Detected intelligent life on Earth

NASA has on its website a section called "Astronomy Picture of the Day" in which he published a picture of our fascinating universe, along with a brief explanation of a professional astronomer daily.

On February 6 the photo published was this:

© SETI

Nobody knows for sure what caused this signal. There is a slight possibility that it could be caused by an extraterrestrial civilization. Bright colors of blue background indicate that an anomalous signal was received here on Earth by a radio telescope project search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The search for these signals is being conducted by several groups including volunteer members of the SETI League. The vertical axis represents time and the horizontal frequency. Although this strong signal has not been identified, astronomers found themselves in it many attributes that point to a much more mundane origin and ... Earth. In this case, the most likely explanation is that the signal originated by the unusual modulation between a GPS satellite and terrestrial signal unidentified. Many unusual signals detected in space remain inidentificadas. But none has been strong enough, or lasted long enough to be considered unequivocally as alien

Elsewhere, as the world with my eyes, it has also dealt with this news, but making a partial translation of the explanation of the astronomer. Guess which part?

NASA Official: Possible extraterrestrial signal received

"No one knows for sure what Caused esta signal. There is a slight Possibility That Might it just originate from an extraterrestrial intelligence. "

The virgin who opens and closes her eyes

According to an article by journalist Gianni Bonina, the newspaper "La Sicilia" of September 23, 1994, the young Domenico di Martino, 24 and in poor health, she went to church with his video camera in order to document the procession of Our Lady of Sorrows, it was not performed due to weather conditions. Therefore, it starts recording images inside the church, realizing that when it captures the statue of the Virgin, it closes and opens his eyes again, leaving stunned young Sicilian.

Not believing what he saw through the camera, Domenico notices with their own eyes that the statue continues to make the same gesture with his eyes, he ran to tell the priest, Paolo Mansueto, the phenomenon we just witnessed. Without believing too much in what you hear, the cleric Domenico informs that at least a dozen people had already informed this matter, but had not taken seriously his claims. But having a video image is somewhat different, and thus both confirm the veracity of the event.

That same night, and given the clamorous experience, parishioners begin to speak openly of the miracle, and a local photographer request a copy of the video, and then analyzing it, reach the conclusion that there is a fraud, it is a true picture. Same conclusion we have reached virtually all television technicians around the world who have been able to access those images.



This is how Miguel Muñoz, Jaime Mexican Mausan second or third prime time, described the supposed miracle of Our Lady of Sorrows Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Ispica, Sicily, which opens and closes his eyes at the sight of all faithful.

The virgin is a real cari size so that having changed by someone with a hidden mechanism is complicated. But if you look carefully at the time that closes the eyes closed you will notice something else. (1:35)

The camera loses focus and saturated overexposing the image. This makes the black parts shrink. As when looking at a face we mainly look at the eyes gives us the impressionthat that these are closed. But if you look at the mouth we noticed the same effect. Therefore, we accept this decision or simply reproduces an optical effect, a lucky optical effect for this city of Ispica, or call this "the virgin who opens and closes his eyes and mouth image by moving her eyebrows and widening face ".

How debate with a creationist?

Debate with a creationist is very easy because you only have a few arguments and have been long enough without adding something new. These arguments have been published again and again, and when you talk to a creationist you the loose all of his run. Each is easily refuted, although it is true that never get to change his mind.

We're going to see one by one these arguments, and begin by I like best:

Evolution is a theory, not a fact

This should be understood as that evolution is an unproven hypothesis, like many others, and therefore should not be taught in schools as if something true. Really evolution is a theory and it is also a fact. A fact is something that we see in the world, and one theory is our best explanation for this. In the same way that gravity is certain that things fall, and that the theory of Newtonian gravity tries to explain this fact. The theory of gravity is more or less perfected does not affect the fact that things fall. In fact, the current theory of the elution is still incomplete, but it is thousands of times better than it was in the time of Darwin. Yet the state of our theory of evolution does not affect the observed fact that species evolve over time.

The evolution is controversial. Scientists themselves do not agree on its validity

Creationists are closed in band to the fact that evolutionary biologists have found theories explaining minor aspects of evolution. Discredit evolution by discarding it is like using wheeled cars because manufacturers do not agree on the design of the tread. Practically no scientific doubt today the fact of evolution or the validity of evolutionary theory in its entirety. Creationists often publish lists of scientists who reject evolution claim. These lists are probably true. In the United States most people are creationist in one color or another. But the scientific community has a very different opinion. Most polls show that between 95 and 98% of scientists accept the theory of evolution.

