In June 1988, the French scientist Jacques Benveniste, M.D. published an astonishing research paper in Nature, which indicated that water has memory. The paper immediately caused a great disturbance in the scientific community, where opposition to his findings was substantial.
Biochemical experiments have confirmed that the IgE antibody can stimulate basophils to degranulate. In Benveniste’s experiment, however, after the IgE solution was diluted to 10-120, active degranulation of basophils still occurred. Theoretically, [based upon Avogadro’s number of the possible number of molecules in a solution of a substance] such a dilution would have no molecules of the antibody. This demonstrates that water preserves the characteristics of substances with which it has had contact.
This conclusion seemed to violate common sense. Many people disputed Benveniste’s findings. Consequently, he lost his laboratory, funding, job and even his credibility as a scientist. Fortunately, a progressive private research company hired him to continue his work.
There had not been any evident resolution for the “Benveniste incident” until 1999, when four laboratories in different European countries conducted independent experiments. Their findings demonstrated that extremely diluted solutions still preserved the effect of the original solutions that degranulated basophils. People started to think that Benveniste had been right.
Benveniste’s experiment required that at each dilution, the solution had to be shaken vigorously. His experiment demonstrated that a substance that is dissolved in water passes on its own characteristics to the water. Even if there is no more of the original substance, its characteristics still remain.
Benveniste’s findings are not isolated. Dr. Masaru Emoto, a Japanese researcher whose experiments have been described in previous weeks in these pages, claimed in the report on his water crystal experiment, “All the characteristics of substances will affect the characteristic of the water.” Benveniste’s experiment studied the influence of substances diluted and agitated in water, whereas Emoto’s water crystal experiment studied the effects of thoughts and music on water. Emoto’s findings are even more astounding because they seem to indicate that water can recognize the content of thoughts and words and distinguish good ones from evil. One would be hard put to cite existing scientific theory to explain these findings and so they certainly provide fertile ground for further investigation.
Discovery: Earth Formed After Collision With a Twin Planet
It is probable that the Moon formed 4.5 billion years ago as a result of a collision that nearly destroyed the Earth. This hypothesis was suggested by American astrophysicist Robin Canup. Like a culmination of a large firework, this event became the key one in the process of formation of the Earth and of neighboring planets as a result of collision of sub-planet bodies that lasted for 100 million years.
In accordance with Canup’s theory, a protoplanet of the size of today’s Mars collided at a high speed with the Earth that by that moment was already a formed planet. It is interesting that the protoplanet that hit the Earth was practically its twin. The Moon’s chemical composition speaks in favor of this fact. Analysis of the chemical composition of the Moon revealed that it consists of practically the same material that the Earth, although it was completely formed of the remains of the celestial body that had hit the Earth.
Modeling of the collision revealed that the protoplanet was to have broken to many pieces as a result of the collision. However, after orbiting, these pieces were to have grouped once again in several hours, and a new object was to have collided with the Earth once again. In an interview to BBC Canup said that at that very moment the new object was completely destroyed. Majority of the protoplanet’s remains dropped on the Earth surface to become the last essential component of the planet formation.
But several pieces formed a red-hot disk around the Earth similar to the disks around Saturn. Later, the Moon was formed of this material within dozens of years.
Robin Canup thinks that destruction of the twin planet made the Earth such as we know it at present. The most important result of the collision was that the Earth started revolving; this is the reason why now one day lasts 24 hours on this planet and none of the Earth parts gets too hot or cools down very much. It is a key factor that allows life existence on the Earth.
The Moon has become a gravitational counterweight for the Earth, it stabilizes a slightly inclined axis of revolution of the planet. This incline of 23 degrees regulates seasonal periods in the nature.
Dead Animals Made Apes Become Human Beings
The issue of homo sapiens evolution keeps getting more and more hypotheses. Our genealogy table becomes broader and broader, although the outburst of evolution remains as mysterious as it was two million years ago. A widely-spread version says that fast changes of human appearance gave an incentive to the development of hunting skills in the beginning of the Ice Age. Scientist James O’Connel from the Utah University substantiates another theory: a human being became a human being, because it started eating carrion.
