Searching for alien life in California's Mono Lake

Mono Lake has a bizarre, extraterrestrial beauty. Just east of Yosemite National Park in California, the ancient lake covers about 65 square miles. Above its surface rise the twisted shapes of tufa, formed when freshwater springs bubble up through the alkaline waters.

Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a geobiologist, is interested in the lake not for its scenery but because it may be harbouring alien life forms, or “weird life”. Mono Lake, a basin with no outlet, has built up over many millennia one of the highest natural concentrations of arsenic on Earth. Dr Wolfe-Simon is investigating whether, in the mud around the lake or in the water, there exist microbes whose biological make-up is so fundamentally different from that of any known life on Earth that it may provide proof of a shadow biosphere, a second genesis for life on this planet.

Arsenic is chemically close to phosphorus. While phosphorus is a primary building block of life on Earth — an essential component of DNA and ATP, the energy molecule — arsenic is a deadly poison. In Mono Lake there are micro-organisms that live with arsenic. But they don’t incorporate it into their biology.

Dr Wolfe-Simon has theorised that there may be life that chose an “evolutionary pathway” to utilise arsenic. If such microbes existed, it could suggest that life started on our planet not once but at least twice. In turn this would help to support the idea that life is much more likely to have started elsewhere in the galaxy.

“There is life ‘as we know it’ and there is life ‘as we don’t know it’. What would that look like? I am trying to give us a framework to work with to help us look for what ‘we don’t know’, the particular framework of arsenic,” she says.

Dr Wolfe-Simon has taken samples from the mud and the waters of the lake and is performing a series of multiple dilutions — hugely increasing the levels of arsenic and reducing residual phosphorous to zero. She adds sugar, vitamins and other nutrients to encourage organisms to grow and tests the results.

Her experiments are not yet over but she is quietly pleased with the progress she is making. “We have some very exciting data,” she says. The results should be published by the end of this year.

She points out that Mono Lake arsenic life, if found, may only go as far as proving the extreme adaptability of life on Earth billions of years ago. It is generally agreed that on early Earth the chemical soup was very different because of the material being thrown out of the planet’s depths by volcanoes and hydrothermal vents and the lack of biologically derived oxygen. If arsenic was around in far greater concentrations then, perhaps “arsenolife”, as she calls it, in Mono Lake is evidence of that ancestral life, a finding that would deepen our understanding of how life on Earth got started.

But she hopes that her research may help scientists to reconsider what alien or “weird” life might look like: “It may prove that there are other possibilities that are beyond our imagination. It opens the door for us to think about biology in ways we have never thought. We are going to look for life on other planets and we only know to look for that which we know. This may help us to develop tools to look for something we have never seen.”

Her work is funded by the Nasa Astrobiology Institute and she is based at the laboratories of Professor Ron Oremland, of the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. Does she believe that there are alien life forms out there? “I don’t know how there could not be extraterrestrial life,” she replies.

Original story can be found here.

On-line auction site lists two bottled ghosts for sale.

Vials, claimed to contain the spirits of ghost exorcised

from a house, are up for sale.

Two vials, which the owner claims contain the spirits of ghosts exorcised from a house in New Zealand, have been put up for sale on online auction site, TradeMe.

So far, bidding on "Two Captured Ghosts" had reached $NZ410 ($A316), and incited hundreds of comments, with advice ranging from how to get rid of the spirits for good, to the ethics of selling someone else's captured immortal essence.

Before the exorcism, the seller said he and his partner were plagued by noises, strange "vibes" and the mysterious flicking of switches. After contacting spiritualist churches, they were referred to an exorcist, who put the ghosts in the bottles.

Since having their troublesome housemates removed last July, the couple had experienced no further disruptions, he said.

The auction description claims the spirits were captured by an exorcist from a spiritual church at a property in Christchurch, the largest city on New Zealand's South Island.

The seller claims that one spirit belongs to a man who died in the house in the 1920s.

"We have had no (paranormal) activity since they were bottled on July 15, 2009," the seller said.

"So I believe they are in the bottles."

The auction said the "holy water" in the vials dulled the spirit's energy and put them to sleep.