Evolution is not falsifiable, so it is not science

One aspect of science is that you can refute. If we can run a test based on a proposition and that test fails, then we have rejected that proposition. This is the basic operation of science. Something that can not be subjected to a test and be discarded, as the existence of God can not be science. But creationists do not see this side of the argument, only applied to evolution. But evolution can be easily discarded. The evolutionary biologist JBS Haldane became famous joke that had, stating that when a rabbit fossil Precambrian age are, evolution rule.

The evolution is itself a religion

This argument has gained in popularity in recent years, in which creationists have underpinned their positions decorating them with words that sound scientific, such as intelligent design. They try to convince us that their position has scientific basis, and change the tide calling evolution and religion to mock those who worship Darwin as his prophet. This argument is only valid for use in people who know little or no history of Darwin. The religion is based on the fact worship a higher being and divine, and that nothing in evolutionary theory nor is there an evolutionary church.

The evolution can not be observed

Part of what is needed to validate a theory is to try and observe the results. Although there are evolutionary phenomena that can be directly observed as some experiments with fruit flies, most of the things that explains the evolution occurred in periods of millions of years. Obviously, no one has so much patience to watch the evolution. This is true. But here that is misunderstood observation. There are many observations in science in which you have to use the evidence of an event to supplement direct observation of fact. Certain chemical reactions, particle physics, theoretical physics, are examples of fields of science in which we resort to this type of observation. The theory of evolution was originally developed to explain the evidence obtained from observation of the fossil record.

There are fossils of transit

If the ancestor of the modern horse evolved from its predecessor Miohippus Mesohippus, then surely there will be traffic between the two fossil species showing common features, or perhaps an intermediate species. I have taken the example of the horse, because evolutionary branch that is extremely well documented. Creationists claim that there are no such fossils transit, but they exist, and in abundance. To say something, or is intentionally lying, or that do it refuses to be documented. Lay people have only to visit the wikipedia to find numerous fossils of transit.

However, the fossil record is sufficiently massive so that gaps between developmental stages of the species. These absences are used by creationists to proclaim that there are no fossils of transit and that evolutionary theory is a fallacy.

Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics

The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time. In a crude way, this law can be explained with an example. If we put a glass of hot water in one room, the heat energy that glass water will dissipate in the room until the temperature is equalized with the environment, but the energy released is impossible to send her back to the glass.

Creationists argue that if a body had been formed by evolution, this would entail a decrease in entropy. Order from disorder. They claim that this is impossible without divine intervention. But organisms are not isolated systems. To exchange energy with other elements of the environment, the second law of thermodynamics is not relevant. Countless natural and artificial processes produce order from disorder in open systems using energy and foreign matter.

Evolution can not create complex structures with irreducible complexity

This argument was popularized by Michael Behe, a biochemist evangelist, who coined the term irreducible complexity. Take a complex structure as it is an eyeball, and eliminate part of it to simulate a reverse evolution, and see that the structure stops working. As a result, an eyeball can not have evolved by natural selection, since this structure without one of its parts does not work and does not provide any evolutionary advantage. The concept seems to make sense, but is based on a tremendous misconception. The animal world is full of types of structures to enable vision. Some structures are more complex and simpler ones, all with irreducible complexity and all are likely to improve evolutionarily.

It is highly unlikely that complex life forms evolve for change

Is it possible that a tornado pass by a dump and a 747 mountain by chance? The same argument was used for centuries by William Paley, only he used the simile of a pocket watch. Such a device had to be created by someone and not be the result of chance. This statement is the result of ignorance of the extraordinary power of evolution from simple to complex structures. Once generational mutation and natural selection are understood, and how irreducibly complex structures evolve, there is nothing implausible in evolutionary theory. The bottom-up design (from simple to complex) is not only likely, it is inevitable, and almost always produces better designs an intelligent designer could create.

Evolution can not create new information

According to this argument, the new information required to create new species can not originate spontaneously. This information can come only from an intelligent creator. This statement falls soon, because in fact a mutation is a generation of new information. Not all information is good. Most is useless. It is what is called genetic drift. But occasionally, one of these mutations gives a benefit to the organism that has mutated. This benefit is immediately absorbed by the species and evolutionarily spread.

