Mysteries Unsealed Featured News

Archaeologists Unearth Remains of Largest Ancient Egyptian Fortified City in Northern Sinai

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 22:37:45 GMT

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Archaeologists have unearthed 3,000-year-old remains of the largest ancient Egyptian fortified city while exploring an old military road in Sinai that once connected Egypt to Palestine, the antiquities authority said Wednesday.
Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that archaeologists unearthed a relief of King Thutmose II (1516-1504 B.C.), thought to be the first such royal monument found in Sinai. It indicates that Thutmose II may have built a fort in the area.

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Scientists say curious clouds could foretell earthquakes

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:09:15 GMT

"Scientists say strange cloud formations could alert nations to impending earthquakes, according to a report today.

The theory comes after two distinctive cloud formations were observed above an active fault in Iran, each before two large earthquakes occurred.

According to the New Scientist, geophysicists Guangmeng Guo and Bin Wang of Nanyang Normal University in Henan, China, noticed a gap in the clouds in satellite images from December 2004 that exactly matched the location of the main fault in southern Iran.

The gap in the clouds stretched for hundreds of kilometres and was visible for several hours.

It also remained in the same place despite the clouds around it moving.

Thermal images of the ground showed that the temperature was higher along the fault.

On February 22nd 2005 - 69 days later - a 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck the area, killing 600 people.

In December 2005 a similar cloud formation was spotted and 64 days later an earthquake with a magnitude of six hit the region.

Geophysicists argue that there could be a number of reasons for the link between clouds and earthquakes.

They say that an eruption of hot gases from inside the fault could have caused water in the clouds to evaporate.

Another theory is that when rocks are squeezed, positively-charged ions form in the air above.

The cloud formations have led some to propose that they could be used for earthquake prediction.

However Mike Blanpied of the US Geological Survey's earthquake hazards programme told the New Scientist: "There is no physical model that explains why something would suddenly occur two months before an earthquake, and then shut off and not occur again."

News Source

Archaeologists unearth "mini-Stonehenge" in Greater Manchester

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:06:33 GMT

"London, April 10: Archaeologists have unearthed a "mini-Stonehenge" in Greater Manchester, England, which dates back to about 5,000 years.

Archaeologist Stuart Mendelsohn spotted two sites near the moors of Rochdale, believed to be ancient burial sites, during a walk on the hills in December.

He believes that the sites may soon become a major tourist attraction.

"I suppose you could describe it as Rochdale's version of Stonehenge. It would have been a sacred site and what we've found so far I feel will be the tip of the iceberg," Manchester Evening News quoted the 52-year-old archaeologist, who is based in Sweden but originally from Middleton, as saying.

He revealed that the sites boasted an oval made up of collapsed slabs, and a 30-metre circle of rounded stones.

"It was very unexpected and I didn't believe it at first. I just can't believe that it's been missed by everyone. The stones are not arranged randomly and it's quite clear to see," he siad.

"For our area and beyond, it's very significant. We've found two burial mounds. The stones may represent particular lunar events in the calendar. I think it would have been a focal point for the whole community," he added.

Peter Iles, a leading archaeological expert from Lancashire County Council, visited the two sites.

The sites have also been inspected by English Heritage, which described them as "fairly well preserved".

English Heritage claimed that both sites were "possible of Bronze age date", suggesting that they could date back to 3,000 BC.

However, unlike the famous monument at Stonehenge, local materials are believed to have been used at the newly discovered sites.

The first site, made up of fallen stones, is 10.2m in overall diameter. The second, which includes the circle, is on the western slope.

The entire site covers an acre, according to an English Heritage report.

"It's great news for Rochdale. Prehistoric flints have been found in Littleborough, but as far as I'm aware, this is the first significant discovery in the town," said Mendelsohn.

"I don't know why that site was chosen originally but it has fantastic views of Rochdale and was fairly close to where people lived. It's a great site and we really need to get it protected and preserved," he added.

Norman Redhead, the Greater Manchester county archaeologist, said that he was planning to visit the site in the next few weeks."

News Source

Study: Grand Canyon 11M years older than thought

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:12:46 GMT

"By Lauran Neergaard, Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Gazing into the majestic Grand Canyon, awe-struck visitors inevitably ask: "How old is it?"

Far older than generally thought, says new evidence that scientists culled from caves lining the canyon's red limestone cliffs.

The Grand Canyon often is referred to as about 6 million years old — but its western half actually began to open at least 17 million years ago, a University of New Mexico team reports Friday in the journal Science.

Remember, geologists caution, that the Grand Canyon was carved from drainage systems that didn't turn into the single river we now know as the Colorado until roughly 6 million years ago. The new research suggests two canyons formed that eventually joined. And it makes sense that the older side would even look different, less jagged, thanks to more years of gravity and wind erosion to soften its edges.

"This is really exciting for those of us who work in the stories and theories of how the Grand Canyon has evolved," Arizona geologist Wayne Ranney, author of Carving the Grand Canyon, said of the new work. "This paper helps us to more clearly understand that different parts of the canyon formed at different times. That's how big the Grand Canyon is."

How and when the Grand Canyon formed has been a question of both geologists and average visitors since John Wesley Powell's famous first expedition in 1869.

Dating the canyon's carving has been difficult because it has largely depended on evidence from exposed rock and mineral deposits that themselves erode over time.

The University of New Mexico team tried a new technique: Testing formations inside the numerous caves that line the Grand Canyon — protected formations less susceptible to erosion — that form at the water table. So cave specialist Carol Hill said they should provide a record of how the water table dropped over time as the canyon was cut deeper and deeper.

First Hill and colleagues made the grueling climbs to cull the formations from caves in 10 different spots along the length of the Grand Canyon. Then came work in specialized labs to pin down the age of each formation, using a method called uranium-lead isotope testing.

The findings: The western side of what is now the Grand Canyon started forming about 17 million years ago, and that initial erosion was fairly slow and steady — a couple of inches every thousand years.

The canyon formed not just downward and westward but it opened steadily to the east, too, through what geologists call "headward erosion," the team reports — until the western side cut through enough rock to meet water on the eastern side, around 5 to 6 million years ago.

Then the action really started, with the eastern side of the canyon being cut at a rate of about 8 inches to almost a foot every thousand years, they report.

