Prof Stephen Hawking: man faces nuclear armageddon and must colonise space

Mankind faces nuclear armageddon and must build colonies on Mars and beyond, Stephen Hawking has said.

Professor Stephen Hawking in his office at University of Cambridge Photo: Sarah Lee/Science Museum

By Matthew Holehouse

8:48AM GMT 06 Jan 2012

"It is possible that the human race could become extinct but it is not inevitable. I think it is almost certain that a disaster, such as nuclear war or global warming, will befall the earth within a thousands years," Professor Hawking, the Cambridge University cosmologist and theoretical physicist said.

"It is essential that we colonise space. I believe that we will eventually establish self-sustaining colonies on Mars, and other bodies in the solar system, although probably not within the next 100 years.

"I am optimistic that progress within science and technology will eventually allow humans to spread beyond the solar system and out into the far-reaches of the universe," he said.

Professor Hawking was answering questions submitted by listeners to BBC Radio 4's Today programme to mark his seventieth birthday.

But if man should meet alien life on its journey into space, the consequences for humanity could be grave, Prof Hawking warned.

"The discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would be the greatest scientific discovery ever. But it would be very risky to attempt to communicate with an alien civilisation.

"If aliens decided to visit us, then the outcome might be similar to when Europeans arrived in the Americas. That did not turn out well for the Native Americans."

He said did not believe the results of the CERN experiments which appeared to show particles travelling faster than the speed of light - in defiance of the known laws of physics.

"Einstein's theory of relativity predicts that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Thus if the Opera experiment is correct, and neutrinos do travel faster than light, then relativity theory is wrong.

"However, I don't believe the Opera results, because they disagree with the detection of neutrinos from supernova SN 1987A."

Bursts of neutrinos detected in 1987 from that stellar explosion suggested neutrinos travel at the same speed of light. If CERN's experiment is correct, they would have been detected on earth years before the light from the explosion was seen on earth, physicists believe. Instead, they arrived within hours of one another.

A listener from Lagos asked Hawking, Britain's most celebrated physicist, whether there "was a time when there was nothing".

"The origin of the universe can be explained by the laws of physics, without any need for miracles or divine intervention," replied the professor, who uses a speech synthesizer due to his debilitating Motor Neurone Disease.

"These laws predict that the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing in a rapidly expanding state. It's called inflation, because it's like the way prices go up at an ever increasing rate. Time is defined only with the universe, so it makes no sense to talk about the time before the universe began. It would be like asking for a point south of the south pole."

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Mac

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEAZ8qdvuzE

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-Mac

www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Si50parlc

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Government officials in the Russian region of Siberia have announced ‘definitive and indisputable proof’ of the existence of mountain Yetis living in the area.

A professional expedition was organized after Kemerovo's governor invited researchers from the United States, Canada, and several other countries to share their research and stories of encounters with the creature at a conference. By all accounts, it was a success and evidence has been found.

"During the expedition to the Azasskaya caves, conference participants gathered indisputable proof that the Shoria mountains are inhabited by the 'Snow Man'," the Kemerovo region administration said in a press release.

The Kemerovo regional government (south of Siberia) said in a statement on its website that footprints and possibly even hair samples belonging to the elusive Yeti were found on the research trip to its remote mountains.

"They found his footprints, his supposed bed, and various markers with which the yeti marks his territory," the statement said. The collected "artifacts" will be analyzed in a special laboratory, it said.

Yetis, or Abominable Snowmen, are hairy ape-like creatures regularly seen in Eurasia (cousins of the North American Sasquatch), that are generally held to inhabit the Himalayas. But many believe Russia also holds a population of yetis, which it calls Snow Men, in remote areas of Siberia.

Kemerovo region's Shoria is a sparsely populated territory in Western Siberia that has historically been a territory of coal and metal mining.

The region, the administrative centre of Kuznetsk coal basin, has pursued the elusive Yeti for several years. Considering the latest findings, the region may "create a special research centre to study the Yeti" in the regional university and "create a journal" dedicated to the science of the Yeti, the administration's statement said.

I, for one, have just found my next ski trip destination.

-Mac

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A brief breakdown for the uninitiated:

Skylab was the first American space station was launched into orbit May 14, 1973. Skylab 3, the second crew to visit, consisted of Astronauts Alan Bean, Jack Lousma, and Owen Garriott. Tasked with everything from maintenance to experiments both scientific and medical, they also faced a number of crises during their short tenure (July 28, 1973, to September 25, 1973,) all of which were thankfully resolved. The one unresolved occurance was the sighting and photographing of a MASSIVE unidentified object that followedthe space lab while remaining undetected by NASA or NORAD, an event which would become known in military/NASA/UFO circles as the "Skylab 3 UFO Incident."