To revive the spirit, the buyer would need to pour the contents into a dish and let it "evaporate into your house''.

"I just want to get rid of them as they scare me,'' the seller said.

Original story can be found here.

Is Fresno's Meux Home Haunted?

Do the spirits of former residences still wander this Victorian era

house in downtown Fresno?

Located on the corner of Tulare and R Streets in downtown Fresno sits a house that has been in existence since 1890. Built in the Victorian style, the Meux Home was the residence of a Dr. Thomas Meux and his family up until 1970 when his daughter, Anne Prenetta Meux passed away. The house was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. It now exists as a museum, educating the public what a typical Victorian home was like. But there are stories that not all of it's residences have left.

When I first started investigating haunted locations in the Fresno area over a decade ago, I was told by several people that the Meux Home might be haunted. Stories of hearing children's laughter upstairs were common and I was even told the story of how the house would be closed up for the night and then when it was reopened the next day there were door knobs missing on several of the doors.

I decided to go to the home itself and see if I could find any truth to these stories. Upon my arrival, I found the head docent (tour guide) and struck up a conversation with her. I talked a bit about the architecture style of the house before broaching the subject of ghosts. To my surprise she didn't flinch when I asked if the house was haunted. But she did tell me she had never heard any stories if there were ghosts there and had never heard that the place was haunted.

I discussed the topic of ghosts and the paranormal with her for a few more minutes, she was quite knowledgeable in it (turns out she listens to Coast to Coast AM every night). I then asked her if it was possible to do an investigation of the home, to determine if there actually was anything there. At that point she got somewhat annoyed, saying they don't allow camera flashes in the home as the light from the flash tends to fade antique objects. I told her we could do only video work, and just use our night vision enabled cameras to accommodate them, but she still declined. Saying that the Board of Trustees wouldn't like the stigma of the Meux Home being haunted. I gave her several examples of homes turned museums that were known to be haunted (Whaley House in San Diego, Winchester Mansion in Santa Clara) that have benefited from this, but she still declined. I gave her my card and said goodbye.

Though I never did hear from the Meux Home, every time I drive by it I still wonder if the stories are true. Why are children's laughter heard and whose voices are they of? And the stories of the door knobs missing intrigues me. Could it be the same children playing pranks on the docents that now work there? Or is it someone else? Unfortunately I may never know and it seems the haunted history of the Meux Home is still a mystery and may always be one.

Death of chickens in Texas town spark talk of Chupacabra

Were these chickens victims of a Chupacabra attack, or was it just a wild animal?

HORIZON CITY -- The legend may be back, just as mysterious and dark, to stalk the unsuspecting.

Until last weekend, Cesar Garcia and brother-in-law Juan Miranda saw their life near Horizon City as secluded and peaceful.

They moved to the area from Chicago three years ago, but have suddenly been beset by strange and unexplained occurrences.

Their rabbits went into hiding, their cat spent the weekend on the roof of their house, their roosters didn't crow, and their dogs didn't bark.

And at least 30 of their chickens were killed by an unknown interloper.

The brothers are hesitant to say what they think spooked their animals or killed their chickens.

But when pressed, they said it: El Chupacabras.

The legend of El Chupacabras has been part of border folklore since stories of the creature's existence in Puerto Rico emerged in the early '90s. The creature has rarely, if ever, been seen, but it leaves dead animals behind. Its name comes from the animal's reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats.

But El Chupacabras is very real to Cesar Garcia, who came out of his house Saturday morning and found 20 dead chickens.

"I saw the chickens were dead, but there was no blood around the sheet metal" in the coop, Garcia said. "All of them were just dead in one big pile. But, really, I don't know what it was because there was no blood.

"If it had been a dog, there would have been blood everywhere because a dog tears them apart."

Garcia was puzzled by the wounds on some of the chickens, which he described as "two pokes."

"We looked it up on the Internet -- the Chupacabras," he said.

On Sunday morning, Garcia's brother-in-law, Miranda, found 10 more dead chickens in a different coop. Sheriff's deputies responded both mornings to investigate, Miranda said. El Paso County sheriff's spokeswoman Chris Acosta confirmed that deputies went to the house in the 15600 block of Slippery Rock.