Why the speedup? The new research can't say exactly, but Ranney notes that land mass was shifting around a lot during this period, too, heaving some sections of rock and lowering others. The Hurricane and Toroweap faults in the western Grand Canyon dropped enough to essentially form a waterfall, speeding water flow enough that the eastern side was being ripped as the river plunged to the west, he explained.

While geologists point to some questions in the new research, overall it does fit with various theories about how the Grand Canyon formed, said Rebecca Fowler of the University of Colorado, Boulder, who also studies the Grand Canyon.

"All of it is pointing toward a pretty complex history of Grand Canyon development, which is one of the reasons this area has been so controversial," she said. "It's a pretty complicated system and it's very likely that the entire Grand Canyon did not incise (cut) all at one time." "

News Source: USA Today

Melting Ice Sheets Can Cause Earthquakes, Study Finds

admin@mysteriesunsealed.com — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:57:44 GMT

"As ice sheets melt, they can release pent-up energy and trigger massive earthquakes, according to new study.

Global warming may already be triggering such earthquakes and may cause more in the future as ice continues to melt worldwide, the researchers say.

A series of large earthquakes shook Scandinavia around 10,000 years ago, along faults that are now quiet, the scientists point out.

The timing of each earthquake roughly coincided with the melting of thick ice sheets from the last ice age in those same places.

Researchers had suspected that the melting had triggered these earthquakes by releasing pressure that had built up in Earth's crust.

Now a new study, the first to use sophisticated computer models to simulate how ice sheets would affect the crust in the region, bolsters this scenario.

The study showed that earthquakes are "suppressed in presence of the ice and promoted during melting of the ice," said study leader Andrea Hampel of the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany.

Hampel and a colleague had earlier found evidence that the shrinkage of a huge lake at the end of the last ice age had triggered a series of large earthquakes in Utah.

The new study shows this can happen even along faults that are normally quiet and are not prone to slip.

The new research will be published soon in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Ancient Quakes Rocked Scandinavia

The ancient earthquakes marched northward through Scandinavia as ice sheets retreated.

They began in the south of what is now Sweden about 12,000 years ago, then hit south-central Sweden near modern-day Stockholm around 10,500 years ago (see Sweden map).

Finally the earthquakes hit Lapland, in northern Scandinavia, about 9,000 years ago.

Based on the amount that the faults slipped, it seems these ancient earthquakes were massive, registering about magnitude 8—bigger than the quake that devastated Kashmir in 2005.

(Related news photos: "Earthquake Devastation in Kashmir" [October 11, 2005].)

Today those Scandinavian faults rarely cause quakes, and when they do, the temblors are small, usually less than magnitude 5.

"With our new modeling technique we can model faults themselves and directly compare the slip on the model fault to the slip on natural faults," Hampel said.

The models showed that thick ice could weigh down the land, preventing a fault from slipping and thereby causing it to store up that energy.

The thicker the simulated ice sheets—from 325 to 6,500 feet (100 to 2,000 meters) thick—the more they suppressed earthquakes, and the bigger the earthquakes were after the ice sheets melted.

Since the amount of movement on the fault in the model matched the actual amount of slippage measured in the field, this supports the idea that the melting of ice sheets had triggered the earthquakes, Hampel said.

Global Warming Causing Quakes?

Such melt-induced earthquakes are not just a thing of the past and could be happening today, since global warming is melting ice worldwide, the team says.

"The frequency of earthquakes should increase in the future if the ice continues to melt," Hampel and colleagues write in their study.

"The current low level of seismicity in Greenland and Antarctica may be caused by the presence of the large ice sheets."

Jeanne Sauber of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has led research showing a recent increase in earthquakes in Alaska when the ice was melting the most.

"All of sudden, between 2002 and 2006, we had warmer temperatures and much more rapid ice wastage," Sauber said.

Even though ice thickness shrank 10 percent or less, this was apparently enough to trigger small earthquakes in the summers when the ice was melting, the study showed.

"It's harder to see if there's an influence on large earthquakes, because they don't happen as often," Sauber added.

"We expect that in Greenland and Antarctica, if they start rapidly losing lots of ice, you would expect at least some little earthquakes." "

News Source

Planet X Projected at Solar System's Edge

admin@mysteriesunsealed.com — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 21:35:30 GMT

"Scientists at a Japanese university said Thursday they believed another planet up to two-thirds the size of the Earth was orbiting in the far reaches of the solar system.

The researchers at Kobe University in western Japan said calculations using computer simulations led them to conclude it was only a matter of time before the mysterious "Planet X" was found.

"Because of the very cold temperature, its surface would be covered with ice, icy ammonia and methane," Kobe University professor Tadashi Mukai, the lead researcher, told AFP.

The study by Mukai and researcher Patryk Lykawka will be published in the April issue of the Astronomical Journal.

"The possibility is high that a yet unknown, planet-class celestial body, measuring 30 percent to 70 percent of the Earth's mass, exists in the outer edges of the solar system," said a summary of the research released by Kobe University.

"If research is conducted on a wide scale, the planet is likely to be discovered in less than 10 years," it said.

Planet X--so called by scientists as it is yet unfound--would have an oblong elliptical solar orbit and circle the sun every thousand years, the team said, estimating its radius was 15 to 26 billion kilometers.

The study comes two years after school textbooks had to be rewritten when Pluto was booted out of the list of planets.

Pluto was discovered by the American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 in the so-called Kuiper belt, a chain of icy debris in the outer reaches of the solar system.

In 2006, nearly a decade after Tombaugh's death, the International Astronomical Union ruled the celestial body was merely a dwarf planet in the cluttered Kuiper belt.

The astronomers said Pluto's oblong orbit overlapped with that of Neptune, excluding it from being a planet. It defined the solar system as consisting solely of the classical set of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The team noted that more than 1,100 celestial bodies have been found in the outer reaches of the solar system since the mid-1990s.

"But it would be the first time to discover a celestial body of this size, which is much larger than Pluto," Mukai said.

The researchers set up a theoretical model looking at how the remote area of the solar system would have evolved over the past four billion years.

"In coming up with an explanation for the celestial bodies, we thought it would be most natural to assume the existence of a yet unknown planet," Mukai said.

