Reported and Edited by Linda Moulton Howe
September 17, 2000 Sinop, Turkey - This week a discovery twelve miles off the northern coast of Turkey near the town of Sinop (SIN-op) was announced that could force archaeologists and anthropologists to rewrite history about the relationship of Neolithic cultures in Europe, Asia and Mesopotamia seven thousand years ago.
September 12, 2000 Washington, D. C. - Today at NASA headquarters in the nation's capitol, astrophysicists presented new x-ray images by the Chandra X-ray Observatory that indicate something with the mass of at least 500 of our suns is packed into a region about the size of our moon in a nearby galaxy called M82. Such concentrated mass is probably a black hole. And if so, it is the first discovery of such a large black hole outside galactic centers. Until now, scientists have found evidence of small black holes only ten to twenty times bigger than our sun (one solar mass) or massive ones millions of times more massive than our sun, but only at the center of galaxies. This new discovery is at least 600 light years from the center of M82 and could be a new type of black hole that evolves and grows from the merger of many black holes. Further, the scientists reported that the intensity of the X-rays was rising and falling every 600 seconds, a ten minute cycle. Cycles are more consistent with matter falling into a black hole than the collapse of one gigantic star.
"If the prediction of total Arctic ice melt by 2030 is correct, then it is truly frightening because I think it would result in huge ecological changes to the polar oceans, the loss of species, changes of balance. The effects on climate change around the Northern Hemisphere particularly could be quite dramatic."
- Ian Sterling, Ph.D., Zoologist and Research Scientist
September 10, 2000 Churchill, Manitoba, Canada - The Arctic and northern latitudes have been singled out by the World Widelife Fund as the most vulnerable to the rapid rate of global warming. Their sobering statistic is that 20 percent of all species in northern environments could die out as melting ice and tundra completely change the habitats.
"I have used the Hubble quite extensively to look at many dying stars and we've seen many mysterious and beautiful shapes and structures, but we've never seen such a jet-like structure."
- Raghvendra Sahai, Ph.D., Astrophysicist, Jet Propulsion Lab
September 6, 2000 Pasadena, California - At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, astrophysicists are puzzled by a bright object about 8,000 light years from earth in the constellation Centaurus. It is giving off large jet pulses that are more typical of star births. But there is also an accretion disk of gas and dust often associated with a dying star. The paradox of birth and death characteristics is forcing a re-evaluation of what has been considered a planetary nebula since the 1990s.
August 26, 2000 East Field, Wiltshire, England – On Monday, July 31st late in the evening, crop circle researchers Ed and Kris Sherwood were in an East Kennett crop formation when a bright yellow unidentified aerial object appeared followed immediately by a loud, military-type helicopter that nearly ran them down in the field. After the couple went to the ground to escape the low-flying helicopter, it pursued the bright yellow object again, both disappearing behind a hill. Then a second bright yellow aerial object appeared. The Sherwoods videotaped the helicopter and yellow object and learned that other people did, too. Frank Laumen, a researcher and photographer from Germany, was at the bridge in Allington and could see lights and a helicopter back toward East Kennett. He videotaped the interactions. Andy Buckley from Manchester, England was also on Martinsell Hill and videotaped helicopter and light activity about the same time.Click for report.
June 26, 2000 Boulder, Colorado - Major breaking news this past week was NASA's press conference in Washington, D. C. at NASA Headquarters on Thursday, June 22nd, to announce 250 photographs of widespread areas on Mars that closely resemble gullies and springs of water on earth.
April 30, 2000 Raleigh, North Carolina - There was an astonishing discovery in the Hell's Creek sandstone of northwestern South Dakota back in 1993: a 13 foot long dinosaur with a heart in its rib cage. It's all fossilized, of course, but now modern CT scanning technology has confirmed it's four chambered with one aorta like warm-blooded animals today, not the cold-blooded reptilian metabolism assumed for dinosaurs over the past 150 years.
April 24, 2000 MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts Ten years ago on April 24, 1990 the Hubble Space Telescope was launched with its imperfect mirror. Later astronauts repaired it. Since then, Hubble has provided some of the most astounding photographs of the universe over the past decade. And recently, Hubble and the Chandra X-Ray telescopes were focused on a spot in the Big Dipper about 6,000 light years from earth to help solve a mystery.
April 2, 2000 Santa Fe, New Mexico - The New Mexico legislature is in session and in February 2000 State Representative J. Andrew Kissner (Las Cruces, Dona Ana County) was successful in having a once-secret experimental microwave radar station at El Vado in Rio Arriba County north of Los Alamos added to the New Mexico State Historical Register. The importance of the El Vado radar site is underscored by the fact that its construction was specifically authorized by President Harry S. Truman himself.
