Alien Activities:

August 17, 2013      Coast Insider Audio

During Friday's show, author Whitley Strieber discussed alien activities on Earth and a force responsible for policing or controlling them—a premise presented in his new novel, Alien Hunter. Strieber estimated that he and his wife Anne have received close to a million letters and emails describing both wonderful and terrifying interactions with aliens. The dead sometimes show up within the context of these experiences, he added. Strieber shared a story about a seven-year-old boy who claimed to have seen little blue men in his bedroom after a ball of fire blazed across the sky over his family's home. The young boy told his parents that his brother, who had died a week earlier in an auto accident, was also with the beings, he noted.

We do not know what these visitors are, Streiber continued, pointing out that they could be extraterrestrials, time travelers, residents of parallel dimensions or some combination of the aforementioned. Based on his own alien experiences, which he described as feeling less real than reality, Streiber proposed that someone could be projecting something into our reality from another dimension. He shared a remarkable missing persons case from Indonesia that suggests parallel worlds may exist. Whether or not these alien visitors are from distant planets in our universe or different dimensions altogether, they can move instantaneously from their world to ours, he said.

Streiber reported on an unusual number of vagrants who had disappeared off the streets, been drowned in the ocean, mutilated like cattle and then put back where they were originally found. This monstrous killing spree eventually stopped, which hints to Streiber that "there's some kind of control out there... trying to keep things in order." He also commented on recently declassified documents that show the CIA acknowledging the existence of Area 51. Streiber said he once spoke with a staff member who traveled to Area 51 with his senator, who had long expressed interest in what goes on at the facility. After a tour and a private briefing the senator returned and told his group, "The subject is over. We're dropping it." Streiber wondered what he was told or shown that made him decide to back off from further inquiry.

SpaceX's Reusable 'Grasshopper' Rocket Leaps Sideways In Amazing Test Flight (Video)

Megan Gannon 15 hours ago

An experimental reusable rocket built by the private spaceflight company SpaceX has soared though a series of ever-higher test flights over its Texas launch site, but it may have just taken its most awesome leap yet: a sideways rocket hop.

Nicknamed Grasshopper, the rocket prototype successfully performed a sideways "divert" test yesterday (Aug. 13) at SpaceX's proving grounds in McGregor, Texas. SpaceX released an amazing video of the sideways Grasshopper rocket flight today (Aug. 14).

The new video shows SpaceX's Grasshopper launching to an altitude of 820 feet (250 meters). The rocket then went into a hover mode, moved 328 feet (100 m) sideways, and then returned back to the center of its launch pad. From launch to landing, the flight lasted just over one minute.

The Grasshopper rocket, which is officially known as the Falcon 9 test rig at SpaceX, stands roughly 10 stories tall and its large size presents a challenge of control for sideways maneuvers. SpaceX officials said in a statement that the test proved "the vehicle's ability to perform more aggressive steering maneuvers than have been attempted in previous flights."

"Diverts like this are an important part of the trajectory in order to land the rocket precisely back at the launch site after re-entering from space at hypersonic velocity," SpaceX officials added.

SpaceX's Grasshopper rocket is a prototype for a new launch system built around completely reusable rocket vehicles. The project aims to make spaceflight cheaper and more efficient than current systems that use expendable rockets that burn up in Earth's atmosphere after lifting their payloads into space, SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk has said.

The Grasshopper rocket incorporates the first-stage tank of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which is used to launch the company's robotic Dragon capsule on contracted cargo runs to the International Space Station for NASA. The Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion NASA contract to make 12 unmanned deliveries to the orbiting outpost. It has flown two of those 12 flights so far.

Wednesday's test flight is the latest in a series of ever-more ambitious tests for the Grasshopper rocket system. In mid-June, the SpaceX's Grasshopper made its highest flight so far, reaching an altitude of 1,066 feet (325 m) before returning to its launch pad.

Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @SPACEdotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com. 

Anastasia Ashley is one very smart ass

Her butt-wiggling warmup routine has attracted more than 2 million views

August 09, 2013 by Chris Mauro

Several decades ago, Dave Parmenter, a famously opinionated pro surfer, raised eyebrows when he said the only way women’s surfing would gain popularity was if women started competing in the nude. Recent events would suggest he’s right, as the women’s side of the ASP World Tour has been thrust into the spotlight due to incidents involving bosoms, butts, and, well, jiggling flesh.

Anastasia Ashley commences her pre-heat stretching routine. For the rather entertaining full version, watch the video below.