Miranda said he could not figure out why the family's three dogs did not bark either night. "Nobody heard anything. Nobody saw anything," he said.

Miranda said whatever got the chickens left tracks that included a paw and a heel, and looked like Chupacabras tracks they found on the Internet. "We followed them all the way past the trailer over there, then over the fence. We walked about four blocks and then the footprints vanished."

Tracks from whatever killed the chickens. Could they be of a Chupacabra?

Henry Flores, director of the Paso Del Norte Paranormal Society, said his group in the past has searched for El Chupacabras in far Northeast El Paso and in Chaparral. The group may now expand the search to the Horizon City area.

"Chupacabras ranks right up there as one of the creatures that has supposedly been seen," Flores said. "It's something we want to try to hunt down when we get a chance."

On their past hunts, Flores said, the group has never glimpsed El Chupacabras, but has found fresh carcasses drained of blood.

"We do see some trails of remains that we think could be the Chupacabras, but we just don't know," he said.

Tony Zavaleta, a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas-Brownsville and an expert in border folklore, said the story of El Chupacabras is kept alive by Spanish-speaking media.

"The Chupacabra is a mythical creature," Zavaleta said. "I reserve the right to say that until someone produces one."

Zavaleta said belief in El Chupacabras has become something of a game to people. Belief is widespread in Latin America and the American Southwest because any mention of the creature quickly gets picked up in the Spanish-speaking media and feeds the craze.

"I don't like to use the word 'hysteria,' but I'll use it with a small 'h.' " Zavaleta said. "Usually, the stories start when a small mammal is killed by a possum, coyote, mountain lion or something. Suddenly, people create an association with the Chupacabras."

The Chupacabras craze was biggest in El Paso in 1995, when T-shirts with images of the goat-sucker, based on "witness accounts," were hot items.

Chupacabras stories made the rounds in El Paso-Juárez that year, but one story stood out. A woman in the Juárez area told reporters that she was bitten by the creature on her neck. Her claim was debunked later as a ploy to divert attention from a lover's hickey and her supposed marital infidelity.

El Chupacabras even stumped TV FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in a 1997 episode of the "X-Files" that starred Ruben Blades.

But Garcia was left to wonder whether his trouble is over and whether it could have been worse: Until three weeks ago, there was still a herd of goats -- allegedly El Chupacabras' favorite food -- on his property.

"Now I'm left with no chickens. Thirty chickens -- gone," Garcia said. "Imagine if we still had the goats."

Original story can be found here.

Bizarre tongue-eating parasite discovered off Jersey Shore

Ain't he cute?

There's been a spate of amazing animal discoveries recently-- the giant rat-eating plants found in the Philippines, a huge woolly rat discovered in a volcanic crater--and now, yet another creature has emerged that could be right out of a sci-fi film. It's a bizarre creature that survives by eating its hosts' tongue and then attaching itself inside the mouth.

The sea-dwelling parasite attacks fish, burrows into it, and then devours its tongue. After eating the tongue, the parasite proceeds to live inside the fish's mouth. There's a horror film waiting to be made about this thing. Surprisingly, the fish doesn't seem to suffer any severe impediment--just the loss of its tongue--and seems to have no trouble surviving with its new, far uglier tongue.

While the isopod, a kind of louse, has been known to exist for a while now, discoveries of live specimens is rare. The BBC reports that "Fishermen near the Minquiers - islands under the jurisdiction of Jersey - found the isopod, a type of louse, inside a weaver fish." So no, the tongue-eater wasn't found in that Jersey. The Jersey Shore is still tongue replacing creature-free, if you stateside Northeasterners were worried about the thing ruining your late summer vacationing.

Not that you'd have to be too concerned anyways--the isopod isn't a threat to humans in the slightest, though it's reportedly vicious, and can deliver quite a little bite. One of the fishermen who found the creature described it thus: "Really quite large, really quite hideous - if you turn it over its got dozens of these really sharp, nasty claws underneath and I thought 'that's a bit of a nasty beast'." And while it can't seriously hurt people, it evidently doesn't like them: "It doesn't affect humans other than if you do actually come across a live one and try and pick it up - they are quite vicious, they will deliver a good nip."