The evolution does not explain some aspects of life and culture

In other words. Evolutionary theory does not explain everything, so it is completely false. Evolutionary biologists are the first to recognize that there are aspects of life that we have yet to understand. That gets us everything we have learned is false. There creationists that refer to things that have nothing to do with the origin of life and specialization, such as the Big Bang, or the age of the Earth, and as the evolutionary theory does not explain these aspects is false. Only theories can explain the observed phenomena that try to explain, but can not be used for a purpose for which they were not designed.

Hawking: "God did not create the universe"

British scientist Stephen Hawking says in his new book, The Grand Design (The Grand Design), the Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, that God created the universe and that the most current scientific theories become redundant figure of a creator. The book, which the British newspaper The Times ahead of today excerpts, notes: "Since there is a law such as gravity, the universe itself-and indeed did-could be created out of nothing themselves. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something, there is the universe that we exist. " Therefore, he adds, "it is not necessary to invoke God" so that there is cosmos.

In his most popular work, A Brief History of Time (A Brief History of Time), a text of disclosure about the universe and its evolution, Hawking, a theoretical physicist internationally recognized for their contributions in matters of cosmology, black holes and quantum gravity, It suggested that "if we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason because then we would know the mind of God." Now he argues that, just as Darwinism eliminated the need for a creator in the field of biology, new theories of physics make redundant the role of a creator of the universe. The last book, written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, will be released on 9 September, a week before the Pope's visit to Britain.

Existing arguments suggest that Hawking has broken with his earlier view about religion, when maintained that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang. Now it stands, for example, the discovery of the first extrasolar planet in 1992, helped to dismantle the vision of Isaac Newton that the universe could not emerge from chaos but was created by God. That finding "makes the precise conditions of our planetary system-the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar-mass are much less showy and not at all convincing evidence that the Earth was carefully designed to satisfy humans, "write Hawking and his colleague in the new book.

British physicist has completed 68 years and suffering for decades a serious neurological disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which paralyzed his body almost completely. Due to an emergency tracheotomy that was performed a few years ago he lost the ability to speak and expressed with great difficulty through a computer that handles your eyes and artificial voice synthesizer.

He hawking occupied from 1979 until his recent retirement, the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge University, which had been its historical colleague Isaac Newton.

The legendary chupacabra is just a mangy coyote

El chupacabras has ashen skin, prominent fangs and ridges on the back. According to legend stretching from the US to Southern Cone of America, attacking goats and chickens to drink his blood. But Sharman Hoppes, veterinary medicine at Texas A & M University, the mythical creature is just a coyote with mange.

Days ago, Hoppes received a call from Hood County Sheriff in northern Texas. They had found a creature near a school and the neighbors called the police, who struck the animal. "Suspected it was a chupacabra" comantaba Hoppes shaking his head.
First, Hoppes studied anatomy: "We look his head, ears, teeth and knew it was some kind of canine. If it was a coyote or coyote hybrid dog or coyote and wolf is difficult to determine, given their status, "he says. The skin disease was evident. "We see how the skin is thicker, wrinkled and hyperpigmented, abnormally dark with this proliferation in the ears". The skin scraping confirmed that the animal was suffering from severe mange, caused by the mite Sarcoptes scabiei. The vet says that the animal had long without food, scabies weakened him and affected his ability to hunt. The back muscle was consumed, creating small ridges on the back.

Hoppes sent the body to complete Pathology for necropsy. There reviewed the internal organs and found more mites. Finally, they took blood and tissue samples for DNA analysis.

Remove the legend of chupacabras can help these scientists to go further. According Hoppes, he is interested in finding out "why this animal has developed scabies so severely. A dog with scabies is not like this. " The analysis of the adrenal glands reveal whether the child suffered immunodeficiency.

Teeth in the freezer

It is the first time analyzes of these whole animal. For years there have been sightings of chupacabras assumptions about the US-Mexico border. However, Hoppes said, "who claimed to have captured one is reluctant to give it away for investigation, only send pieces of skin or a tooth. As the woman who claims to have two or three, I think in your freezer. "

The woman he refers is called Phyllis Canion. Three years ago a similar creature found on his ranch and froze. Today, the self-shirts Lady of the Chupacabras sells on its website with the slogan 2007, the year of the Chupacabras.

On reports of goats and chickens bled, Hoppes said that "kill this animal bites, not sucking blood. I see no relationship, I do not know if there will be vampires in the area. " Your reflection is not far-fetched: vampire bats live in Texas. A few of them, a mangy coyote and a rancher with a freezer enough to have a chupacabra. And 20 more dollars, the shirt.