The story was rather happy. Men would go hunting and bring meat home. Meat was rich with nutritious substances, although other ancient apes could not get it. The hunting developed the spirit of cooperation. It made prehistoric people study their surroundings and use various tools. Evolution led to biological changes: brain became more prefect, eyesight became a dominating factor over sense of smell, jaws became lighter, arms became more adroit. Social structures and families appeared due to the need to search for food in separate groups. So, prehistoric men would go hunting and women would go to pick plants, taking care of children.
James O’Connel believes that it was absolutely different. The key role in the evolution did not belong to a hunter male, but to a collector female. It is not ruled out that it was a grandmother, not a mother, that played the most important role in that respect. A grandmother did not deal with raising children, she looked after food. A lot of archaeological discoveries say that early homo erectus males did not bring any meat at home. Archaeological excavations in Africa, on river banks, basically, reveal both animal bones and primitive stone tools. Those places are swarmed with predators, even up-to-date hunters prefer not to encounter them.
James O’Connel says that prehistoric people were not likely to spend nights in those places. Predators would attack them easily at nighttime. The scientist believes that animal bones and stone tools were found at the places of so-called temporary dining-rooms. Groups of ancient people would gather near a body of a dead animal and eat it. Traces of stone tools were found on animal bones together with predators’ bites. Maybe, prehistoric people did not hunt at all? Maybe, they just ate dead animals that were killed by predators first? Scientists compared those marks to jags that carrion-eating people would leave on bones. Scientists came to conclusion that the biggest thing that ancient people could do was to frighten stuffed predators away from their dead preys.
Adult males were unable to feed their children. This means that mothers and grandmothers played more important roles for their survival. Older women would deal with collecting, while younger mothers had an opportunity to give birth to children and raise them. A human infant is the weakest creature among all biological species on the planet. Yet, it is weakness that provides long upbringing as well as an opportunity to share experience. The brain of a baby ape is 70% close to the brain of an adult ape. The remaining 30% appear in just a few months.
However, the brain of a human infant makes up only 20% of its adult analogue, while the process of growth is over at the age of 23. Thus, the evolution assisted in the life span extension, which enlarged human bodies and delayed the maturity age. Therefore, most considerable changes in the evolution of a human life are explained with collecting, not hunting. This explanation sounds more reasonable. However, the followers of the “meat theory” do not give up. At the end of the day, a human being is the only predator of all apes, which means something already. In addition to that, prehistoric people might hunt not for animals, but for weaker species of their own kind. It is rather nutritious meat, really.
Killer Asteroid Approaching the Earth?
Robin Scagell, vice-president of the British Society for Popular Astronomy said: “Now we start realizing that we are living in the world that is a real shooting range in fact. Until now, the mankind was lucky.” He added that only when the last generation of telescopes appeared, astronomers understood that the space was polluted with “tiny” meteorites and asteroids, each of them may wipe a large city off the face of the Earth. Not so much time ago, a meteorite called 2000YA passed by the planet, it was just 800 thousand kilometers from the Earth, which is a short distance judging by the astronomic standards. The meteorite moved at the speed of over 36 km/sec. Scagell says that the meteorite could turn the central part of London into a mess if it hit London. To tell the truth, there are even larger meteorites that pass the planet.
Recently, on December 27, 2002 Ukraine’s newspaper Pravda Ukraini (Ukrainian Truth) published a sensation that attracted little attention in the fuss on the New Year’s eve. The newspaper reported that a meteorite called Eight (it is called so by its shape) was approaching the Earth and would hit the planet on January 25, 2003. It was also reported that “leaders and scientists of the world largest countries started incredibly heated disputes on the problem. The world practice witnessed such situation for the first time. It was also for the first time that projects of astrophysicists were discussed at parliamentary sessions in Central Europe. The reason to it was a huge meteorite hundreds times larger than the famous Tunguska meteorite, which can drop on the Earth on January 25, 2003. The most optimistic forecasts say that if the meteorite falls, it may raze to the ground the territory of several thousands of square kilometers.”
The newspaper cited President of the Boston Center for Space Research and Observation, Herbert Coliander who said that “no doubt that the meteorite discovered four years ago will fall on the Earth.” The problem was discussed at a G7 session in Warsaw, where it was suggested that a special group for averting a catastrophe must be created. The newspaper reported at that: “However, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly declared such hasty actions were ungrounded.”
