Humans to get to Mars by 2030?

Charles Bolden, a NASA administrator stated that president Obama and the congress have been constantly making ambitious plans for the space agency.

Bolden says that Obama's plan challenges NASA to accomplish very big things. First, Obama expects the space agency to rendezvous with an asteroid by 2025. Secondly, and what is one of the biggest things on the agenda, Obama wants NASA to land people on the red planet, Mars, in the 2030s.

Charles Bolden also adds that low-orbit transportation will be handed off to private companies, while NASA will be focusing on inventing new technologies that will allow for better deep-space exploration, and make quieter, cleaner, and safer planes! Kind of odd that he would add that in a statement about deep-space exploration, but the safer the better.

Light created from nothing!

The dynamic Casimir effect has finally been proven true after more than 40 years since it was predicted. A team of scientist in Sweden lead by Chris Wilson are the ones that made it possible. Wilson said that "they were very happy when it worked" and I'm not surprised.

How'd they do it? Well first, they got a SQUID, or Superconducting Quantum Interface Device, and made it move at the speed of light in a vacuum. The rapid movement of the SQUID starts transferring its kinetic energy to virtual particles. What did this yield? Photons, also know as light started appearing, therefore proving that space is not empty, even though it is a vacuum.

That being said, I don't think we're gonna have any light sources made out of virtual photons any time soon, because Wilson and the team aren't yet sure as to how many "real" photons they can get get out of the "virtual" ones.

Numerology explains central message of Bible

Many fans of numerology have noticed odd coincidences in the Bible. For example, Psalm 118 is the middle chapter of the bible. Immediately before Psalm 118, Psalm 117 is the shortest chapter in the bible and Psalm 119 in front of it is the longest.

Furthermore, the Bible has 594 chapters before Psalm 118, and 594 after it. Add up all the chapters except 118 and what do you get? 1188 chapters. If you would interpret this as Psalm 118, verse 8, then the message would be "It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in humans." 

There it is, the central message of the Bible, at least in terms of numerology. 

Others predict 2012 doomsday?

Tom Horn, an American writer, says that not only the Mayan calendar says the end of the world is in December 2012, but also other ancient calendars. Tom Horn strongly believes in the Bible and is the author of the book Apollyon Rising 2012. He never said he did not believe in the Mayan calendar and the end of the world in 2012 but became aware that there are many other calendars and prophecies that predict the end of the world is on the same date, December 2012. He says these calendars have no connection with the Mayan calendar.
Despite having no telescopes, the Mayans made fine measurements of the heavens above. "The Maya understood the phenomenon of precession of the equinoxes is not the end of an era but the beginning of a new one," said Tom Horn. According to the author, the Maya associated December 21, 2012 with the advent of a new man and the return of their god dragon, a flying snake which has the power of air. Tom Horn noted that the Aztecs also had a flying snake, Quetzalquatl, and that their calendar also ends in December 2012. The Hindus’ Kali Yuga provides global and major changes in 2012. The Chinese I-Ching book known as the "Book of Changes" provides the entire world end in 2012.

Tom Horn talks about the fact that 38 years ago two researchers named Terrence and Dennis McKenna created a line chart inspired by the book I-Ching and found that on December 21, 2012 the time line on the graph stopped suddenly. This is amazing considering that this research was published in 1973 while no one knew anything about the Mayan calendar and the end of the world in December 2012.
But above all the Zohar, a mystical Jewish book made comments about the Torah speaks about the Messiah at the end of 2012 "All the kings of the world will gather in the great city of Rome and the Holy city will catch on fire and brn until it will destroy all..."

Gene that controls sleep found at last!

Everyone knows someone that can get as little as 4 or 5 hours of sleep and be more energized than you would be with 8. Why is it that they can do that and not us? A group of German scientists might have the answer to our question. Named ABCC9, this gene seems to allow you to sleep for significantly shorter periods of time and be just as energized.

To prove that this gene is what differs from a short energizing sleep and a long tedious one, the scientists conducted an experiment on more than 4,000 people that lived across seven European countries. Part of the experiment was filling out a questionnaire about the sleeping habits the people had. The other part? Seeing if they had the correct version of gene ABCC9.