"Based on our hypothesis, we calculated how debris moved over the past four billion years. The result matched the actual movement of the celestial bodies we can observe now," he said.

He was hopeful about research by Kobe University, the University of Hawaii and Taiwan's National Central University.

"We are expecting that the ongoing joint celestial observation project will eventually discover Planet X," Mukai said."

News Source: Discovery News

Have Scientists Discovered a Way of Peering Into the Future?

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 23:22:19 GMT

"Deep in the basement of a dusty old library in Edinburgh lies a small black box that churns out random numbers. At first glance the box looks profoundly dull, but it is, in fact, the ‘eye' of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future.

The machine apparently sensed the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre four hours before they happened, and appeared to forewarn of the Asian Tsunami.

"It's Earth shattering stuff," says Dr Roger Nelson, Emeritus researcher at Princeton University in the USA. "But unfortunately we don't have a box for predicting the future that we can sell to the CIA. We're very early on in the process of trying to figure out what's going on here. At the moment we're stabbing in the dark."

Dr Nelson's Global Consciousness Project - originally hosted by Princeton University - is one of the most extraordinary experiments of all time. It aims to ‘sense' whether all of humanity shares a single unconscious mind that we all tap into without realising it. Some might refer to it as the mind of God. But the machine has also thrown up another tantalising possibility: that scientists may have unwittingly discovered a way of predicting the future.

Although many would consider the project's aims to be little more than fools' gold, it has still attracted a roster of 75 respected scientists from 41 different nations. Researchers from Princeton - where Einstein spent much of his career - work alongside scientists from universities in Britain, Holland, Switzerland and Germany. The project is also the most rigorous and longest running investigation ever into the paranormal.

"Very often paranormal phenomena evaporate if you study them for long enough," says physicist Dick Bierman of the University of Amsterdam. "But this is not happening with the Global Consciousness Project. The effect is real. The only dispute is about what it means."

The project has its roots in the extraordinary work of Professor Robert Jahn of Princeton University during the late 1970s. Professor Jahn was one of the first modern scientists to take paranormal phenomena seriously. Intrigued by such things as telepathy, telekinesis and ESP, he was determined to study the phenomena using the most up to date technology available.

One of these new technologies was a humble looking black box known was a Random Event Generator. This used sophisticated technology to generate two numbers - a one and a zero - in a totally random sequence, rather like an electronic coin-flipper. The pattern of ones and noughts - ‘heads' and ‘tails' as it were - can then be printed out as a graph. Pure chance dictates that the generators should churn out equal numbers of ones and zeros which produces a more or less flat line on a graph. Any deviation from this shows up as a gently rising curve.

During the late 1970s, Professor Jahn hauled strangers off the street and asked them to concentrate their minds on a number generator. In effect, he was asking them to try to make it flip more heads than tails. It was a preposterous idea at the time, and to many it still is.

The results, however, were stunning and have never been satisfactorily explained. Again and again, entirely ordinary people proved that their minds could influence the machines and produce significant fluctuations on the graph. According to all of the known laws of science, this should not have happened - but it did. And it kept on happening.

Dr Roger Nelson, also working at Princeton University, then extended Professor Jahn's work by taking the machines to group meditations, which were very popular in America at the time. Again, the results were shocking. The meditators somehow caused dramatic shifts in the numbers.

From then on, Dr Nelson was hooked. Using the Internet, he connected up 40 random event generators from all over the world to his laboratory computer in Princeton. These ran day in day out, generating millions of different pieces of data. Most of the time, the resulting graph on his computer looked more or less like a flat line. But during the funeral of Princess Diana something extraordinary happened: the graph shot upwards and reached for the sky. It was clear that they'd detected a totally new phenomena. The concentrated mental effort of millions of people appeared to be influencing the output of random event generators around the world. But how? Dr Nelson was still at a loss to explain it.

In 1998 he gathered together scientists from all over the world to try and understand the phenomena. They, too, were stumped and resolved to extend and deepen Jahn and Nelson's work. The Global Consciousness Project was born.

Since then, the project has expanded massively. A total of 65 Eggs (as the generators have been named) in 41 countries have now been recruited to act as the ‘eyes' of the project. And the results have been startling and inexplicable in equal measure. The Eggs not only ‘sensed' the moment that Princess Diana was buried, but also the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the Kursk tragedy and America's hung election of 2000. The Eggs also regularly detect huge global celebrations such as New Year's Eve. Even more bizarrely, they sense the celebrations as they sweep through the Earth's different time zones.

The project threw up its greatest enigma on September 11th 2001. As the world stood still and watched the horror of the terrorist attacks unfold across New York, something strange was happening to the Eggs. Not only did they register the event as it happened, but the characteristic shift in the pattern of numbers began four hours before the two planes hit the Twin Towers.

"I knew then that we had a great deal of work ahead of us," says Dr Nelson.

The same happened with the Asian Tsunami. Twenty four hours before the tragedy unfolded, the characteristic shift in the pattern of numbers began. Curiously, it was at around this time that animals in the path of the tsunami began fleeing for their lives. Very few animals were killed in the tragedy, as you may remember, leading some to ask whether they had somehow foreseen the disaster.

So does the Global Consciousness Project really forecast the future? After all, cynics will quite rightly say that if you look at enough data then you will find correlations with something. After all, our world is full of wars, disasters and terrorist outrages, as well as the occasional global celebration.

The team behind the project say that they've thought of this. Using rigorous scientific techniques and powerful mathematics it is possible to exclude these chance connections. And they believe they have done so.

"Good scientists will ask what mistakes we've made," says Dr Nelson. "We're perfectly willing to discover that we've made mistakes. But we haven't been able to find any, and neither has anyone else.

"Our data shows clearly that the chances of getting these results by chance are one million to one against. That's hugely significant."

The Global Consciousness Project may have generated an incredible amount of compelling evidence, and garnered the support of eminent scientists, but many remain sceptical.

Professor Chris French, a psychologist and noted sceptic at Goldsmiths College in London, says: "The project has generated some very intriguing results that cannot be readily dismissed. I'm involved in similar work to see if we get the same results. We haven't managed to do so yet but it's only an early experiment. The jury's still out."

Strange as it may seem, there's nothing in the laws of physics that precludes the possibility of foreseeing the future. Time may not just move forwards - but backwards too. And if time ebbs and flows like the tides in the sea, it might just be possible to foretell the future.

