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Source: SPACE.com

The total solar eclipse Sunday may only be visible to a lucky cadre of die-hard skywatchers spread across the southern Pacific Ocean, but that hasn’t dampened spirits at remote spots like Easter Island – where tourists and scientists have flocked to catch the celestial show.

The best seats on Earth for the total solar eclipse are on Easter Island and other islands and atolls along a southern Pacific Ocean path that stretches from a spot just north of New Zealand to the tip of South America. Thousands of tourists are expected at Easter Island alone, drawn by both the looming cosmic show and the island’s mysterious history.

Source: New Scientist

The first sign that the prediction was wrong came when 2008 turned out to be even calmer than expected. That year, the sun was spot-free 73 per cent of the time, an extreme dip even for a solar minimum. Only the minimum of 1913 was more pronounced, with 85 per cent of that year clear.

As 2009 arrived, solar physicists looked for some action. They didn’t get it. The sun continued to languish until mid-December, when the largest group of sunspots to emerge for several years appeared. Finally, a return to normal? Not really.

Even with the solar cycle finally under way again, the number of sunspots has so far been well below expectations. Something appears to have changed inside the sun, something the models did not predict. But what?

The flood of observations from space and ground-based telescopes suggests that the answer lies in the behaviour of two vast conveyor belts of gas that endlessly cycle material and magnetism through the sun’s interior and out across the surface. On average it takes 40 years for the conveyor belts to complete a circuit (see diagram).

When Hathaway’s team looked over the observations to find out where their models had gone wrong, they noticed that the conveyor-belt flows of gas across the sun’s surface have been speeding up since 2004.

Source:   Telegraph

An artist’s impression of Japan’s space probe Hayabusa and an asteroid, called Itokawa Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Scientists are anxiously awaiting the return of Hayabusa – Japanese for "Falcon" – in the hope that the probe has successfully gathered tiny fragments of space rock, which could provide more clues about the origin of the solar system.

Hayabusa, which weighs about half a ton and is similar in size to a family car, was launched in May 2003 with the objective of intercepting an asteroid named Itokawa, gathering a sample from the surface and then returning to Earth. It has covered 1.2bn miles on its journey and is due to land in the Australian outback on Sunday night.

Source: BBC News

A man charged with the murders of three Bradford women has referred to himself as the "crossbow cannibal" in court.

Stephen Griffiths, 40, is accused of murdering prostitutes Suzanne Blamires, Shelley Armitage, and Susan Rushworth.

Mature student Mr Griffiths, of Thornton Road, Bradford, was remanded in custody by magistrates and later by a judge at the city’s crown court.

Recent events have been described in some of the tabloid press as the "crossbow cannibal killings".

When asked to confirm his name by magistrates, Mr Griffiths told the court he was "the crossbow cannibal".

Source: American Chronicle

According to accounts released Saturday, April 24, 2010, by the coordinator of an e-mail news and information service, officials of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) and other U.S. government agencies have been involved in security activities involving human-appearing extraterrestrial beings in the U.S.

Victor Martinez, the e-mail information coordinator, is a former federal employee with an interest in space, defense and current affairs. Recipients of his e-mail news items include a wide variety of people interested in emerging and leading-edge scientific and other developments.

In his April 24 information release, Martinez quoted one of his alleged established contacts, one of a handful of current or former officials of the DIA, regarding any new or updated information on extraterrestrial encounters that would be of interest to the public.

WASHINGTON — NASA will hold a news media teleconference at 1:30 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, April 28, to discuss the status of agency-sponsored astrobiology research, including the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life and the study of how life began on Earth. Topics also will include the quest for evidence of life on Mars, the habitability of other celestial bodies, and future technology research.

This week, NASA and scientists from around the world are gathering at a biennial meeting near Houston to celebrate 50 years of astrobiology research. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe. Scientists gathered to share new data and insights, initiate and advance collaborations, plan new projects, and educate the next generation of astrobiologists.

The teleconference participants are:

• Mary Voytek, astrobiology senior scientist at NASA Headquarters, Washington
• Steve Squyres, researcher, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
• Bill Schopf, researcher, University of California, Los Angeles
• Jack Farmer, researcher, Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz.
• John Peters, researcher, Montana State University, Bozeman

To obtain call-in information, journalists should e-mail their name, media affiliation and telephone number to: dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live on NASA’s website at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio
For more information about NASA astrobiology activities, visit: http://astrobiology.nasa.gov

Source: Astrobiology Web

Reports of flying Toblerones, close encounters of the second kind, and ­attempted alien abductions in the latest batch of UFO files released today by the Ministry of Defence demonstrate that the British public’s appetite for matters extraterrestrial shows no sign of abating.

More than 650 reports of UFO sightings reached the MoD last year – the highest for 31 years – before it took the decision to close its UFO desk, known as Air Secretariat 2A1, in December.