Lo and behold, the people with two copies of the "less sleep" version of ABCC9 slept for a shorter period of time, while people with two copies of the "more sleep" version of ABCC9 slept for much longer.

To test the results they got form the questionnaire, they modified the gene in fruit flies with the help of scientists from the Leichester University in England. The flies also had different sleep cycles now with their new ABCC9 genes, and Till Roenneberg said - one of the study's authors - said that this is means that the same mechanism might work in a wide variety of species. 

Why do we have wisdom teeth?

Why do we have wisdom teeth has been a question that I've personally asked myself many times and always wanted a good answer to the question. It finally seems like that answer has come, and it might surprise you.

A new study that was published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences basically says that our wisdom teeth are there because of our ancestors diets. Hunter-gatherers had a longer, narrower jaw-bone, which in turn allowed for another set of molars, the wisdom teeth for better chewing of the relatively hard foods that they were eating.

On the other side, there were those who got their food from agriculture and the food was often cooked and much softer. This lead to a smaller jaw-bone and no space for that extra set of molars that hunter-gatherers had. This can also explain dental crowding and teeth misalignment. Now that my question has finally been answered, all I need to know is why they call them wisdom teeth.

Water found on Europa?

NASA has long thought that there was a gigantic lake larger in volume than all the oceans on earth combined hiding in the depths of Jupiter;s moon, Europa, bu it would be miles upon miles below the surface.

New research suggests that the moon actually has a body of water the size of the Great Lakes only about 2 miles below the surface! Does that mean that life exists below Europa's icy surface? Scientists can't say yet because there are so many variables to take into consideration, but one thing is for sure - the probability of there being life on Europa has increased.

New data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft has made some scientists make a correlation between a lake-like body of water under Europa's surface and strange areas made up of bumpy and irregular terrain on the surface of Europa called "chaos terrains".

The video below should put everything into perspective pretty nicely and will allow you to see just how scientists think that these "chaos terrains" form.

NASA's Curiosity to launch on November 26

NASA's new rover called Curiosity will launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force station located in Florida.
Curiosity's destination and mission objective? It's supposed to land inside the Gale crater on planet Mars. There, it will look for signs on whether Mars' environment was ever suitable for microbial life.

Source: NASA

Much longer and also much heavier than its two predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity weighs in at 900kg and is 3 feet long. It boasts ten scientific tools that all together weigh 15 times more than Spirit or Opportunity's scientific tools.
Curiosity is supposed to get to Mars in August of next year, after a long and treacherous 8 month journey through our solar system. 

Peruvian Mummy is Extraterrestrial?

A new discovery has been made in Peru, in which archaeologists found a mummy with a head almost 20 inches long. Its body? Also 20 inches long. 

The mummy was found by Renato Davila Riquelme, who works at the Privado Ritos Andinos museum found in Cusco. What Renato says is interesting about the head is that while it has a soft spot (commonly seen in babies) it also has wisdom teeth. Another interesting observation he makes is how large the eye sockets of the skeleron head are. Below is a video with more info on the subject.

Lightest Material on Earth

Scientists have invented the lightest material on Earth. Dubbed "ultralight metallic microlattice", it consists of 99.99% air. The material is easiest to make out of nickle, but it can also be made out of other metals.

How light is this material? Well to put it into perspective, it is 100 times lighter than Styrofoam, and when dropped from shoulder height, it acts like a feather and takes about 10 seconds to touch the ground. If that wasn't crazy enough, if it is placed on top of a dandelion, it does not damage the fluff at al, as seen in the picture  below.

Now, for its uses? Well, Lorenzo Valdevit (UCI's principal investigator on this project) says that it can be used for anything ranging from battery applications to acoustic dampening and even impact protection. Definitely an interesting  material.

Russian keeps an Alien in her fridge for two years?