Forget for now that the most popular female surfer in the world at the moment is Alana Blanchard. Blanchard has never won an ASP World Tour event. In fact, her highest finish in the rankings is 13th. But she’s been competing in tiny little G-strings for years. Not surprisingly, her most anticipated move is her bottom turn. And yeah, it doesn’t hurt that she’s pretty, too. In fact, Blanchard’s looks overshadowed her surfing skills (which are actually pretty solid) long ago. Blanchard has parlayed them into her hit YouTube show, “Alana: Surfer Girl.”  Blanchard and her handsome boyfriend, Jack Freestone, a budding star on the men’s side, are the Brad and Angelina of the sport.

In July, the video teaser for the upcoming Roxy Pro France caused an uproar, because rather than show five-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore surfing, it showed her awaking in bed, rolling around in her panties, looking very sexy as she emerged from the sheets. The video created a ton of heat from the blogosphere. It also got more views than any other contest teaser in ASP history. Mission accomplished for Roxy?

But the latest incident, starring Anastasia Ashley, could just be the most egregious example of Parmenter’s theory. The video below captured Ashley’s pre-heat warmup routine at the Supergirl Pro in Oceanside, California. Her ass-wiggling moves were supposedly done to loosen up her ligaments. But to shocked onlookers, it looked a lot more like something you’d see in a Vegas strip joint. “I had to get up and move,” said one man who was watching with his 13-year-old daughter. He wished to remain nameless, because, as he said, “I felt dirty!”

Not surprisingly, this thing has gone viral, with more than 2 million views. And yeah, that’s significantly higher than any highlight reel from this year’s Supergirl. Anastasia, who happens to model on the side, is getting all kinds of attention. Of course this was purely incidental. I mean, how could she have known this would create a stir?

Fly to Mars in a month, ex-astronaut's Kickstarter bid says

7 hours ago

Ad Astra

Private rocket company Ad Astra is working on a propulsion system that could make future space missions more efficient.

A former astronaut's rocket company is raising money via Kickstarter to make a short documentary that explains the technology behind a propulsion system that could fly people to Mars in just over a month.

"Our goal is to produce a full-length video, full of stunning animations that describe the way in which we intend to use our technology to transform space transportation," Franklin Chang-Diaz, a retired NASA astronaut and the founder of the company Ad Astra, says in a video describing the Mars rocket documentary.Chang-Diaz earned a doctorate in plasma physics from MIT before he became an astronaut in 1980 and flew on seven space shuttle missions. He founded Ad Astra in 2005 to work on VASIMR, the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket.

The engine uses electric power and magnetic fields to create a stream of superheated plasma with steady and efficient thrust, building up speed over time. In theory it could carry a crewed mission to Mars in fewer than 40 days, advocates say. But as Ad Astra's Kickstarter video explains, VASIMR could also bring greater efficiency to missions to capture or deflect asteroids, clean up space junk or reboost orbiting outposts like the International Space Station.

Ad Astra's Kickstarter campaign has gone well. With five days left, the company has already surpassed its $46,000 target, garnering more than $53,000 in pledges as of early Tuesday morning.

You can learn more about the project on Kickstarter.

Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @SPACEdotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com

Illuminati

Incredible Technology: How to Explore the Microscopic World

By Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer August 3, 2013Science, Social Science, & Humanities

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Editor's Note: In this weekly series, LiveScience explores how technology drives scientific exploration and discovery.

Ever since Robert Hooke first made his beautiful sketches of magnified insects, scientists have been peering at the world through microscopes.

The microscopic world generally refers to things humans can't see with the naked eye. But thanks to microscopes, scientists have the tools to visualize the detailed structures and dynamic processes inside living cells. Today's microscopes can reveal everything from the secretion of insulin in pancreatic cells to the chemical crossfire in slices of living brain tissue.

The Dutch glasses maker Hans Jansen and his son Zachariasinvented the first compound microscope in 1595, according to letters by the Dutch envoy to the court of France. The microscope consisted of a tube with a lens at either end, in which changing the distance between the lenses changed the magnification.

Hooke used a compound microscope to create the famous sketches in his tome "Micrographia," published in 1665. Dutch draper and microscope maker Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was also instrumental, being the first to describe sperm cells and bacteria in droplets of water. [Nature Under Glass: Gallery of Victorian Microscope Slides]

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Today's microscopes provide a view of the unseen. Here, a false-colored scanning electron micrograph …

Today's microscopes

But modern microscopes have come a long way since the days of Hooke and van Leeuwenhoek. "Nobody's looking with their eye anymore — everything's digital," said biophysicist David Piston of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

The main advance in microscopy has been in the cameras, Piston told LiveScience. The electronic light sensors in cameras, CCDs, are much more sensitive than the human eye. The consumer camera market has driven the price of a good microscope camera down from about $100 thousand to $30 thousand, Piston said.