A few days before returning to Earth and while out of radio contact, Garriott took photos of an anomalous object from Skylab’s wardroom window. The first recorded mention of the incident was between the astronauts and CAPCOM some four and a half hours later:

Lousma: Did you tell him about that satellite we saw?
Bean: Yes, we saw a great satellite. We didn’t know if we told you about it.
Lousma: The closest and brightest one we’ve seen.
Bean: Huge one
Lousma: We’ve seen several. It was a red one
Capsule Communicator: No, you may have told someone but it wasn’t this team. I don’t remember hearing about it.
Lousma: I guess we didn’t report it. It was flashing red lights and oscillating at, oh, counting its period of brightness to dimmest, about 10 seconds. It led us into sunset. That was about three revs ago, I think. Something like that, wasn’t it Owen? (No answer).

Further allusion to the anomaly took place during a debriefing on October 4, 1973:

Garriott: Do you want to talk about that satellite?
Lousma: I saw a couple of satellites that appeared like a satellite would on Earth. I saw one that was not like one you would see on Earth, so why don’t you mention it.
Garriott: OK. About a week or 10 days before recovery and we were still waiting for information to be supplied to us about the identification. Jack first notices this rather large red star out the wardroom window.Upon close examination, it was much brighter than Jupiter or any of the other planets. It had a reddish hue to it, even though it was well above the horizon. The light from the Sun was not passing close to the Earth's limb at the time. We observed it for about 10 minutes prior to sunset. It was slowly rotating because it had a variation in brightness with a 10-seconds period. As I was saying, we observed it for about 10 minutes, until we went into darkness, and it also followed us into darkness about 5-seconds later. From the 5 to 10 second delay in its disappearance we surmised that it was not more than 30 to 50 nautical miles (35 to 58 statute miles or 56 to 93 km) from our location. From its original position in the wardroom window, it did not move more than 10 or 20 degrees over the 10 minutes or so that we watched it. Its orbit was very close to that of our own. We never saw it on any earlier or succeeding orbits and we'd be quite interested in having its identification established. It's all debriefed in terms of time on channel A, so the precise timing and location can be picked up from there.
The Channel A recorder was off, so determining the precise time and location of Skylab using that method was not possible. The information was later determined though using NORAD tracking data. The case is still totally unresolved. Here's the official photos, there are more out there but I can't find them just now.

A video on it... the narrator is awful.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG9hhTuUonw

Disregard that idiots mention that this is the only NASA sighting, that's horseshit. Nearly every one of the apollo crews has gone on the record to say that they were monitored by ET vessels. I believe the Skylab case is a real one. Thoughts?

Love, Mac

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International team of scientists to share secret Cold War evidence

Its legend has long haunted the icy wastes of the Himalayas and Siberia.

Yet for all the mysterious sightings and strange footprints in the snow, the Yeti has proved remarkably elusive to those seeking solid evidence of its existence.

Now, however, the Abominable Snowman has an international team of scientists on its trail in a Russian region which one expert claims is home to around 30 of the creatures.

An expedition and conference – the largest of its kind since 1958 – will this week bring together scientists from Russia and the U.S. who have even agreed to share  secret Cold War evidence in the effort to prove the humanoid beasts exist.

It follows a rise in apparent Yeti sightings in the Kemerovo region 3,000 miles – and four time zones – east of Moscow.

One of the most recent was reported by 82-year-old Raisa Sudochakova, who claims her dogs howled in fear and ran when they saw the Yeti.

She said: ‘It was still a tall creature, but not giant. It was covered with long brown-grey hair, like a bear. It wasn’t a bear – I have lived all my life in Siberia and wouldn’t make that mistake. This creature walked like a human, or almost like a human.’

Experts speculated she may have seen a young Yeti, as other sightings have suggested the creatures are about 7ft.

This week’s expedition will begin with experts from six nations gathering at the International Centre of Hominology in Tashtagol.

Snow joke: Russian and U.S. scientists will join forces in a bid to shed light on the mysterious yeti. This image shows a supposed footprint of one of the beasts

Russian Scientist: Igor Burtsev is the head of the 'Yeti institute' at Kemerovo State University

Igor Burtsev, the centre’s director, believes around 30 Yetis live in the Kuzbass coal mining area of Kemerovo, where villagers say they steal sheep and hens. He claims they are Neanderthals who have survived to this day.

The event comes after the most recent expedition to find the Yeti failed, despite the efforts of Russian heavyweight boxing champion Nikolai Valuyev, known as the ‘Beast from the East’.

‘Valuyev did not manage to meet the Yeti itself but on the way he discovered traces such as broken tree branches,’ said a local government spokesman.

‘By the time they reached the Azass cave, the expedition saw gigantic footprints.’

Not surprisingly, there has been a degree of scepticism over the latest hunt – not least from those who reckon it’s just an attempt to boost tourism in Kemerovo.

Yeti country: The conference is taking place in Tashtagol in Siberia, in a region where the creatures are said to liveBy WILL STEWART

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044813/Yeti-hunt-Russian-American-scientists-pool-Cold-War-evidence.html#ixzz1a3iBrMJt

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A full 33-foot Sei Whale has been found in the middle of a field in Northern England, nearly 1000 feet from the nearest shallow estuary, which was barely 4' deep and not deep enough to support such a large animal.

Andy Gibson, of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, said such strandings were very rare.