There have been way too many UFO sightings in Russia as of late. I'm pretty sure that with the vast amount of s called aliens found in Russia, if Aliens really were to come down to Earth they would use Russia as their spaceport.
The story goes like this, Marta Yegorovnam kept the body of a dead alien in her fridge in the town of Petrozavodsk for over two years, and lo and behold she only took five pictures to prove that the thing is actually real. No video, nothing. Here is the first picture of this beast.

God, Russia seems to be the most alien-ridden place on Earth. 

All jokes aside, it seems like its hands would be useless, and could be compared to twigs. Its very small as well. Marta says that she found the alien resting dead by a pile of extremely hot, twisted metal. Unexplained Mysteries says that two men turned up at Marta's house two days ago and confiscated to body. Who were they? Not the Men in Black, if that's what you were thinking. Apparently, they came from the Karelian Research Center. What do you guys think? Real or hoax? Judging by Russia's past credibility of so called alien encounters (see Kirill Vlasov's bread alien hoax) I'd say that we don't have a dead alien at Martas house just yet. But, you never know!

There Was The Fifth Giant Planet In Our Solar System?

Astronomer David Nesvorny of Southwest Research Institute from Texas believes that our solar system may have had a fifth planet once near Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. He believes that this planet was designed in the depths of our galaxy in a moment of cosmic disorder. After carefully studying the Kuiper Belt and craters from the Moon, Nesvorny concluded that about 600 millions years ago in the life of our solar system unstable orbit dynamics appeared that affected giant planets and made smaller celestial objects scatter. So, some of them moved in the Kuiper Belt and others moved on the inside of the galaxy.There also existed an impact with the Moon and other planets. If things would have been like that, then changes in the orbit of Jupiter would have had devastating effect on large and small planets like the Earth, the last one being able to collide with Mars or Venus.

So, something was wrong. "My colleagues have suggested another way to solve this problem", said Nesvory in a press conference.

It was assumed that Jupiter's orbit could change very quickly and not too slowly. But it didn't solve the problem because all the computer simulations performed have shown that sudden change of Jupiter's orbit would have made the planets Uranus and Neptune to be expelled from our solar system. So, probably in our solar system there was a fifth giant planet. Introducing another giant planet with a mass similar to that of Uranus or Neptune made perfect computer simulations that is the result of today's solar system as we know it. With Jupiter remaining in his place the inner planets remained unaffected and the outer planets remained behind.

"The possibility that our solar system had more than four giant planets in the beginning and then some of them were ejected seem to be feasible conditions because recently scientists discovered a large number of free floating planets in interstellar space indicating that the process of ejection of planets is one that is currently happening", said Nesvorny.

Therefore, is this scenario were true this fifth planet could be Planet X?

Is The Egyptian Government Trying To Cover Up The "Hall of Records"?

There is a new conspiracy theory afoot that says that the Egyptian government is trying to cover up the Hall of Records, which is rumored to contain information on Atlantis and how the city sunk.

Edgar Cayce, a renowned psychic says that there are three such halls spread across the globe, one in the Yucatan Peninsula, one in Egypt under the Great Sphinx, and one in Atlantis (but it's sunken, so we obviously won't be able to find it). Cayce thought that there were small groups of inhabitants that escaped before it sunk and settled in present-day Mexico and Egypt.

According to sources, there is a little nit of evidence that the Hall of Records might actually indeed exist. More than 20 years ago, a radar scan was conducted my the Great Sphinx and found a strange anomaly under one of the Sphinxes paws. There appeared to be a small chamber right where Cayce said the Hall of Records would be hidden. There is another piece of evidence which as that there is a network of caves and tunnels that run all around the Giza plateau. and some very close to the Sphinx and where the Hall of Records is believed to be located. Some say that a group of archaeologists were able to dig through and get to the hall, but covered it right back up when they found it.

Now, why would Egypt try and hide such a great discovery? Well I think that if the truth came out about how the ancient Egyptians were helped by citizens of Atlantis, then everything we knew about them would be changed and they would seem much less advanced than previously thought. Now as always, these are just conspiracies and the chances of them being true are very slim, but what if they are? Hopefully, the truth will come out and we'll know for sure.