Baikal Lake is one of the possible spots of the meteorite’s falling; if the catastrophe occurs, the lake will turn into one more ocean, not to mention the accompanying climate cataclysms.
It is strange that the information about the approaching cataclysm caused just slightest anxiety. Probably, the Ukrainian newspaper made a misprint, and the meteorite may hit the Earth not in 2003, but in 2013 or even in 2113. This doesn’t change the situation radically, as the mankind is not yet ready for resistance to danger going from the sky and unlikely to be ready for it very soon. Indeed, the above mentioned 2000YA meteorite was detected when it already passed by the Earth. After that, a report of three scientists warning of a real meteorite danger was published in Great Britain. The report suggested that a system of anti-meteorite protection covering the whole of the planet must be created.
On June 14, 2002, asteroid 2002MN of about 100 meters in length passed by the Earth at a distance of 120 thousand kilometers (it is less than one third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon). And the asteroid was detected only in three days after it successfully passed the planet. The problem is that the “space guards” still have no equipment to detect such “small” objects.
A meteorite threat is not a myth, but reality. Let’s remember the Tunguska meteorite which explosion in 1908 was equivalent to the explosion of 500 nuclear bombs. Fortunately, the meteorite blew up over the Siberian taiga. What would happen if it didn’t? There is a hypothesis saying that dinosaurs were killed with an asteroid of 5 kilometers in diameter. About 40 meteorite craters with the diameter of more than 20 kilometers were discovered on the planet. It means that large celestial bodies collided with the Earth and will do in the future as well.
Famous journalist and researcher Yaroslav Golovanov wrote: “90% of all asteroids are orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. There are thousands, if not millions of asteroids. They are large and small; judging by calculations, 17% of the large asteroids have tiny satellites of their own. (About one billion of comets outside the Solar system are not taken into consideration at that. 20% of celestial bodies that are dangerous for the Earth are just exactly new comets that are difficult to predict).
Some asteroids de-orbit and approach the Earth under the influence of the Solar system planets’ gravitation. It is currently considered that there are 1000-1100 asteroids of this kind. It was determined that about 400 of them are approximately of one kilometer in size.” Astronomers calculated that about 160 asteroids cross the Earth orbit, 125 of them are potentially dangerous. According to other information, about two million asteroids of over 50 meters in diameter cross the Earth orbit.
What can be done? We must seek new modern methods of detection of killer asteroids and instruments of liquidation of these asteroids. These are the main objectives of Russia’s Space Shield Foundation in the city of Snezhinsk, the Federal Nuclear Center of Russia; the international organization Space Guard is working on the problem in Europe; space protection is developed in the USA on the governmental level. However, it is too early to speak about complete space safety of the Earth. For better security, not only systems of detection must be created, but also systems of interception of dangerous objects, that certainly costs a lot. It will be possible only if the mankind joins the efforts for creation of a space shield. Meanwhile, it is highly likely that the killer asteroid is approaching the Earth, but we still don’t realize this fact.
Human Being Originated from Anteater?
English scientists ventured to challenge their world famous country-fellow Charles Darwin. Cambridge University scientists cast doubts on the hypothesis, which says that a human being originated from an ape-like ancestor. Our common ancestor is rather strange-looking, and it does not look like a human being at all. It is an anteater.
Most likely, this scientific discovery will make the humanity pay a lot more attention to the mammals of the edentate species. To be more precise, it goes about African aardvark anteaters. These animals have a special scientific name, which is very hard to pronounce. It is translated from the Dutch language as a “ground pig.”
This animal has a nighttime mode of living. It has a long tubular snout and long ears. It eats ants and termites. This ground pig looks like a big armadillo. A group of researchers from the Cambridge University compared the chromosomes of a human being, an ant-eater, and African and Asian elephants. It turned out that all those animals have several common chromosomes. However, human beings and ground pigs turned out to be closer to each other on the base of this factor.
The report, which was prepared by the researchers, mentioned that an African anteater differs the least from a human being from the point of view of the chromosome index. This was discovered among all known placenta mammals. Compared to other mammals, this animal is closer to a human being in the chain of ancestors.
