Chasing the giant long-finned eel

A tip of the adventurer's cap to Jeremy Wade for yesterday's "River Monsters" outing. which focused on an unknown but plausible freshwater mankiller: New Zealand's long-finned eel. We know it gets 4-6 feet long and lives to be very old, but two modern accounts of divers being attacked say it gets considerably larger. An eight-foot specimen, which an eel biologist tells Wade is quite possible, would weigh over 100 pounds, and there are plenty of people claiming to have seen them - including one Maori who gave his account to Captain Cook. Wade didn't catch one, but he thinks they exist, and the scene of Wade trying to lure one out by putting on Kevlar shorts and gloves and wading in after smearing himself with fish guts was pretty scary when a host of 3 - 4 foot eels appeared for what must have smelled like a fest to them.

Even more amazing photos - Space Station at night

Take a gander at these awe-inspiring pictures of humanity's outpost in space, with the Earth below and the starry, starry night above.

Most amazing ISS photos ever

Our international outpost in space has never been photographed more evocatively than in these wide-angle views. The sheer scale of the ISS is breathtaking from these images: especially if you know how large the docked Space Shuttle is. The alien-ness of space comes through, too, in the brilliant sun and total blackness beyond.
Watch and wonder.

Weird Weather: Now that's a hailstone!

Hailstones the size of golf balls are destructive. The size of baseballs? Very dangerous, and fortunately rare. The size of cantaloupes? Seriously? This one fell in Norman, OK, before the recent tornadoes.

New clue from Peking Man

OK, Peking Man is not considered unique anymore, "just" a population of Homo erectus. But it has an allure far beyond its considerable scientitic importance because of the mystery surrounding it. Nearly all the known fossils vanished at the beginning of World War II, and extensive searches and large rewards have turned up nothing.
In Uppsala University in Sweden, three teeth were preserved. Now a fourth has been found, a canine, and it is almost pristine - un-handled since it was sent to the university's museum all those decades ago. Excited anthropologists note that a great deal of information can be extracted for wear patterns and other aspects of a tooth mith modern diagnostic tools, and they hope to learn much more about this enigmatic ancestor.
Thanks to Loren Coleman for catching this item and posting it.

JFK and the Moon

Despite his critical role in the American space program, JFK was never quite an all-out space buff. He approved Apollo for a mix of reasons, political and economic as well as idealistic. A new tape shows he still wasn't quite sold even after he'd authorized and promoted the program. Tow months before his death, Kennedy told NASA chief James Webb, "But this looks like a hell of a lot of dough to go to the moon when you can go -- you can learn most of that you want scientifically through instruments and putting a man on the moon really is a stunt and it isn't worth that many billions." He added, though: "I think this can be an asset, this program. I think in time, it's like a lot of things; this is mid-journey and therefore everybody says, 'What the hell are we making this trip for?' But at the end of the thing they may be glad we made it." Webb assured him they would be.

Neat new cryptozoology magazine

Richard Muirhead sent me the first issue of his new "Journal of Cryptozoology, Folklore, and Forteana," Flying Snake. It's not a journal in the peer-reviewed sense, but a very enjoyable little magazine. The printing is crisp and professional, the articles generally well written, and the correspondence included from Richard's files very interesting. It strays to the borders of cryptozoology and beyond (cf. Richard's own piece insisting the Biblical story of Ezekiel's wheels was a supernatural event and not a UFO), but it's Richard's magazine and he can address anything he wants. A notable feature is that not one article addresses the "classic monsters" of cryptozoology, and I found that quite refreshing!
I loved the color photo of an orange badger (really) on the back cover.

Fifty years ago in the Space Race

It was fifty years ago today that JFK asked us the great question: "Why does Rice play Texas?" Oops, not that question. He challenged us: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the earth." Politicians today say, "commit ourselves to achieving no goal, because that might be hard, except for that of landing a bugdet on the Capital and returning the money safely to my state or district."
Yes, JFK was initially unenthusiastic about the whole thing. But, helped by key advisers, he came to the conclusion that an ambitious space goal was, in modern parlance, a win-win" It would boost national morale, enhance national prestige, make the USSR look like the second-place power in the Cold War, and give a major boost to high-tech industries at home. He turned out to be right on all counts.