Modern microscopes come in three flavors: optical microscopes, electron microscopes and scanning probe microscopes.

Within optical microscopes, there are wide-field microscopes and confocal microscopes. Wide-field scopes include your basic light microscope, which has a lens or lenses to magnify visible light transmitted or reflected by a sample. They're good for looking at single layers of cells or thin tissues, Piston said.

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An mEGFP-mitochondria/mOrange-Histone-H2B image of a beta-TC-3 cell.

The main advantage of optical microscopes is their ability to image living cells. But they are limited to a resolution of about 200 nanometers, where one nanometer is a billionth of a meter; for comparison, a sheet of paper is 100,000 nanometers thick.

To see finer details, scientists employ electron microscopes, which produce images using a beam of electrons instead of light. These have much better resolution than optical microscopes, because the wavelength of electrons is about 100,000 times shorter than visible light. However, this type of microscope can't reveal living cells, because the preparation steps or high-energy electron beams kill them.

Scanning probe microscopes use a physical probe to scan a sample and produce an image. These scopes enable scientists to view things on the atomic level or smaller.

Oh the things you'll see

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An insulin-GFP lentiviral infection of a murine islet of Langerhans.

The uses of microscopes span from the mundane to the arcane. A typical use for wide-field microscopy might be observing how a protein called a transcription factor binds to part of a cell's DNA to activate a specific gene. Improper binding of transcription factors plays a role in many cancers, for example.

Neuroscientists often use confocal microscopy to visualize activities at the synapses between neurons. They can even look at living slices of an animal's brain, Piston said.

Electron microscopes provide a stunning level of detail that reveals fine structures. Scientists have used these microscopes to create the iconic close-up images of red blood cells or human hairs.

But ultimately, microscopy's importance lies in the dynamics of living cells, Piston said. "The ability to look at how things move around will really revolution how we think about cells."

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

The “footprint”

From http://www.sitchin.com/ SO WHAT IS IT? Several weeks ago, a photograph (Fig. 1) was posted here and readers were asked, “What is it?”  The correct answer:  It is a photograph from the surface of Mars. Specifically, according to NASA:  Wheel prints of the Mars rover Opportunity in Meridiani Planum, showing a cluster of greenish tiny balls  (nicknamed “Blueberries”) of hematite (iron oxide) that can form only in the presence of water. When I first saw this photograph (in an issue of The Planetary Report) I scratched my head. The rover,  as (Fig. 2) shows, moves on six wheels -- three on each side.  The wheel treadprints, as (Fig. 3) shows,  form continuous double tracks. Yet here there is a distinct untreaded break, a disconnection; how is that  possible, if the camera is looking back on where the rover had passed? Also, the wheels (see Fig. 4) are  slightly convex (like the boards in a wooden barrel), leaving (see Fig. 3) a slightly rounded imprint; yet  here the segments are perfect elongated 90º rectangulars. And they are laid out tightly like stone slabs  next to each other, without the separation between the “slabs” that must be caused by the wheels’ ribs.  How come? The circular indentations (bottom left, upper right) in (Fig.1 ) are explained by NASA’s analysts as the  marks left by Mossbauer Spectrometer as it punches the soil to analyze it. But that instrument (see Fig. 2 ) lies in the rover between the two rows of wheels; yet the bottom left circular imprint is smack within the  wheelprint. How can it be? This imprint is also different from both the one on the upper right (made by Opportunity’s instrument) and an imprint (Fig. 5)  left by the similar instrument on the twin rover  Spirit (that roams on the other side of Mars). The difference remains unexplained. In response to the question “What Is It?”, scores of answers were mailed in -- from all over the world. A few answered it exactly NASA’s way: Pribyl Frantisek of the Czech Republic; Frank Rumore of  New Jersey; Mark Keller of Virginia; Mrs. B.J. Stewart from Canada; Bill Stanley of Tennesee;  Mark Miller of Appleton, Wisconsin and Tony Giovanni of Nevada. Most of the other answers suggested a “footprint” of sorts on the Moon or Mars. Many realized that the “Blueberries” indicated a site on Mars; but, as some explained, the ‘disconnection’ suggested a bootprint  rather than a wheel’s track, so it had to be where Man had gone: The “footprint” of an Apollo astronaut’s  boot on the Moon (Fig. 6a). What threw them off, and the other discrepancies detailed above, remain cause for continued head scratching.
March 2008	Zecharia
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Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6a Figure 6b