Victims of Anomalous Zones
Natural phenomena can hardly be explained, especially if they are dangerous. Some of the geographic names on the map are terrifying: the Hill of the Dead, the Devil Bog, the Gorge of Death. Each of these places is covered with lots of mysterious legends saying not only about an accidental death of a traveller, but about mysterious deaths mostly.
In fact, the names of such places always served (and also currently do) as warnings not to enter them. The name of the height 1079 in Northern Urals, Kholat Sjahyl, is translated from the Mansi language as “Mountain of the Dead.” From time to time, the hill proves that the name had been given correctly.
Old residents of the place still remember an accident that occurred near the Mountain of the Dead. On February 2, 1959, a group of tourists from the Ural Polytechnic Institute set up a camp on the mountainside of the ominous height. In several days, the people were found dead. The reasons of the tragedy are not yet investigated. Several versions of the tragic deaths of the tourists were put forward: it was supposed that the men could be killed by a ball lightning, or they died because of a fatal effect of some UFO. It was also supposed that the tourists accidentally entered the area where secret tests of a vacuum weapon were held.
It was strange to discover that the skin of the dead had an unusually red tint; the people had internal injuries and haemorrhages. The same symptoms are typical of damages caused by a vacuum bomb that rarefies the air on a vast territory. In the outskirts of such a zone human blood vessels burst because of the highest internal pressure, and when a man in the epicenter, his body bursts into pieces. However, none of the versions was confirmed.
Investigators of phenomena are sure that geographic places with deadly names are rather anomalous areas where unusual natural processes happen. Mysteries of some of the regions have been discovered. For instance, it is no longer a surprise to see heaps of white bones in the Valley of Death in Russia’s Kamchatka, the Valley is on the territory of the Kronotsky preserve. Scientists found out that strange deaths of birds, gluttons and even bears happen because of volcanic cyanic gases evolved from earthly fissures; this gas paralyzes the respiratory tract.
However, there are no clear explanations to all phenomena. We may take for instance the Valley of Death in Russia’s republic of Yakutia, in the Upper Vilyui. The mystery of the valley lies in strange metal hemispheres that protrude in some places right from the permafrost. Legends say, when some brave man risked to spend a night near such an object, he inevitably died for unknown reasons. As we currently understand, such strange deaths resembled deaths caused by radioactive damages. Are there sources of such strong radiation in Yakutia? Nothing of this kind was discovered during geological surveys held in these regions.
The ill fame of the Valley of Death in China’s province of Sichuan is not accidental as well (sometimes the valley is called Black Bamboo Valley). In the summer of 1950 about 100 people strangely disappeared there and a plane crashed for unknown reasons. Such a large number of victims was once again registered in the valley in 1962. A man who guided a caravan of geologists survived. He later described the accident: “As soon as the advance group entered the gorge, the people were enveloped with a thick fog. Indistinct sounds were heard; but when the fog lifted, they were gone.”
Scientists recently organized an expedition to the Sichuan anomalous zone. They say that strange accidents probably happen there because of saturated fumes of decaying plants that choke people; then people lose the bearings and die in deep fissures that are abundant in the area.
But other scientists are sure that this solution of the mysterious death is just visible. In fact, tragedies occur there because of an unusually strong magnetic field of the Black Bamboo Valley. The same peculiarity is also typical of another Chinese valley of death situated in the mountains of the province of Jilin. For unknown reasons, planes crash and people disappear there. It happened sometimes that even experienced gatherers of ginseng, who perfectly knew the place, never got back home from the mountains. Compass hands vibrates, and people even lose memory and bearings there. Travellers stray about the same place but cannot find a way out. And the fatal valley just enlarges the number of its victims.
First River of Dry Ice Discovered on Mars
It is highly likely that scientists managed for the first time to discover streams of some substance in the Martian canyons. A geologist from the University of Melbourne (Australia), Doctor Nick Hoffman studied the pictures of the Martian surface made from the automatic station Mars Global Surveyor.
After the study, the scientist discovered signs of active processes going on in the canyons and in the canals of the planet’s polar areas. Despite the opinions of majority of scientists saying these may be streams of liquid water, Doctor Hoffman is sure the substance is highly likely frozen carbon dioxide. If his words prove true, all attempts of NASA to find liquid water and life on Mars will be useless.