"There's plenty of evidence that time may run backwards," says Professor Dick Bierman, a physicist at the University of Amsterdam. "And if it's possible for it to happen in physics then it can happen inside our heads too."

As a consequence says Professor Bierman, forecasting the future may not just be possible - it's something we do routinely without even realising it.

Dr John Hartwell, working at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, was the first to uncover evidence that people could sense the future. In the mid 1970s he hooked people up to hospital EEG machines so that he could study their brainwave patterns. When these people were shown emotionally charged cartoons, characteristic patterns flickered through their brainwaves. Strangely, these patterns began to emerge a few seconds before they actually saw the pictures.

But it was to be another 15 years before anyone else took this work further. Dean Radin, working in America, connected people up to a machine that measured their skin's resistance to electricity. This is known to fluctuate in tandem with our moods, indeed, it's this principle that underlies many lie detectors. Radin repeated Dr Hall's work whilst measuring skin resistance. Again, people began reacting a few seconds before they were shown the pictures. This was clearly impossible, or so he thought, so he kept on repeating the experiments and getting the same results.

"I didn't believe it," says Professor Bierman. "So I repeated the experiment myself and got the same results. I was shocked. After this I started to think more deeply about the nature of time."

Bierman then devised an experiment to settle his mind once and for all. He decided to use a hospital brain scanner to peer inside people's minds as they were shown a series of photographs. Each person was randomly shown erotic or violent pictures, or neutral images of white fluffy clouds. Each of these pictures produced unique patterns in the patient's brainwaves. In effect, you could see inside the mind as it reacted to each picture.

What is remarkable is that the patients began reacting 1-2 seconds before they saw the images. This is clearly impossible, or so we're taught to believe. And yet it happened time and time again.

Obviously sceptics would love to demolish Bierman's work but have so far failed to do so. Nor is his research a one off that can be casually dismissed. To make matters even more intriguing, Bierman says that other mainstream labs have produced similar results but they are too frightened to go public.

"They don't want to be ridiculed so they won't release their findings, says Professor Bierman. "So I'm trying to persuade all of them to release their results together. That would at least spread the ridicule a little more thinly!" jokes the Professor.

If Bierman is right, then sensing the future may help explain such things as deja vu, intuition and a host of other paranormal phenomena. It may also open up a far more interesting possibility - enhancing psychic powers using machines. Just as we have built machines to replace muscle power, may we one day build a device to enhance psychic abilities?

Dr Nelson is optimistic - but not for the short term: "We may be able to predict that something is going to happen. But we won't know exactly what will happen or where it's going to happen," he says.

But for Dr Nelson, talk of psychic machines is of far less importance than the implications of his work for ordinary people. We may all be individuals, he says, but we are also part of something far, far greater.

"We're taught to be individualistic monsters," he says. "We're driven by society to separate ourselves from each other. That's not right. We may be connected together far more intimately than we realise."

News Source: News Monster

Saturn Moon May Have Water

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:45:39 GMT

"Feb. 6, 2008 -- Astrophysicists in Germany say they can add evidence to bolster theories that water, one of the precious ingredients for life, exists on the Saturnian moon Enceladus.

A tiny satellite measuring just 504 kilometers (315 miles) across, Enceladus has become one of the most fiercely debated objects in the solar system, thanks to close-up pictures taken by the NASA Cassini probe.

Enceladus has a brilliant white shell of ice that is untouched except for some strange-looking grooves and impacts from space rocks.

Cassini revealed plumes of water vapor that gush from surface stripes near its south pole, shooting crystal jets upwards for hundreds of miles into space.

Fuelling discussion about the origin of these strange "cryo-volcanoes" is the fact that icy particles of dust are also mixed in with the eruptions, but beguilingly travel far slower than the vapor.

A team led by Juergen Schmidt of the University of Potsdam, near Berlin, say they can now answer at least this part of the mystery.

Their theory is that water vapor and ice grains are blasted through funnels in the so-called tiger stripes -- and the grains, being heavier, rub against the rough sides of these holes.

The friction slows the particles down, which explains why they travel at a far lower velocity in the void.

For this to happen, though, liquid water would have to exist in equilibrium with ice and vapor beneath the moon's frigid crust, according to the model.

One hypothesis for the cause for Enceladus's cryo-volcanoes is a phenomenon called tidal heating.

The little moon suffers agonising gravitational pull from the giant Saturn and from the nearby satellites of Dione and Janus.

As a result, its interior is squeezed and stretched, causing friction that causes water to warm, this theory goes.

Enceladus has a surface temperature of -193 degrees Celsius (-315 degrees Fahrenheit) and the tiger stripes are -133 C (-207 F), which implies that its interior must be warmer still.

Heat and water are two of the essentials for life as we know it, although anything that exists in Enceladus's presumed sub-surface ocean is likely to be microbial at best, scientists add.

The new study appears on Thursday in Nature, the weekly British science journal."

News Source: Discovery News

How a lunar eclipse (on Feb. 20) saved Columbus

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:33:18 GMT

"On the night of Feb. 20, the full moon will pass into Earth's shadow in an event that will be visible across all of the United States and Canada.

The total lunar eclipse will be made even more striking by the presence of the nearby planet Saturn and the bright bluish star, Regulus.

Eclipses in the distant past often terrified viewers who took them as evil omens. Certain lunar eclipses had an overwhelming effect on historic events. One of the most famous examples is the trick pulled by Christopher Columbus.

Shipwrecked

On Oct. 12, 1492, as every schoolchild has been taught, Columbus came ashore on an island northeast of Cuba. He later named it San Salvador (Holy Savior). Over the next ten years Columbus would make three more voyages to the "New World," which only bolstered his belief that he reached the Far East by sailing West.

It was on his fourth and final voyage, while exploring the coast of Central America that Columbus found himself in dire straits. He left Cádiz, Spain, on May 11, 1502, with the ships Capitana, Gallega, Vizcaína and Santiago de Palos. Unfortunately, thanks to an epidemic of shipworms eating holes in the planking of his fleet, Columbus' was forced to abandon two of his ships and finally had to beach his last two caravels on the north coast of Jamaica on June 25, 1503.