Moon is shrinking

According to observations of the moon Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter it has decreased around 200 meters in diameter in the last billion years.

The shrink forces are doing on the moon, are making wrinkles appear on the surface creating formations called lobate failures.

Apollo astronauts photographed some of these formations near the lunar Ecuador 40 years ago. Thanks to the LRO we have been able to observe 14, some of them near the poles, indicating that this phenomenon is occurring across the lunar surface.

The amazing thing about this is that there has been fairly recently in geological terms. This estimate is made on the basis that some of these failures are destroying craters on the lunar surface are not older than one billion years.

Moon may be shrinking yet, indicating that these formations may continue to rise. Lunar contraction may have been the cause of any of the earthquakes in the seismographs astronauts of the Apollo missions to the Moon left in the early 70s.

At present, NASA scientists are comparing the pictures taken by the LRO with those taken 40 years ago by astronauts who visited the moon to try to figure out how fast this phenomenon is occurring.

The contraction is likely caused because the lunar temperature is reduced. If you were to ask Alberto Canosa, sure this is further evidence that the Moon is hollow. But we're not going to ask.

The battery of Baghdad

OOPArt is the acronym for "out of place artifact", ie artifact out of place. It is a term coined by zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson referred to paleontological and archaeological objects that were found in circumstances or strange or impossible for archeology or paleontology traditional places.

I will open a new category in the blog to address these OOPArts, which will certainly be very interesting. The first of these devices to treat here is the stack of Baghdad.

Baghdad Battery

In 1936, during excavations on a hill Kujut Rabua, a village southeast of Baghdad (Iraq), workers in the Iraqi State Railway Department discovered an old tomb covered with a stone slab. For two months, the Iraqi Department of Antiquities extracted there a total of 613 beads, clay figurines, chiselled bricks and other parts. They were dated to the period of deliveries (years between 248 BC. and 226 AD.). They also found some very unique clay vessels. It is a terracotta cups 15 centimeters high and about 7.5 centimeters in diameter. Emerging from a bituminous plug, an iron rod would be inserted inside a copper cylinder and isolated from it by a plug at its base asphalt; He is welded copper cylinder with its hood a lead / tin alloy.

In 1939 the German archaeologist Wilhelm König, then in charge of the Laboratory of the State Museum of Baghdad, identified it as a probable electric battery. He described his findings at 9 Jahre Iraq, published in Austria in 1940. The first analysis of this object was to introduce within an electrolyte, and connect a lamp which lit very weakly. The official report was drawn up after saying that this object is behaving exactly like a modern electric battery. Copper bears a characteristic blue patina with silver plating.

After the Second World War, Willard Gray, an electronics engineer at the Laboratory of High Voltage, General Electric Company, Pittsfield (Massachusetts, EE. UU.), He built a duplicate of these batteries and filled with copper sulfate ( but he said that it could have used another liquid electrolyte available to the people of Iraq at the time: current grape juice). The battery operated and generated between one and two volts.

Gray said he also introduced a silver statuette, in two hours turned golden. According to him, it had shown that the battery work, and that their use was likely to restore silver objects.



In contrast, the archaeologist König showed what material could have joined the "battery" because among the thousands of archaeological objects found in Mesopotamia was not any metal objects transmitter power (like an iron wire) length enough to join several of these "batteries". König said the goal of these batteries was to provide the electricity needed for electroplating gold and silver (although so far has not found any old object galvanized).

For König and Gray there was nothing easier than to assert that these containers were batteries. However, the hypothesis untenable batteries: no residues were found, not even traces of any electrolyte within the copper cylinder. If these containers had been used as voltage generators should have contained an electrolyte, which, although it would have been a long time, could have been detected at present.

The fact that adding copper sulfate electrolyte is generated a potential difference of 1.5 V, does not mean that actually had been used as batteries, and any other container two metals may generate a low voltage if It is added an electrolytic element.

The experiment Engineer Willard Gray (two hours galvanizing silver statuette electrolyte grape juice) proved to be false. The battery of Baghdad could have generated up to 10 mA. Then to deposit 10 g of gold theoretically be needed almost six days of continuous work (and 10 days to deposit 10 g of silver). In practice this time can double or triple.

If wine, vinegar or other acid is added, the iron rod would disintegrate in just over 1 year. Despite these rods have survived until today, clearly it shows that galvanic coupling was used.

After seeing all this evidence, it seems that perhaps these vessels had been merely receptacles for storing scrolls.