Original article can be found here.

It's 2010 and people still think the Earth is flat.

Daniel Shenton should be the most irrational man in the world. As the new president of the Flat Earth Society, you'd imagine he would also think that evolution is a scam and global warming a myth. He should ­argue that smoking does not cause cancer and HIV does not lead to Aids.

Yes, that Flat Earth Society, a group that has become a living metaphor for backward thinking and a refusal to face scientific facts. Yes, it is still going, and no, this isn't an early April fool.

In fact, Shenton turns out to have resolutely mainstream views on most issues. The 33-year-old American, originally from Virginia but now living and working in London, is happy with the work of Charles Darwin. He thinks the evidence for man-made global warming is strong, and he dismisses suggestions that his own government was involved with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

He is mainstream on most issues, but not all. For when Shenton rides his motorbike, he says it is not gravity that pins him to the road, but the rapid upward motion of a disc-shaped planet. Countries, according to him, spread across this flat world as they appear to do on a map, with Antarctica as a ring of mountains strung around the edge. And, yes, you can fall off.

If you thought that flat Earthism was gone, think again. The scientific evidence is stacked against Shenton, obviously, just as it is against those who think global warming is a hoax and that the dead stalk the Earth as ghosts – but that doesn't appear to trouble him in the least.

"There is no unified flat Earth model," Shenton suggests, "but the most commonly accepted one is that it's more or less a disc, with a ring of something to hold in the water. The height and substance of that, no one is absolutely sure, but most people think it's mountains with snow and ice."

The Earth is flat, he argues, because it appears flat. The sun and moon are spherical, but much smaller than mainstream science says, and they rotate around a plane of the Earth, because they appear to do so.

Inevitably, Shenton's argument forces him down all kinds of logical blind alleys – the non-existence of gravity, and his argument that most space exploration, and so the moon landings, are faked. But, while many flat Earthers have problems with the idea of orbiting satellites, Shenton navigates the London streets using GPS. He was also happy to fly from the US to Britain, but says an aircraft that flew over the Antarctic barrier would drop from the sky, and from the planet.

The Flat Earth Society was originally formed as the Universal Zetetic Society in 1884, after the Greek word zeteo, "to seek". Zeteticism, Shenton says, emphasises experience and reason over the "trusting acceptance of dogma" – or, it seems, overwhelming evidence. Only a personal trip into space to see the world as it is for himself would ­persuade him. "But even then, in seeing it, I would have to be convinced there weren't any tricks involved."

The International Flat Earth Society was formally founded in 1956. Shenton resurrected the society and claimed its presidency last year, ­following years of inaction after the death of former president Charles Johnson in 2001, who had some 3,000 registered followers. He has so far recruited 60 members through the society's website, which boasts about 9,000 visitors to its discussion forums.

"I can't say what everybody's motive is for joining, but there are quite a few who I know are as serious as I am," he says. "Lots of people log on once to hurl abuse but they tend to get bored and go away. We're not ­fanatical about it and we're not going to engage in pointless, angry discussions."

The website features scanned issues of the society's newsletter, the notorious Flat Earth News, from its 1970s and 80s heyday. Sample headlines include: Sun Is a Light 32 Miles Across, Australia Not Down Under, and World Is Flat and That's That.

"I thought it was a shame that all these documents would go unseen ­forever," Shenton says. But what about the evidence? In an age where ­astronauts send photographs of a spherical planet from an orbiting space station, how can the concept of a flat Earth persist?

"Look at what special effects are capable of: you can produce any photograph, any video. I don't think there is solid proof. I'm not intentionally being stubborn about it, but I feel our senses tell us these things, and it would take an extraordinarily level of evidence to counteract those. How many people have actually investigated it? Have you?"

Last year, Shenton did just that, travelling to a six-mile stretch of straight water along the Old Bedford River in Norfolk, the scene of many infamous flat Earth experiments. "There should have been curvature, but I didn't see what mainstream science says should have been there," he says.