Initially, the Jamaican natives welcomed the castaways, providing them with food and shelter, but as the days dragged into weeks, tensions mounted. Finally, after being stranded for more than six months, half of Columbus' crew mutinied, robbing and murdering some of the natives, who, themselves grew weary of supplying cassava, corn and fish in exchange for little tin whistles, trinkets, hawk's bells and other rubbishy goods.

With famine now threatening, Columbus formulated a desperate, albeit ingenious plan.

Almanac to the rescue

Coming to the Admiral's rescue was Johannes Müller von Königsberg (1436-1476), known by his Latin pseudonym Regiomontanus. He was an important German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer.

Before his death, Regiomontanus published an almanac containing astronomical tables covering the years 1475-1506. Regiomontanus' almanac turned out to be of great value, for his astronomical tables provided detailed information about the sun, moon and planets, as well as the more important stars and constellations by which to navigate. After it was published, no sailor dared set out without a copy. With its help, explorers were able to leave their customary routes and venture out into the unknown seas in search of new frontiers.

Columbus, of course, had a copy of the Almanac with him when he was stranded on Jamaica. And he soon discovered from studying its tables that on the evening of Thursday, Feb. 29, 1504, a total eclipse of the moon would take place soon after the time of moonrise.

Armed with this knowledge, three days before the eclipse, Columbus asked for a meeting with the natives Cacique ("chief") and announced to him that his Christian god was angry with his people for no longer supplying Columbus and his men with food. Therefore, he was about to provide a clear sign of his displeasure: Three nights hence, he would all but obliterate the rising full moon, making it appear "inflamed with wrath," which would signify the evils that would soon be inflicted upon all of them.

Bad moon rising

On the appointed evening, as the sun set in the West and the moon started emerging from beyond the eastern horizon, it was plainly obvious to all that something was terribly wrong. By the time the moon appeared in full view, its lower edge was missing!

And, just over an hour later, as full darkness descended, the moon indeed exhibited an eerily inflamed and "bloody" appearance: In place of the normally brilliant late winter full moon there now hung a dim red ball in the eastern sky.

According to Columbus' son, Ferdinand, the natives were terrified at this sight and ".. . with great howling and lamentation came running from every direction to the ships laden with provisions, praying to the Admiral to intercede with his god on their behalf." They promised that they would gladly cooperate with Columbus and his men if only he would restore the moon back to its normal self. The great explorer told the natives that he would have to retire to confer privately with his god. He then shut himself in his cabin for about fifty minutes.

"His god" was a sandglass that Columbus turned every half hour to time the various stages of the eclipse, based on the calculations provided by Regiomontanus' almanac.

Just moments before the end of the total phase Columbus reappeared, announcing to the natives that his god had pardoned them and would now allow the moon to gradually return. And at that moment, true to Columbus' word, the moon slowly began to reappear and as it emerged from the Earth's shadow, the grateful natives hurried away. They then kept Columbus and his men well supplied and well fed until a relief caravel from Hispaniola finally arrived on June 29, 1504. Columbus and his men returned to Spain on Nov. 7.

Another side to the story

In an interesting postscript to this story, in 1889, Mark Twain, likely influenced by the eclipse trick, wrote the novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. In it, his main character, Hank Morgan, used a gambit similar to Columbus'.

Morgan is about to be burned at the stake, so he "predicts" a solar eclipse he knows will occur, and in the process, claimed power over the sun. He gladly offers to return the sun to the sky in return for his freedom and a position as "perpetual minister and executive" to the king.

The only problem with this story is that on the date that Mark Twain quoted — June 21, 528 A.D. — no such eclipse took place. In fact, the moon was three days past full, a setup that can't generate an eclipse.

Perhaps he should have consulted an almanac!"

News Source

Time Machine to Be Created?

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:30:06 GMT

"The stream of stories about the Large Hadron Collider's operation is getting genuinely weird. Nineteen-sixties, little-green-monster, B-movie sci-fi weird. Not, mind you, that that's an entirely bad thing.

Latest is a group of stories that spin off from a paper published in October by pair of Russian physicists, who – in a display of serious, but also seriously speculative mathematics – theorize that the LHC's operation could in fact "lead to the formation of time machines (spacetime regions with closed timelike curves) which violate causality."

New Scientist offers a cover-story look at this idea, but if you really want to get a sense for how science reporting goes sensational, check out the British Sun's tabloid version:

Two scientists claim the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - a giant atom-smashing machine - could open the door to unexpected visitors from the future.

The machine, due to come on stream this year, has been constructed at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva.

And the scientists' calculations show it is possible the machine will tear a hole in the fabric of space and time, creating a gateway to tomorrow.

That means, with sufficiently advanced technology, people from the future might even be able to walk through it. ... The year 2008 might then become "Year Zero" for future time travelers, since it would only be possible to travel back as far as the first doorway in time.

Again with the caveats: I'm not nearly enough of a mathematician to critique the Russians' argument. But it's based on a series of very iffy ifs. It takes an idea from string theory and quantum gravity theories that tiny black holes could be created by the proton-proton collisions at the LHC.

That's generally viewed as extremely unlikely, even by many dedicated string theorists, at the energy levels reached by the LHC. But, OK, say all the features of the universe do line up in the right way, and the tiny black holes are not only possible, but within the LHC's reach. At this same black-hole energy level, wormholes could be created, the Russian scientists argue:

A wormhole forms a handle-like geometry, whose two mouths join different regions of spacetime. If the wormhole is traversed from mouth to mouth, it acts as a time machine allowing one to travel into the past or into the future.

In the best of the reporting on this idea, LHC-affiliated scientists are politely very, very skeptical."

News Source Wired

Have we Passed the Global Warming Tipping Point?

admin@mysteriesunsealed.com — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:26:20 GMT

"Anthropogenic forcing could push the Earth’s climate system past critical thresholds, so that important components may “tip” into qualitatively different modes of operation. In the renowned magazine “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” (PNAS) an international team of researchers describes, where small changes can have large long-term consequences on human and ecological systems.

“Society may be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change,“ the researchers around Timothy Lenton from the British University of East Anglia in Norwich and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research report. Global change may appear to be a slow and gradual process on human scales. However, in some regions anthropogenic forcing on the climate system could kick start abrupt and potentially irreversible changes. For these sub-systems of the Earth system the researchers introduce the term “tipping element”.