Dude, it's a freaking ELEPHANT you're grabbing

This crocodile bit off more than it could chew when it grabbed the trunk of a full-grown elephant. The elephant was injured and the crocodile survived, but the crocodile was lucky. There is one case of a crocodile's body being found in a tree after an enraged elephant was done with it. There is another case of a hippo biting a croc in half, which I'm mentioning not just to show off that I remember this kind of trivia, but that we should remember in studying nature that it's not neatly divided between predator and prey. It's dangerous all around.

Bronze Age battle site found

In the 1970s, I clipped out a cartoon that showed archaeologists digging out skeletons pierced by axes and spears. One said, "3.75 million years old - and they're definitely human." (Yes, I do remember such trivia very clearly.) While this site from Germany dates only to 1200 BC, it's important for containing only human and horse remains and weapons. In other words, it's the site of a battle with at least 100 participants.
COMMENT: I'm not sure why this one caught my eye. We knew people were fighting long before this. But there's a difference between knowing there were battles and actually getting a picture of how human-on-human violence (sadly) evolved.

Dark energy is really out there

A project with the unique name of WiggleZ has produced evidence that dark energy is real. Dr. Chris Blake explains that studies of how quickly galaxies form and how they are distributed in the universe show it's everywhere: "The results tell us that dark energy is a cosmological constant, as Einstein proposed. If gravity were the culprit, then we wouldn't be seeing these constant effects of dark energy throughout time."

COMMENT: I'm for anything that makes the universe weirder.

Boing-Boing, cryptozoology, and the "pseudoscience" claim

Boing Boing, which carries all sort of interesting and provocative articles, has misstepped on this one. Contributor Maggie Koerth-Baker has lumped cryptozoology in with the pseudosciences: a common belief given how much silliness and chicanery the field has attracted, but a wrong one. I posted a response (a bit shorter than this version). I seem destined to be making thie argument for the rest of my life, but I don't mind, seeing as how I'm right.

The lumping of cryptozoology with other “pseudosciences” is incorrect for a very simple reason: cryptozoology, unlike the study of ghosts, UFOs, etc., deals in testable hypotheses. For example, either there is a large unknown animal in Loch Ness, or there is not. The means to test the hypothesis may not be available (e.g., a definitive sweep using the most modern naval sonar gear and hydrophones may be something no one can afford) but the hypothesis is, nonetheless, logically testable and thus scientific.
There is no arguing with the statement that many people involved in cryptozoological research, mainly amateur enthusiasts, are too quick to conclude an unknown animal is real based on inadequate data. The implication in your article that searching for unknown animals is fruitless, however, is absurd.
New mammal species alone described in scientific literature in the last 15 years number 408, including cetaceans, deer, van Roosmalen’s tapir and dwarf manatee, and other creatures of substantial size. This doesn’t mean there is a huge ape stalking the Northwest forests, and indeed (in my opinion, at any rate) ecological and other factors indicate it is unlikely that one will be discovered. Yet this does not invalidate cryptozoology as a field of inquiry any more than disproven claims of cold fusion invalidate nuclear physics.
It’s proper to demand that, to be accepted, creatures propounded by cryptozoologists must meet the universal scientific standard of a type specimen. In many cases, though, species which have been thus established did not fall into the lap of science. They were found when researchers (both academically qualified and amateur) followed the kind of evidence cryptozoologists collect – historical accounts, footprints, local stories, etc. – until a type specimen was obtained.
You can argue convincingly that many overly enthusiastic cryptozoologists overreach the data in their claims for particular species. You cannot, however, argue that the search for unknown animals – a search being validated by the description or collection of new type specimens every single day – is scientifically void.

New bird and rediscovered tree rat

I'm pleased to give credit to the blog Cryptomundo for catching these two major finds. Birds and mammals are the groups generally considered best-known: various experts at various times have declared them virtually all catalogued. But birds keep coming at a steady rate, and the discovery curve for mammals is actually trending up.
So it is we have a new rail from Madagascar and the rediscovery of a strikingly colored tree rat from Columbia not seen since 1898. The tree rat just sort of walked into view, ambling along a hand rail at a nature center. From the Beanka forest in western Madagascar - and area where the terrain is so steep the forest has yet to be logged - comes the rail Mentocrex beankaensis, courtesy of scientists from the Field Museum. Keep your eyes open, everyone. Discoveries are everywhere.