Shenton's critics, it should be pointed out, can fall back on spherical trigonometry and astronomical observations that date right back to Aristotle in 330BC. In fact, the idea of a flat Earth was widespread only until about the fourth century BC, when the Ancient Greeks first proposed it was a sphere. By the Middle Ages, most people in Europe were convinced, contrary to popular stories. "A lot of the stuff about Columbus isn't true; there weren't mutinies about whether they would fall off the Earth," Shenton says.

The modern Flat Earth movement dates back to Victorian England, and biblical literalist Samuel Rowbotham and his followers, who promoted their cause by engaging top scientists of the day in public debate.

Shenton himself used to accept that the Earth was round, but began ­asking questions after hearing musician Thomas Dolby's 1984 album The Flat Earth. (When Shenton reconvened the society last year, Dolby accepted membership number 00001.) "It was the late 1990s and I started doing research into what the Flat Earth Society was. I had heard of it and, when I did some more research, I eventually ended up believing its ideas were true."

It may sound like Shenton is playing games, that the reborn society is a clever metaphor or marketing tool for another cause – but he insists he is serious.

"I haven't taken this position just to be difficult. To look around, the world does appear to be flat, so I think it is incumbent on others to prove ­decisively that it isn't. And I don't think that burden of proof has been met yet."

Original story can be found here.

Zombies to sue police for wrongful arrest

An appeals court in the northern United States has allowed a group of zombie-dressed protesters to press ahead with their lawsuit against police who arrested them for disorderly conduct.

The Minneapolis appeals court in Minnesota overturned a lower court in finding the group of seven zombies had been wrongfully detained during a 2006 shopping mall protest against consumerism.

The three-judge panel ruled Minneapolis police lacked probable cause to arrest the demonstrators for disorderly conduct.

At the time of the protest, the zombies were wearing make-up including white face powder, fake blood and black circles around their eyes that gave them a "living dead" look.

They lurched stiff-legged through the halls of the mall, urging shoppers to "get your brains here" and "brain clean-up in aisle five".

The protesters carried audio equipment in various bags, including loudspeakers and wireless phone handsets, which police described as "simulated weapons of mass destruction".

But the appeals court sided with the protesters in ruling police had no reason to imprison them for two nights simply for "dressing as zombies and walking erratically in downtown Minneapolis".

"An objectively reasonable person would not think probable cause exists under the Minnesota disorderly conduct statue to arrest a group of peaceful people for engaging in an artistic protest by playing music, broadcasting statements and dressing as zombies," the appeals court ruled.

The decision allows the protesters to revive their lawsuit against Minneapolis and its police.

Original story can be found here.

Sheep gives birth to human-faced lamb

A sheep gave birth to a dead lamb with a human-like face. The lamb was born in a village not far from the city of Izmir, Turkey.

Erhan Elibol, a vet, performed a caesarean on the animal to take the lamb out, but was horrified to see that the features of the lamb's snout bore a striking resemblance to a human face.

“I’ve seen mutations with cows and sheep before. I’ve seen a one-eyed calf, a two-headed calf, a five-legged calf. But when I saw this youngster I could not believe my eyes. His mother could not deliver him so I had to help the animal,” the 29-year-old veterinary said.

The lamb’s head had human features on – the eyes, the nose and the mouth – only the ears were those of a sheep.

Vets said that the rare mutation most likely occurred as a result of improper mutation since the fodder for the lamb’s mother was abundant with vitamin A, CNNTurk.com reports.

A goat from Zimbabwe gave birth to a similar youngster in September 2009. The mutant baby born with a human-like head stayed alive for several hours until the frightened village residents killed him.

The governor of the province where the ugly goat was born said that the little goat was the fruit of unnatural relationship between the female goat and a man.

"This incident is very shocking. It is my first time to see such an evil thing. It is really embarrassing," he reportedly said. "The head belongs to a man while the body is that of a goat. This is evident that an adult human being was responsible. Evil powers caused this person to lose self control. We often hear cases of human beings who commit bestiality but this is the first time for such an act to produce a product with human features," he added.

The mutant creature was hairless. Local residents said that even dogs were afraid to approach the bizarre animal.

The locals burnt the body of the little goat, and biologists had no chance to study the rare mutation.

Link to the original article can be found here.