of fairies and fantastic literature. But was there a real link to the use of psycho-active fungi?
The doors of perception.
Did meteor cause microquake?
Doomsday: the electrical connection.
Massive black hole stumps researchers.
Bilingualism may protect the mind from deterioration in old age.
Fossils confirm cold spell doomed the dinosaurs.
Mars scientists marvel at mysterious rock formation.
How Hitler became a dictator.
Expanding Earth: a symposium.

Study finds mobile phones cut sperm count. A new twist on "will you call me in the morning?".
Ladies, stop laughing - I've got one for you too. Atkins Diet affects chances of conception. But I wouldn't be so crass to mention a high-protein diet after the last story.
Sounds like a good enough reason to resort to a natural entheogen - chewing Khat leaves said to boost sperm power.
Worldwide scare on Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) was based on flawed research.
After 60 years of biding its time, the corpse flower is about bloom into full stench. A rose by any other name...
Why do some men experience pregnancy symptoms such as vomiting and nausea?
Nazi shadow over German IVF research.
Normal explanations for Min Min lights?
UFOlogy's untapped resource - Canada.
Crypto Conference witnesses rare talk by Bigfoot legend Bob Gimlin.
Psychologist Leo Sprinkle on Past-Life Regression (PLR).
British Museum unravels mummy mystery in 3D.
Afghanistan's legendary Bactrian Gold surfaces briefly for catalogueing. Images please?!
Contrary to recent fears of a zoning change, Silbury Hill will be off-limits to walkers.
The Arctic Ocean holds monsters of the vasty deep.
Milky Way X-ray mystery deepens.
More and more evidence emerging about Mars' watery past.
Scientists are baffled as to how this black hole had time to grow to its massive size (about 10 billion times the mass of our Sun).
Astrobiology presents an excerpt from Alan Shephard's Light This Candle. Hip-gangsta-wannabes take note...cool your over-blown testosterone levels - these guys were 'real men'.
Here's the latest newsletter from James Randi.
Here's a thought - next time you've had a big night on the bottle and want to fight off the hangover, try some cactus extract. Probably a good idea to make sure it's a prickly pear though, rather than a peyote or San Pedro.
Watching too much TV might bring on early puberty due to changes in melatonin.
New type of ultrasound scan provides stunning images of baby in womb.
As always we try and present the really important stuff - student builds beer device to pour the perfect pint.

Amateur archaeologists busted doing DIY digs at Mycenae.
Baalbek identified as ancient city of Tunip.
US military base in Iraq said to have caused 'horrifying' damage to ancient Babylonian temple.
Additionally, data is showing that SpaceShipOne took a 'trajectory excursion'. At least it wasn't a 'major malfunction' (children of the 80s will know what that refers to).
NASA announces organisational changes.
Space.com takes a closer look at the dragon in the Northern sky.
Spirit finds a rock unlike anything seen on Mars or Earth before.
Beach blob mystery solved at last. Also: abstract for "Microscopic, Biochemical, and Molecular Characteristics of the Chilean Blob and a Comparison With the Remains of Other Sea Monsters: Nothing but Whales".
Doubts cast on effectiveness of Alzheimer's drug Aricept.
Irishmen see delta-winged inter-planetary craft. Apparently.
Cryptozoology conference held on the weekend.
A recap of Robert McNally's research on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and alien abductions.
What a task it would be, to count all the fish in the sea.
Let the science and art of nanotechnology take you on a fantastic voyage.