Drawing on a workshop of 36 leading climate scientists in October 2005 at the British Embassy, Berlin, Germany, a further elicitation of 52 experts in the field, and a review of the pertinent literature, the authors compiled a short-list of nine potential tipping elements. These tipping elements are ranked as the most policy-relevant and require consideration in international climate politics.

Arctic sea-ice and the Greenland Ice Sheet are regarded as the most sensitive tipping elements with the smallest uncertainty. Scientists expect ice cover to dwindle due to global warming. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is probably less sensitive as a tipping element, but projections of its future behavior have large uncertainty. This also applies to the Amazon rainforest and Boreal forests, the El Niño phenomenon, and the West African monsoon. “These tipping elements are candidates for surprising society by exhibiting a nearby tipping point,” the authors state in the article that is published in PNAS Online Early Edition. The archetypal example of a tipping element, the Atlantic thermohaline circulation, could undergo a large abrupt transition with up to ten percent probability within this century, according to the UN climate report from 2007.

Given the scale of potentially dramatic impacts from tipping elements the researchers anticipate stronger mitigation. Concepts for adaptation that go beyond current incremental approaches are also necessary. In addition, “a rigorous study of potential tipping elements in human socio-economic systems would also be welcome,” the researchers write. Some models suggest there are tipping points to be passed for the transition to a low carbon society.

Highly sensitive tipping elements, smallest uncertainty:

Greenland Ice Sheet - Warming over the ice sheet accelerates ice loss from outlet glaciers and lowers ice altitude at the periphery, which further increases surface temperature and ablation. The exact tipping point for disintegration of the ice sheet is unknown, since current models cannot capture the observed dynamic deglaciation processes accurately. But in a worst case scenario local warming of more than three degrees Celsius could cause the ice sheet to disappear within 300 years. This would result in a rise of sea level of up to seven meters.

Arctic sea-ice - As sea-ice melts, it exposes a much darker ocean surface, which absorbs more radiation than white sea-ice so that the warming is amplified. This causes more rapid melting in summer and decreases ice formation in winter. Over the last 16 years ice cover during summer declined markedly. The critical threshold global mean warming may be between 0.5 to 2 degrees Celsius, but could already have been passed. One model shows a nonlinear transition to a potential new stable state with no arctic sea-ice during summer within a few decades.

Intermediately sensitive tipping elements, large uncertainty:

West Antarctic Ice Sheet - Recent gravity measurements suggest that the ice sheet is losing mass. Since most of the ice sheet is grounded below sea level the intrusion of ocean water could destabilize it. The tipping point could be reached with a local warming of five to eight degrees Celsius in summer. A worst case scenario shows the ice sheet could collapse within 300 years, possibly raising sea level by as much as five meters.

Boreal forest - The northern forests exhibit a complex interplay between tree physiology, permafrost and fire. A global mean warming of three to five degrees Celsius could lead to large-scale dieback of the boreal forests within 50 years. Under climate change the trees would be exposed to increasing water stress and peak summer heat and would be more vulnerable to diseases. Temperate tree species will remain excluded due to frost damage in still very cold winters.

Amazon rainforest - Global warming and deforestation will probably reduce rainfall in the region by up to 30 percent. Lengthening of the dry season, and increases in summer temperatures would make it difficult for the forest to re-establish. Models project dieback of the Amazon rainforest to occur under three to four degrees Celsius global warming within fifty years. Even land-use change alone could potentially bring forest cover to a critical threshold.

El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) – The variability of this ocean-atmosphere mode is controlled by the layering of water of different temperatures in the Pacific Ocean and the temperature gradient across the equator. During the globally three degrees Celsius warmer early Pliocene ENSO may have been suppressed in favor of persistent El Niño or La Niña conditions. In response to a warmer stabilized climate, the most realistic models simulate increased El Niño amplitude with no clear change in frequency.

Sahara/Sahel- and West African monsoon - The amount of rainfall is closely related to vegetation climate feedback and sea surface temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean. Greenhouse gas forcing is expected to increase Sahel rainfall. But a global mean warming of three to five degrees Celsius could cause a collapse of the West African monsoon. This could lead either to drying of the Sahel or to wetting due to increased inflow from the West. A third scenario shows a possible doubling of anomalously dry years by the end of the century.

Indian summer monsoon - The monsoon circulation is driven by a land-to-ocean pressure gradient. Greenhouse warming tends to strengthen the monsoon since warmer air can carry more water. Air pollution and land-use that increases the reflection of sunlight tend to weaken it. The Indian summer monsoon could become erratic and in the worst case start to chaotically change between an active and a weak phase within a few years.

Lowly sensitive tipping elements, intermediate uncertainty:

Atlantic thermohaline circulation - The circulation of sea currents in the Atlantic Ocean is driven by seawater that flows to the North Atlantic, cools and sinks at high latitudes. If the inflow of freshwater increases, e.g. from rivers or melting glaciers, or the seawater is warmed, its density would decrease. A global mean warming of three to five degrees Celsius could push the element past the tipping point so that deep water formation stops. Under these conditions the North Atlantic current would be disrupted, sea level in the North Atlantic region would rise and the tropical rain belt would be shifted."

Article: Lenton, T. M., Held, H., Kriegler, E., Hall, J. W., Lucht, W., Rahmstorf, S. and Schellnhuber, H. J. (2008). Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Online Early Edition

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Archaeologist Finds Ancient Nasca Iron Ore Mine in Peru

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:10:36 GMT

"A Purdue University archaeologist discovered an intact ancient iron ore mine in South America that shows how civilizations before the Inca Empire were mining this valuable ore."

"The researchers determined that the mine is a human-made cave that was first created around 2,000 years ago. An estimated 3,710 metric tons was extracted from the mine during more than 1,400 years of use. The mine, which is nearly 700 cubic meters, is in a cliffside facing a modern ochre mine."

News Source

Worship at Zeus's "Birthplace" Predates the Greek God

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:06:53 GMT

Excavations at the mountain top birthplace of the Greek god Zeus reveal the mountaintop's conical ash altar was used for sacrifices long before the Greeks began to worship their most powerful god. What the altar was used for the thousand years before Zeus sacrifices began is the mystery archaeologists are trying to solve.