In the last issue of the Astrobiology magazine, Doctor Hoffman provided his evidence showing that the Martian flows had no connection with habitual liquid water.
When data obtained with automatic stations were studied, it turned out that when spring comes to Mars, the flows rush along the Martian canyons filled with carbon dioxide ice and snow at the temperature of 130 degrees below zero Celsius. This extremely low temperature may even turn the battery acid into a stone cobble. Water cannot flow under such temperature conditions, which means that the Martian streams are highly likely the streams of carbon dioxide. However, it is impossible that liquid carbon dioxide may exist on Mars; it transforms from its solid state into the gaseous one. To all appearances, the Martian streams are landslides or avalanches of boiling dry ice that may also contain sand, dust and stones.
Doctor Hoffman says that the discovery will dispel all illusions concerning life being on Mars. “If the mechanism of formation of all new canyons is the same everywhere on Mars, it means that no life, so actively searched for by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, can exist in the planet’s near-surface layers. No life is possible without water in its liquid state. And despite the numerous reports saying that large supplies of water ice were found on Mars, NASA still fails to discover liquid water there.”
According to Doctor Hoffman, the discovery of active streams on Mars is an epoch-making event by itself, as Mars was traditionally believed as absolutely motionless, with the exception of dust storms. The Martian canyons are considered to be the highly likely places where streams of liquid water can be found in these days. Majority of NASA specialists focus on the search of mechanisms that might explain how the streams appear under the influence of ablation. However, nobody ever managed to see the canyons running.
Christmas Has No Connection With Christ’s Birth
No, it is not in vain that the church persecuted the science. The question whether the knowledge makes for the belief, or on the contrary, the knowledge results from the belief, is put aside. This is because on the Christmas eve the science gave the church several stunning hypotheses concerned with the Bible; these hypotheses cast doubt on the inner sanctum of the Holy Scripture.
First of all, as the science insists, there is no reason to consider that Jesus Christ was born on the day when the whole of the world celebrates his birth, no matter if based on the Gregorian or on the Julian calendars. British astronomer David Hughes, guided by the story about the three wise men or Magi, decided to find the Bethlehem Star that appeared on the ski on the day when Jesus Christ was born. What astronomic events are similar to those described in the Bible?
After studying the ancient Babylon and Chinese astronomical records, Hughes discovered a rare conjunction of two planes, Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation Pisces in 7 B.C. The Magi were interested in any bright “star” as a sign of birth of a new tsar. In that case the combination was ideal: Jupiter symbolizes the Tsar of Gods, Saturn – Palestine and Pisces – the Jewish people. Based on the exact astronomic data we can suppose that the actual date of the Christ’s birth is September 15, 7 B.C. Astronomer Persy Seymour from Plymouth recreated a sky model in the planetarium and got a confirmation to the Hughes’ theory.
It was at the beginning of the 17th century that great German astronomer Johannes Kepler calculated that a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter would be the most appropriate on the Christmas night: because of the difference in the speeds of the planets and the Earth, they can join into one bright spot three times within less than a month. Thus, if we follow the scientific principle, this year must be not 2003, but 2010. If we stick to the time scale of the current epoch, we may soon see with the naked eye a phenomenon similar to the Bethlehem Star; it will be a comet in 2005. There is a blunder in the Bible then.
The very fact of the Christ’s birth in 7 B.C. is confirmed by the travel made by Maria and Joseph to Bethlehem for payment of some tax a year before Jesus Christ was born; the travel is mentioned in some apocryphal sources. As based on the wall inscriptions made in Turkey, it was a general tax imposed by the Roman Empire on the territory of Asia Minor and Middle East. The tax was paid regularly once in several years, including 8 B.C.
But the birth is not only the date, it is also a memorable event. Once again, the science couldn’t stay aside in this situation. Israeli and British forensic anthropologists tried to restore the image of Jesus Christ with the help of programmers. The work was carried out on the basis of the principles of archeological and anatomic researches developed by Richard Neave from the Manchester University. The image of Jesus Christ could be restored with a high degree of reliability judging by his skull or the DNA. But as the church insists that Jesus Christ ascended to the skies, his skull and DNA are unlikely to be obtained.
