Category Archives: Science

"River of the giants"

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Reading about how a volcano in India might have killed all the dinosaurs is not awesome.

(Dinosaurs getting hurt makes me sad.)

But reading about how archaeologists in the Sahara have discovered a new “river of the giants,” on the other hand, is awesome.

(Take that, Sarah Palin!)

Have an amazing rest-of-your-week, gang. I’m off tonight to see my good friend Garrison Starr rock the roof off of Boulevard Place Cafe in Indianapolis.

Georgia Bigfoot's a hoax, but don't lose hope

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As expected, the idiots in Georgia who claimed they found a dead Bigfoot body have been proven liars and frauds:

Researcher says Bigfoot just a rubber gorilla suit

One of the guys is a former Georgia corrections officer, and the other guy is a cop on medical leave.

Well, he WAS a cop:

On Tuesday, Clayton County Police Chief Jeff Turner said he has not spoken to Whitton but processed paperwork to fire him.
“Once he perpetrated a fraud, that goes into his credibility and integrity,” Turner said. “He has violated the duty of a police officer.”

At least there’s SOME justice coming out of this whole thing. They’ll never be taken seriously again for the rest of their lives, and that’s awesome, too.

More on the hoax here.

In the meantime, fellow Mulders, don’t lose hope.

Like I mentioned last week, a previously undiscovered population of 125,000 lowland gorillas was recently discovered living in the Congo.

And that gives me out that somewhere out there, in the great American frontier, something is, well, out there.

I believe in Bigfoot.

BFRO updates Georgia Bigfoot hoax warnings

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The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization continues to build its case against the guys in Georgia who claim to have found a dead Bigfoot (and who further claim that they’ll reveal details about it in a press conference tomorrow):

BFRO: Georgia Bigfoot Body Hoax

More debunking here and here.

What do these guys seriously hope to gain?

Yesterday, I mentioned that the one guy who’s a cop recently got shot in the line of duty.

His police chief isn’t happy about what he’s up to with all this Bigfoot stuff:

AJ-C: Policeman’s claim of Bigfoot sighting a headache for boss

More about this can be found here.

However!

I still — and always will — believe in Bigfoot.

And check out this story:

Time for Kids: Good News for Gorillas

125,000 previously undiscovered lowland gorillas were recently found in the Congo.

That’s amazing!

And it also gives me hope that there are some Sasquatch families roaming the wilds of the United States.

The truth is out there. It’s just not in Georgia.

Georgia's D.N.R.W.R.D. weighs in on Bigfoot

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Here’s another article about the guys claiming to have found a dead Bigfoot in Georgia:

KTVU: ‘Bigfoot’ Trackers Claim They’ve Found Their Prey

I like this story because of the following quote:

Officials from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Division said the largest wildlife they are aware of in the state are black bears and white-tail deer.

Thank you, Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Division, for your cracker-jack contribution to this curious mystery!

More on this as it unfolds, kids.

(I think I’m going to write some Georgia D.N.R.W.R.D. comics to compete with the B.P.R.D. comics about Hellboy’s friends at the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. Can any of you draw?)

F-22, what DO you do?

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Check out this dizzying air show footage of a Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor doing maneuvers that have got to be putting the pilot’s balls in a box.

This video, from the same air show, is even longer. Wow.

My dad was a radio technician in the Air Force, and he was lucky enough to share a hangar with an SR-71 Blackbird. (It’s still the scariest looking, most beautiful airplane ever built.) Listening to his stories is what started my lifelong fascination with Lockheed birds, and my parents and I used to go to the Air Force museum in Dayton almost every summer. (In fact, we went again just a couple of years ago. They had one of the YF-22 prototypes of the F-22 there, and it was the unanimous family favorite. Dad and I also flew the simulator. We couldn’t shoot anything down, so we just started rolling it over and over again until our time was up. We could barely walk when we got out.)

The F-22 is everything rolled into one: speed, agility and advanced stealth technology. It does things that civilians like me will never know about, and that drives me friggin’ crazy.

That’s my idea of Heaven. I’m on the beach, with a big giant book that’s got the answers to everything. Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, what the F-22 can do. Why the things I like to eat make my cholesterol go up, while the things that taste like cardboard make it go down. Stuff like that.

P.S. I was going to show this to my friend James, but I already know what he’d say. “Not enough Lima Lima Lima!”

A big week for Superman and science

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I’ve loved Superman ever since the first moment my little eyes saw Christopher Reeve rocket into action in the red, gold and blue. (“You’ve got me? Who’s got you?”)


Christopher Reeve as Superman


Not Christopher Reeve

As you know, Superman was sent to Earth from the dying planet of Krypton by his scientist father, Jor-El, who knew that Krypton was doomed but couldn’t get the ruling council to listen to his wisdom. Under Krypton’s red sun, little Kal-El would have grown up as normally as we do. But because of our yellow sun, his body became a solar battery that stored the yellow solar radiation in such a way that it gave him whiz-bang powers. His only weakness is Kryptonite, a radioactive mineral that was scattered throughout space when Krypton exploded. Much of it found its way to Earth and has been used against him time and again by his enemies.

Superman’s first comic book appearance happened in the pages of Action Comics in 1938, when such notions were the stuff of fantasy.

Until now.

According to this article, an international team of astronomers — including one from right here in Indiana! — has found what they think is an Earth-sized planet orbiting a red sun 20.5 light-years away (in the Libra constellation).

Particularly of interest is the astronomers’ belief that the planet shares enough similarities with our own little interstellar spinner that it could likely support life. The article is brimming with lots of really cool quotes and explanations. Check it out.

As this was happening, geologists in Siberia were busy discovering Kryptonite. The new mineral — which has been named Jadarite and is currently on display at the Natural History Museum in London — shares the same chemical makeup as the piece of Kryptonite stolen by Lex Luthor from a Metropolis museum in Superman Returns.

The real sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide, however, is not a radioactive green space rock but rather a harmless, white powdery substance. Which means that in addition to not knowing anything about Superman, the writers of Superman Returns are also big dummies when it comes to science.

I’m not surprised.

I’m no science whiz myself, but I find this kind of thing fascinating. (I love days when you can look up at a clear blue sky and see the moon. To think that we’re just a small little cog in an infinite cosmic engine is so humbling and exciting.) I’m such a Mulder at heart, and it’s good to know that we’re constantly discovering things that once would never have been thought possible.

I’ll leave you with some wise words from another of my heroes, Jack Burton, played by Mr. Kurt Russell in the 6.9-on-the-Richter-scale classic, Big Trouble in Little China: “Now I’m not saying that I’ve been everywhere and I’ve done everything, but I do know it’s a pretty amazing planet we live on, and a man would have to be some kind of fool to think we’re alone in this universe!”

Amen, brother.

Keep your eyes on the skies.