They are hoping excavations will lead them to the origins of the god Zeus and the original reason why the site was a sacred site for 1,000 years before the worship of Zeus was brought to Greece.

The researchers have theorized that the mountaintop weather which is prone to rain, thunder, lightning and storm clouds gave birth to the god Zeus who is associated the storm elements.

The two leading stories of the birth place of Zeus suggestedt both Crete and Mount Lykaion where the excavations of the altar are being conducted.

The most intriguing find at the altar site is a rock crystal seal with an image of a Minoan bull that was left by worshiper as a tribute to their god.

"Scholars say the artifact may indicate some kind of Crete-Arcadia connection related to early Zeus worship."

News Source: National Geographic

NASA Spots Mysterious 'Spider' on Mercury

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 02:17:51 GMT

"A whole new side of Mercury has been revealed in pictures taken by NASA's MESSENGER probe, which flew by the tiny planet two weeks ago in the first mission to Mercury in more than three decades.

MESSENGER skimmed only 124 miles (200 kilometers) over Mercury's surface on Jan. 14, in the first of three passes it will make before settling into orbit March 18, 2011.

The photos, released today, include one of a feature the scientists informally call "the spider," which appears to be an impact crater surrounded by more than 50 cracks in the surface radiating from its center.

Scientists are perplexed by this structure, which is unlike anything observed elsewhere in the solar system.

"It's a real mystery, a very unexpected find," said Louise Prockter, an instrument scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which built the probe for the $446 million NASA mission. She said whatever event created the spider "is anybody's guess," but suggested perhaps a volcanic intrusion beneath the planet's surface led to the formation of the troughs.

The last time NASA sent a probe to Mercury was in 1975, when the Mariner 10 spacecraft flew by the planet three times. MESSENGER'S first flyby gave scientists the first glimpses of Mercury's hidden side, the 55 percent of its surface that was left uncharted by Mariner 10.

MESSENGER, short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging, also measured another peculiar element of Mercury — its magnetic field. Earth has a magnetic field surrounding it that acts as a protective bubble shielding the surface from cosmic rays and solar storms. But scientists were shocked when Mariner 10 discovered a magnetic field at Mercury, too.

"The only other example in our solar system of an Earth-like magnetosphere is tiny Mercury," said Sean C. Solomon, MESSENGER Principal Investigator from the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

MESSENGER was able to fly through the magnetic field and take detailed measurements that scientists hope to use to discover the origins of the inexplicable magnetosphere.

Scientists have been poring over more than 1,200 new images sent by seven instruments on the probe, and they are excited to gain new insight into the composition of Mercury's surface, the planet's history, and where its atmosphere comes from.

"On the eve of the encounter I couldn't sleep at all," said Robert Strom, a MESSENGER science team member who also worked on the Mariner 10 mission. "I've waited 30 years for this. It didn't disappoint at all. I was astounded at the quality of these images. It dawned on me that this is a whole new planet that we're looking at."

The satellite will further probe Mercury's mysteries in a second pass over the planet in October, followed by a third flyby in September 2009.

The probe has traveled 4.9 billion miles (7.9 billion-kilometers) since it launched in August 2004. On its journey it soared by Earth once and Venus twice, offering gorgeous views of these planets as well. In 2011 MESSENGER will become the first spacecraft to orbit the closest planet to the Sun. "

News Source Space.com

Video: Ruins Found Near Machu Picchu

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:48:46 GMT

Ruins Video

America’s Stonehenge, Miami Stone Circle, Hides 2,000-Year Old Secrets

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:57:07 GMT

"Miami Stone Circle was discovered in downtown Miami, Florida in 1998. It’s a series of 24 loaf-shaped holes or basins cut into the limestone bedrock on a coastal spit of land, surrounded by a large number of other ‘minor’ holes."
View Photos

News Source

Ruins Discovered in Peru Could be Ancient "Lost City"

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:48:29 GMT

According to recent claims ruins found in Peru may be the legendary lost city of Paititi. The lost city has been described to be a stone settlement embellished with gold statues and has long been the holy grail to Peruvian explorers.

A common legend claims that the lost city of Paititi was built by an Incan hero Inkarri, the founder of the city of Cusco.

The site has been described as "an archaeological fortress" found in the district of Kimbiri. The ruins are described as a 430,000 square foot fortification near Lobo Tahuantinsuyo.

An Italian archaeologist discovered archival records in 2001 that reported a missionary seeing a "city of gold" in the region.

However the site was not found in the region where historical records have indicated Paititi should be found.

National Geographic News

Dino tracker finds trove of prints in D.C. suburb

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 16:35:03 GMT

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Ray Stanford pulls into the lot of a fast-food restaurant on a suburban commercial strip and parks at the back. Wearing high rubber boots and carrying a backpack, he makes his way through the brush and down to a stream bank littered with wrappers and cups.

He's come to track dinosaurs.

Stanford, a 69-year-old Texan, has been combing Maryland stream beds for evidence of dinosaurs for the past 13 years. The result is an unprecedented collection of footprints that were left behind 112 million years ago — found in an area where none had been reported before.

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Risk of Mars impact drops to 1 in 10,000

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 16:15:47 GMT

The risk that an asteroid will hit Mars on 30 January has dropped to 1 in 10,000, essentially ruling out an impact, NASA researchers say.

The truth is out: X-Files go public: UK

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:27:22 GMT

British UFO 'sightings' investigated by a secret branch of the MoD are soon to be revealed and officials are braced for a torrent of inquiries

Without warning, the orange UFO swooped toward them. The crew of the RAF Vulcan bomber banked hard and radioed they were being chased across the Atlantic by a large mysterious object. The incident was classified as a UFO sighting and the details were immediately locked away.

Now, 30 years later, the extraordinary encounter is among thousands of previously secret cases contained in the government's 'X-Files' that officials are to release in their entirety.

The cases, many from a little-known defence intelligence branch tasked with investigating UFO claims, will be published by the Ministry of Defence to counter what officials say is 'the maze of rumour and frequently ill-informed speculation' surrounding Whitehall and its alleged involvement with Unidentifed Flying Objects.