The latest files released at the National Archives cover the period from 1994 to 2000 when sightings were running at 200 to 300 a year. The MoD intends to make public the files for the last 10 years by the end of 2011.

Source/Full Story: The Guardian

A mysterious X-shaped pattern of space debris seen by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was probably two asteroids that collided, scientists said Tuesday.

The object, called P/2010 A2, was discovered in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research sky survey, or LINEAR, on January 6, NASA said.

The shape, and the streamers of dust shooting off of it, were photographed by Hubble on January 25 and 29, according to NASA.

Astronomers have long thought the asteroid belt is being ground down because of collisions, but such a head-on crash had never been seen before.

“If this interpretation is correct, two small and previously unknown asteroids recently collided, creating a shower of debris that is being swept back into a tail from the collision site by the pressure of sunlight,” said principal investigator David Jewitt, from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com

Witches, Druids and pagans rejoice! The Air Force Academy in Colorado is about to recognize its first Wiccan prayer circle, a Stonehenge on the Rockies that will serve as an outdoor place of worship for the academy’s neo-pagans.

Wiccan cadets and officers on the Colorado Springs base have been convening for over a decade, but the school will officially dedicate a newly built circle of stones on about March 10, putting the outdoor sanctuary on an equal footing with the Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Buddhist chapels on the base.

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com

Building a home near a moon crater or a lunar sea may sound nice, but moon colonists might have a much better chance of survival if they just lived in a hole.

That’s the message sent by an international team of scientists who say they’ve discovered a protected lunar “lava tube” — a deep, giant hole — that might be well suited for a moon colony or a lunar base.

The vertical hole, in the volcanic Marius Hills region on the moon’s near side, is 213 feet wide and is estimated to be more than 260 feet deep, according to findings published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

More important, the scientists say, the hole is protected from the moon’s harsh temperatures and meteorite strikes by a thin sheet of lava. That makes the tube a good candidate for further exploration or possible inhabitation, the article says.

“Lunar lava tubes are a potentially important location for a future lunar base, whether for local exploration and development, or as an outpost to serve exploration beyond the Moon,” writes the team, led by Junichi Haruyama, a senior researcher with the Japanese space agency JAXA.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com

I could find no specific information related to the significance, or lack thereof, of a Blue Moon in the occult, other than various pagans and witches preparing to dance naked by moonlight and charging up their wands, so to speak.

It happens only once in a blue moon — and scientists say a blue moon is exactly what we’ll see in the skies this New Year’s Eve.

Don’t expect an azure glow over our lunar satellite, however. The term “blue moon” simply refers to the second full moon in a calendar month, something that hasn’t happened on a New Year’s Eve for nearly 20 years, NASA says.

“December 1990 ended with a blue moon, and many New Year’s Eve parties were themed by the event,” said Professor Philip Hiscock of the department of folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland, in Canada. “It was a lot of fun.”

Most months have just one full moon, because the 29.5-day cycle of the moon matches up pretty well with the length of calendar months. Occasionally, there will be two full moons in a month, something that happens about every 2½ years, NASA says.

But a blue moon on December 31 is rare.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com

A boffin at the Bulgarian national Space Research Institute has stated that not only are aliens living among us, but that they object strongly to “immoral behaviour” by humanity – such as causing global warming. “Unnatural” acts such as use of cosmetics and “artificial insemination” are also frowned upon by the extraterrestrial visitors.

Luchezar Filipov, deputy head of the space institute at the government’s Bulgarian Academy of Science, made these startling assertions to Bulgarian media earlier this week.

The Sofia Echo, referencing other local media, quotes the eminent space brainbox as stating that “they [aliens] are here right now, among us” and that the extraterrestrials are “conducting surveillance” and – chillingly – “research” on humanity.

“They are currently all around us, and are watching us all the time. They are not hostile towards us; rather, they want to help us but we have not grown enough in order to establish direct contact with them,” said the Bulgarian boffin, according to Sofia news agency novinite.com.

Source/Full Story: The Register

Hundreds of thousands of Hindus gathered at a temple in southern Nepal on Tuesday for a ceremony involving the slaughter of more than 200,000 animals, a festival that has drawn the ire of animal-welfare protesters.

A Nepalese minister said it was the largest sacrificial slaughter of animals in the world.

Animal rights groups and activists including the actress Brigitte Bardot have condemned the event, which takes place every five years in the Nepalese village of Bariyarpur, Sky News reported.

But Nepal’s government says it will continue with the “centuries-old tradition” and will deploy armed police to keep the peace, Sky News reported.

Protests have occurred in recent weeks in towns near the Gadhimai temple and in the capital Katmandu by animals rights activists and other religious groups. However, Hindu organizers refused to halt the slaughter saying it was a centuries-old tradition.

“People have deep faith in the goddess and they believe that sacrificing animals will bring them good luck and prosperity for their families,” said Mangal Chaudhary Tharu, a priest at the Gadhimai temple, according to Sky News.

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com