James Webb telescope takes longer than Apollo program

James Webb was the superb manager who, as much as any other single human, got our species to the Moon. The space telescope named after him is a fitting monument - if it ever launches. Its management is, shall we say, NOT a monument to Webb's own.
The telescope was budgeted at $1B. It is now $7B. Yep, 600% cost increase. It was supposed to launch in 2007. Now it may be as late as 2024. Seriously. A 17-year slip. Jim Webb got Apollo to the Moon in eight years.
I don't dispute the value of the telescope, but if it had been managed to the original cost and schedule, we would now have four years of data from it, and the other $6B could have funded all sorts of other worthy space research. It's a given that development of a huge new space-based astronomical instrument is a major, risky undertaking. Technology proves harder to perfect than anticipated, NASA budgets fluctuate, and unexpected needs elsewhere often force program stretchouts. I wouldn't have been surprised or even much displeased if it had ended up with even a 100% cost overrun and a slip of two or three years. But this is no credit to NASA or Northrop Grumman. Webb may come back from the grave to demand his name be taken off the thing.
AS ALWAYS, ONLY MORE SO: All blog posts represent solely the personal opinion of the author as a private citizen.

From Bali: Cool Photos of New Species

A Marine Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) visiting the cost of Bali has reported nine potential new species, and there's a great photo collection here. A beautifully mottled "garden eel" from the genus Heteroconger peers out from the sediment. A striking "bubble coral" shines yellow, white, and green in the photographer's lights. A red-barred fish with a disdainful expression meanders across the bottom. And so on. Treat yourself to this display of the fellow life forms we're still uncovering.

Our Awesome Earth: Lighting Rises Towards Space

Until the 21st century, we didn't know that lighting bolts - gigantic lightning bolts - could shoot out of cloudtops into the upper atmosphere. We never detected this stunning phenomenon until we watched it from orbit. Ever since, atmospheric physicists and meteorologists have been buzzing about how it works.
Now we think we know. Essentially, one lightning bolt develops in a could but isn't quite strong enough to break out, but its failed attempt clears the upper cloud region of the charges that made it fizzle out. Then a second lighting "channel" develops, and, because the path of least resistance is now upward, it leaps towards space, up to 90km or so, until the charged ionosphere "shorts out" the remaining charge.
Awesome, dudes.

Neanderthals lasted longer than we thought

At a site in Russia, just below the Arctic Circle, scientists have found artifacts that match those known to be of Neanderthal origin. While we thought Neanderthals vanished about 37,000 to 40,000 years BP, this is a clue suggesting they lingered another 8,000 years or so. So far, though, there are only artifacts, not human remains, and this isn't a settled issue.
COMMENT: Cryptozoologists like Myra Shackley have suggested Neanderthals lasted much longer: indeed, that in the rugged central Asian region known as the Pamirs, they may still exist. There is no hard evidence here, just sightings and footprints, but it's irresistible to hope the stories of the almas might really hide a human tribe from the mists of time.

Cryptozoology Classics: Creature Chronicles

Thirty years ago, Ron Schaffner published Creature Chronicles, a pioneering newsletter on Bigfoot and other critters. Now he's put the old issues on line. It's a lot of fun to read these accounts from the days before the Internet had sasquatch reports, speculation, and just plain trash seemingly flooding the world.

The Last Shuttle

With the shuttle Endeavour safely on orbit, workers rolled Atlantis into the VAB for processing for the last flight of the program. Workers unveiled a banner ("We're Behind You, Atlantis") and then a quilt with every shuttle mission patch on it. Here are some great photos.
COMMENT #1: In today's Wall Street Journal, a writer compared watching Endeavour's smooth rise toward space to seeing a Yankee clipper under full sail. I liked that.
COMMENT #2: Atlantis was named for the US government's first oceanographic research vessel.
COMMENT #3: Of interest only to me: I named my Honda CRV Atlantis.

Michael Jackson photos = Free Energy?

One of the perks of living on planet Earth is the the opportunity to read news items no one could possibly make up. An inventor in Los Angeles is selling a cache of previously unpublished Michael Jackson photos to raise money for a machine that produces more energy than it uses. Reginald Garcia's electric motor is reconfigured so "it captures the negative electromagnetic field as it collapses, sends energy to a capacitor and recharges the battery." Seriously. Variations on this scheme have been promoted a hundred times. Sometimes the inventors even believe the effect is real. The laws of thermodynamics beg to differ, but the financing approach is certainly original.