The public opening of the MoD archive will expose the once highly classified work of the intelligence branch DI55, whose mission was to investigate UFO reports and whose existence was denied by the government until recently. Reports into about 7,000 UFO sightings investigated by defence officials - every single claim lodged over the past 30 years - are included in the files, whose staged release will begin in spring.

The decision to release Whitehall's full back-catalogue of UFO investigations was taken last month after the Directorate of Air Space Policy, the government agency responsible for filtering sensitive reports, gave its permission to publish the biggest single release of documents in MoD history. Now the government fears a repeat of the unprecedented demand and the website crash experienced by the French national space agency in March when it released its own UFO files. Government IT experts are believed to have drawn up contingency plans to avoid a repeat scenario when Britain's dossiers are finally made public.

Among the first tranche of UK cases will be the official government files into the famous Rendlesham incident, dubbed 'Britain's Roswell' after the US incident when a flying saucer is said to have crash-landed in the New Mexico desert 60 years ago. On a foggy night in 1980 several witnesses reported a UFO apparently landing in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk. Statements claimed the craft was covered in markings similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics and aliens emerged from it.

Another case reported to the intelligence branch DI55 - Britain's version of the 'Men In Black' - chronicles a series of reports sent to RAF Scampton, Lincolnshire, by the crew of a Vulcan bomber on exercise over the Bay of Biscay early on 26 May 1977. According to documents seen by The Observer, five crewmen, including the captain, co-pilot and navigators, watched 'an object' approach their aircraft at 43,000ft above the Atlantic. The mysterious craft then appeared to turn and follow their precise course from a distance of four miles.

Initially, the crew said the object resembled landing lights 'with a long pencil beam of light ahead' but as it turned towards them the lights suddenly went out leaving a diffuse orange glow with a bright fluorescent green spot in its bottom right-hand corner. Then, according to signals sent back to Scampton, the crew noted a mystery object 'leaving from the middle of the glow on a westerly track... climbing at very high speed at an angle of 45 degrees'.

The Vulcan's navigator recorded interference on his radar screen from the direction of the UFO which continued for 45 minutes as the plane headed back to Britain. On return to the UK, the camera film from the aircraft's radar was examined by RAF intelligence. They found a 'strong response' from the direction of the sighting. The UFO was captured as 'an elongated shadow' of a 'large-sized' object travelling at a similar height to the Vulcan. An intelligence report sent to the MoD the same day says the crew 'were unable to offer a logical explanation for the sighting'.

Although hailed as the complete disclosure of the UK's UFO files, questions are likely to remain over whether all available information will be made public. Despite the Vulcan sighting being investigated by DI55, no details remain in the file indicating what they found or what became of the radar film.

The disclosures are more likely, claim some experts, to lend credence to the theory that such UFO incidents were, rather than alien visitations, military activities such as missile launches, testing of prototype aircraft and other activities during the Cold War.

David Clarke, a lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University and author of Flying Saucerers: A Social History of UFOlogy, said: 'Something was definitely going on, but really these files show that the government did not know either. This release will be a source of disappointment or vindication for some, and embarrassment for others.

Clarke, who has lodged hundreds of FoI requests, recently discovered that the government was considering destroying the 24 files created by DI55 because they were contaminated by asbestos. Not only were the UFO records polluted, but a total of 63,000 files estimated at between six to 12 million pages - most of them classified as secret - were facing the same fate. Having admitted the existence of the problem to Clarke, the MoD opted to instigate a £3m project digitally to scan the files before they were destroyed. Scanning of the 24 contaminated UFO files owned by DI55 was completed last year, although it is understood that names of officials in the reports will be removed.

Although the government remains reticent to discuss its intelligence work on UFOs, it is known that DI55 has been hot on the trail of flying saucers since the Sixties. Experts admit that they work closely with the security services MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to collect and assess evidence of potential threats to Britain.

The decision by the UK to open its files could lead to the US government following suit. A group of former pilots and government officials recently urged the Pentagon to reopen investigations into claims of UFO sightings.

UFO claims

1980 Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk. US servicemen claim to have seen an alien craft and its landing site.

1984 Minsk, USSR. Aeroflot pilots say they are pursued by a glowing shape.

1989 Bonnybridge, Scotland. Fire crew report objects rushing towards them before veering away at the last moment.

1990 Brussels, Belgium. Two F-16 fighter pilots recount being engaged in 75-minute mid-air chase with a UFO.

News Source

Transient Lunar Phenomena

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:27:46 GMT

The Moon is dominated by gigantic circular structures where unusual luminous discharges have been observed. Are they indicative of past electrical events?

Human beings have long looked up at and wondered about the Moon. Our forebears probably pondered its origin and its influence, perhaps seeking a purpose for the pale, shining orb that now dominates the night sky.

For more than a thousand years, reports have circulated about events on the Moon that should not appear on a "dead" celestial body. Various accounts describe glowing clouds in red and green, or sudden outbursts of yellow flares and intense flashes of light. Such observations do not accord with conventional theories.

Because the Moon is thought to have lost all its heat to space more than a billion years ago and it has no magnetic field to speak of, violent activity should not be taking place on its surface today. For this reason, astronomers and astrophysicists have discounted "transient lunar phenomena". Since most of the sightings by single individuals received no corroboration and no images were recorded until recently, the incidents were said to be apocryphal or deliberately misleading. However, some serious attempts have been made to link historical narratives with physical impacts:

"There was a bright new moon, and as usual in that phase its horns were tilted toward the east; and suddenly the upper horn split in two. From the midpoint of this division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out, over a considerable distance, fire, hot coals, and sparks. Meanwhile the body of the moon which was below writhed, as it were, in anxiety, and, to put it in the words of those who reported it to me and saw it with their own eyes, the moon throbbed like a wounded snake. Afterwards it resumed its proper state. This phenomenon was repeated a dozen times or more, the flame assuming various twisting shapes at random and then returning to normal. Then after these transformations the moon from horn to horn, that is along its whole length, took on a blackish appearance." (Jack B. Hartung (1976). "Was the Formation of a 20-km Diameter Impact Crater on the Moon Observed on June 18, 1178?" Meteoritics 11:187-194).

Meteors are one hypothesis for the abrupt appearance and disappearance of lunar scintillations, although Hartung's proposal has met with skepticism.

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