The research was made on the basis of the skull of a Jesus’s contemporary, an Israeli living in 1 Common Era and on the Gospel text. At the final stage, the image was modeled with a computer. Earlier, the same technology was applied to make “portraits” of famous people of the past, for instance, portraits of Alexander the Great and King Midas. As the research revealed, the real Jesus Christ was 153 cm tall, his weight was less than 50 kg, the hair was black and curly, the nose was massive and the skin tawny. An anthropologist professor from the University of California, Alison Halloway says about the image: “It is highly likely to be more close to the reality than the images of Jesus Christ made by famous artists.”
The science also decided to focus its attention on one more participant of the birth of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Maria. Right before Christmas, a documentary about the Mother of Christ made by BBC was broadcast in Great Britain. The film rejects majority of the truths belonging to the religious canons of the Christianity; it gives a new picture of the events connected with the birth of Jesus Christ as seen from a scientific point of view. Maria was tawny, with dark hair and was poorly dressed; as we see this depiction has nothing in common with the traditional images of the Virgin. The Mother of God was illiterate for sure.
The most delicate problem is the problem of birth as a result of the immaculate conception; the science rejects this idea completely. As based on the morals of that time, we can suggest that Jesus was conceived as a result of sexual abuse by the Roman centurion; at that, Maria became mother at the age of 12-13. Other versions say that Maria got pregnant from some secret lover or actually from Joseph, who wasn’t her husband yet at that period. Which by the way was a really hard task for Joseph at his old age (90 years).
It is also possible that the very interpretation of the immaculate conception was translated incorrectly. Experts say that the word “virgin” meant “young woman or girl” in the original texts, it was certainly not obligatory that the young woman was virgin in fact.
We would like to add that revision of some symbols of the belief isn’t a revision of the belief itself or a blasphemy. It is not the birth of Jesus Christ that is of special importance, it is his life and his ideas that really matter. These ideas are still of considerable importance.
The Mysterious Plate
In May 1992, we shot a documentary about UFO studies in Estonia. At the end, we had almost the whole day free, so my friend, who is a well-known ufologist in Estonia, proposed to visit an interesting place, as he called it. While we were driving through Tallinn, then along a country highway, my friend told me a real crime story…
It started in the middle 60s. A dweller of a settlement which is not far from Tallinn, car mechanic Virgo Mitt, decided to dig a well in his yard. Everything was going OK. Though suddenly his spade knocked against some metal thing. Virgo tried to dig the thing out, though to no effect: this was a big, literally endless plate. Virgo found a paving breaker and tried to make a hole.
The first level, which was very hard and thick. After it, there was another stuff, more structured (like nails). Virgo worked hard. In several dais, in the 1-1.5-inch plate, there was a good hole, which was enough for a well. Water started to swell too fast, so Virgo decided to refuse from his idea of the well and to fill the hole up. He threw almost all grit to the hole, though he kept a couple of the plate splinters, about 10 cm in diameter. One of them was later lost, while the other had an unusual fate.
Virgo Mitt told about his find to his friend, who was a chemist. Therefore, this piece of metal was handed over to Tallinn Polytechnic Institute, while in 1969 it got to the table of Herbert Wijding, future deputy director of Estonian Geology Institute. This could have been the end of the story, though once an engineer touched the splinter. The hit was as big a powerful electric discharge: the engineer lost consciousness. Herbert Wijding was shocked: he held this splinter so many times! Of course, he could not neglect his mysterious fact. And he started his own investigation.
Before sending the splinter to experts, he cut it in several thin plates. The scientists were surprised: in a very small example, they found 38 elements of the periodic system, most of which cannot coexist in nature. The example was not radioactive, though very magnetic. According to the conclusion of academician Obraztsov and professor Yelkin, this was a composite stuff armored with calcium-iron-silicon fibres, while its matrix was of metal glass. According to academician Kishkin, alloys like that are not known in aviation. Such alloy must be firm against heat and acids of any concentration. Specialists suppose this stuff was most likely created through powder metallurgy method under a very high pressure, which is impossible with today’s level of science.