This mysterious animal abduction comes amidst a massive UFO wave in the Kingston upon Hull area. In August there were at least six sightings of darting UFO craft in the area, the most publicized being on 8/10 at 2pm, in which a small series of crafts hovered low to the marshland before darting off at extreme speeds defying all known laws of physics.

Due to the extreme amount of UFO sightings in the Hull area, there has been established the official "Hull UFO Society" (link) to sort out the claims. This abduction, examination and depositing of an entire whale is the first on record though, to my knowledge. As the days pass I can predict that we'll get a few saucer reports from the Kingston upon Hull area. I'll update this article as they come in.

-Mac

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The house is nestled into a hillside. Stone and mud (and magic) were the basic construction materials. Water pipes in by gravity feed from a nearby spring. They use a compost toilet--so that's how hobbits do their business. Their refrigerator is cooled by air coming in from the underground foundations. While that sort of thing works in Wales, and probably in Hobbiton, it probably doesn't in Southern California.

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Apparently, they are not the only ones into little woodland houses. Also, here...

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Roundhouse and Barn, Cae Mabon

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xoxo Mac

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For the first time since pterosaurs were discovered more than 100 years ago, the basic physics of how the largest of them flew are becoming understood. The new research suggests that estimates of giant pterosaur wing size and shape have been wrong, and that, mechanically, the wings would have had to be crescent-shaped and angled much farther forward on the body than has been thought.

"Something as big a pterosaur is really pushing the limits of what's possible. That's what's interesting from an engineering point of view," study researcher Colin Palmer, of the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, said to LiveScience. Palmer figured out how these physical boundaries contribute to the size and shape of the pterosaur wings. "It does allow us to have a better idea of how things work and throw away a number of things," he said.

Winged lizards

Pterosaurs (meaning "winged lizards") seem to be capable of powered flight even though some were the size of giraffes. They are thought to have ruled the skies for more than 200 million years, until they died out with the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Their wingspans reached 7 meters — about twice as long as any living bird — and some fossils suggest even larger species of pterosaurs may have lived.

Previous drawings of the animals' possible wing size and shape were based on anatomical limits: For instance, scientists knew from fossils that the pterosaur's wing membrane connected from the ankle to the arm bones and elongated ring finger that form the leading edge of the wing. [Avian Ancestors: Dinosaurs That Learned to Fly]

By analyzing the pterosaur's center of mass (where gravity is pulling down the hardest) and the center of pressure (where lift is pushing up the hardest) in different conformations, Palmer added physics-based boundaries to the possible size and shape of the wings. He found that as depicted in most illustrations, pterosaurs wouldn't have been able to fly. To successfully fly, these two forces must be equal and opposite.

To equalize the two forces acting on the flying pterosaur, the wings would need to be crescent-shaped and angled much farther forward on the body. Palmer also realized that to keep the membrane taut (so it didn't flap back and forth, producing drag) the wings had to have been narrower, to keep the membrane from extending too far back.

"To stop it from flapping in flight, you have to have tension in there. You can only do that by bending the wing bones, like a bow and arrow," Palmer said.

Flying giraffes

The wing size and shape that Palmer discovered would have given the airborne giants a great amount of stability in the air, without need to constantly correct their course.

These large animals would have spent most of their time soaring over the oceans, Palmer said. This passive stability provided by their wings would have enabled them to exert little effort to correct their flight after a wind gust, for instance. They probably didn't have to flap their wings much, though previous research has indicated they did flap to make their landing.

"When it hits a gust, the wing flexes, the wing bends, in a way to stabilize it," Palmer told LiveScience. "A 7-meter, very flexible wing could actually have flown successfully."

The study was published today (Sept 27) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on Twitter @microbelover. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and onFacebook.

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Records pulled from the New York Daily News show that the photo was taken in the 1860’s at Johnson’s Island Prison Camp in Ohio where Cage was being held as a captured confederate soldier.  The eeriest part of the 147 year old photograph is that the Oscar winning actor hasn’t aged a day since.

Jack Mord, who is selling the photo on eBay, said:

“Personally, I believe it’s him and that he is some sort of walking undead vampire, et cetera, who quickens/reinvents himself once every 75 years or so. 150 years from now, he might be a politician, the leader of a cult or a talk show host.

“My theory is that he allows himself to age to a certain point, maybe 70, 80 or so, then the actor ‘Nicolas Cage’ will ‘die’…but in reality, the undead vampire ‘Nicolas Cage’ will have rejuvenated himself and appeared in some other part of the world, young again, and ready to start all over.”

Interestingly enough, Cage himself has NOT denied being a vampire. He also hasn’t confirmed it, but that’s a given.

As you may know, I’m a long standing advocate of the Richard Chanfray/ Comte de Saint-Germain immortality case (he reportedly drank the elixer of immortality in France in the 1740’s and faked his suicide in San Tropez in the early 80’s), so this is a breath of fresh air as well as a fascinating case.

Comte de Saint-Germain/Richard Chanfray

If you head straight to Ebay to see (or bid on) the picture, don’t bother its been removed. Rumor has it that Cage bought the image himself, most likely to cover his tracks and quietly put an end to the controversy.  The smart money is on this potentially being the real deal.

-Mac

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