Random Thoughts, Random Places

Tales of secret underground laboratories abound in the lore of UFOs. But now there’s a real deep underground lab, and it’s no secret.  The Deep Underground Science and Engineering Lab(DUSEL) is being built in the old Homestake gold mine at Lead, South Dakota. There have been other labs built in the old mine in the past, particularly a neutrino detector, but until recently the mine was sealed and filling with water. The first efforts are to get the water out; other work will follow. The DUSEL will be at the 4850 level to start, with other labs planned as deep as 8000 feet.

Did a UFO save the world from a collision with an 1 billion ton meteorite?  That’s the supposition put forth by Russian scientist Yuriy Lavbin. In an article from the Macedonian International News Agency (MINA), Lavbin says that Siberian scientists, searching river banks near the site of the 1908 Tunguska meteorite crash, found unusual quartz boards; solid stones that do not exist on Earth. And there were strange drawings on the stones. Scientist could not duplicate them, even with the most powerful lasers available. They theorize a UFO carrying the stones put itself between the meteor and the earth, breaking it up and deflecting most of it away from earth.  Of course it didn’t do much good to the UFO.

I don’t know what those altruistic aliens would do with those solid stones on a UFO. The weight might cause problems with flight.  Of course that may explain all those crashes in New Mexico. But if you read it  on Macedonian International News Agency website, who can argue with that.  The story was even picked up by Fox News.

‘Nuf said.

Another “UFO” sighting in Arizona has come down to earth, but it wasn’t aliens or a weather balloon. Residents from all over the northern part of the state saw what some described as a ”gigantic bubble from the Wizard of Oz”.  But rather than Dorothy and Toto it was massive NASA research balloon. According to Bill Stepp of the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, the balloon was launched Sunday morning from Fort Sumter in central New Mexico.  It came down Monday evening just south of Kingman, Arizona. The purpose of the flight was measurement of gamma ray emissions at high altitudes.  Stepp said the balloon usually floats at an altitude of 130,000 feet, so on a clear day it can be seen for about 170 miles.

One question.  Aren’t the usual jet stream winds at that altitude from west to east?  The balloon traveled from east to west. 

That should keep conspiracy seekers busy.

Canadian researchers say they’re a step closer to reading people’s minds.  The website LiveSience reports that a study at the University of Toronto demonstrated the ability to decode a person’s preference for one of two drinks with 80 percent accuracy. 

The study, led by Sheena Luu, a University of Toronto doctoral student, had adult volunteers rate eight drinks on a scale of 1 to 5.  Then, wearing a fiber-optic headband that emitted near infrared light into the frontal cortex of the brain, they were shown pictures of two drinks on a computer screen and their brain activity was monitored.  Using a computer to analyze the patterns scientists were able to predict which one the volunteers preferred.

 The goal of the research, done at the University’s Bloorview Kids Rehab center, isn’t “mind reading”, but rather to give the ability to communicate choices to children who can’t speak or move.

There’s a lot more noise in space than astronomers expected. A team from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, led by Alan Kogut, announced on January 7th the discovery of cosmic radio noise that is six time louder than had been previously thought. In an article on NASA’s Goddard Center Web Site Kogut said, “The universe really threw us a curve. Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted.”

The noise was discovered using “ARCADE” — the Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission — which was taken to an altitude of 120,000 feet by a balloon. It was launched from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas in July of 2006.

I like reading about scientific “surprises” like this. It keeps me, and I hope other’s, from getting to complacent with our current knowledge of the world and space around us. We still don’t know about everything that is “out there”.